James Herbert--The Devil in the Dark by Craig Cabell

Author:Craig Cabell [Craig Cabell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782194989
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2013-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

When an ancient evil attacks Alice in her sleep, we witness a scene that works in a similar way to Regan’s possession in The Exorcist. However, Herbert shows a little more restraint than William Peter Blatty in his description of the girl’s macabre rape. Indeed, what Alice says underplays the rape. She is not swearing and spitting, but languishing and inviting her possession (albeit an ancient spirit using her tongue): ‘“… disperse thyself into me … more filling than e’er it was …”’ before speaking sacrilege ‘“… cursed Mary… Cursed MARY…”’ A nun, Mother Marie-Claire, is outside the bedroom door listening to all this and enters the room to see what is going on. She finds the child asleep and a black cat suckling on Alice’s third nipple.

Folklore and fairy tales walk hand in hand, both real and fantastical. Many stories, like those of the brothers Grimm, have their source in historical legends, such as the ancient belief of witchcraft. The third nipple confirms to any man of God that the person inflicted with the obscenity is a witch, and consequently should be executed as such. Men like Matthew Hopkins, self-proclaimed Witchfinder General of East Anglia during the English civil war, would track down and sentence those with such a mark of Satan. It is legends such as this that clearly show the barbarism and religious mania within history.

Twelve years after writing Shrine, Herbert would again explore the dark secrets of Britain’s bloodthirsty past in The Ghosts of Sleath, where a peaceful village harbours its own corruption. An exploration into the parish records uncovers its brutal history, as it does in Shrine. In fact, while investigating the location in Shrine Herbert found the last two witches to be burned at the stake in Britain had been hiding in the very church where he was conducting his research. An odd coincidence …

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