If you’re at all familiar with Laird Barron’s work, you know from the jump that you’re not going to get the same old same old with him. X’s for Eyes is no different in that regard. How best to describe it? Think about what it would be like if you combined teen sleuth novels like the Hardy Boys and Three Investigators with the original Johnny Quest cartoons from Hannah-Barbera with a liberal dose of cosmic horror, and then viewed the action through a cracked lens. Yeah, that’s what X’s for Eyes is.

If you were to describe a story to me the way I just did to you— Well, let’s be honest, I’d geek out and say it sounds awesome, but some people might not. Some might screw up their faces as they imagine a messy picture created by a toddler dabbling in and finger painting with the guts of several different disparate genres. Luckily for us, Laird Barron is no toddler doing finger paintings. He’s a skilled artist who seamlessly blends together those genres with deft brushstrokes, and the result is a picture that gives the viewer a bit of vertigo to look at. The angles aren’t the kind we’re used to seeing and the colors aren’t quite recognizable as anything of this world. The novella isn’t free of camp, but it’s not void of horror either. There is some seriously horrific imagery in the last third of the story. The camp and the horror both offset and compliment one another and the result is nothing if not genuinely weird, and weird is exactly what you’re looking for when you pick up anything by Laird Barron.