We're Off to the Witch, We May Never Never Come Home

British author Brian N. Ball was born today in 1932. I haven't read a word of his books, but damn do I love these UK covers from the early (when else?) 1970s. I believe The Venomous Serpent was the only title published in the States, but retitled The Night Creature.

 

 

 

You can learn a little about Ball at (where else?) Vault of Evil!

Running Nightly Lightly Through the Jungle

Jeff Jones: The Paperback Covers

These stunning covers illustrations by the late Jeff Jones help confirm that 1960s and 1970s horror-fantasy paperbacks were a world unto themselves. Like his comrade-in-ink Frank Frazetta, Jones reveled in the mythical past, but it was one perhaps darker, more Gothic, less heroic. Rather than hulking loincloth primitives and armor-clad villains, though, Jones's covers here showcase a misty nighttime world of sorcerers and shadowy cults, of masters of occult powers and animal familiars, the hungry undead and their victims. My faves? Definitely The Vampire Women (Popular Library, 1970) and The Curse of the Undead (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1970). But could the books themselves deliver as well as their covers...?

Isobel (1977): The Rowena Morrill Cover Art

Glorious and sublime, this cover art truly embodies the classic era of horror paperbacks. Artist Rowena Morrill gives us virtually everything we want - demons, winged creatures of the night, alligator people (with boobs!), creepy landscape, and yes, a naked lady - for Jane Parkhurst's 1977 occult/witchcraft novel Isobel (which I haven't read), and can you believe it was Morrill's first cover? How would one ever top this?!

Elizabeth by Jessica Hamilton (1976): She'll Reflect What You Are In Case You Don't Know

"It doesn't follow, Elizabeth, 

that because you are old enough to be evil, 

you are an adult."

So says Grandmother. And so will any reader say upon finishing Elizabeth, the debut novel from Ken Greenhall, writing under the pseudonym Jessica Hamilton. At just 14 years old, Elizabeth Cuttner is a startling little sociopath with powers natural and not (A Novel of the Unnatural states its tagline). She tells her story in a voice quite distinctive, yes, but also as cool and unforgiving as a marble tombstone. With dispassionate precision, she grasps the motivations of those around her, fathoms their subconscious desires; Elizabeth has psychological insights that people thrice her age never attain. She amazes, charms, bewilders, and ultimately horrifies. When I was younger, she tells us on the very first page, I saw James, my father's brother, look from our dog to me without changing his expression. I soon taught him to look at me in a way he looked at nothing else. And oh that's just a hint of what's to come.

Elizabeth lives in lower Manhattan, in a very old building not far from the once-bustling harbor. Her grandmother appears each evening in a full black dress and tells ever-changing stories about the family's ancestry at dinners to the remaining members of the Cuttners: the aforementioned James, her son, his wife Katherine, and their son Keith. Their live-in servants are the Taylors, who reside in the basement but have little interaction with the family (I suppose there is no need to speak to those whose dirt and appetites you know intimately). Grandmother's husband left her years before, but his office building is next door. Oh, Elizabeth's parents? You can probably guess why they're not around, can't you?

1988 Bart Books reprint

The supernatural slips in very early but oh-so-quietly. In the second chapter, Elizabeth and her parents vacation in a cabin at Lake George, and while on a nature walk she finds an unlikely-looking toad the color of decaying meat and takes it home, then she is compelled to hold it between her breasts. As she does this, a visage swims into view in the antique mirror in her room. "Do not fear me, Elizabeth. I have come to help you." She has a fearsome beauty and speaks in an antique language; her name is Frances, a distant Cuttner relative; indeed, we learn she is an English witch from centuries past. Elizabeth seems to fall in some kind of love or obsession with Frances, who wants to reveal and guide all of Elizabeth's familial powers... and warns Elizabeth of the new tutor from England that James has hired for her, Miss Barton. Young Miss Barton, who strangely resembles the woman in the mirror...

1978 Sphere UK paperback

There's all that, as it's said, and more. There is barely a whisper of actual violence or overt sex, yet the novel seethes with these powers, and the tone throughout is cool, almost affectless. Affairs that speak more of desperation and opportunity than real human feeling spring up in the home. Elizabeth is no Lolita-esque coquette; she is a young woman who accepts impassively the male sexual appetite - especially when it serves her own needs and ends. Her knowledge of male vanity, and flattery of such, is complete. Elizabeth notes that James feels about the Don Juan legend the same way a priest feels about the New Testament. Something seems to be going on between Katherine and Miss Barton too, but that's only par for the course:

James had never been happier. He accused Katherine of being in love with Miss Barton and pretended to be outraged. Actually, the thought of his wife being involved with another woman excited him... he became much more open about his relationship with me and on afternoons when Katherine and Miss Barton were uptown shopping together he would take me to his wife's bed. "You be Katherine," he'd say, "and I'll be Miss Barton."

Elizabeth is one of the most intriguingly written novels I've read in some time; it is deceptively rich and rewarding. Hamilton's style is one of allusion, of casual reference, an author in full command of the writing craft, knowing what to tell, what to show, and most especially what to conceal. And ironically in that concealment revealing all. Elizabeth herself is an amazingly complex character, her voice so confident, so ageless, so wise, as she begins to use her unnatural talents to harm others, such as Grandmother...

"Martha," I found myself saying, "with my gift and  power I bid thee desist. Martha Cuttner, I bid thee vanish. Thrice, Martha Cuttner, my gift and power bid thee desist and vanish." 

And then there was silence. Behind me stood the city and its people. Some of those people had passed me on the street and admired me, thinking I had never done unmentionable things in the night, as they had done or wanted to do.

1979 Sphere UK reprint

I really cannot recommend Elizabeth highly enough. This unheralded, forgotten work deserves rediscovery by fans of weird fiction. Copies are easily found online and I urge you to purchase one. If you enjoy the literary chill of calculating children, the frosty tales of du Maurier and Jackson, the quiet horrors of witchery and those it dooms, the foolishness of men in the thrall of women, do yourself a favor and become acquainted with Elizabeth.

For a little more on Greenhall, check out the Phantom of Pulp's blog.

The Witching Night by C.S. Cody (1953): She Comes on the Eve of Dusk

Seems I totally overlooked one fairly well-regarded novel of witchery written under a pseudonym, C.S. Cody, of an author I've never heard of named Leslie Waller. So I give you The Witching Night in all its paperback (and hardcover) glory! Some very excellent and evocative art on these. The Bantam edition from 1974 above features groovy satanic hullaballoo by artist unknown, alas. I've seen lots of post-Exorcist paperbacks from Bantam with the same cover design/font, it was a whole thing I guess.Totally cool.

This is the original '53 hardcover, art by John Hall, all boobs and sultry eyes; then below is the Lancer 1968 edition with simply marvelous witchy art by Jerome Podwil. Love the lady, love the bats, poor dude in suit and tie besieged by supernatural forces. Some of my fave horror fiction cover art of late.

Finally, the Dell 1953 first paperback, looking quite a bit like those famous pulp noir paperbacks of the day. Doesn't look too satanic, really, does it? But dig on this quote from the book I found:

Abbie brought the body of the slaughtered kitten to her mouth. I could see the lips curl and her teeth gleam fiercely until the furry black corpse masked her face. But I could see her throat, that long, smooth white column, so soft, so delicately modeled in sweeping lines. I saw it pulse as a regular muscular motion within it drew up and down in measured rhythm. I knew what Abbie was doing. She was drinking the kitten's blood.

And many thanks to Sara from My Love-Haunted Heart, who sent me the 1963 UK paperback cover, from Corgi Books.

All of Them Witches

I can't really think of any horror fiction I've read that features witches - I suppose Leiber's Conjure Wife counts, though - but that can't stop me from appreciating some ghastly cover art of them. Witch Child (Zebra 1987) is absolutely blood-curdling. The witch's face is horrifying enough, but then you see her skull--! Yikes. Witch House's (Del Rey 1979) cover below is just fucking terrifying. If I were that little girl I think I'd have dropped dead of fright instead of gone into a rendition of "Good Ship Lollipop."

Conjure Wife (1943) and Our Lady of Darkness (1977) by Fritz Leiber: Under Her Black Wings

Two good novels from classic fantasy writer Fritz Leiber: Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness. The former is a tale of witchcraft set at a New England college university, while the latter explores the occult theory of Thibaud de Castries known as "megapolisomancy" (invented solely by Leiber himself in a Lovecraft-inspired bit of mythmaking) and posits the city of San Francisco itself as a haunted - and haunting - entity. It also weaves authors like Jack London and Clark Ashton Smith into its storyline, as well as the pulp fiction background of Leiber himself, and won the 1978 World Fantasy Award. Both novels feature modern men, thoughtful and literate, modern men of skepticism and rationality, who find that the dark superstitions of the past have a horrifying way of wending their way into the light of the contemporary world. Count me in!

I don't think either of these covers captures the feel of the books themselves: Conjure Wife is another example of an older book republished during the height of the Gothic romance fad (this edition is from '68, art by Jeff Jones). Its current edition has a pretty foxy Goth chick on its cover, reminiscent of the loverly Eva Green. Berkley's Our Lady of Darkness has an odd psychedelic tinge to it, dated even by 1977 standards; fortunately Amazon has it listed as being back in print this fall.

...sometimes it wasn't clear whether it was a real woman, or a goddess, or some sort of metaphorical entity that de Castries was talking about. "She is all merciless night animal," he would say... "She knows the cities' secrets and their secret weaknesses, their ponderous rhythms and dark songs. And she herself is secret as their shadows. She is my Queen of Night, Our Lady of Darkness."