The Reaping

by Bernard Taylor

  THE REAPING

  BERNARD TAYLOR

  With a new introduction by

  WILL ERRICKSON

  VALANCOURT BOOKS

  The Reaping by Bernard Taylor

  Originally published by Souvenir Press in 1980

  First Valancourt Books edition 2019

  Copyright © 1980 by Bernard Taylor

  Introduction © 2019 by Will Errickson

  “Paperbacks from Hell” logo designed by Timothy O’Donnell. © 2017 Quirk Books. Used under license. All rights reserved.

  Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia

  http://www.valancourtbooks.com

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.

  Cover painting by Oliver Frey

  Cover text design by M. S. Corley

  INTRODUCTION

  The first time I heard of Bernard Taylor was around Halloween of 1994, when I was working in a large chain bookstore and trying to stock the horror section with some terror-ific titles. My guide was Horror: 100 Best Books by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, two men who know a thing or two about the genre. Well-known horror writers wrote about their favorite books, and the esteemed author and editor Charles L. Grant—another writer who knows a thing or two about the genre—chose Taylor’s 1977 novel Sweetheart, Sweetheart to write a short essay about. Grant notes, among other things, ‘its elegant use of language,’ and that it ‘achieves its effects without artifice.’ He plainly states it’s the ‘best ghost story’ in novel form he’s ever read. Of course when I tried to procure copies of this title for the bookstore shelves I was unable to, for whatever long-ago reason, but it went on my list of must-reads. Many years later, when I began my blog Too Much Horror Fiction, I sought it out in its 1979 Ballantine paperback edition and read it. I wasn’t quite prepared for the unhurried buildup of events, but by the final pages, I was hooked. Then I read other Taylor titles, and was always taken with them, impressed by their intelligence, their patience, their care and concern for characterization and dialogue and their suspenseful finales.

  Looking back over the titles he published during the Paperbacks from Hell era, the covers of Taylor’s books show the entirety of the horror publishing boom. There are the requisite blurbs that compared his first novel, The Godsend (1976), to The Exorcist, The Other, and Rosemary’s Baby, that original unholy trinity of bestselling horror novels; there is erotically unsettling cover art by the unsurpassable illustrator George Ziel; there are title typefaces in dripping blood-red letters; encomiums from such fine horror connoisseurs as Publishers Weekly, the Evening Standard, the Hartford Courant, and the New York Daily News; there’s that one blurb that demands Stephen King himself ‘move over,’ ostensibly because here comes Taylor to usurp the position of bestselling horror author. There is also one uber-unsettling creepy fetus almost winking at the prospective book-buyer from the inky black cover.

  The purpose of all those elements is obviously to sell books, shift units, move product, and it looks like it worked, because here we are over 30 years later still talking about Bernard Taylor and his horror novels, many of them reprinted by the fine fellows of Valancourt Books. Indeed they brought us Taylor’s latest work, The Comeback, only last year. But those garish, gaudy, even gauche cover images, so iconic of their era, belie what makes Taylor special.

  So why are we still talking about these books, and in particular, his third novel, The Reaping (1980), the reprint of which you now hold in your hands? It is not because Taylor achieved King-size success, or that his novels are in any way similar to King’s vintage-era output. I believe it is because Taylor works in a quieter, subtler, more restrained manner that is not in a godawful rush getting to the bizarre and outré, the supernatural and the occult. His first three novels are kin to the contemporaneous horror/thrillers of Ira Levin, Robert Marasco, and Thomas Tryon. If you’ve read any of those authors’ early Seventies works—and if you haven’t, you must—you will recognize some of the template in Taylor’s novels as well. He takes his time, he settles into the story, he lets you get to know his characters and their situations, not giving the reader many clues to which narrative thread will be the one to unravel everything. But his novels do not overstay their welcome; none is more than 300 pages, and once the horrors start coming, they come fast and hard. The climax of Sweetheart is sad and bloody and shocking, and the finale of The Reaping features the most menacing creaky lift this side of The Shining.

  I like the realistic quality that Taylor brings to the proceedings: his characters are upscale, literate, ambitious; they appreciate the finer things and talk easily of art and literature. Alan Marlowe, the main character of The Godsend, listens to opera while illustrating a new edition of The Arabian Nights. The haunted David Warwick of Sweetheart is an English teacher. Tom Rigby, our protagonist here, when not painting portraits, relaxes with the novels of Muriel Spark and Thomas Hardy. Taylor is also adept at the push and pull of romantic relationships, ones fraught with insecurity, the importance of fulfilling work, or the unfathomable weight of dead children, the strain that family history puts on the present, the desire to do the right thing in a world gone mad. Taylor writes like he has perhaps experienced these events, but presenting them in readable prose is a skill beyond many, many horror writers. Don’t get me started on the average horror writer’s inability to depict a believable sex scene. The Reaping hinges on it, and Taylor is up to the task… if you’ll pardon the pun.

  So, first-time reader of The Reaping, you’re wondering what’s in store? An art-supplies shop owner with ambitions of being a portrait-painter is commissioned out of the blue to paint a portrait of a woman living in Woolvercombe Mansion. Offered more money than he can refuse, he sets out with paints and easels to a familiar genre setting: the giant house of doom populated by aloof servants, faux-friendly assistants, a come-hither-yet-keep-away possible romantic interest, and a very, very, very old lady who isn’t shy about showing off her withered, decrepit body. Odd things begin happening: five nuns lurk about the premises, his car keys are lost, the portrait model is being mistreated by one of the menacing servants, and then there’s the matter of a disturbing massage of George Costanza-like proportions. Aided by another familiar genre offering—the research trip to a library where terrible truths are slowly realized—Rigby eventually finds out why he was chosen to paint this portrait.

  Taylor’s books are not the kind that ‘scare the bejabbers out of you’ or ‘keep you from sleeping for a month!’ They don’t rely on full-throttle shocks and tableaus of gore and cruelty to unsettle and disturb; no, Taylor’s style is deceptively simple, a fine-tuning of the art of misdirection, piling detail upon detail so that before you know it, you’re in too deep, and the horror is about to start. In fact, it’s been going on all along. And that, devoted horror reader, is why you’re here. Welcome to The Reaping.

  Will Errickson

  Will Errickson is a lifelong horror enthusiast. Born in southern New Jersey, he first encountered the paperback horrors of Lovecraft and Stephen King in the early 1980s. After high school he worked in a used bookstore during the horror boom of the ’80s and early ’90s, which deepened his appreciation for horror fiction. Many years later, in 2010, he revisited that era when he began his blog Too Much Horror Fiction, rereading old favorites, rediscovering forgotten titles and writers, and celebrating the genre’s resplendent cover art. With Grady Hendrix in 2017, he co-wrote the Bram Stoker Award-winning Paperbacks from Hell, which fe
atured many books from his personal collection. Today Will resides in Portland, OR, with his wife Ashley and his ever-growing library of vintage horror paperbacks.

  Chapter One

  When I found myself staring into the darkness and realized that I’d been dreaming again my sense of relief was indescribable. I lay there in the dark, drenched in sweat and waiting for my heartbeat to slow its pace.

  The dream had been much like all the others: the same theme. I had seen so clearly again the faces of the people, the house, the tower, and the familiar grounds. This time, though, I’d been completely hemmed in by the shrubbery and the undergrowth—so thick I could hardly move. And then, quite suddenly, it had all changed and I was running up those steps, round and round and round, seeing no end in sight and feeling as if my legs were churning through treacle.

  Some parts, granted, are fantasy. But not all. And anyway the events behind the dreams—the cause of them—are real enough.

  Too real for comfort—still. But perhaps, I tell myself, the fault lies within me, in my refusal to face up to it. Maybe if I faced it all squarely in the day I wouldn’t be so plagued during the night—when I’m off my guard. Is that, then, part of the answer?—to talk about it? But where would I start?—it’s only in literary, created dramas that stories have beginnings . . .

  Though I could use almost anything as a cue. I could, perhaps, begin with one of those times when Ilona was away from London—and choose a particular day of her absence. Yes . . . I’d go back to that day last June—to the day I got her second postcard.

  Not that there was anything special about the postcard—there wasn’t. It showed a picture of the Arc de Triomphe. The first, a week previously, had shown a view of the Plomb du Cantal in the Auvergne. On the back of both cards Ilona had crammed an enormous number of words into the available space, but for all she’d written very little had been said—and nothing I was really interested in reading. All right, I thought, maybe it was hell getting to a phone when she needed one, but at least she might have written a proper letter. But no—just the two postcards. Two in almost three weeks. It hadn’t always been like that.

  She worked as a make-up artist. Employed on a freelance basis and good at her job she seemed to be forever going off in connection with some film or television production or other. She complained about it often, decrying its disruptive effect on her social life, but nevertheless I was quite sure she derived a great deal of satisfaction from it.

  My own feelings about it were unequivocal. Hardly surprising; sometimes many weeks would go by when I’d rarely see her, and of late when she’d been away the contact between us was next to useless. The postcards were an example.

  But, I said to myself, I suppose even a postcard was better than nothing at all: at least I could be glad I’d got that. It hadn’t made me glad, though; it had disappointed me, and my disappointment had hung around. I know it stayed with me for a good part of that Monday.

  Disappointment or not, though, I had things to do, and as soon as five-thirty arrived I was at the shop’s glass-panelled door and turning the sign so that the Closed side looked out onto the pavement. Then I turned and started to give a hand with the last-minute jobs, taking up a duster and wiping it over the counters. Arthur, my senior assistant, was cashing-up at the till while over to one side Alice bent her round body to straighten the stacks of cartridge paper and mounting-card. Brian, looking even more eager than I to escape, hurried into the yard at the back with the accumulated waste paper while Sharon, the youngest, busied herself with the display boxes of paints, brushes and pencils.

  The business part of the shop’s premises was large, comprising not only the very wide area on the ground floor but also a spacious basement where Enid and Margaret, two other assistants, sold gifts and prints. I employed six people in the shop itself, and one more in the picture-framing workshop half a mile away. I’d worked hard over the years to bring the whole thing to its present state, and as small businesses went it was a successful and profitable one. I didn’t, though, regard it with unadulterated pleasure . . .

  Now, all the jobs finished, I unlocked the door and stood aside as everyone trooped out into the sun. I myself left only minutes after them; not to go far, though, but just to let myself through the adjacent door and climb the stairs to the first-floor flat above the shop.

  There in my studio I lit a cigarette and surveyed the stacked canvases, and all the paintings, sketches and photographs that hung from the walls. Tomorrow would see the selecting of paintings for the forthcoming exhibition at the newly-built local theatre, and today was the last chance to submit them to the panel. It was at Ilona’s suggestion that I’d decided to participate. I realized that I felt an odd little sense of excitement; it had been years since I’d shown anything of my work.

  I moved to where four framed canvases stood separately to one side. I turned them around, lined them up against the wall, sat down in the old carver and studied them. There was a landscape, two still-lifes and a self-portrait.

  The self-portrait was the most recent of the paintings; I’d only completed it over the weekend. In it I was wearing a favourite old green sweater that had seen better days a long time ago. Its colour made a good contrast with the pale blue-grey of the background. My portrayal of myself was, I thought, a truthful one. There, very accurately, was my thick dark hair—a bit ragged and curling around the ears—and the ears themselves sticking out a bit too much for comfort. There too was the curved, too-large nose and the long, angular jaw. It wasn’t, I had to admit, a face I’d have chosen to paint, but it was, nevertheless, one that had the singular advantage of always being available.

  I studied the pictures for a long time. There was nothing more I could do to them at this stage, though, I thought—except maybe add a little retouching varnish . . .

  * * *

  By six-fifteen I was on my way home, walking briskly the three hundred yards to Lansbury Crescent.

  Letting myself in at the front door of the large detached house near the crescent’s centre I was greeted by the sound of Em’s transistor radio in the kitchen. ‘Hello-o-o,’ I called out to her and her voice, like an echo over the music, came back to me in reply. I heard, too, movement on the landing above, and as I set down my briefcase Simeon came down the stairs, his shy smile wide and welcoming. When he was close enough I leaned down and placed my hands on his slim shoulders.

  ‘So how have you been doing today?’ I asked.

  ‘All right, thanks.’

  ‘Where’s your sister? Is she in?’

  ‘No, she’s out. Why—were you going to play tennis?’

  ‘Not today. She’s supposed to be coming with me to help me with my pictures.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ He stepped past me and crossed the hall to the kitchen. ‘Aunt Em,’ he said, ‘—where’s Julia?’

  ‘Having tea with her friend Joanna.’ Following the sound of Em’s voice the radio accompaniment of Neil Diamond faded and she appeared in the doorway. ‘She won’t forget,’ she said. ‘She’ll be here any minute, I’m sure.’ Then she added: ‘I’m just making some tea. You go and sit down and I’ll bring it in.’

  As Simeon followed me into the sitting room he said: ‘I expect they’re discussing their holiday.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I expect so.’ I sat down in my armchair, pushed off my shoes and stretched out my legs. Simeon leant against the chair-arm and smiled up into my face. In his blue, blue eyes I could see his mother—so clearly.

  ‘Aunt Em and I have been discussing our holiday,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Yes. She says the ponies are wild and that they come into the villages and just wander all round the streets.’

  ‘So I’ve read.’

  His coming holiday in the New Forest with Em and her friend Ivor was very much on his mind. That particular time was in my own thoughts too, for over part of that s
ame period I was going to be in Devon with Ilona.

  It had been Ilona’s idea. When an invitation had come from the parents of Julia’s friend for her to go to Cornwall with them, and at the same time the twins were invited to stay in York with their cousins I’d suddenly found myself presented with two weeks of relative freedom. Ilona, seeing me divested of most of my responsibilities for that time had suggested that maybe she and I could go away together somewhere. I’d jumped at the idea—though we’d have to take Simeon with us, I said. At this point, however, Em had stepped in. Perhaps she and Ivor could take Simeon away with them, she said—which would then allow Ilona and me to be completely on our own for a while. Besides, she’d added, Ivor’s son was close in age to Simeon, so they’d be good company for one another. And so it was agreed, and we’d gone ahead and made our various arrangements. Em and Ivor had found a cottage in Brockenhurst for a fortnight and I had booked a week at a hotel in Sidmouth. Ilona’s schedule, she had told me, wouldn’t allow her to take longer than that—but that didn’t matter. We’d have a week of total relaxation; a week of walking, reading, swimming and tennis; a week when we’d be alone together, just the two of us. I blessed Em for her generosity and her understanding. She had known how important it was to me, that Ilona and I get some real opportunity to be by ourselves and sort everything out.

  Now Simeon said: ‘Aunt Em says the New Forest is a super place. Don’t you wish you were coming with us, Dad?’

  ‘There’ll be other times,’ I said. ‘Maybe next year.’

  ‘Next year . . .’ he repeated, and then: ‘Julia says that next year she might go away to boarding school like Mike and Chris.’

  ‘She’s too young,’ I said. ‘She’s not eleven yet.’

  ‘Will I go when I’m older?’