The Dark (UK: NEL, 1980)
Tagline: "From the blackest pits of hell..."
Here we are once again in the court of the master, James
Herbert, the guy who pretty much invented (unintentionally) the
nasty subgenre, making publishers a ton of money and giving
lots of writers reasons to write creepy-crawler books, and
giving us readers lots of books to paw over...and giving me the
opportunity to look at them and call this Horror's Guilty
Pleasures. No need in me introducing Herbert (check my
review of The Rats) because if you read this kind of stuff you
Tagline: "From the blackest pits of hell..."
Here we are once again in the court of the master, James
Herbert, the guy who pretty much invented (unintentionally) the
nasty subgenre, making publishers a ton of money and giving
lots of writers reasons to write creepy-crawler books, and
giving us readers lots of books to paw over...and giving me the
opportunity to look at them and call this Horror's Guilty
Pleasures. No need in me introducing Herbert (check my
review of The Rats) because if you read this kind of stuff you
should know his work and if you don't...well, shame on you. Through the years and
many, many bestselling novels, Herbert has changed his approach to horror somewhat,
couching it and combining it with the thriller genre and producing an interesting hybrid
style known as chillers, though now and again he still reaches back to his roots. And
that's what we're interested in here: his early work. The Dark was Herbert's seventh
novel and is one of the last in what might be called his classic cycle which began with
The Rats, carried through this book, and closed out with Shrine or Domain a few years
later.
Herbert opens this one with a series of gruesome set pieces featuring his usual
assortment of frustrated working class types, sexual deviants, and the disenfranchised,
instantly grounding us in the urban despair of Willow Road. And for these people it all
culminates in a night of violence and horror as a spreading patch of parasitic darkness
invades them. Two brothers are shot as is their father. A little girl sets her house on fire
and watches as her parents burn. A woman knives her husband to death. Enter Chris
Bishop, psychic investigator. A man who believes in de-mystifying the supernatural and
looking for scientific explanations for hauntings and the like. After a lecture on psychic
sciences he is contacted by Jessica Kulek who wants his help. Her father, Jacob, is a
renowned parapsychologist. He believes the tragedies on Willow Road have a common
cause: Beechwood house, a manor where thirty-seven cultists committed mass suicide
nine months earlier. What was in them, Kulek believes, was harnessed at the point of
death by the leader of their sect, Boris Pryszlak, who also committed suicide. Bishop
knows the details of all that well enough for he was hired by the family who owned the
house to investigate occult dealings on the premises. He was the guy that found the
bodies of the cult.
And now, after seemingly gestating, the horror is rising up again:
"Even as he watched in amazement and dawning horror, a young girl's body was blown
apart by a shotgun; men and women sat patiently around a table while a wild-eyed
executioner slit their throats one by one; a mallet-wielding maniac joyously crushed
human skulls as if they were eggshells."
And it just keeps rolling, gaining strength:
"A heavyset man lumbered toward them, his clothes open to display his genitals. In his
hand he held a long, pikelike object, its length black and tapering gradually to a fine
point. He held the point against the back of the man uppermost in the tangled heap,
pressing it slowly down until it punctured the skin and a tiny drop of blood oozed out.
The naked man paid no heed to his injury, continuing to press into the man beneath
him. The heavyset man plunged downward and the long black point sank from view,
the pike descending into a fountain of red liquid...impaling the naked man and the man
beneath him and the woman on the bottom."
As skeptical as he is, Bishop knows that Jacob Kulek is right: the dark is real, it is the
embodiment of the primal fear, savage aggression, and instinctual violence of those that
committed suicide and with each mind it infects and each death it brings about, it feeds
on these primeval passions, filling and empowering itself, growing larger and more lethal.
The owners of Beechwood house come up with a novel solution: they have the house
torn down, but that only releases the dark into the world at large. Pretty soon it is
roaming London, creating scenes of carnage and bloodthirsty savagery. Acid is poured
down a woman's throat. A man drenches a family in gasoline and lights them up. A
football stadium erupts into butchery. An underground train plows through human
wreckage. Subhuman things long awaiting a world of darkness rise from the sewers to
take the city from their human cousins. As rape, assault, and wholesale murder plague
the city, as corpses sprawl in the streets, people hide from the darkness and London is a
city under siege. There's only one possible solution: light that will dispel the dark.
Pros: Great story, great characters. Gruesome and perverse and spooky. Creepier than
most of these books simply because the dark is unstoppable, not something physical that
can be fought as such.
Cons: Can't think of any.
Overall: A worthy addition to any horror collection. This one ranks right up there with
Herbert's best and has a dark, brooding feel to it like The Fog.
Five bloody skulls out of five.
For next month's guilty pleasure we go slumming:
"Something began to seep from the poisoned ground..."
many, many bestselling novels, Herbert has changed his approach to horror somewhat,
couching it and combining it with the thriller genre and producing an interesting hybrid
style known as chillers, though now and again he still reaches back to his roots. And
that's what we're interested in here: his early work. The Dark was Herbert's seventh
novel and is one of the last in what might be called his classic cycle which began with
The Rats, carried through this book, and closed out with Shrine or Domain a few years
later.
Herbert opens this one with a series of gruesome set pieces featuring his usual
assortment of frustrated working class types, sexual deviants, and the disenfranchised,
instantly grounding us in the urban despair of Willow Road. And for these people it all
culminates in a night of violence and horror as a spreading patch of parasitic darkness
invades them. Two brothers are shot as is their father. A little girl sets her house on fire
and watches as her parents burn. A woman knives her husband to death. Enter Chris
Bishop, psychic investigator. A man who believes in de-mystifying the supernatural and
looking for scientific explanations for hauntings and the like. After a lecture on psychic
sciences he is contacted by Jessica Kulek who wants his help. Her father, Jacob, is a
renowned parapsychologist. He believes the tragedies on Willow Road have a common
cause: Beechwood house, a manor where thirty-seven cultists committed mass suicide
nine months earlier. What was in them, Kulek believes, was harnessed at the point of
death by the leader of their sect, Boris Pryszlak, who also committed suicide. Bishop
knows the details of all that well enough for he was hired by the family who owned the
house to investigate occult dealings on the premises. He was the guy that found the
bodies of the cult.
And now, after seemingly gestating, the horror is rising up again:
"Even as he watched in amazement and dawning horror, a young girl's body was blown
apart by a shotgun; men and women sat patiently around a table while a wild-eyed
executioner slit their throats one by one; a mallet-wielding maniac joyously crushed
human skulls as if they were eggshells."
And it just keeps rolling, gaining strength:
"A heavyset man lumbered toward them, his clothes open to display his genitals. In his
hand he held a long, pikelike object, its length black and tapering gradually to a fine
point. He held the point against the back of the man uppermost in the tangled heap,
pressing it slowly down until it punctured the skin and a tiny drop of blood oozed out.
The naked man paid no heed to his injury, continuing to press into the man beneath
him. The heavyset man plunged downward and the long black point sank from view,
the pike descending into a fountain of red liquid...impaling the naked man and the man
beneath him and the woman on the bottom."
As skeptical as he is, Bishop knows that Jacob Kulek is right: the dark is real, it is the
embodiment of the primal fear, savage aggression, and instinctual violence of those that
committed suicide and with each mind it infects and each death it brings about, it feeds
on these primeval passions, filling and empowering itself, growing larger and more lethal.
The owners of Beechwood house come up with a novel solution: they have the house
torn down, but that only releases the dark into the world at large. Pretty soon it is
roaming London, creating scenes of carnage and bloodthirsty savagery. Acid is poured
down a woman's throat. A man drenches a family in gasoline and lights them up. A
football stadium erupts into butchery. An underground train plows through human
wreckage. Subhuman things long awaiting a world of darkness rise from the sewers to
take the city from their human cousins. As rape, assault, and wholesale murder plague
the city, as corpses sprawl in the streets, people hide from the darkness and London is a
city under siege. There's only one possible solution: light that will dispel the dark.
Pros: Great story, great characters. Gruesome and perverse and spooky. Creepier than
most of these books simply because the dark is unstoppable, not something physical that
can be fought as such.
Cons: Can't think of any.
Overall: A worthy addition to any horror collection. This one ranks right up there with
Herbert's best and has a dark, brooding feel to it like The Fog.
Five bloody skulls out of five.
For next month's guilty pleasure we go slumming:
"Something began to seep from the poisoned ground..."
