Great black magic stories

by Michel Parry (Editor, Introduction), Ramsey Campbell (Contributor), Dennis Wheatley (Contributor)

CONTENTS
Introduction by Michel Parry
Potential (1973) by Ramsey Campbell
The Snake (1933) by Dennis Wheatley
They Bite(1943) by Anthony Boucher
The Vixen (1910) by Aleister Crowley
"He Cometh and He Passeth By!" (1928) by H. Russell Wakefield
The Invoker of the Beast (1974) (trans. of Призывающий зверя? 1906) short story by Feodor Sologub
Witch War (1951) by Richard Matheson
The Ensouled Violin (1892) by Helena P. Blavatsky
Nasty (1959) by Fredric Brown
The New People (1958) by Charles Beaumont
In the Valley of the Sorceress (1916) by Sax Rohmer
The Devil's Debt (1894) by James Platt
The Hand of Glory (1933) by Seabury Quinn

Genres: Horror

222 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Abbey · Rating 4 out of 5]

BOTTOM LINE: edited by Michel Parry, this is a nicely creepy mix of stories, with an interesting introduction. The quality of the writing varies, of course, with the best IMO: “The New People”, Charles Beaumont; “They Bite”, Anthony Boucher; “The Hand of Glory”, Seabury Quinn; “He Commeth, and He Passeth By”, H. R. Wakefield. Also includes stories from: Madame Blavatsky, Fredric Brown, Ramsey Campbell, Aleister Crowley, Richard Matheson, James Platt, Sax Rohmer, Feodor Sologub, Dennis Wheatley.

Beaumont, Charles: “The New People”, 1958
— evil in suburbia, predictable but very creepy

Blavatsky, Madame: “The Ensouled Violin”
— a musician, a teacher, a performance for the ages, overlong but well done

Boucher, Anthony: “They Bite”, 1943
— odd desert legends and inhabitants, cooly cruel

Brown, Frederic: “Nasty”, 1961
— oft reprinted short classic, deservedly so, wryly lives up to its title

Campbell, Ramsey: “Potential”, 1973
— love-in, die-in, and more, exceedingly creepy NewAgeish

Crowley, Aleister: “The Vixen”
— possession and possessing, interesting but awkwardly done

Matheson, Richard: “Witch War”, 1951
— interesting spells-as-combat take

Platt, James: “The Devil’s Debt”
— slow and oldfashioned fairytaleish tale of an almost competent wizard

Quinn, Seabury: “The Hand of Glory”, 1933
— lovely rule-the-world and exorcism story

Rohmer, Sax: “In the Valley of the Sorceress”
— creepy Egyptology worthy of Amelia

Sologub, Feodor: “The Invoker of the Beast”
— Slavic creepiness mixed with Turkish darkness, overwrought

Wakefield, H. R.: “He Cometh and He Passeth By”, 1928
— a sensible lawyer tries to aid a friend caught by a demonic dilettante

Wheatley, Dennis: “The Snake”, 1943
— sly African witchdoctoring

[Shawn]

Placeholder review

"The Snake" by Dennis Wheatley is probably the first piece of short (or long) fiction I've ever read by the author - Wheatley being a figure most familiar to me as having written the source for the fun film THE DEVIL RIDES OUT. Outside of that, I'm not really in a rush - descriptions of his novels make me feel like he's some sort of reactionary Robert Ludlum writing supernatural novels. But here we have a story, told over drinks, where a rich man explains why he believes in black magic, relating a story that goes back to his poverty-stricken beginnings in South Africa, where his bootlegging/arms-dealing boss runs afoul of the local witch doctor when he tries to collect on a debt. This is one of those traditional "native magic works on unbelieving white man" stories (see the much better "Pollock And The Porroh Man" by H.G. Wells) which plays out mostly like you'd expect (although there's a final, dramatic, unexpected twist) but pretty much does so in a workmanlike way - and Wheatley lives up to my low expectations by insulting Italians, Jews and Black Africans within the first few pages. Eminently forgettable.

"He Cometh And He Passeth By" by H.R. Wakefield. Edward Bellamy (the "most brilliant" junior at the Criminal Bar law courts in London) reconnects with his school-friend Philip Franton (invalided somewhat since a mustard gas attack in WWI - "one is brought right up against the vast enigmas of time and space and eternity when one lung is doing the work of two...") who admits to having fallen into the orbit of "that other Oscar" - Oscar Clinton, notorious scoundrel of the Decadent 90s and reputed sorcerer. Clinton insinuated himself into Franton's life, "borrowing" money, directing Franton to fight his suicidal thoughts, and impregnating the man's servant staff, before being banished - upon which he cursed Franton. And as Bellamy then sees that curse come true, he teams with Mr. Solan (an eccentric Orientalist and occult expert) to lay a trap for the crafty and wise/wary Clinton. So, as might be obvious, this is M.R. James' "Casting The Runes," just tricked out a bit. We have the same use of a stand-in for Aleister Crowley (there, Haddo, here, Clinton) - although this would essentially be "Crowley in decline" as Solan notes "the naughty boys of the Nineties" didn't age well (or, in some cases, survive at all). Some space and time is given to Clinton's persona/character (he is acknowledged to be brilliant and charismatic, while also being a debauched drug user and hedonist) and the "meeting scene" with him seems a fairly good "outsider" portrait of Crowley through a fictional lens. On the other hand, the story has very little atmosphere, and is more of an "English club story by way of a early pulp thriller" than a horror story, and everything has a breezy, surface sheen (there's even some clumsily deployed P.G. Wodehouse-styled humor) - so while the incidental details are interesting (Club Chorazin, Solan), it's just in service of a pretty disposable entertainment - and while James' had the religious belief to inform a "Crowley gets his" story, here it seems more like a punishment from a class perspective ("that brilliant but unscrupulous bounder gets his!").