Incubus - Ray Russell

 The more Ray Russell I read, the more fascinated I get.  How has he been so neglected?   In The Case Against Satan he created the paradigm for The Exorcist.  Sardonicus is the precursor for the Gothic revival in the 1980s and '90s.  As for Incubus, as I far as I can judge it is unique, the full sexual implications of the sexual demon.   I can't think of a single novel that even encroaches on the same territory.

Julian Trask returns to smalltown Galen for a break and to perhaps catch up with Laura Kincaid, a student of his back in the day, now editor of the local paper.  Julian was definitely attracted to Laura when he taught her at the local college but professionally she was untouchable.  Now... who knows?

Over the years Julian's academic field has shifted from pure anthropology to the anthropology of the occult.  His mentor Professor Henryk Stefanski has given him a copy of the Artes Perditae, the book of the dawn gods, said to be bound with skin flayed from witches.   It is one of the rarest books on earth - yet there is another copy in Galen, in the home of the founding family, brought there by the mother of young Tim Galen, whom his grim aunt believes was a witch.

Tim dreams of witches and his mother.  He dreams of one young witch being tortured in Tudor times.  Is she the witch whose skin bound the book?  Tim possesses something Julian Trask doesn't - a skinning knife.   Tim is dating the daughter of Doc Jenkins, who is run off his feet with women being raped and murdered - literally torn apart by the huge penis of their attacker.

The twist at the end is truly jaw-dropping, but Russell plays absolutely fair and seeds the clue well in advance.  As I have already said, more than once, nothing in occult fiction compares to this.  An absolute must-read for any horror aficionado.  

Haunted Castles - Ray Russell

 Round this time last year I reviewed Ray Russell's The Case Against Satan on my blog.  On the basis of that I bought Haunted Castles and now I've finally got round to reading it.   What a book!  A masterpiece of Gothic Horror that has somehow fallen from sight.  Thankfully it's now a Penguin Classic endorsed by the great Guillermo del Toro.

Essentially the collected Gothic stories of Russell (who also wrote sci fi and twist-in-tail stories), Haunted Castles comprises three long tales obviously meant to go together from the outset ('Sardonicus', 'Sagittarius', and 'Sanguinarius') and four shorter works in similar style: 'Comet Wine', 'The Runaway Lovers', 'The Vendetta' and 'The Cage' (also known as 'The Prince of Darkness', the opening story in Russell's collection of the same name, which I'm currently working my way through.)

If I have to name a favourite, it's 'Sagittarius'.  I liked 'Sardonicus' a lot, 'Sanguinarius' a little less, mainly because it's Eliabeth Bathory and I think my own novella about her will be scarier; basically, we take totally different approaches to her character.   'Sagittarius', though, is pure Grand Guignol and couldn't be more to my taste.  One of the characters even performs at the theatre of the same name.  Pure bliss.

Overall, I really enjoyed the way several stories are linked by Harley Street physician Sir Robert Congrave and his travelling pal Lord Henry Stanton.  Stanton's letters to Congrave give Russell another story-telling device which adds texture to his narratives.  It helps that the two friends are so completely different in character.

In summary, Ray Russell is a great of horror fiction, up there with Lovecraft and M R James.  I deliberately exclude living masters because they came after.  Stephen King, of course, is a generation later than Russell but broke through at a similar time.   I wonder if King, surely the greatest horror writer of all time, was aware of Russell when he started out?