‘Breed’ brings horror close to home

Forget vampires, zombies and guys clad in hockey masks brandishing oversized machetes. Chase Novak unleashes truly scary literary horror villains in Breed: Mom and Dad.

Novak (author Scott Spencer of Endless Love fame using a pseudonym for the first time) explores what happens when one's parents aren't quite the protectors they should be in this excellent horror novel. He probes emotionally deep and heartbreaking themes of family and friendship that seem fresh in a book that's a bit like a mad-scientist movie — or Frankenstein if the monster decided he needed some kiddos in his life.

Breed begins almost like Rosemary's Baby: Alex Twisden is a New York City lawyer from a well-to-do family and he yearns to have an heir with his wife Leslie, although their strong love for each other has not proven fruitful in terms of offspring. They hear about a doctor in Slovenia who, although odd, has had uncanny success with an unorthodox fertility treatment.

Leslie produces two healthy twins but both she and Alex discover they're not quite the same as they were before their excursion — in their case, more hair than they ever thought possible, animalistic urges and a taste for raw meat.

Ten years later, twins Adam and Alice also start to realize that their parents aren't quite normal, since they're locked in their rooms at night, they can't visit the cellar where strange sounds come from, and they're prohibited from spilling any of the family's secrets.

The kids escape their domestic prison, which shifts gears in Breed from a psychological tale to a high-stakes adventure where your fingers can't flip the pages fast enough. Adam and Alice go on the run with a helpful prep-school teacher, and learn way more than they'd like about their family's odd behaviors and abilities from folks who've also been affected. Yet they find it near impossible to escape Alex and Leslie, who are using everything in their power — legally and horrifically — to bring them back home.

Novak revels in the horror side of the story, especially in descriptions of eerie scenery — one abandoned apartment, for example, is "a hideous bouillabaisse of everything repulsive, hell's soup du jour." The author is at his best with emotions: It's heartbreaking to see Alex and Leslie torn between paternal instincts and their more primal ones, and to watch Adam and Alice wonder why their mother and father are so off but love them so much at the same.

Breed doesn't need love triangles, twist endings or aspects of a gore fest to keep an audience enraptured. Instead, it's the simple conceit — how do you love parents who do more harm than good? — and a moving ending that make Novak's horror novel a thrill to read.