Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell (1989): The Wheat is Growin' Thin

Folk horror has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity in recent years, but it is certainly not a new subgenre. Fans have long spoken of the rustic, pagan, creepy charms of books and movies like Harvest Home, Blood on Satan's Claw, The Wicker Man (based on the near-forgotten 1967 novel Ritual by David Pinner), Witchfinder General, The Ceremonies, "Children of the Corn," "The Lottery," most recently Midsommar, and of course back to the greats like Arthur Machen. Rural landscapes, taciturn locals, primitive religious and cult practices, and doomed interlopers are the essential tropes that form the basis for this always-fascinating pocket of horror.

So I'm well chuffed to report that Ramsey Campbell's 1989 novel Ancient Images (Tor paperback, June 1990, art by Gary Smith) ticks all those boxes successfully. A measured, mature, and well-paced thriller that finds the prolific modern master Campbell plying his quiet horror trade in top form, I devoured this book in a matter of days, eager to get back to it every time I had to put it down.

Campbell in 1989, photo by JK Potter

Interestingly, the impetus here is utterly modern: the search for a lost (fictional) film. Tower of Fear stars horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, produced during the same era as their real dual-starrers like The Black Cat (1934) and The Body Snatcher (1945). Graham Nolan is a film critic for television news who has finally tracked down a copy of the film, suppressed and never released, after searching for it for two years. He invites his colleague, film editor Sandy Allan, from the TV station they work at, to watch it with him. When Sandy arrives at Graham's apartment that evening for the "premiere," she finds it's been ransacked, the film projector knocked over and empty film canisters strewn about... and no copy of Tower of Fear. Then she sees Graham on the roof of the adjacent building, and as Sandy rushes to an outer door, she can only watch in horror as he tries to leap back to his own building, but misses and falls to his death:

His mouth was gaping, silenced perhaps by the wind of his fall, and yet she thought he saw her and, despite his terror, managed to look unbearably apologetic, as if he wanted her to know that it wasn't her fault she hadn't been in time to reach him.

Upon learning of the rarity of the film, the police think that Graham chased a thief across the rooftops. Sandy thinks this makes as much sense as anything, and writes an obituary for Graham to be broadcast by the station, mentioning his search for Tower of Fear and its theft. A day later a snarky tabloid critic who knew Graham pays him a backhanded tribute in print, angering Sandy by the dent it makes in Graham's integrity. She confronts this pompous writer, Len Stilwell,  at a horror movie premiere with American film historian Roger Stone (our eventual love interest). Stilwell dismisses the two of them and their mission: "I write consumer reports, I've no time for cleverness. Nor to argue." Wow do you wanna smack the guy! (Was Campbell inspired by a real-life critic?!)

Armed with Graham's notebook that contains contact info of people who'd worked on and starred in the film so many decades before, Sandy begins tracking them down, determined to save Graham's reputation. The mystery grows, for director Giles Spence was killed in a car accident just after filming ended. Karloff and Lugosi themselves never spoke of it. Like so many novels before and since, this research quest is a pleasure to read. What sinister force made this movie such a troubled production, caused it to be banned, led its makers and stars into seclusion, secrecy, even death? I mean, I love this kinda shit!

Campbell shines as he creates the unique characters Sandy meets. To a one they seem agitated, even fearful, to have Tower of Fear brought up again and again; many principals are aging and their adult children don't want their parents bothered by some trash horror nonsense from long ago. Even Sandy's parents are put off by it, although Dad admits, "Neither your mother nor I have heard of it, though it's the kind of thing we would have lapped up before the war changed all that."

Legend Books UK, 1990

Sandy meets the editors and designers and and writers and actors who were involved with Tower of Fear, and as I said, it's a pleasure to read; Sandy is a smart and capable character. She even hangs out with a disreputable group of grungy young movie fans who put out a gore zine. His fictional cinematic creations and their intersection with real-life movie culture isn't cute or self-aware, nor is it pretentious or faux-intellectual (*cough* Flicker *cough*), it simply is.

But it's the creeping unease when dealing with those who helped make the movie, the paranoia and distrust, which Campbell conveys with such subtle mastery, that propels the novel forward. There are also notes of tragedy, particularly in the sad career of once-popular actor Tommy Hoddle, who'd provided the comic relief for Tower of Fear. Sandy tracks him to down at a beach resort town where he is playing in children's afternoon theater shows, this one a pathetic vampire spoof. She tries to engage him about the movie, to no avail, and succeeds only in terrifying the poor old chap...

Eventually, after much to-do that involves a burgeoning affair with Stone, professional pressures, and figures that flitter and caper just at the edge of perception—that hallmark of Campbell's off-kilter approach to chills and dread—Sandy finds the owner of the movie rights. This is Lord Redfield, of the township Redfield, known far and wide for its successful agriculture which provides the wheat for Staff o' Life bread, a popular brand whose commercials always seem to be playing in the background. Lord Redfield invites Sandy to his palatial home, and in Bond villain fashion, explains (almost) all to her. Political strings and newspaper ownership factor in, but there are still unsettling questions in Sandy's mind about the film and its relationship to Redfield... and sullen locals to avoid. She scales an historic tower, obviously the inspiration for the film, and traipses through the cemetery, where death dates have an uncomfortable 50-year regularity going back centuries. And that name: red... field. Uhhh, that can't be good. Folk horror fully engaged!

US hardcover, cover art by Don Brautigam

And I haven't even mentioned Enoch's Army. What's Enoch Army? It's a sort of leftover band of hippie revolutionaries who are trudging in a caravan through parts of England, looking for a safe haven to call home, but tabloids are biased against them (guess who owns one of those tabloids). Tensions are rising as no one wants these folks around. Campbell has them on a parallel with the search for Tower of Fear, both literally and figuratively. During her travels, Sandy comes across them in the road with police escort, but one of the children runs in front of her car and she nearly hits him and his mother. Apologetic, Sandy talks with them and then the leader himself, Enoch Hill. His words form the thematic core of the novel:

"Our way is to move on when the land wants to rest and dream, but the mass of men won't leave it alone. Man and the land used to respect each other, but now man pollutes the land...There'll come a day when the earth demands more of man than it ever did when man knew what it wanted... All fiction is an act of violence... Man can't resume his old relationship with the earth until we remember the tales that told the truth. We had a blueprint for living, and civilization tore it up."

Basically, Enoch himself made me think of Alan Moore.

UK hardcover

All these disparate elements are steadily making their way towards one another in Campbell's sure hand: Enoch's Army, those strange twig-like shadows hovering at the corners of the narrative, Lord Redfield, Tower of Fear, the harvest... step by careful unavoidable step. Beautifully paced, restrained, subtle, and intriguing, I've only sketched the aspects that make this such a satisfying read; it has to be one of Campbell's very finest works of the Eighties. It's also cool that Campbell is no mean film critic and fan himself, so you just know he had a high old time writing it (and he thanks our old pal Dennis Etchison in the notes for his help with cinematic minutiae).

Like the atmospheric black-and-white movies of the past that Campbell invokes, there is scarcely a drop of blood, but there is a great deal of suspense and mystery. If you love film history and behind-the-scenes accounts of film-making, the trappings of folk horror, or a sharp, well-crafted tale, this is a must-read. Ancient Images is also a great place to start if you've never read a Campbell novel. No doubt about it: this is a masterful piece of quiet horror. That quiet, however, just means you can't hear what's sneaking up behind you.

 She imagined the land was able to send something to hunt victims on its behalf...

Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon (1973): What No Man May Know Nor Woman Tell

All I recall about my reading of this paperback of the bestselling Harvest Home (Fawcett Crest/June 1974) in the late 1980s is that there was one scene that left me breathless with horror, but I have never been able to remember specifically what happened in that scene. Rereading it recently proved no help, as there were several scenes that now left me breathless with horror. Well, maybe not breathless exactly, but in a state of extreme suspense. Actor-turned-author Thomas Tryon (1926-1991) continued his success after 1971's The Other, another tale of quiet down-home horror.

Long a well-known pre-Stephen King bestselling horror novel, I assume many readers of TMHF will be familiar with Harvest Home's set-up: New York ad-exec Ned Constantine wants to paint full-time, so he and his family (wife Beth and sulky asthmatic teen daughter Kate) buy, through some coincidental luck, an 18th century home in New England's Cornwall Coombe. This pocket of "heart's desire" is of course as picturesque a country town as one could imagine, a veritable rural Shangri-La of endless cornfields and dark woods. 

The Constantines settle in, welcomed by some, looked at askance by others, but generally find things satisfying. Life revolves around corn here, everything is tied to its cycles ("the eternal return"); these people are an ancient agrarian culture living in the 20th century. Most welcoming to them is aged matriarch Widow Fortune, a bespectacled black-skirted dowager who dispenses down-home wisdom and tends her farm with the energy of someone half her age. She speaks in that maddening country way in which answers only raise more questions.

"Just what is Harvest Home?" I asked.

"Harvest Home?" [the Widow Fortune] peered at me through her spectacles. "Why, I don't think I ever heard a pusson ask that before. Everybody knows what Harvest Home is."

"I don't."

"That's what comes of bein' a newcomer. Harvest Home's when the last of the corn comes in, when the harvestin's done and folks can relax count their blessin's... It means success and thanks and all good things. And this year's the seventh year."

"The seventh year?"

"Ayuh. For six years there's just feastin' and carryin' on but the seventh's a special one. After the huskin' bee there's a play, and—well the seventh year's particular for us. Harvest Home goes back to the olden times."
"When does it come?" "She looked at me as if I were indeed a strange species. "Never heard a pusson ask that either. Harvest Home comes when it comes—all depends."

Ned and family learn all about this Harvest Home business as they meet the inhabitants of Cornwall Coombe. Tryon does an able job of introducing characters and keeping them distinct personalities. There is Justin Hooke, the Harvest Lord (a traditional role in the festival with many perks and only one downside); his wife Sophie, chosen to be the Corn Maiden; Tamar Penrose, seductive postmistress who spells trouble for Ned, mother of little Missy, creepy little Missy who makes creepy little pronouncements about the future; Jack Stump, local ragamuffin man with a big mouth; the Soakses family, dangerous hillbillies out in them thar woods; Robert Dodd, a blind, retired college professor; and Worthy Pettinger, a rebellious, reluctant teen who has been chosen (by Missy in a creepy little scene) to be the next Harvest Lord. 

You'll spend a lot of time with these folks, and more. Bit by tiny bit Tryon ratchets up mystery and foreboding, and the downhill swing begins when poor Jack Stump gets his... well, I won't spoil it.

Ned becomes close with young Worthy, who may have innocent designs on Kate, and finds that Worthy is none too happy about being the next Harvest Lord. It's more than just teenage surliness; Worthy seems almost panicked and eventually leaves town, trusting only Ned. This is a huge disgrace to the Pettinger family. And the more Ned tries to learn about Cornwall Coombe, the more mystified he is, especially after he notices the gravestone of one Gracie Everdeen, outside the cemetery proper. What happened to her? How did she disrupt Harvest Home years earlier? Did she really kill herself? This unsettling tale swirls beneath everything that happens, a dark secret Ned pieces together himself.

 TV-movie tie-in, Fawcett Crest 1978

The hinge of Harvest Home is that readers must be in as much perplexity as Ned himself; I'm not sure they are, at least today. Those worldly smarts of a city slicker, his arrogance and condescension, mis-serve him in the environs of Cornwall Coombe and he misapprehends much, till it's too late. Of course. It wouldn't be a horror novel if he figured out what Harvest Home really was all about 20 pages in, would it?! The long climax I think works, secrets and horrors and suspicions piling up till a final reveal that satisfies, and must have even more shocking in the early '70s. Tryon writes a composed line of prose, thoughtful, literate, upper-class; this lends a gravitas to the proceedings which enhances the horrors.

Relying a little too easily on cultural stereotypes—the simple ways of countryfolk, their unthinking allegiance to tradition, their lusty women, their secrets and their distrust of outsiders as well as insiders who don't conform, the bloody rituals of paganism—Harvest Home could seem dated to the modern general reader. Gender politics may grate: Beth and Kate are somewhat under-characterized, Tamar is an evil vamp, yet Widow Fortune emerges as one of the great characters of '70s horror fiction (no surprise she was portrayed by the venerable screen legend Bette Davis in the TV movie adaptation). While touted as a horror novel, Harvest Home is not just that; the tactics of suspense loom larger than generic horror conventions. Some might not have patience for the hundreds of pages of country livin'.

Those looking for a roller coaster ride of shock and violence would well remember that this novel predates King and his progeny on the bestseller lists. Aside from a few moments here and there the tone is one of taste—at one point Ned goes to a doctor for fertility test and the exact mechanics of that go completely unmentioned! The lone violent, overheated sex scene, promised in early chapters and delivered near the last, was sure to please adventurous readers who wanted some well-written salaciousness between the hardcovers.

One bit of cleverness I noted on this reread: is the name "Constantine" a little in-joke for the history buff? Constantine the Great, the Roman Emperor who converted and stopped the persecution of Christians and heralded its spread over the Western World, hastening the end of pagan rites and worship as he and his heirs destroyed their holy sites. Ned is confounded by the villagers' atavistic beliefs and rather than overcoming them, he is overwhelmed, very nearly killed by the same kind of believers his namesake persecuted: a bit of literary comeuppance, perhaps? Perhaps.

As I said, Tryon takes his time setting up scares but boy does it pay off. This leisurely approach makes Harvest Home that kind of read that's perfect for fall—for summer too if you need to take the heat off—providing hours of cozy chills as the season of the dead approaches, as it does every year, as it will continue, forever, the Eternal Return, for thus it was since the Olden Times.