Vengeance from Beyond: Ruthie is a terrifying tale of one dead child's quest for revenge

 

Ruthie

Angie Gibson

Independently Published, 2025

Ebook, 128 ppg.

ISBN-13: 979-8311772297

Buy link

 

A group of 12-year-old friends know about a missing 6-year-old girl named Ruthie in their area, but when they find Ruthie, they at first find her as what appears to be a body. Frightened out of their wits, they run away screaming, but when they return, the child is sitting up and is alert. What’s going on here? Didn’t they just see her as a body not too long ago? Nevertheless, they befriend Ruthie, thinking she was just left there, and they decide to help her bring her abductor to justice. Then strange things start happening with Ruthie. The group of friends – four boys named Jalen, Pedro, Dylan and Dakota – are not really sure what’s happening, only that Ruthie needs their help! But are they willing to hang in there until the very end, despite all of the strange things that keep happening with their young friend?

 

I really enjoyed reading Ruthie by Angie Gibson! It may be a story for kids, but it definitely held my interest! I loved seeing how the four friends were trying to figure out if Ruthie was alive or not, and if not, then what was she, exactly? Was she a zombie? One of them asks the others if they think so. Nah, one of the boys say. “Zombies aren’t real.” Maybe so, but Ruthie sure does show interesting signs of being a zombie – like how she is slowly falling apart and smells pretty much like death!

 

I also liked seeing how the friends relate to each other. Even when one of them is freaking out over Ruthie’s strange behavior and is convinced they need grown-up help, they rally together to help this friend. It’s definitely a scary situation for a kid to be in, but they keep their heads in the right place and stay grounded when they work through everything happening together.

 

This story was scary, mysterious and full of suspense. It kept me guessing at every turn. I was surprised over the new things happening as the story unfolded, and I worried that something bad was going to happen to one of the boys before they could bring the person who hurt Ruthie to justice.

 

As a person familiar with ghosts, and as someone who has read many ghost stories (both real and fictional), I was really intrigued by the “ghostly” aspect of this story. It’s hard to see the character Ruthie as a ghost, since she eats the same food as the other kids, but there are some parts of her existence that is ghostly. So I pretty much saw her as a ghost in the story. That said, I also recognized her as a child that had been murdered. For the longest time, as I read this story, I tried to ignore the brutality of a child of only six being murdered. I tried not to let it get to me. But when I got to the part where Ruthie says “I miss my friends and my dollies” that was when the waterworks broke. That made me so sad. I have seen similar statements by child ghosts in stories, even though Ruthie is not a ghost in this story. So, yeah, that hit hard.

 

And as a parent, I was thoughtful over the boys’ actions, as well as the mother who was dealing with the pain of her missing child.  

 

Ruthie is a story with very scary moments, but it is also a very moving story of making right what was made wrong. Themes of vengeance, loss, and friendship are very strong in this story, possibly themes which young readers 12 and up could relate to. It’s a spooky story that is both entertaining as well as chilling. Ruthie is the kind of story that stayed with me long after I read the very last page, and even though it had a very satisfying ending, I could only wonder if there was the chance our young ghoul may once again rise from the grave, hungry for more blood and revenge!

 

 

Five stars.

 

 

Disclaimer: I downloaded this book through my subscription with Kindle Unlimited.

 

Ruthie by Angie Gibson is available both as a Kindle ebook and for free through Kindle Unlimited.

A Tale of Two Screams: The Screaming Child is a haunting account of one mother's obsession to find her missing child

 

The Screaming Child

By Scott Adlerberg

Ghoulish Books, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-943720-87-3

176 ppg.

Buylink

 

Brace yourself. You are about to be pulled into a mother’s grief. No, her son is not dead – at least, we think he is not dead. But he is missing, and the not knowing of where he is, if he is safe, if he is cared for or even if he is alive eats away at the mother in this book. This story is told from the mother’s point-of-view, so readers get a very raw and very emotional grasp of what she is going through.

 

In the beginning, we are introduced to the child who will eventually go missing. The story begins just as it does for many parents of missing children: One day, their child is there, then they are not. They are gone, almost erased from the world.

 

Coping with her child missing is just too much for the mother, Eleanor. She can’t handle it, as I’m sure many parents with missing children cannot. The pain, uncertainty and anger gets to be so bad between her and her husband that they often argue with each other. There’s the blame, the confusion and the regret.

 

So, she decides to spend some time somewhere else for a while. Somewhere she can be alone and just try to PROCESS everything.

 

Plus, being at home, a place she shared with her child, is too much for her. "On Grahame’s bed, at the kitchen table, in the closet with his sneakers and shoes—everywhere in the house, through every square foot—a void existed where my son had been. My husband could not fill that void." (Page 55)

 

Eleanor tries to throw herself into the writing of a nonfiction book she was working on before her child disappeared. Even then, though, she struggles with it, wondering if she is focusing her energy on the wrong thing. But then, while she is at her “shack,” something happens: She hears a scream. At first, she is not sure if she heard this sound right, but then she hears it again. And again. And she is convinced it is a child screaming. A thought enters her head: ‘That could be MY child who is screaming.’

 

This, I feel, is what ultimately keeps her rooted to the spot. She is extremely against leaving the shack and returning home to civilization. Perhaps she thinks she is close to wherever her child is being held captive. Maybe it’s a sign that he is alive and she must not give up hope. Whatever she feels about it, she refuses to leave her spot, instead staying and hoping to keep hearing that scream again.

 

This takes Eleanor through a world where she’s not sure which is which. On one hand, she hangs on to this mystery of the scream, wondering if it really is her child. And on the other hand, she tries to focus on the tangible things she can work with: Talking with people who knew her son, who know the area better or have more knowledge about the case. She tries to stay grounded even as the lingering mystery of that screaming child keeps trying to pull her back into a world of “what if’s” that she knows will cause her to lose the last grip of her sanity.

 

This is not just a story about a mother dealing with the pain of her child missing; in a way, it’s also a mystery to be solved. So, appropriately, this is a mystery horror novel. Eleanor gets all these different clues and all this misdirection happens, and while I was reading it, I was trying to think ahead. I was right there with her trying to solve that mystery and trying to find out where her son had been snatched away to.

 

One thing I noticed about this story that really stood out for me is the scream itself. Before Eleanor hears the scream of a child, she hears the anguished scream of a mother who has lost a child. This parallelism made me wonder how it seemed to symbolize the meaning of the story itself. The whole message behind the story. There is the mother who lost her child screaming and there is a child, possibly taken from a mother, screaming. It’s a thought I entertained until I got to the real horrors of this story, a horror which I was not prepared for.

 

The Screaming Child is a gripping story of loss and isolationism, as well as a raw look into the stories we try telling ourselves to alleviate the harsh realities of the world. For some, mysteries may never be solved, and we must cope with them in our own ways. Where to go from there are roads we all must eventually travel on our own.

 

 

Five stars

 

 

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.