"They believed in evil as a power in itself..."
A 1980 novel by James Herbert.Two years since Chris Bishop witnessed the aftermath of a mass suicide in Beechwood House, Willow Road, London, the district has seen several further suicides.
On behalf of Jacob Kulek, founder and president of the Research Institute of Parapsychological Study, daughter Jessica approaches Bishop, and persuades him to join an investigation of the house - in which he encounters a phantom reiteration of the murderous orgy overseen by Jacob’s old colleague, occultist Boris Pryzlak.
At night, curiously concentrated patches of darkness entice Willow Road residents to crazed bouts of brutal violence. Agnes Kirkhope, Beechwood’s absentee owner, has the house demolished. Soon afterwards, the city finds itself shaken by mass-violence which seems, undeniably, to be caused by something in darkness itself…
This novel provides examples of:
- Agent Scully: Downplayed; while Bishop believes in some kind of life after death, he aspires to empirically explain spectral phenomena.
- Arch-Enemy: Boris Pryzslak vainly sought the aid of psychic investigator Jacob Kulek, who continues to oppose his heinous machinations.
- Ax-Crazy: The Dark insatiably rouses its victims to this.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Policemen Les and Bob, stationed to Willow Road after the recent outbreak of violence, pursue an agonised howl to a darkened house, to find a Dark-crazed resident has mutilated his wife’s dog.
- Berserk Button: Bishop strongly dislikes fake mediumship; he and wife Lynn, bereaved of five-year-old daughter Lucy, hired such a charlatan, whose fakery Bishop exposed halfway through the sitting.
- Big Bad: Occultist Boris Pryzslak sought to harness evil as a living force. On ritual suicide, he and his followers became discarnate agents of the Dark.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The soft-voiced medium who faked contact with the spirit of daughter Lucy, on exposure by Bishop, flew into a rage.
- Blind Seer:
- Jacob’s blindness is said to have enhanced his extrasensory faculty.
- Having been blinded by the Light, Bishop and Jessica gain a deep extrasensory sensitivity.
- Bizarrchitecture: The Kuleks’ house is covered with iodized glass, so as to refract daylight, by which Jacob may enjoy his remaining fraction of eyesight.
- Came Back Wrong: In her mental rest home, the Dark rouses Lynne from her delirium - to murderous violence.
- The Caretaker: Jessica aids her blind father.
- The Cavalry: Atop a tower block, surrounded by Dark-infected crazies, Bishop and co are rescued by Peck and his officers.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Following the death of their five-year-old daughter Lucy, Bishop’s wife Lynne was driven to attempted suicide, and tried to kill him when he stopped her. He was forced to commit her to a “rest home for the mentally disorientated.”
- Dark Is Evil: A force which houses and rouses natural tendency to violence, invoked by occult ritual, manifests in concentrated darkness.
- Death of a Child: Just short of five years old, Bishop’s daughter Lucy died of pneumonia.
- Driven to Madness: Following the death of daughter Lucy, and exposure of faked contact with her spirit, Lynne tried to kill herself and then Bishop.
- Eccentric Millionaire: Dominic Kirkhope, heir to a ship building franchise and co-owner of several properties, hosted mystic experimentation at Beechwood.
- Elder Abuse: Live-in nurse Julie is suddenly roused by the Dark to rape and strangle to death elderly charge Benjamin.
- Eldritch Abomination: In palpable concentrations of darkness, a sentient assertion of the human capacity for evil insatiably seeks further agency.
- Hate Plague: In anyone, the Dark may rouse negative emotion to murderous violence.
- Haunted House: In the 1930s, Beechwood hosted mystic rituals. Co-owner Dominic Kirkhope, with Pyszlak, later used the house for a violent ritual which ended in suicide. On return to the house, Bishop encounters phantasms of the murderous orgy.
- High-Voltage Death: During a football match, thuggish player “Animal” is roused by the Dark to rip out the cables of the junction box, sending the lethal current across the rain-soaked stadium.
- Late Coming Out: Horrifically subverted; RAF veteran and convicted sex offender Pinky Burton, taunted by two teenage boys to whom he seems unable to admit his attraction, is roused by the Dark to shoot them and their dad.
- Light Is Good: Any kind of light can, at least for a while, protect against the spectral malignancy of the Dark.Jacob: Whatever energy light rays contain, be they from the sun or artificial, it may be that they counteract or negate the catalytic qualities of darkness.
- The Lost Lenore: From Lynn’s mental ruination, Bishop feels something close to bereavement.
- Magnetic Medium: “Sensitive” Edith Metlock accompanies Bishop and the Kuleks to Beechwood, and is used for manifestation by the violently killed participants in Pryszlak and Kirkhope’s ritual. Having in her youth been romantically involved with Pryszlak, she involuntarily attracts concentrations of the Dark, which she barely manages to keep at bay by turning on all the lights in her house.
- Merger of Souls: The Dark seems to be composed of discarnate souls bent to its evil.
- Multiple Narrative Modes: Bishop narrates the prologue and epilogue, but the main chapters are told in third-person.
- No Name Given: Two of Pryszlak’s followers, a respectively tall and short woman, murder Agnes Kirkhope and housekeeper Anna, and relentlessly pursue Bishop and co.
- Not Too Dead to Save the Day: Back at the Beechwood site, as Edith’s attempt to summon spiritual aid from Jacob comes to naught, Jacob’s spiritual influence manifests in a flare of cosmic light, which banishes the Dark.
- Occult Detective: Parapsychologist, or “ghost hunter” Chris Bishop, following the Kirkhopes’ inability to let Beechwood, visited the house to check for ghosts, and saw the grotesque aftermath of thirty-seven suicides. Jacob and Jessica Kulek entreat him to accompany them on a second investigation, and encounter phantasmal repetition of the carnage.
- Parental Abandonment: Jacob’s wife and Jessica’s mother died some time ago.
- Place of Power: Under supervision of police, army and several specially installed high-power lights, Edith Metlock leads an attempt to contact the incorporeal agents of the Dark.
- Police Are Useless: Averted; Detective Chief Inspector Peck and his men manage to provide some protection for Bishop and co when swamped by Dark-infected crazies.
- Poltergeist As it grows in strength, the Dark explosively shatters a large window.
- Pyromaniac: Eleven-year-old Susie, troubled by her mother’s affair, is roused by the Dark to set the house on fire.
- Sentient Cosmic Force: The Dark, a tangible assertion of the human capacity for depravity.
- Shout-Out:Les: Murder, manslaughter, bloody house burning down - all in one night? It’ll be another hundred years before anything else happens down this road. They’ve had their lot all in one night.Bob: You can’t blame them, though. I mean it’s not Coronation Street, is it?
- On hearing of Julie’s use of her hair to strangle Benjamin, Edith Metlock recalls Lilith.
- Spiritual Antithesis: Arguably to Herbert’s second novel, The Fog (1975) (1975). Whereas the titular Fog is bred artificially, released by accident and subdued through technical means, the Dark, independently of matter, rouses innate tendency to violence, and is eventually countered by Jacob’s posthumous attunement with the Light, a force which embodies peace.
- War Refugees: In 1946, Jacob Kulek and Boris Pryszlak, from the communist regime about to be set up in Poland, fled to England.
