Demons abound in Grace Byron’s debut novel, Herculine. There’s the garden-variety sleep-paralysis demon that confronts the book’s narrator in bed, and the more terrifying demon that appears before her in the bathroom of the Brooklyn club where she’s been dancing with friends, turning the floor into a sludgy pile of revolting goo. Other, less visible demons haunt her, too. Byron’s narrator—she goes unnamed—is a trans woman transplant from the midwest trying, and largely failing, to make her way as a writer in New York City. Her group of friends form an ersatz Sex and the City clique; her sex life consists of a series of unsatisfying encounters with self-involved men. She grew up in a deeply Christian household and survived conversion therapy in her adolescence, but now, in her early 20s, is lonely and adrift, and thus highly susceptible to a series of insistent text messages from Ash, her ex, who has founded an off-the-grid commune for trans women in rural Indiana called Herculine. Ash, magnetic and authoritative, holds out the promise of eros, of independence, of freedom, and, most powerfully, of love. But when the narrator at last makes her way to Herculine, she finds that the promise of utopia may entail its own kind of bargain with the devil.

I first came to know Grace Byron as an incisive and prolific critic, a thrilling new voice on the literature scene. It was a delight to then discover her as a fiction writer, and such a daring and funny one at that. Herculine is a horror novel, but it is also wry and witty; just because you suddenly find yourself in the midst of a Rosemary’s Baby situation doesn’t mean that you can’t quip about it. In early October, Grace and I sat down at McNally Jackson Seaport to mark the book’s paperback publication with a conversation in front of an enthusiastic audience. She began with a reading from a section of the novel that concerns the narrator’s grandmother, a warm, surprisingly open-minded woman who nurtured her in childhood, gently suggesting to her that there might be a world beyond evangelical Christianity. The character, Grace said, was partially based on an uncle of hers. Herculine, in fact, began as a memoir, but it soon found a life entirely its own, as she went on to discuss.

I really resist the idea of autofiction in this book because there are demons.

My narrator does have a very tortured relationship to belief and doubt, to God, to Christianity. God is not a character in the book per se, and neither are angels. Demons are, and that’s a choice I still grapple with. Although I would argue the demons are not entirely evil either. They're sort of complicated.

That's so sympathetic towards demons. There's a moment in the book where the narrator says, in such a wonderfully dry way, “Oh, great. Christianity was right about this. There are demons. This is real.”

And it's true that it's horrifying, but it’s also very funny and emblematic of the dry humor that's everywhere in this very frightening novel. How do the demons make their way in? [There’s] no God, no angels, as you say, and yet the demons take up more and more space. Where do they come from?

I grew up with sleep paralysis demons, which is where they start in the book.

I want to pause for a second and ask you to define “sleep paralysis demon.” In other interviews I've seen with you, everyone knows what this is. Does everyone in this room have one?

Have you had one?

Tell me what it is and I'll tell you if I've had one.

Good for you. Okay. Sometimes it’s described by some people as the Benadryl Hat Man. Have you ever taken a lot of Benadryl?

Maybe I will tonight.

The most benign version of a sleep paralysis demon is the one that comes when you take a lot of Benadryl to sleep. You wake up and there's a man in the corner of your room, and he has a hat, and he's kind of like a shadow figure.

Is it the Babadook?

It's kind of like the Babadook. This is kind of why the Babadook originated in mythology. It's the ancient mythology of the Babadook. He's gay, so it works.

I know. Yes, yes. I'm obsessed with the Babadook being gay. We're not going to get too far afield here—but I just need to ask you a follow-up. A sleep paralysis demon, by definition, has a hat?

No, no, no. I went off track. So a sleep paralysis demon could be almost anything. It’s dramatized very differently [across] pop culture. On the TV show Evil, it was a much more traditional demon. But, like, it could be somebody just standing in the corner of your room or maybe above you or on your ceiling, and you're asleep but awake.

I do think that commonly Benadryl produces the same kind of creature for some people, which is why it's so scary.

They need to be marketing this: “Get the hat man. Give it a try.”

Take the little pink pill. But yeah, that's why in the book I'm making the joke, like: It's a twink. It's Superman. You know, it could be any of these things. And crucially, you can't move.

You can't move. And was that experience very scary for you?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that's why I believed in the demonic for so long. I had no idea when I was growing up about sleep paralysis demons. I think they're more common as an idea now, although clearly not ubiquitous.

We're going to popularize this so that people can know. You experienced this when you were a child? And you were told that these were demons?

Growing up I was told that it was real and that these were demons. As a child you're like, "Oh, that's terrifying."

And were you told that it was because you were bad that the demons were coming to you? Or does everybody see demons?

I opened myself up for that one, didn't I? For sure. Well, the thing about demons is you have to invite them. In every exorcism handbook, the reason that somebody has a demon in their life is because they have sinned in some way, and that invites or allows the demon to come in.

So they went away for you?

They did.

Did they come back?

Every so often I have nightmares now, but I don't really have sleep paralysis demons. I've become less superstitious as I've gotten older, and I think a lot of people around me are maybe more superstitious. I really don't even love tarot cards. I have, like, two people I let read my tarot cards.

That's still two people.

You're saying I should cut them out?

I'm not saying anything prescriptive at all.

Okay, but no Ouija boards. No séances for me.

Got it. On the spectrum of the occult, you're pretty chaste.

I think so. For what I could be.

There are extreme examples out there. You were subject to an exorcism.

[laughs] Lightly, lightly, lightly, lightly.

Did you feel that the demon got out?

No. Well, I think the demon in my case was, um, being gay. So, in some ways you could argue that I became straight, but I sometimes think a woman is beautiful. I'm not a demon. I've dated women as a woman.

So you were the subject of a failed exorcism.

Well, when you say it like that . . .

No, I think it's a wonderful sign for you, personally.

Sure, yes. Character building.

This was a big part of your early life; you were in an evangelical environment, and expecting the Rapture at some point.

Oh, yeah. I was like, "So the end is coming and we're all going to face plagues and demons and fire and floods." And it'll be climate change, but then there'll also be demons. It was terrifying.

I remember having OCD as a kid. I would stare at clocks and we'd be eating Mexican food and I'd be like, "It's about to end. At 2 pm it's going to end." Which, like, is such an OCD doom thought. It’s not real, but it felt very real as a kid. I didn't know what OCD was. I was like, "This is real and there's no other reason that I would be thinking this thought. There's no possible reason that religion has conditioned me to think about the world in a certain way."

I want to come back to the question that I had asked before, which is why did demons make a reappearance for you in the novel?

I didn't expect it. I really wanted to write an Alice Munro or Lorrie Moore or Marilynne Robinson-type searching, probing sad-girl novel with some spirituality in it. I was really like, "I'm going to write a trans girl who inherits a house in some beautiful town, like Provincetown, and she's just going to think about her life."

Sounds good.

Yeah, like wish fulfillment. But instead I was really angry. There was something that felt really cathartic and interesting about using the mythology of demons to write about anger and pain and punishment. I didn’t have Greek mythology to use, and I wasn’t going to use wizards and witches. What I had, and what was left, were angels and demons. Angels seemed kind of boring, but demons are interesting, you know?

I didn't know it was going to be a horror novel. I wanted to write the sad girl novel, but instead she was really mean and bitter. And I was like, "I guess I'm a little mean and bitter." And then the demons kept coming. I would try and be like, "Okay, she's going to go to the club and she's going to dance and maybe she'll be sad." But then, "Oh, okay, there's a demon in the mirror now." That just kept happening.

My boyfriend was, for the first time in my life, showing me horror movies. I had never really been a horror person because of my upbringing. But then that form and genre really interested me, and it was useful.

That's a wonderful answer. It's so interesting to me that you didn't have horror earlier in your life. I assumed, fascinatingly, that it was a framework for you because of where the novel goes. I also could not deal with horror for a very long time. And then I became unafraid, or so I say, and it became interesting to me as well. Did horror grip you and fascinate you when you encountered it?

Not as a kid. As a kid, I was like, "Goosebumps is too scary," and it was. In high school I had a crush on a guy, so he made me watch Silence of the Lambs, obviously. And I hated that experience. We did not get together.

The first time that I had seen any of the modern or old horror classics was four or five years ago. And then I was gripped by them, and [wanted to watch them all]. One of the early ones was Hereditary, but I made my boyfriend stop and not play the scene where the girl gets her head chopped off. I was like, "That's too early for me in my horror journey."

But I watched Midsommar, Candyman, and Silence of the Lambs again. I watched The Exorcist. One of the things that I found the most shaking and scary was The Blair Witch Project. I could not go to sleep, I think because that version of demons was very relatable to me growing up. And also it's the woods, which I find to be very scary.

Yeah, the woods are not a fun place in Herculine. It's not a happy idyll over there.

I wanted to talk about the queer back-to-the-land genre and complicate it.

Do you have a relationship with nature?

I love nature. The one thing that is hardest about living in New York City is a lack of access to the wilderness. We kind of had the brambles in Central Park and cruising there, but of course that has changed.

I grew up hiking in the woods in Indiana. My parents took me to nature parks and state parks. So I have very fond memories, actually, of those times. Those walks were probably when I first thought of myself as an artist, turning around ideas for stories or playing pretend or thinking about wood nymphs or secrets in the woods or playing with my sister.

When I was doing EMDR, my safe place was a cabin in the woods. I think I hold nature in a real high regard. But I don't know if I could live there long-term.

Yeah, there's an interesting parallel between New York City, where of course there's a crush of people around at all times, and Herculine, this very isolated commune, because the narrator feels equally isolated in both places.

In New York, she has a close group of friends, but are they? And then she's invited to Herculine by her ex, Ash, and is told, "This is a place for you. This is going to be utopia, and you're going to be able to be free here. You're going to be with other trans women. We don't need anyone else outside of this community. " I want to talk about Ash, who is such a fascinating character. Would you say she's an anti-hero, a villain?

I think in a classical [sense], if you're really mapping the archetypes on, she is the antagonist. She's messing with the narrator's life.

In pretty much most things that I have written that have legs, I’m thinking, “What is the worst thing a trans woman could do?” and then just letting her do it.

I find those quote-unquote, "controversial" places to be really interesting wounds to fuck with and experiment with. I hope that she [finds] some sympathy. Even as the author, I have sympathy for her, but I wish I had more.

She's a very frightening figure, in the guise of a savior, who turns out to be a demonic force in every sense. It's very interesting, because there are certainly enough antagonists in the world—especially for trans people—who are not trans. I would imagine that maybe an evil cis person would come along and be the antagonist of this book. But it sounds like you're really attracted to being able to make something that has nothing to do with ideal representation politics. Did that ever concern you as you were writing this character that you were putting a figure like that out there? Or was it just exciting and thrilling?

I mean, it's a horror novel. It's not a political tract, you know? It's not a memoir, even. I have no interest in writing holier-than-thou trans women or people who are going through some emotional journey to find themselves. Many people write those books. But I don't like reading those books, and I don't want to write that kind of a book. I'm writing, hopefully, for a different audience.

I think about Gary Indiana and others—those gay guys are awful and I love them and I know them. I feel like somebody should be doing the same thing for trans women. Like, who cares if they're all likable? That's not the point. They should all get healthcare. They're not going to, but they should. It doesn't mean that you're not going to hate some of them.

I think it was more stressful in retrospect. I was like, "Well, maybe somebody cis could pick this up and be angry about it." There are Goodreads warriors who feel like the politics of the book don't reflect what they want. To me, that's more annoying than it is worrying. It does make me worry about the state of readership and morality. But it's not worrying to me politically.

I think a cis villain would be really boring to me. That's just a different thing. I think it’s interesting how a scarcity mindset can make villains of us all.

That's so well said. What is it about the narrator that makes her not able to get out of Herculine, once bodies start to fall?

Well, they have really good sex. I also think the pull of getting a second chance is really intoxicating. It is a sort of demonic pull. "Okay, what if we did it again and this time it was perfect?"

There’s a spooky topic for spooky season that we wanted to touch on: pans and the subject of panning as a critic. What do you have to say on this subject, Grace?

Well, first, what's the last book you panned?

Oh, what a good question. In my younger days, I loved to just write a mean screed and tell all the older established writers what they were doing wrong, often at enormous length in the Nation.

You wrote a kind of mixed review of Sheila Heti once, no?

Oh my god, that got me in so much trouble.

The point is I've written many a negative review, or mixed review. The only thing I really care about is a serious thinking-through as a critic myself. I want to think honestly and fluidly through someone's work. And I personally find that book reviewing in particular can be emotionally strenuous because it's one-to-one. It's one person reviewing one person's work. For the writer, it's not one-to-one. It's like, you know, zone defense because you're putting your work out there and getting swarmed—hopefully—with responses.

I'm very curious about your experience as a writer with this. As the critic, you can feel like you’re looking the writer in the eye, but the writer doesn’t know that you're looking at them. That can lead to strong feelings, but it can also lead to a lot of sympathy, which is what I usually feel, and a need to be judicious. The Heti piece is a good example of a book that I found very interesting and flawed in interesting ways.

I love when something is flawed in interesting ways.

I mean, I've gotten in trouble for pans many times. Even just over the past year. I have a lot of qualms with contemporary literature, even as a novelist. I think I am less scared now than I maybe was, but I never let the fear show in the writing. If I'm writing a negative review, even if I'm terrified, I'm like, "You gotta say it." I think people are really tired of people saying something is good when it's not. I also feel like you should stand behind what you made. And if somebody pans it, oh, well. My book was panned. Many a Substack was written about Herculine. I read one of them. I thought it was well written, unfortunately, which hurt even worse. But you know, you take a week, you complain to your friends, you drink a Negroni, and you move on.

I also wanted to talk to you about the treatment of trauma in art. I wrote a piece on the New Yorker's website last week about the new Zoe Kazan adaptation of East of Eden on Netflix, and specifically the treatment of Cathy Ames. I should say, I think it's a great show, and people should see it. It's beautiful and very intelligently adapted from the book. The problem I had was with Cathy Ames, who is an evil force, essentially demonically possessed. And yet, I think what makes Cathy Ames so repugnant, and also very fascinating as a character, is this sociopathic quality of hers. She wants to cause hurt and cause pain. I don't think she needs to have been traumatized as a child for us to understand why someone would want to do that in the first place, or why a woman would want to do that generally.

There’s great power to Cathy’s sociopathy. To me, the interesting, but I think misguided, attempt to make this character sympathetic by giving her relatable trauma undermined both the nature of trauma and the character herself. She's not necessarily a realist character—but it's not a realist book. It's based on the tale of Cain and Abel, so allegory becomes very powerful here. And I, as a female reader—and as a feminist reader—had to wrestle with Steinbeck’s treatment of this character. But there's such a thing as productive wrestling.

I think about Stephen Greenblatt's idea of strategic opacity, which is something that he writes about in his book about Shakespeare, and that Torrey Peters did a really great craft lecture on—the idea of do you need to know why something happened? People do things for all sorts of reasons, and they're not really reducible to their past experiences all the time. Sometimes they can be, and obviously Herculine has a lot about that, where past trauma certainly is informing the character. But I almost think of my book as a trauma monologue. She is telling you the comedic monologue, and she's struggling to tell you about the trauma part. She mostly wants to tell these kind of biting jokes that are almost self-defeating. She's trying to get you to like her, and then in the meantime being kind of confessional. ♦