The “greatest beast” doesn’t like “pain sticks.”

101. Deadly Harvest – Morgan Fields

The main thing I don’t understand about this book is why it has this title. There is no harvesting in the story and not even any farming. It’s a pretty different entry into the 80s horror pantheon, involving an otherworldly beast that has been preying on people since the Pleistocene. Some of the older, well, genetically, or maybe evolutionarily would be the better ly-word here, did manage to keep the beast to its pit so it wouldn’t pick them off in bloody carnage before they could starve to death while all their food sources died, and those very people are talking to the sheriff’s daughter in her dreams.

You see both these people and the 1989 group of girls who went swimming and trekked back through the woods saw a cabin (a weirdly modern one for the Pleistocene) rippling, but present, and it seems to be the doorway to a pit. A pit which contains evil and also a super huge carnivorous beast which is depicted like an angry Rottweiler on the cover. I am not sure if I was supposed to intuit that the beast (and they do keep calling it that, and so shall I) is doing the harvesting? I have too much farming information in my head for that to work.

Anyway, the three girls are part of small town Hobart, TX, and now they’re also part of the theoretical team to re-contain the ancient evil of the beast, mainly, as it’s super after Jodie. The team also includes Jodie’s dad, the sheriff who is having a hard time with custody exchanges, Cariann’s dad, the town drunk who has actual redeeming qualities in between his fits of anger, and Audra Jean’s dad, the historian who totally gets infected with the evil guiding the beast and goes off the deep end. He is not very helpful to the team. Jodie’s getting all the dream information from the Pleistocene team of two and it’s a very different but followable story even with the beast’s perspective.

Apparently the story has its genesis in an actual archeological finding in Texas and an actual carnivorous beast, the megistotherium. The finding is helpfully explained in an afterword and as someone who really enjoys some anthropology in her horror novels, this was a good one. I didn’t mind the lack of research scene, which is something I do not normally say.

The sheriff in this, Rad, also has a charge plate, just like Nancy Drew and Danger Crumples.