The Flesh Eaters by L.A. Morse (1979): Eat 'Em and Smile

Behold the Frazetta glory that adorns this paperback! Inhuman brutes, their flesh gone grey-green from their ghastly diet (yet somehow they're ripped as hell), drag along another hapless victim to their lair hidden by great rocks in a misty, nightmarish landscape—what self-respecting horror fan could resist reading this book? Why it promises terrors beyond imagining! Slim, grim, and altogether grimy, The Flesh Eaters (Warner Books, Dec 1979), an unheralded vintage title by one L.A. Morse, operates in that unwholesome arena of dead-eyed depiction of graphic, taboo-obliterating violence with not a whiff of concern for taste or restraint. As you'll see, this is an altogether good thing.

This story of legendary Sawney Beane and his unholy clan is a master class in unsettling the unwary reader. Me, I had some idea of what I was getting into, but even so I was somewhat astonished—and impressed—at the darker turns the narrative took. A straightforward tale of supposedly historical events: a preface declares the factual (meh) basis of the novel, and Morse spares no ugly detail in describing the sheer shittiness of life in 15th-century Edinburgh. There are the houses basically made of mud and straw, the miasma of garbage and human waste, the scavenging creatures animal and man alike, the cathedral filled with light and wealth. The townspeople have no experience of any alternatives. If a clean town does not exist for them, then this town is not dirty.... This filth is merely one of the necessary accompaniments of progress.

We're introduced to Sawney and the other townspeople as they're watching the merciless executions of several prisoners, a momentous event that breaks the monotony of daily life. Of course after watching the men killed in vile ways he feels a tingling throughout his body, a pleasant warmth in his groin. He even sniffs blood from the ground and totally gets off on it. Then it's off to work in the blacksmith's, a horrible abusive guy, known as Master, but he's got this hot teenage daughter, Meg, who hates being her father's slave. Meg and Sawney develop I guess a "relationship." One night the blacksmith is drinking with a pal, and they humiliate Sawney and grope Meg. After being rejected by Meg, the pal leaves, and the blacksmith then attempts to rape his own daughter—till Sawney steps in to stop him. You can guess what happens:

At last Sawney Beane and Meg become exhausted and stop. There is blood all over them. Sawney Beane puts his hand in a wound on the Master's chest and brings it out covered with blood. He licks his hand, then holds it in front of Meg's face. She licks one finger slowly with the tip of her tongue; and then takes each of the other fingers into her mouth and sucks them greedily. Her lips are swollen, as though with passion.

They begin to laugh maniacally. 

ebook cover 2014

Two kids have killed the father, now they've gotta be on the run. That they do. Before, Sawney Beane was practically mute, a cipher, a dullard, a nothing, barely existing, barely thinking, barely feeling. Post-murder he is in touch with desires and sensations that before had only moved about him like beckoning shadows. Oh he has solved the sweet mystery of life, Sawney Beane has! He explains to Meg as they leave that dirty old town:

"We will become hunters. We will be like the great wolves of the forest. Only we will not attack cows and sheep and deer. We will hunt men... Aye, eat them! Feed upon them..."

Well all right! Now we're talkin'. The two self-imposed exiles trudge through spooky forest and across lonely beach and lo and behold, Sawney finds a tiny crevasse in a cliff face which he explores, finding that it turns into a dry, lofty cavern: the perfect home for he and his carnal bride, virtually invisible to any human eye. Here will be their hearth from which they will venture only to kill unsuspecting travelers on the road above. What follows are simple, sometimes gut-wrenching depictions of remorseless killers at work and the enjoyment they find in overpowering the weak things. To wit:

  They are the hunters and it is natural to hunt; anything else would be unnatural. Eating the flesh of their victims no longer has special significance. It is natural for hunters to eat what they kill. They feel no connection between themselves and their victims, no common humanity... they stand over their fallen victims, yelling at the corpses, cursing them, kicking them, spitting on them, dancing in triumph over their bodies

Then the inevitable occurs: Meg becomes pregnant. The baby's birth makes Sawney squeamish; he can't watch and he certainly can't cut the umbilical cord! Even looking at this mewling creature is beyond him... till he realizes: their numbers can increase. So will their strength. And so then will the fear they can cause in the others. Our numbers will increase.... We have only begun.

Once the Beanes start to procreate, things get sketch as eff. Meg gives birth yearly. The children have no names but their jaws are strong. They function almost as one organism, moving and breathing in harmony. The children know no life other than that of the cave; they accept it as normal. Sawney rules as patriarch, of course, teaching his loathsome offspring that "the things are stupid.... It is very funny when they know they are dead." To his clan he spins a myth of the grey wolf of the forest, a tale he remembers from his hazy youth: the wolf is both his own father and he, the supreme predator of the dark woods. The children lie in wait in lonely roads, one pretending to be injured, perhaps, to lure the unsuspecting travelers to aid; then father pounces. The eldest son wants dearly to be a hunter like his father, and the younger children want to partake in the kills on their own. Sawney is not sure if they're ready... but he is willing to let them try.

(Maybe skip this section if you want to experience the book for yourself) If you thought murder and cannibalism were the deepest depravities Flesh Eaters was going to plumb then you've thought wrong. There is rape and incest, and, in one dizzying moment of pure outsider horror, Morse notes the undercurrent of sexuality in the family... sexual energy crackles through the cave; the smell of lust is heavy. Like a pack of wild dogs, the family couples at every opportunity. All but the youngest children are involved, and these imitate their elders, pressing their naked loins together, thrusting their hips in a parody of the sexual act. Holy Jeezus.

They exist apart from human notions of morality or value; again and again Morse notes the uselessness of money and clothes and other "booty" accrued from their victims. "It's shit," Sawney Beane says more than once, tossing away gold coins and fine clothing, "all that belongs to them is shit. This is why they are weak." Morse crafts these scenarios for maximum impact with minimum stylized force: he doesn't overwrite or oversell his disturbing visions; his plain, unadorned prose simply documents horrific events but does not comment on them. Victims rarely have identity; those that do serve a larger purpose to the plot.

The only image of author Morse found

There is more to the novel than these grotesqueries of appetite and destruction:  the townspeople hear of more and more traveler disappearances (the story takes place over two decades). Their idiot Sheriff is lazy, not very smart except when it comes to avoiding difficulties, cowardly, and inordinately fond of his own voice. Perhaps it is a demon responsible? A priest is called. No luck. Several innocent men are accused of devil worship and human sacrifice after a rotted arm is found washed ashore; the men are tortured to confess and executed (the classic "throw the accused in the water, if he drowns he is innocent" is employed to sad effect). Morse gets good mileage out of dry political satire in these instances. Finally the King is involved, a search party started, and the noose begins to tighten around the Sawney Beane clan.

This brief work—just over 200 pages—has power and pull; you'll read it quick as Morse goes straight for the jugular with his clean prose shaved to the bone (he was also the author of several hard-boiled crime novels and won an Edgar Award). Don't let that Frazetta cover fool you: this is no tale of dark fantasy or thrilling adventure; it is all too prosaically real. Like Jack Ketchum, whose own landmark work of stark yet extreme horror Off Season (1981) was almost surely inspired by this novel, Morse notes depravity with clarity but does not linger or cheapen. Flesh Eaters is perhaps not a book for every horror fan, but it is a must for every horror fan who likes horror fiction nasty, brutish, and short. Get your hands on this book, devour and enjoy.

Yellow Fog by Les Daniels (1988): Blood and Tears

Now here's a Stephen King paperback blurb you can believe! Author Les Daniels (1943-2011) had been writing his series of historical vampire novels for about a decade, all featuring the "protagonist"  Don Sebastian Villanueva, an immortal Spanish nobleman. Yellow Fog (Tor Books, August 1988/cover by Maren) was originally published in 1986 by specialty genre publisher Donald M. Grant (see cover below) and is the second-to-last in the series. The only other novel of his I've read is the last one, No Blood Spilled (1991), which I quite enjoyed. In fact I wished Daniels had written more of these! Daniels has lively way with common classic monster tropes, delivered in the fond, knowing manner of someone well-acquainted with them. Yellow Fog is highly reminiscent of Charles Grant's Universal Monsters series (also published by Donald M. Grant) but surpasses that because Daniels is a much, much livelier writer, engaging the reader with effortlessly-drawn characters and setting.

To begin: after an intense train crash prologue in 1835 that leaves one survivor, we move forward to 1847 and meet twenty-ish Londoner Reginald Callender, a callow, immature, shallow, and greedy fellow. Rather than being a unlikable protagonist, Reggie (how he hates that diminutive!) provides much delight for the reader as he is repeatedly confounded in his efforts to secure vast wealth at his own minimum cost. His rich uncle William Callender, he of upper-crust London country clubs, of wealth and taste and hidden vice, has shuffled off this mortal coil, which doesn't upset Reginald overmuch as he stands to inherit the old man's hard-earned money. And yet that is not to be. Even though betrothed to the lovely Felicia Marsh, a young woman with her own inheritance—and the survivor of that earlier train crash— Reginald is beside himself with frustrated greed when he learns Uncle W. left behind nothing save enough to cover his (extensive) funerary, legal, and my-mistresses-shall-be-cared-for-after-I'm-gone costs.

Felicia, as well as her middle-aged Aunt Penelope, are intrigued by all manner of the occult, superstition, and questions of life after death. "Death is only a passage," Felicia tells a nonplussed Callender after his uncle dies, "A journey to another land." She speaks of a man named Newcastle, who can communicate with spirits, and invites Callender along with her and Auntie to one of his seances. Grumbling at the indignity of a betrothed who believes such nonsense, Callender goes along. He's taken aback by this Sebastian Newcastle: clad in black, drooping black mustache on a scarred white face, inviting them into his darkened home lit only by candlelight. The creepy seance that follows, in which Uncle W., in all his irascibility, appears, does nothing to convince Callender that Newcastle isn't a fraud after Felicia's inheritance. Neither does Callender realize that Newcastle is, the astute reader will have noticed, a real live vampire.

Callender, suspicious as only a crook can be, hires a former "runner," a kind of private detective, named Samuel Sayer, to look into the elusive Newcastle. Callender learns of Sayer through Sally Wood, a nightclub singer and dancer, a woman of "cheerful disarray" who would not do as a wife but does great as a mistress (but of course) and who is fond of a new work of fiction titled Varney the Vampyre ("Sounds deucedly unpleasant to me," he sniffs). A wonderful scene ensues of Callender tracking Sayer down at The Black Dog, a dingy bar of ill repute, and later Sayer explains who, and what, he is, and what he does and how. It's a great bit of political theater, a hard-bitten old gent explaining things to a clueless snob.

"A pup like you has no idea what London was like before there was such a thing as a Bow Street runner. Nobody to enforce the law at all... [the runners were] men who were as sly and strong and ruthless as the thieves and murderers they were hired to catch. And I was one of 'em!"

 Donald M. Grant hardcover, 1986, art by Frank Villano

A visit to Madame Tussaud's House of Horrors thrills and chills Aunt Penelope and Felicia as they are accompanied there by Mr. Newcastle, Callender muttering behind the latter two as they view torture instruments and waxen murderers. Then out steps aged Mme. Tussaud herself, who takes one look at Newcastle and states, "Have we not met, sir?... There were stories in Paris, when the revolution raged, about a magician, one who had found a way to keep himself alive forever." Newcastle, polite and deferential as all get-out, engages her in an ironic conversation that Callender can barely stand. The nerve of this guy! Sayer really better be worth it, he's thinking. Of course you can probably guess what happens to Sayer, and to Felicia as she's drawn under Newcastle's spell. Or is she? Perhaps she goes willingly, to see the other side...

Of course you may be able to guess what happens a lot of the time. That's rather the enjoyment factor in Daniels's work. He doesn't belabor readers with details they can fill in themselves: the stinking fog-enshrouded cobblestone streets of early 19th century London; a dank, frigid dock on the Thames; a derelict bar; the Gothic horror/romance of a church graveyard haunted by the shades of the dead; the candlelit drawing room during a seance. Sketched briefly, these settings are perfect for the characters that inhabit them. Sharp dialogue and keenly-observed human folly Daniels does quite well, and his knack for plot, short chapters that clearly advance the narrative, are quite welcome; moments of dramatic confrontation are scattered throughout the book, satisfying hooks of grue that propel readers forward. Daniels could have in my opinion been quite a scriptwriter.

Raven UK paperback 1995, art by Les Edwards

Weaving interesting historical trivia into an larger story to add color and background isn't always easy; it can read too much like an encyclopedia entry. Daniels knows, and does, better. In Yellow Fog, readers will learn a bit about the origins of England's professional police force, the class distinctions relevant to it, and find it all fits with the larger tale of vampirism, greed, and desire (Daniels shrewdly compares Callender's incipient alcoholism to the vampire's bloodthirst). I read the novel over two cold, rainy days, listening to John Williams's score for the 1979 Dracula, and I consider it time well-spent.

Early on the notion struck me that, considering the familiar scenario, that Yellow Fog was a cozy-horror. Unlike the cozy-mystery, there is violence, and sex, fairly explicit, but in such a way that is easily digestible; Daniels is not upending decades of horror convention, he is simply utilizing them in a satisfying, understanding manner. You know what you're getting, you get it, maybe a little bit extra, but it's all been seen before... which is precisely the point. Sayer's meeting with Newcastle, Callender meeting Sally at novel's end: both provide the serious horror creeps. The finale sets up No Blood Spilled, I guess at some point I'm gonna go back and read the previous installments, see what I missed.

Origins of cover art: Germán Robles in El Vampiro (1957)

This is horror comfort food, if you will. When you want mom's mashed potatoes, or grandma's mac n' cheese, nothing else will do; when you want a Universal or Hammer-style vampire story, that's what you want and no revisionist take will do. Okay, there's some Anne Rice-style eroticism tinged with immortal regret, but you had that first in Universal Dracula's Daughter way back in '36. Daniels knows what's up.

Then they were on the carpet, her carefully coiffed pale hair spilled upon its darkness, her gown in disarray, her body throbbing with delight and dread. She felt an ecstasy of fear, stunned more by the desires of her flesh than by the small, sweet sting she felt as he sank into her and life flowed between them... She took life and love and death and made them one... 

She was at peace, but Sebastian knew that she would rise full of dark desire when the next sun set. 

His tears, when they came, were tinged with her bright blood.

Ammie, Come Home by Barbara Michaels (1968): That Ghastly Thing in the Parlor

It may not surprise you when I say I only read Ammie, Come Home because I really dug the cover art for this 1969 Fawcett Crest paperback. The eerie landscape and the floating girl, her barefoot vulnerability and that blackening sky beyond, really struck me in a positive way, even though 1960s Gothic novels are not my thing. Venerable paperback artist Harry Bennett hooked me into reading a novel I never would have otherwise! Well-done sir. Author Barbara Michaels is one of the pseudonyms of Barbara Mertz (1927 - 2013), a prolific writer and Egyptologist; her most famous nom de plume was Elizabeth Peters, under which she wrote dozens of mysteries I remember from my old used bookstore days. Anyway, Ammie is a pleasant enough read, nothing earth-shattering, perhaps even too mild for some contemporary readers. Here and there a jagged edge appears, a moment or a scene of black dread and emotional distress, a slow build-up of the supernatural; the evil deeds of the past wending their way through history only to end up at the tag-end of the groovy generation-gapped 1960s!

Ruth Bennett, widowed, mid-40s, lives in a stately Georgetown, Washington DC home built in the 1800s, inherited from an elderly aunt. Her college-aged niece Sara is boarding with her while attending a nearby school; the novel begins with Sara introducing her aunt Ruth to Professor Pat MacDougal. Big, blunt, brilliant, Ruth isn't sure she likes him. Right off the bat I'm a little iffy on this set-up because it's the stuff of romance novels, in which the two foreordained lovers hate each other on sight... until they don't. It's a generic convention I personally can't abide. Fortunately Michaels doesn't dwell on it overmuch. Prof has a tendency to bloviate and condescend, no surprise, but will prove a formidable foe in the soon-to-come battle against otherworldly forces. Also along is young Bruce, one of Sara's friends, a not-really-boyfriend who today would probably bitch and moan about his being friend-zoned. He's kind of a hipster doofus too, but like the Prof, he really steps up when strange things are afoot.

A black smoky shadow appears in a dream of Ruth's one night, but, as one other unlucky lady once put it, "This is no dream, this is really happening!" She hears someone calling "Come home, Sammie" and thinks maybe a neighbor is looking for their cat. This event is set aside as MacDougal invites Ruth to his mother's home for a society soirée, the main event of which is, can you dig it, a séance. Ruth thinks it's a scam, this medium Madame Nada conjuring up long-dead folks from the Revolutionary War (still kind of a big deal in tony Washingtonian circles). What's funny in a modern problems way is that Ruth invites both Mac's mom and the medium to a dinner party in her own home! Motivated more by social duty than true warm-heartedness, this dinner party turns into one bizarre affair. No good deed, etc.

Meredith Press hardcover, 1968

After a discussion on the paranormal between Bruce (he accepts it), Mac (he doesn't), and Ruth (she's unsure), Mac parses Ruth well: "You are fastidious," he tells her. "You dislike the whole idea, not because it's irrational but because it's distasteful." Oh snap! The author will well note the strain  supernatural occurrences put on daily living; it's difficult to keep up appearances when one's niece is suddenly a conduit to a crime committed in one's own house two hundred years earlier. Bruce endeavors in good faith to plumb the mystery, researching Ruth's home in town archives while Mac argues from the viewpoint of scientific rationality. Poor Sara, when not being possessed, kind of lounges about in a miniskirt, getting disapproving looks from  her aunt and opposite ones from the Prof (ew!). Every now and again she'll pop in with a stray observation (it's not Sammie, it's Ammie!) but otherwise she's only a pawn in the possession game. Unspoiled, modern, guileless; she's around but not all there, I suppose, a vessel for the plot but not in and of herself; how could she have character if she is unsullied?

 

 Uber-lame reprints

Experienced travelers in the realm of horror/supernatural/occult fictions will recognize familiar notes in the story. I find this rather comforting. I appreciated the author's efforts at detailing the banal everydayness that co-exists with the crazy: food, traffic, clothing, cleaning. The turbulent 1960s are noted here and there as Ruth is ambivalent about Bruce and his college-bred revolutionary airs and his designs on Sara. Ammie is also, as many of these pop novels are, charmingly dated: endless miniskirts, dudes with long hair, Ruth's old-lady attitudes (she's only in her 40s! She's never eaten pizza!), Bruce's hip-academic pretensions. Sometimes this aspect is less charming: gender normativity/misogyny out the wahoo in Prof's not-so-subtle lechery, and the time Bruce declares there are "women you rape and women you marry." Yee-ow.

Barbara Mertz (1927 - 2013)

aka Barbara Michaels, aka Elizabeth Peters

As the origins of the possession become clearer, our narrative becomes tauter: Bruce learns more about the home and its literal foundations ("the whole house is rotten with hate"). A friendly Father figure is enlisted to aid in an exorcism and this goes poorly. Then the old Prof isn't so above-it-all as he'd like to appear; is he part of what seems to be a historical reenactment from beyond? The back-story is satisfyingly unsettling; you'll agree it's a crime that deserves retribution through the ages. Ammie, Come Home ends on a note of sentiment, but it is only the beginning in a three-book series that Michaels continued into the 1990s. I found the novel to be decidedly okay and won't be reading the rest; go ahead and check it out if you think you'll dig a quaint snapshot of the supernatural '60s and a helluva generation gap.

Postscript: for two other takes on the novel, check out Dark Chateaux and The Midnight Room. And thanks for the pix guys!

Saucy Jack

Guv'nor fancy a squeeze?

Les Daniels Born Today in 1943

Born on this date in 1943 was Les Daniels, the creator of the vampire Don Sebastian de Villanueva, who found his evil was often outshone by humanity's historical horrors, in a series of novels published from the late '70s to the early '90s. He was also a horror and comix expert of some note (Daniels, not Don Sebastian). Daniels died in 2011. I read No Blood Spilled several years ago and really dug it and look forward to reading these other titles.

 

And the Dawn Don't Rescue Me

Vampire chronicler Anne Rice was born in New Orleans on this date in 1941. Above is a 1985 reprint of the original 1976 Interview with the Vampire (see earlier paperbacks, with stunning covers, here and here). Below are the later 1980s paperbacks, as she continued the tales of her undead brood and became a mega-bestselling author. I kinda like that they don't look like genre novels, featuring only big bold lettering.

These next three are the UK paperbacks, published by Futura throughout the '80s and early '90s.The cover for this reprint of Interview is the same art as the original 1977 edition.

 

I loved these books when I read them in the late 1980s. Rich, epic, decadent, thought-provoking and a whole lot of fun, I enjoyed them so much and recall them so fondly I'm rather reluctant to reread them today...

The author in 1979

Unholy Trinity by Ray Russell (1967): The Grandest Guignol of All

This little Bantam paperback from 1967 seems slight and cheap—the Halloween-costumed models beyond silly, although making specific reference to the three novellas within—but it packs a solid wallop of historical horror. Unholy Trinity collects Ray Russell's three greatest tales of the neo-Gothic, "Sagittarius," "Sanguinarius," and of course the much more well-known "Sardonicus," which was made into a 1961 film by notorious showman William Castle. Long a TMHF favorite, Russell was fiction editor at Playboy magazine during its height of 1960s influence, publishing Vonnegut, Bradbury, and others, so, you know, class (quite unlike the sleazy delights of his 1976 novel, the infamous Incubus). And class is what Russell brings to the proceedings, a triumvirate of history's most monstrous: Countess Bathory, Gilles de Rais, and Jack the Ripper (what, you say, no Vlad III? Nope) all appear. These monsters may be garbed in the finest raiment, but beneath they are as ghoulish, as diabolic, as unspeakable, as ever they have been.

As one can surmise from a 1985 dust-jacket photo of the author, his style is at once saturnine, urbane, regal even, with a wicked vein of dark humor and irony winding through. His work suggests a sophisticate's interest in pain and debasement, mitigated by the mists of history but also given weight by the fact these the events described actually happened (for the most part; "Sardonicus" is Russell's own literary conceit). Therefore it can be stated that one's sadism is sated while using the cloak of respectable historical detail as disguise... if you even care about that.

We begin with "Sanguinarius"—actually no, wait, we begin with an intro essay by Mr. Russell, "The Haunted Castle: A Confession." He recounts a taxing day as an editor in a modern office and upon returning home, exhausted by the existence of television, telephone, Dictaphone, typewriter, etc., and reading "smart, savvy stuff full of bright slang and hip allusion," he wants to relax with "one of those good old aromatic baroque tales, told in an unhurried, leisurely, painstakingly structured way, with plenty of unashamedly elaborate language." Of course Russell's read everything like that on his shelves (giving credence to Harlan Ellison's cry, "Who the hell wants a library full of books they've already read?"), so what's he do? He begins writing one himself! "Fevered with compulsion, totally absorbed," he produces first "Sardonicus," and within a short time the other two works within. Huzzah!

And so: "Sanguinarius" is a fictionalized first-person account of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, written in faux-16th century hand, detailing her descent into blood lust. From her entombment in a high Castle Csejthe room she writes this memoir, beseeching her Lord to hear her now that she's being punished for unimaginable deeds. In the village below, she writes, "no soul will dare display a thing of crimson." The marriage of the Bathory and Nadasdy lines brought together Hungarian royalty; she is expertly wooed by Count Ferencz Nadasdy (although it was probably an arranged marriage). Imprisoned Elizabeth writes of her and Ferencz's lovemaking, which gets Russell's pen flowing:

...for indeed to peaks of pleasure Ferencz led me, slowly to start with, step by timorous step, then setting out with more audacity, striving together, each succouring the other, climbing, first to one ledge, then to a higher, and then to yet a higher more dizzying ridge, finally to soar as if on wings to attain, both in the same heart-bursting moment, that cloud-capp'd ultimate point.

When Ferencz is called off to battle, Elizabeth mopes and mourns, unconsoled by "faithful old servant" Ilona, till one day Dorottya arrives. A beautiful young "woman of the wood" with the knowledge of healing herbs and ointments, she offers her services to the lonesome Countess. Things turn... heady. Ilona hears illicit cries in the night. You know how it goes. When Dorottya asks Elizabeth if she might bring others to cheer her, the Countess agrees, although slightly hesitant. What follows when of course Ferencz's sudden arrival home interrupts proceedings. Will it surprise the reader to learn that Dorottya is Ferencz's long-time mistress in unholy arts, that he sent her to Elizabeth at her time of weakness, and she was to be his wife's teacher in torture?

"And let us lead thee onward," added Dorottya, "to keen delights far stranger and more bold than those thou  has already savour'd..."

"Ay, wife" said Ferencz, "and be thou Bathory not but in name, but in hot deed, as well!"

"And let us seal this compact with a solemn pledge," Dorottya said, "a ceremonial bath to signalize our fealty to sin."

I think you know what kind of ceremonial bath is to follow. Russell doesn't attempt to make her a sympathetic character. Self-serving, oblivious, even if at times regretful, Bathory blames her husband  and Dorottya for developing her taste for blood and torture (even if such traits ran in her family). The little twist at the end is welcome, however; welcome, appropriate, refreshing even.

 "For who would be disposed to smile under the same roof with him who must smile forever?"

Sandwiched in the middle of the book is Russell's most famous work, "Sardonicus." In 18— (I've never been able to ascertain why that dash was used in dates in pre-20th century literature...) one Dr. Robert Cargrave, an esteemed English physician, is called to a mountainous region of Bohemia by an old friend, Maude Randall. She is now married to a man who calls himself Sardonicus and together they live in a castle, a "vast edifice of stone... cold and repellent... of medieval dankness and decay" which "strike[s] the physical and the mental eye as would the sight of a giant skull." Of course they do! Once there, Cargrave and Maude strike up their old friendship (never consummated) and then she introduces her husband, Mr. Sardonicus.

"The gentleman before me was the victim of some terrible affliction that had caused his lips to be pulled perpetually apart from each other, baring his teeth in a continuous ghastly smile. It was the same humourless grin I had seen once before: on the face of a person in the last throes of lockjaw. We physicians have a name for that chilling grimace, a Latin name... risus sardonicus."

 German edition, 1971

Sardonicus's backstory is a clever one, reaching back to creepy Eastern European folklore. He then reveals himself to be a diabolic mastermind, enlisting Cargrave's medical prowess to cure his wretched face while dangling a promise of bliss with Maude—or, failing in this, Sardonicus threatens the tortures of the damned for his platonic wife:

"Perhaps now you will better understand the necessity for this cure. And perhaps also you will understand the full extent of Maude's suffering should you fail to effect the cure. For, mark me well: if you fail, my wife will be made to become a true wife to me—by main force, and not for one fleeting hour, but every day and every night of her life, whensoever I say, in whatsoever manner I choose to express my conjugal privilege!" As an afterthought he added, "I am by nature imaginative."

It may not surprise you to find that Russell's attitude is one firmly set in the 1960s it was written in; the subtext of "Sardonicus" is like a recasting of the Playboy philosophy, that libertine stew of sex, sophistication, and rationality, in terms of the Gothic. In the end modern urban bachelor Cargrave outwits the violent, boorish cad and wins the woman. Sardonicus's comeuppance is utterly terrible and unutterably fitting. As I said: Playboy! Philosophy! No, really: whether you agree with my reading or not, "Sardonicus" is superb.

Playboy Press, 1971

The final piece, "Sagittarius," is a tale-within-a-tale, two men in an upper-class club exchanging bon-mots over cigars and Scotch. You know the scene. Elderly Lord Terrence and young Rolfe Hunt converse of "the series of mutilation-killings that were currently shocking the city, and then upon such classic mutilators as Bluebeard and Jack the Ripper, and then upon murder and evil in general..." You know, the yoozh. Lord Terry then launches into speculation: what if Mr. Hyde, of Stevenson fame, were real? And supposing that, what if he had sired a son? Then that conversation, about the twists and turns of good and evil in one soul, turns into Lord Terry's reminiscences about his younger days in turn-of-the-century Paris, when he knew a famous actor of Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol named Sebastien Sellig.

Ah, the Grand-Guignol! Theatrical performances of death and dismemberment, madness and the macabre, that drew standing-room-only crowds to witness buckets of stage blood spurting about. A terrific setting for a horror tale, and for Russell to show off his erudition. Into this brew he mixes Hyde, Jack the Ripper, and as a pièce de résistance, Gilles de Laval, Baron de Rais, that 15th century butcher of children and occult dabbler, compatriot of Joan of Arc and a man of—but of course—wealth and taste. Mystery piles upon mystery, and young Rolfe Hunt has, in the story's final sentence, a mind-freezing realization...

In the street, I felt I had to make some utterance. "To think, I said, "that her last evening was spent at the Guignol!"

Sellig smiled sympathetically. "My friend," he said, "the Grand Guignol is not only a shabby little theatre in a Montmartre alley. This—" his gesture took in the world "—is the Grandest Guignol of all."

I spent several days entranced by Russell's imagination, the twists and insights, the decadence of an aesthete's intelligence, enchanted by his delicate yet precise prose used to describe the indescribable. Russell's affection for the wormy tropes of Gothic literature is clear; his facility with them dexterous; his ironic repositioning of them enlightening. Thus I can recommend Unholy Trinity without hesitation (in print as Haunted Castles). High-minded, cultivated, blackly ironic and delighting in the debauched and the deranged from the vantage point of the mighty, Russell is a trustworthy guide through this netherworld populated by crumbling castles, dank dungeons, torture chambers, bleak landscapes, and most terrifying of all, the unfathomable cruelties of the human mind.

Not from God above or Fiend below, 

but from within his own breast, his own brain, his own soul.

The Bog by Michael Talbot (1986): Lost in a Roman Wilderness of Pain

Couple weeks ago on the Reddit horrorlit page someone asked for recommendations in "archaeological horror." I don't know if that's an actual sub-subgenre but it was nicely coincidental as I'd just begun reading The Bog (Jove paperback, July 1987), the second horror novel from the late Michael Talbot. I replied to the OP and I sure hope whoever it was gets around to reading this one because it's pretty much what they asked for: "archeological finds open for an unsuspected horror." Ancient evils indeed are unleashed when two unsuspecting American archaeologists, working from Oxford University, unearth "bog bodies" in West England's Hovern Bog (bog bodies are mummified human corpses, preserved for even thousands of years, that are a unique and immediate window into the past). This ancient evil hearkens back to the Roman occupation, and even to humanity's earliest civilizations, when our imaginations were in thrall to sorcerers and demons, pagan rites and sacrifice. Cool!

Above you can read the back cover copy, as solid a set-up any reader could want. Throw in an imperious, mysterious Marquis who owns a vast estate which encompasses the bog and therefore whatever's found in it, plus his super-hot companion Julia who makes our protagonist, the American archaeologist Macauley, weak in the knees. Macauley and his grad student Hollister have found two bog bodies, male and female, which they date from the Roman Britain era, well preserved but bearing unseemly wounds: the woman was a suicide, a knife buried in her stomach by her own hand; the man has animal bite marks that bear no resemblance to any known bog wildlife. Macauley must penetrate the mystery of those bog bodies and what their deaths imply...

 2015 trade pb reprint by Valancourt Books

Complications ensue: townsfolk of Fenchurch St. Jude warn Macauley against messing with the bog (in the village inn no less, evoking memories of the Hammer Horror extras who tried in vain to stop folks heading up to Dracula's castle), then some of them end up dead. The Marquis hints he has mystical magical powers, as does hottie Julia, and Macauley, so thirsty for esoteric knowledge, is tempted by them both. Of course later Macauley's wife, teen daughter and young son are threatened, and he must balance his academic ambitions against his love for his family—and whatever immortal ravenous thing that stalks the Hovern Bog.

Stepback art by Gary Ruddell, best known for his magnificent Hyperion covers

Setting a horror novel in a dangerous, creepy locale like a bog was pretty ingenious; I mean it could almost write itself, right? Talbot does a decent job of evoking atmosphere and shoe-horning in some nuts and bolts about archaeological technique and academic historical study. There are passages set in the past and one long, powerful sequence owes much to The House on the Borderland (1908). At times though Talbot underwites his intriguing storyline and characters should have had more emotional depth to bear what he puts them through. None of this gets in the way of the story and Talbot brings it all together with a real '80s-style climax. While The Bog may not have the epic, decadent, and sure-handed feel of the author's debut, 1982's The Delicate Dependency, it's still a fun, albeit uneven, '80s horror novel.

Michael Talbot (1953 - 1992)

Lyrica by Thomas F. Monteleone (1987): She Loves Naked Sin

A minor erotic horror novel that's neither sexy nor scary, Lyrica (Berkley/Jan 1987) travels back and forth in time following the seductive adventures of a lamia, a mythical creature who drains the life from the men she sleeps with (that's not really how the ancient myth goes, Lyrica is technically a succubus, but whatevs). I really wanted to like Thomas F. Monteleone's novel, his eighth, since I dig the cover and found a mint copy during my recent cross-country trip. The back-cover copy makes the book sound like an excellent read...

In her human form Lyrica Rousseau snakes her way through the ages, hooking up with brilliant, accomplished men like Mozart, Keats, and James Crichton, fucking them superbly, then leaving them as they, of course, die, withered and emptied of their particularly potent life force... which Lyrica needs to live her eternal life. She's repeatedly described as gorgeous, obviously, with a rampant sexual vibe no man can resist (one character can, and when you find out why, yikes), but we don't feel it, we just get characters talking about it, or Monteleone telling us how hot she is--at one point, she shrugs "sexily." What?!

The modern setting is New York City and show biz, as Lyrica comes to the New World and almost instantly gets an agent (he doesn't chomp a cigar but he might as well) and is on her way to becoming a huge star. Thinly-veiled real life men pop up--is that Stephen Sondheim? Frank Sinatra? Yep!--and she bones all of them. That's right, she kills a guy as famous as Frank Sinatra! Don't monsters know they gotta stay under the radar? On her trail is a guy who's written lots of books on pseudoscience, and of course he's found out the lamia, or succubus, is real! So with the help of the one guy who can resist Lyrica's charms they go after her with a silver sword made in midtown.

Well, there ya go.

I wasn't much impressed with Lyrica herself. For a woman of endless desire and vast powers, one who's part demonic snake and another a temptress from hell, who masters men and controls her own destiny with a fierce and iron will, Lyrica sure smiles and giggles a lot. Ugh. She comes off as more like a young girl playing adult-sexy, say Pretty Woman Julia Roberts rather than, um, I'm gonna go with Body Heat Kathleen Turner.

Monteleone, probably known more for his brilliant editorship of the Borderlands anthology series of the 1990s, has written what could have been a steamy, sultry, sensual historical horror novel about the dangerous allure of an evil woman; instead Lyrica is an unremarkable, by-the-numbers paperback horror novel. It's not a bad story at all and the historical details feel right, but Monteleone just tells everything--there's no showing. While it has a few scenes of graphic sex, it's neither erotic nor sleazy; mostly I found it all dull and suspense-free. No twists, no irony, no atmosphere. But, surprise surprise, the epilogue was a nice and I suppose believable touch--the proverbial happy ending.

Burning by Jane Chambers (1978): Your Lover's Lover's Alibi

It's as if no paperback horror novel of the '70s was complete without a blurb that referenced The Omen, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, The Other, or 'Salem's Lot. But why shouldn't publishers try to market their books to an audience that was growing unexpectedly large? Anything that got the book into readers' hands even for a few moments was necessary; anything to get them to part with a cool buck-fifty was legit. Same for cover art: my God do I love this Rowena Morrill illustration - that is some intense shit. And while Burning (Jove Books, May 1978), playwright Jane Chambers's first novel, isn't a classic like those other '70s heavyweights, it is something entirely its own: a lesbian love story told by fusing two time periods into one.

A sweltering '70s summer in New York City is beginning, and the Martins have little interest in being around for it. But can they afford a vacation? David is a talent agent who, thanks to his wife's urging, has newly gone into business for himself; Cynthia is a harried mother of two who once had grand dreams of filling canvasses with daring visions but soon after moving to NYC met her now-husband. They seem to be a quite typical couple of the day: not a dream team but one that works hard to overcome difficulties. They get a break when one of David's clients offers to "pay" David with the offer of staying at his family's summer house in the Massachusetts countryside. Along with Angela, the 19-year-old student David hired part-time and now helps Cynthia with Martin kids Peter and Janet, Cynthia loads everyone into a Buick station wagon and makes the drive north, with David to join in several days (I kept seeing Katharine Ross and her family in the early parts of The Stepford Wives here, which was cool).

Everyone is delighted by the farmhouse and its attendant lake and woods, but one thing captures Cynthia's attention more than anything else: a small, unpainted room just off the kitchen, older than the home it's attached to, with hearth, dim windows, and roughly-hewn bedframe and chair. The room reached out to her, impatient, as though it had been waiting for her... She stepped inside and felt no fear. She was at home. Images come to her, of the room as it was, of trees being felled to build it, of planks being pounded together. Cynthia cleans it thoroughly, happy that David cannot disturb her enjoyment of it, wryly noting, A D&C... she'd scraped the womb and it was fresh to start again, building protective layers of lust and love and birth. This room will become integral to the story, the reader will have no doubt.

But Cynthia is also concerned that Angela has a crush on her. Angela herself thinks she does but won't say anything - what would be the point? Unspoken love was safest. There is a bit of tension and distrust at first, but that ebbs away as the women focus on the immediate pleasures and tribulations of caring for two rambunctious children during vacation. Thrown into the mix is Red Richmond, the 20-something neighbor, all masculine muscles and ginger beard, who begins a mild flirtation with Angela. Red fills in some history on the house and the room - built in the 1700s, older than the house itself, a crazy migrant must've built it - but his mannish manner puts Cynthia off: She knew a woman had lived in the old room.

1983 JH Press reprint

The first discordant note is really heard one afternoon when Cynthia skinny dips  after the satisfaction of cleaning out that room. Naked, sunloved, fulfilled; then she heard the cry.Without dressing, Cynthia runs towards the commotion and finds Pete in the rushing creek grasping a boulder, Angela and Janet helpless to save him. Unclothed, Cynthia rescues Pete herself. And now it gets weird. You trusted me with your greatest possession and I failed you, distraught Angela tells Cynthia. The conversation the two women have now is suddenly italicized, formal, archaic even, encoded with a knowledge and intimacy and a spiritual aspect neither woman can fathom. The words are not theirs, but the emotion, the longing, the fear is.

I'll never give you reason to lose faith in me again. That is a covenant between us, Angela said. Trust me. We need compatriots. You and I are destined to fight this world together... Angela laughed. The sin of nakedness. I shall never understand God.

Now a new story is teased out of these italicized thoughts and exchanges, and a history emerges the reveals once in this very spot, in that very room attached to the house, two unlikely women forged an unbreakable bond. Three hundred years have passed, but their passion, their honest yet forbidden love, has wended its way through the ages and finds a kind of release through these two women of the 1970s (note that tagline, A love that defied the grave!). Cynthia and Angela experience near fugue states in which they are - possessed? - by Martha and Abigail, two outcasts who found comfort in one another's arms and caresses... in a time when that could very likely lead to death. There are others involved: Red Richmond has strange reveries of a Squire Richmond, a poetic gentleman who attempts to court Abigail, against his father's wishes. In an agonizing moment, Squire Richmond visits Abigail to propose but finds her and Martha in flagrante delicto:

Squire Richmond did not understand what he had seen; he tried to liken it to the time when he'd caught farm girls bathing naked in the bay, although that was against the rules of every village, and, they said, displeasing to the sight of God.

When they tell him they are married, he is aghast. How is that even possible? And these events are being replayed, relived, in the present, nearly beyond the comprehension of the participants. This is a haunting, a possession, of love, terror, guilt, tumultuous emotions that offer great freedom but also exact a terrific price once the Squire informs his father, a respected town elder, of what he has seen in the two women doing in the dark forest. The devil takes a woman's body to perpetuate his work. The devil is possessed to seize a virgin for his mistress.

T'n'T Press reprint 1995

Now the novel's title becomes agonizingly real. The (literal) witch hunt that ensues is well done by Chambers; she gets across the paranoia of the village, all of which seem ridiculous today but then was a soul-freezing fear. Events reach a hysterical, gut-wrenching pitch - both in the past and in the present (there's a perceptive, angering bit making bigoted male cops akin to the elders of the past). But by story's end, a strange peace has been achieved, a kind of evening out of past "sins" and an acceptance of love's cost. As Cynthia notes, "When love is good, it doesn't matter who the lovers are." It's a hard-won knowledge, a sad, bitter wisdom neither woman would have apprehended without Martha and Abigail.

What really makes Burning work is the quality time Chambers spends with her characters, winding their thoughts through the present-day story: passages about David and Cynthia's oft-fraught marriage and the give-and-take of men and women (Their marriage was ingrown, they fed on one another's weaknesses... bloated with a sense of security, knowing each one depended on the other for survival); of Angela's overprotective, vulgar, drunk widowed father and her ambivalence about the opposite sex (Men puzzled her just as her father puzzled her. They frightened her, just as her father did... she discovered male knowledge was a clever sham); and Red's somewhat old-fashioned history with women (if he enjoyed a liaison, he wanted to romance the girl, protect her from the advances of other men) that doesn't quite jibe with the era, and now seeing young Angela... These are the details that real writers use, drawn from observation and experience of  the real world.

Jane Chambers in 1976

I was drawn to Burning solely for its lurid cover, but I stayed for the story and the writing. This knowing, quiet, yet emotionally-charged story of a lesbian affair exists in that uncomfortable realm of being not horrific enough for a horror audience and too horrific for a non-horror audience. The garish cover may have kept away an audience that might have found in its pages a sensitive, realistic portrayal of the secret relationships gay women were "forced" to have in intolerant, ignorant societies. The analogy of lesbians and witches as creatures of the night performing bizarre rituals that threaten male hegemony is a sadly apt one, and one Chambers infuses with a poignant, romantic, and heartfelt authenticity that rings true still these many, many years later.