Berryhill - an Old Fashioned Blood-Curdling Gothic

This book definitely borderlines more on the horror side of things than it does the Gothic side.  Published back in 1979 by Manor Books, just two years before the publisher ceased its activities (the same publisher who put out the "King Size Gothic" line, ripping off Popular Library's line of "Queen Size Gothics"), the book promotes itself as "Editor's Gothic Choice," and claims to be "An Old Fashioned Blood Curdling Gothic."  This is one of the very few Gothics that I have read that actually crosses over into the supernatural and delves into witchcraft and ghosts.  It is also one of the few that puts forth very detailed descriptions of some gory and horrific deaths.  The author was Barbara Curry Bennett (1938-2024), and this appears to be her one and only Gothic novel.  Bennett lived in Tennessee, so it should come as no surprise that her story is set deep in the woods of the southern state.

 

Berryhill takes its title from the house in the story, which is set at the bottom of a hill where berries once grew in abundance.  Unfortunately, the ground upon which the house was built has a horrific background, as it was the site of a terrifying massacre of some outcast Indians, the last of whom put a curse on the land - a curse that managed to endure from year to year and generation to generation.  The author takes readers from the time of the early settlers in America in the opening prologue to the current time (well, current when the book was written!) in the epilogue, telling a terrifying tale that lasts over a century.  It opens with a young boy coming across a group of Indians while he is playing in the woods - a group he mistakenly believes are a threat to his family.  He is unaware that the Indians are merely a rag-tag group of misfits, kicked of other tribes for one reason or another and banded together to live a peaceful existence away from everyone.  But the young boy's family, and the other settlers that are with them, come back with blood-thirst in their veins, and they viciously wipe out all of the Indians, from the youngest child to the oldest woman - an old woman who puts a curse on "all white men who dare to walk on this land where the blood of the innocent is shed!" (p. 8),  Half a century later, a man by the name of Aaron DeGault comes across this clearing and decides it is the perfect spot to build a home for his wife and newborn son.  Unfortunately, the curse begins, as Aaron and his wife are tragically killed in a wagon accident, leaving their six-year old son to be raised far away by distant relatives...

 

Until Jason DeGault grew up, married Abigail, and returned to his family's homestead to start a family.  They had two sons, but the War Between the States claimed Abigail's husband and oldest son, and her youngest son, Paul, was missing in action.  That left Abigail to run the farm and care for her sickly daughter-in-law and her grandchild, Alicia.  The horrors of the Indian curse continue when a vile Union soldier shows up, forces his way into the house, brutally rapes and kills Clarice, throwing the infant child across the room in the process.  Abigail finds an inner strength to fight back and takes an ax to the soldier's head, killing him instantly.  She has just enough time to bury the man in the basement before the nearest neighbor, Harry Hunnicutt shows up.  From here, the story moves forward with the Default family, the years pass, and Paul returns home with a wife, step-daughter, and son, moving in with his mother and niece.  The only problem is, Alicia has been raised alone by Abigail, and she is not happy about these people intruding upon what she feels to be her home.  She pushes her new Aunt Sarah down the stairs, killing her without remorse.  You see, little Alicia has discovered the secret in the basement ... and for her, that dead soldier has suddenly become her closest friend and confidant ... someone who is more than willing to help her rid the house of these unwanted interlopers!

 

After Sarah's death, the girls are sent to a boarding school, from which they do not return until they are teenagers.  Alicia's malevolent nature continues, as she not only scares her grandmother to death using the skull of the dead soldier in the basement, but she also seduces her uncle and leads him to commit suicide.  One by one, Alicia removes the obstacles out of her way so that Berryhill can her hers, and hers alone.  All that remains are her cousins, Julie and Michael.  And never you fear, as she has plans for them as well.  Dark, malicious plans that stem from the very evil of the house itself - evil that only Abigail's slaves, Belle and Sally, have the sense to see.  The curse remains within the halls of Berryhill, and that curse has taken complete control of the soldier's spirit and the once-innocent baby that was so casually thrown across the room by his violent rage.  The two form a symbiotic relationship to carry out that Indian woman's curse, and it seems no member of the DeGault family is safe.

 

Flash-forward some more years, and Julie returns to Berryhill with her husband, Phillip Hunnicutt.  It does not take long, though, for Alicia to frighten Julie to her death, which, in turn, leads to Phillip's depression and his ultimate death.  Which leaves only young Michael, who is far removed from the horrors of that house, taken by his grandparents on his mother's side to be raised away from the memories that could scar him forever.   Michael - who has no real memories of the terrors and tragedies that have overtaken his family for generations.  Michael - who is all grown up and ready to return to Berryhill as a married man, to take over control of the farm and start a new family, bringing joy to a house with a history of darkness and sadness.  Michael - who Alicia is none-too-happy to see, and who she is determined to force out of her house.  It all comes down to these last two DeGaults, and the suspense rises to its highest level yet, as readers wait to see whether good will win over evil, or if the dark curse that has held Berryhill and its inhabitants in its sway for so long will have the ultimate victory.

 

Of course, Bennett gives readers a teaser at the end, with a four-page epilogue, set in the present, in which a new generation of DeGaults arrive in a Porsche, set to take over this land that no one in the family even knew existed until a member of the family died, and a long-hidden deed reveals ownership of the land.  Thus, a new family is ready to take over the farm - is the curse gone, or has it simply lain dormant, ready to spring to life again when these latest white men dare to walk the land where innocent blood was shed?

 

Bennett has no qualms introducing the supernatural into the story, and the spirit of the Union soldier gradually taking more and more control of Alicia's decisions (at one point even interacting with her sexually!) is startling to read.  She is a girl-turned-woman without a conscience, and her systematic destruction of her own family is hard to watch. The house is simply filled with evil, and one has to wonder if Abigail had never buried the soldier in the basement, would all of those horrific deaths still occurred?  Was that one incident - the killing and burying of the soldier - the catalyst that released the curse upon the DeGault family?  Or was it merely the means to an end for that dying Indian's curse?  Either way, the story is extremely sad, and there is no happy ending for anyone in this book!

 

No identification of the artist for the cover art, so I have no way of knowing who painted the cover.  It is as creepy as the story itself, with the foreboding house superimposed over a slowly melting candle, while the young woman in the forefront is running away, her long gown flowing in the wind as she runs.  It is sort of an eerie foreshadowing of the story inside - as the candle slowly burns down, so do the lives of those who live inside Berryhill.  It is also a symbol of those rituals that take place in the basement, as Alicia, and eventually the old witch woman who comes to live with her, perform rites over the grave of the long-dead soldier by candlelight - a picture of the evil being released in the house and on the family that lives within it.  This book, by far, as the darkest one I've read to date.

 

RATING:  8 long strands of glimmering pearls out of 10 for an aptly described "blood-curdling" Gothic tale of terror! 

A Zebra Mystery Puzzler #12 - Sing a Song of Murder

I've reached the twelfth Zebra Mystery Puzzler, and with it comes a new female lead sleuth from a new writer to the series.  Jan Michael is the seventh author in the series thus far, and from what I was able to dig up, the name is yet another pseudonym, this time for Jan Milella, who also wrote books under the pen name "Jan Mathews," as well as under her own name.  She only wrote two books in this series - this book and also book 14.  Milella also wrote books in the Harlequin Intrigue line of books, as well as the Silhouette Intimate Moments line and the "Second Chance at Love" line of romance novels.  Her first entry into the series was not bad at all, and I rather liked the lead character...

Sing a Song of Murder features a young country singer Darby Castle, who has hit it big and is just coming off a national tour with her band.  As they return to Nashville for one final concert, Darby learns from her boyfriend/manager that her new accountant has discovered Max Kingston, her promoter, has been skimming money for years, basically stealing tens of thousands of dollars that should rightfully be Darby's.  Upon arrival at the Nashville area, Jimmy (her manager/boyfriend) and Joe (her new accountant) confront Kingston, which sets off a chain of events that ultimately lead to Darby discovering Kingston dead in his office after the concert, strangled by a patch cord belonging to one of her musicians!  While there were plenty of people in the arena and backstage, it seems that the only real suspects who had the opportunity to kill the promoter are all members of Darby's tour group.

Milella a/k/a Michaels writes a rather fast-paced, but well-plotted murder mystery.  With only 174 pages, and the murder not actually occurring until page 63 (well, that is when the body is discovered), leaving less than 100 pages for the investigation to take place, since Darby reveals her knowledge of the killer's identity on page 161, the final page before the sealed last chapter.  The suspects include her maid, Bernadette, who dated Kingston before he dumped her for the next girl in a long line of flings; her guitarist, Billy, whose patch cord was used to strangle Kingston; her bandleader, Stan, who has some big time gambling debts and who could use the money Kingston stole; her boyfriend, Jimmy, who was allegedly sleeping off a drunken stupor at the time of the murder (but no one actually saw him during the time period in question); her accountant, Joe, in whose room the missing money was found; and even her other three band members, who claim to have been playing cards at the time, but who could easily be giving each other an alibi for the crime!  The obvious motive is the money stolen from Kingston's safe and lock box; however, Darby is intelligent enough to realize there is more to this mystery than meets the eye.

The character of Darby Castle reads somewhat like an adult Nancy Drew.  She is determined to help her friends and prove they are innocent of the crime, and she is quick to pick up on clues that the even the police do not seem to see (such as the lack of marks on the hands of one suspect who is arrested for the crime - marks a cord would leave when used to strangle someone).  She even has no problem getting cooperation from the police, who not only allow her to investigate and share information with her, but go so far as to give her a police pass to permit her to visit the crime scene without any supervision!  I would say that is probably the only drawback to this book, as no police force would be this accommodating, even where Darby is a big, multi-million dollar star in the music industry.  However, Darby is the star of the book, so I suppose the author felt the need to keep her at the forefront of the investigation, regardless of the unrealistic relationship between Darby and the police force.

There is no clue as to the identity of the cover artist, nor for the internal illustrations either.  I do like the internals, as they are full page illustrations, with the exception of a white space at the bottom of each one to allow for the page number.  The only one I found a bit off is the one on page 107, which depicts Darby and Lieutenant Hanson testing a theory regarding the marks that a cord would leave on someone's hands.  In the story, the two of them are at the police station, in the lieutenant's office; however, in the illustration, there are records clearly visible on the wall behind Lieutenant Hanson, which would have been hanging on the wall of one of the dressing rooms or perhaps in the promoter's office back at the arena (such as in an earlier scene as depicted to the left, here).  This, of course, begs the question on how much detail the artist is given when provided scenes to be drawn for the book.  Otherwise, the rest of the illustrations stay consistent with the story, and a few of them do provide some subtle clues regarding the identity of the killer (and, no, I'm not going to give them away here and spoil it for anyone!).

Finally, as indicated above, the story is mostly set in Nashville, Tennessee, and the author references quite a number of streets, rivers, and other locales throughout the story.  From the mention of taking U.S. 40 up to Nashville (p. 1), to Elm Hill Pike melting into Lafayette Street (p. 25), there are numerous references to actual places, including the Cumberland River, Hendersonville, and Sumner County.  The author's use of "King's Town" Arena is likely referring to the Bridgestone Arena, as both the fictional and real arenas are located on Broadway in the heart of the city.  Milella's use of actual locations tends to give the story some grounding that gives readers a sense of "reality" to the mystery, as those familiar with Nashville can easily picture the places described in the book.

Another solid read in the series, and leaves me a bit sad to know there will only be one more Darby Castle story to read!

RATING:  8 new Sony cassette recorders out of 10 for some great red herrings, some well-placed misleading clues, and a good over-all read!