Eric Ericson - The Woman Who Slept With Demons

[severance]

In times gone by, men and women did not accept the boundaries of the visible world as readily as we do today. They looked at the edge of darkness and saw that the unknown places beyond it were peopled with creatures very unlike themselves.
For much of human history these creatures beyond were thought of as gods and were worshipped, placated and their intervention and aid sought in earthly matters. But after the rise of Christianity, the priests of the new god taught that the beings beyond the rim of the dark were devils, to be feared and shunned. By threat of death in this world and everlasting damnation in the life hereafter, they weaned their congregations slowly away from their former ways.
But for all that, the Otherworld was still there. And it is still there today, whether we deny its existence, regard it as evil or as the natural order of things, ordained from the beginning. It is not a world of ghosts but a world as physically real as our own, though existing in another dimension of space and time. And in the places where the Otherworld overlaps our own world, men and women can still communicate with its creatures, as they have always been able to do. Those humans who consort with the hosts of the Otherworld learn strange things and gain the power to control minds and to direct events.
For all the teaching of the Church in the past or the scepticism of the utilitarian world of today, there are still men and women hardy enough to make contact with the Otherworld. They call themselves The Apart.
They use this name for themselves because they are set apart from ordinary men and women by what they have experienced and learned. They are not bound by ordinary human considerations and restrictions. They have different emotions and different needs. They think different thoughts and have different abilities. Neither the laws of society nor the restraints of common humanity bind them in any way.
There are never more than a few of the Apart living at any one time. For the vast majority of people, the way to the Otherworld never opens and they remain unaware of its existence. And of those before whom the path opens, not many dare follow it.
Of those who do follow it, by no means all have the strength of mind or the cold courage to continue all the way, once they realize what is required of them. And so, as they can see no way back to the safety of the herd once their feet are on that path, they either go mad or kill themselves.
But those who follow the path all the way and become truly Apart, also become more than human and at the same time less than human.
The very existence of the Apart is suspected by almost no one, for what can the sheep know of the wolf? And yet sometimes a victim of the Apart becomes aware in time of their power and their viciousness and then, like a fly trapped on a sticky cobweb, he struggles to free himself before the spider sinks it fangs into him and sucks out his life and soul.
What follows is the story of Andrew Jarvis, an ordinary man who became ensnared by the Apart through no fault of his own and of his attempts to break loose from them.

That was the prologue of Eric Ericson's 1980 novel "The Woman Who Slept With Demons" and in my view it sums up the novel far better than the back cover blurb does, so I hope no one objects to my quoting it there at length. We also had a thread on it on the old board, but most of it was about what Ericson had also written, not about this book in particular - though Dem seemed to struggle with it if I remember correctly.

Half way through and I'm really enjoying it - Lovecraftian horror with absolute lashings of sex. Like Jack D. Shackleford, Ericson occasionall overdoes his own knowledge of the occult and a couple of the chapters are little more than prolonged infodumps, albeit very entertaining ones, but they are minor negatives in a thoroughly entertaining novel.

Andrew Jarvis, East Anglian county vet, is on his way home late from a sexual liason with a local married woman when he encounters a young woman having car trouble, Bianca Hallam. He gives her a lift to her intended destination - a country lane who's only obvious attraction is a local landmark, Longman's Hill. Feeling compelled to find out her intentions he steals back to the mound to discover her lying naked on top of her fur coat, legs apart. Feeling his presence she orders him to leave, moments before something slams into him, throwing him from the mound, from where he crawls back to his car before collapsing. Next morning he returns to the mound, where he finds Bianca's clothes and handbag, but no fur coat. Spying a trail through the dewy grass to a cattle shelter at the edge of a field, he eventually finds Bianca, wrapped in her fur coat, her body "criss-crossed from neck to knees with cuts and scratches and smeared with blood... the lacerations were most severe on her small breasts and between her thighs..." And so begins his initiation into the world of the Apart...

[dem bones]

Happy birthday, Sev!

What follows is the story of Andrew Jarvis, an ordinary man who became ensnared by the Apart through no fault of his own and of his attempts to break loose from them.

Substitute "John Mason" for "Andrew Jervis" and that's much the case with The Sorcerer as well, which sees a power struggle between the reluctant latest recruit to the Coven and the megalomaniacal leader.

I must have a second crack at The Woman Who Slept With Demons. It wasn't so much that I struggled with it, more I left it alone for too long to remember where I was in the story!

[severance]

admin said:

I must have a second crack at The Woman Who Slept With Demons. It wasn't so much that I struggled with it, more I left it alone for too long to remember where I was in the story!

Yes you must, seriously. Absolutely cracking novel, plenty of bloody death, and huge amounts of sex. I swear Andrew Jarvis makes it with every female character in the book, including Braddock's 15-year-old daughter. In the sensational chapter 11 Jarvis turns up at Bianca's, and is admitted, much to his surprise, not by her surly butler, Braddock, but by his daughter, Mandy. Although Bianca and Braddock are both out, both of them sense an inexplicable forboding atmosphere in the house and are reluctant to leave each other's company. During tea in Braddock's basemant flat, Mandy tells Jarvis that her own father raped her when she was 14 and fathered her child, before sterilizing her and, as far as Mandy believes, murdering his wife. After she tells him that she can't breast feed, she gets them out and starts playing with them. From then on it feels to Jarvis that he's acting out some preordained role and it's inevitable that they will have sex. Of course Braddock returns while he's getting dressed afterwards and attacks Jarvis with a kitchen knife. Because of the sheer frenzy of the attack, Jarvis has little option but to slit Braddock's throat in self-defence.
After Bianca instructs him how to dispose of the body, he increasingly gets the feeling that she orchestrated the whole proceedings just to get him further under her spell, and give her an unbreakable hold over him.
For once this is a novel of the occult that isn't let down by a deus ex machina ending, truly a brilliant book.

[dem bones]

My 'to read' pile is getting seriously unmanageable and yesterday I swore 'no more until i've got through these!'. Today Filthy Creations showed up and now you post this!

Great to read such an enthusiastic endorsement. It looks quite hefty but I remember fair belting through The Sorcerer on account of Ericson's uncomplicated style and even the serious occult bits were easy on the brain.