Paperbacks from Hell covers The Manitou, of course, and several other Masterton novels get name checked as well. However, the Masterton novel Hendrix chose to highlight was 1988’s cannibal cult novel Feast (published as Ritual in the U.K.). “Wherever you think this book won’t go,” Hendrix writes, “Masterton not only goes there, he reports back in lunacy-inducing detail.” I was sold, and immediately sought out the novel, thrilled I could find the Pinnacle paperback with the die-cut cover.
 |
| Die-cut covers excite me. |
Though I didn’t find Feast to be as over-the-top as Hendrix did, it’s a fun ride. It’s the literary equivalent to watching a B-grade horror movie from the same era (kind of a Phantasm vibe, but with cannibals), with Masterton keeping me guessing where the book was going and usually surprising me when he got there. Sure, it’s kind of silly in places, but Masterton’s writing ability makes the book such a fun read you don’t care.
Masterton’s 1985
novel PICTURE OF EVIL (a.k.a. Family Portrait) has a more serious
tone than the pulpy Feast, yet it maintains an undercurrent of camp that
becomes more overt as the story progresses. The campiness is perhaps fitting given
it’s a riff on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, even going so
far as to make a pun of that book’s title.
Vincent Pearson, a
well-to-do New York art dealer, is the owner of the titular picture of evil, a
portrait of 12 people—all hideous—painted by Walter Waldegrave, a mediocre
talent at best, who was reputed to have an interest in the occult. Not only is the painting unpleasant to look at, the
painting smells as well: A thick sweetish smell, like chicken skin that has
decayed and gone green, only more pervasive, more cloying.
Vincent has no
intention of selling the painting, telling his young executive curator Edward
that it’s part of the Pearson private collection, explaining
the painting was his grandfather’s. “He used to say it was like a family charm—that
as long as we kept it, it would keep us safe.”
But on the same
December day Vincent leaves the gallery early, a
mysterious woman— well dressed, beautiful, very pale—visits the gallery. She
introduces herself as Sybil Vane (yeah, the Dorian Gray references
aren’t always subtle), and she’s interested in a specific painting, and it’s
the one Edward can’t sell her, the Waldegrave. She doesn’t take no for an
answer, but Edward, though entranced by the woman’s beauty, stands his ground,
shaky though it is. Sybil Vane promises to return the next day to speak with
Vincent.
Meanwhile, the
gum-chewing sheriff of Litchtfield County, Conn., Jack Smith, whose job usually
consists of keeping an eye on properties owned by wealthy New
Yorkers, suddenly has a killer on his hands, and a very nasty one at that. The corpse
of a young man has been fished out of a Connecticut reservoir, with all the
skin peeled from his body. The coroner tells Jack that the skin was removed
with surgical precision, mostly likely while the victim was still alive. “Otherwise,
what on earth would have been the point of doing it! This is torture, in my
view,” says the coroner, one of many characters whose dialog will have readers
wondering if the Connecticut in Picture of Evil is a little talked about region of Great Britain.
The woman seeking
the Waldegrave painting and the skinned corpse are not unrelated. “Sybil Vane”
is really Cordelia Gray, who, after several decades of exile in Europe, has
returned with the rest of her family to the United States to reclaim the
Waldegrave painting, and with it, return fully to the life they had when the
painting—a family portrait—was first completed in the late 1800s.
The Grays are undead,
but they are not vampires. It’s more like they’re immortal but not ageless and are prone to decay without Waldegrave painting in their possession. To keep up their
appearances the Grays must steal a new skin suit, usually taken from whatever
unfortunate hitchhiker Cordelia’s brother Maurice can entice into his old
Cadillac Fleetwood. Maurice then takes them back to the family home in Darien, Conn., drugs them (if they’re lucky), then carefully and expertly removes his victim’s
skin. As described by Masterton, it’s the removal of skin that’s the hard part.
The recipient of the new epidermis can slip into it like it’s merely a very
bloody onesie. Once the skin has “settled” onto its new body, the recipient is almost
good as new—on the outside at least.
Cordelia, still
quite rotten on the inside, returns to Vincent Pearson’s gallery, only to again
just miss him. Vincent has gotten an early start on the weekend, heading to his
house in Connecticut with Charlotte, the “the youngest woman board member of
the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. Also, by far the most beautiful.”
Charlotte is literally Vincent’s lady friend, for even though they have kissed
and cuddled, they are not fucking (yeah, I had a hard time buying that,
too). Vincent does have a girlfriend, a 21-year-old, large-breasted editorial
assistant named Meggsy, a moniker more befitting a Bichon Frisé than a person.
Meggsy has absolutely no bearing on the narrative and seems only to exist to assure
the reader that Vincent is a heterosexually active man, despite what might be
inferred by his sexless relationship with Charlotte.
Edward and Cordelia fuck, however. Under the guise of hiring the executive
curator to help her seek out other pieces for her art collection, she makes a date
for lunch, after which the pair return to Edward’s apartment where Cordelia wastes little time seducing her mark. Masterton isn’t terribly graphic (a minor
disappointment as I expected more smut from the author of How
to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed and The High
Intensity Sex Plan), but he makes it clear that Cordelia is an
incredible lay, and that maybe Edward is well-hung, or at least thinks he is:
She was yielding
but cruel, continually biting his neck and his nipples, continually scratching
him, but then parting her thighs widely and wantonly, or twisting around so she
could take him in her mouth, so deeply he couldn’t imagine why she didn’t
choke.
Once Edward drifts
off into a post-nut slumber, Cordelia slips out of his apartment, taking his
keys to the gallery on her way out. Once she’s gone, we learn she’s done more
than drain Edward’s balls. Here, Masterton is much more graphic:
As Edward slept, a
small off-white maggot emerged from the warm, sweaty crevices around his testicles
and slowly made its way up his hairy thigh, its brown-tinged, sightless head
weaving from side to side. Soon it reached the crest of his flaccid penis where
it rested against his leg. The maggot crawled over the top of it, and then underneath
it, until it found the crevice of his urethra. It waggled its way gradually
inside and disappeared.
Yeah, Edward’s not coming back. Vincent does, however, discovering that the door to his gallery unlocked and his executive curator nowhere in sight. Nothing is taken, though. The Waldegrave, the one painting that was of interest to the thieves, was already gone, taken to Aaron, the “big and gingerbearded” art restorer who lives in Lichtfield County, Ct. Vincent, equal parts concerned and pissed off, goes to Edward’s apartment. When Edward doesn’t come to the door, Vincent badgers the concierge into letting him inside, where he discovers his employee’s body is now home to a million maggots. The police, understandably, don’t believe Edward was still alive when Vincent saw him three days ago and consider him a suspect.
An
Eviscerated Cat, a Clairvoyant Housewife
and a Punchable Art Expert
Vincent continues to find himself at the periphery of strange and disturbing events. After discovering the maggot-riddled corpse of Edward, he learns that Edward’s ex-fiancée Laura has disappeared and that Aaron’s cat Van Gogh was killed, found skinned and hanging from a tree. Bizarrely, the cat’s likeness has suddenly appeared on the lap of one of the women in the Waldegrave portrait. Then Vincent learns that Ben, the adult son of his God-fearing housekeeper, paralyzed after a fall suffered during a roofing job, has attempted to slice off his own face with a piece of broken glass.
Jack has heard about Ben’s self-mutilation as well, and rushes to the hospital when he learns that Ben was terrified that someone or something wanted his skin. It’s here that Picture of Evil becomes kind of goofy. Like, climactic scene of The Manitou goofy. Enter Pat, the clairvoyant housewife. Pat is a friend of Jack’s wife, and while he’s skeptical of her “gift,” he’s also desperate. His only lead has been a young hitchhiker named Elmer, who managed to escape Maurice Gray, but the sheriff's attempt—with an assist by the Darien police chief—to question Maurice go nowhere, with Maurice smugly insisting on seeing a warrant first. Upon learning that Ben has only hours left to live, Jack decides to ask for Pat’s help, never mind that it’s 3 a.m. when he does so.
It's at the hospital that
Jack and Vincent finally meet. Jack is initially resentful of Vincent, put off
by “the lord-of-the-manor way in which Vincent had walked into the observation
room and taken over the situation as if he had some kind of royal authority.”
However, upon hearing about all the events that have surrounded Vincent—Edward’s
death, Laura’s disappearance, Aaron’s skinned cat—the sheriff begins to believe
that Vincent might be useful in prosecuting the Grays. Furthermore, Vincent is
on board with using Pat to communicate with Ben via a séance.
Pat arrives at the
hospital with curlers in her hair (a detail the reader will be reminded of
throughout the chapter), annoyed by the inconvenient hour she was summoned and doubtful
a séance will do much good. Interestingly, she’s the only one to express any
real skepticism. Even Ben’s doctor is willing to give this psychic shit a try. The
séance, conducted in the doctor’s office, gets off to a slow start, but dramatically
kicks into high gear, with the participants plunged into complete darkness even
though the lights are on, voices heard through static, showers of white specks,
and ghostly howls (it’s really hard not to visualize this scene through the eyes
of the late William
Girdler, clumsy composites and all). Ben dies during the séance, but not without imparting one cryptic
message, because of course any message was going to be cryptic: Lichtfield
Cemetery…Johnson…next to the oak.
Everyone immediately
goes to the cemetery, only to be disappointed that there is nothing about the grave
that implicates the Grays. Except, Vincent realizes later, there is: the Johnson
grave is a tomb, a walled grave. Waldegrave.
While Jack and Vincent are participating in séances and visiting cemeteries, Cordelia and Maurice have been busy eliminating Sheriff Smith’s sole witness, Elmer, gaining access to his cell by claiming to relatives. After they left, Elmer’s body was discovered, consumed by maggots. The Gray family also dispatch the Darien police chief, George Kelly, whom they catch snooping around their house in the early morning hours.
Meanwhile, Vincent
and Charlotte become lovers (better late than never), their afterglow dimmed by the arrival of Vincent’s
neurotic bitch of an ex-wife, dropping off their tween son, Thomas, a day
early to spend Christmas with his father. Luckily for them, the boy is easily
pawned off on family friends, allowing Vincent and Charlotte time to do
research into Vincent’s family history and the Grays, making the connection
that readers made before chapter five: the people depicted in the Waldegrave
portrait are the Grays.
Pat’s services are
enlisted once again, this time to communicate with spirits through the
Waldegrave portrait, which now has a new addition: Laura, wearing a black maid’s
dress, the skirt hiked up to reveal her cooch. If the description of the first séance
suggested B-movie cheese, or at least an episode of Ghost Hunters, the
second one is more akin to John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness. Laura
appears in the room and Jack tries to communicate with her, to ask where she’s
being held, but Laura’s vaporous image only does a sexy dance in response. They
realize too late that Pat hasn’t summoned Laura; she’s summoned the Grays’ toxic
psyche. Before it’s all over, Pat is will be brought to death’s door, twice.
Once when she appears to have been stabbed, and again when she vomits up
copious amounts of blood. Both instances are illusions. The scars from the
experience are very real, however, and Pat urges Vincent to destroy the
Waldegrave portrait.
Except, destroying the portrait could mean destroying
Laura. Hoping to find an alternate way to stopping the Grays and save Laura, Vincent,
Charlotte and Jack pay a visit Dr. Percy McKinnon, who, per Charlotte, “knows
everything anyone would want to know about art and magic.” He’s also a pompous
asshole; however, he doesn’t dismiss Vincent’s claim that the Waldegrave
portrait is what allows the Grays to live eternally. While his validation is
gratifying, it doesn’t make the punchable art expert’s lecturing any more
palatable, and when Dr. McKinnon offers a theory that things imagined by
artists and writers can become real, Vincent begins to suspect this expert is talking out
his ass.
While Vincent,
Charlotte and Jack are trying to wrap their heads around the magical properties
of art, Thomas returns early from visiting a friend. Parked in front of
his father’s house is an old black Cadillac, and waiting beside it are a man
and a woman, claiming to be family friends…
Nitpick? I Daren’t, but Let’s
I found Picture of Evil to be almost as enjoyable as Feast. Masterton’s writing is strong, vividly evoking a mood with his descriptions and use of spooky metaphors (“the lapels lifted up to enclose her face like the petals of a black tulip”). There are several moments that instill dread, such as the skinned body being fished from the Connecticut reservoir and Cordelia and Maurice coaxing Thomas into their confidence. The final chapters, in which Vincent enters the world of the Grays’ impressive art collection, are particularly fun, though Vincent’s entry into this fantastical realm—via a hastily painted portrait and repeating some Latin phrases—is eye-rollingly silly. However, the artful blending of the serious and the silly is part of the book’s charm.
I do have some notes, however. For starters, Meggsy has no fucking reason to exist in this book and wouldn’t be missed if cut. I’d also argue that Laura should have been Edward’s fiancé rather than his ex, just to raise the stakes. I mean, how many bosses are going to care that much about an employee’s ex? They don't care about employees’ current partners. Or lose Laura completely, have Vincent and Charlotte already be lovers in the book’s early chapters and then have the Grays take Charlotte. That could really crank up the tension.
I’d also argue Picture of Evil’s story starts at the wrong point. The first chapter introduces us to Maurice and Cordelia while they are still living in France. It’s not a bad chapter, illustrating Maurice’s M.O. of picking up hitchhikers and skinning them, but it reveals too much too soon. The book’s third chapter, when the skinned corpse is dredged from water, would’ve made a stronger opening, leaving a little bit of mystery. As it is, when that body is discovered, we already know the who and the why, diminishing some of the book’s suspense.
More of an issue is
the book’s setting, or rather, Masterton’s failure to portray it. For all his
strengths as a writer, Masterton—born in Edinburgh, now living in Surrey,
England—nails the American voice about as successfully as Kevin Costner nails
a British accent. Sounding British works for the Grays, but you will never
believe Vincent, Charlotte, Edward or Sheriff Jack are from the United States. The
author’s “Rules
for Writing” article on his website notes the importance of believable dialog and using
correct idioms, yet Vincent twice uses the contraction daren’t, which isn’t
exactly a common part of modern U.S. speech (my spell checker sure has a problem with it). The characters of Feast sounded
British as well, but not as distractingly. Pictures of Evil’s story
would’ve worked just as well, if not better, had it been set in the U.K.
Pictures of Evil may not be in the running as my favorite Masterton novel, but it’s still pretty damn entertaining, solidifying Masterton as another reliable writer to seek out when I’m shopping for paperbacks of a certain vintage. I daren’t pass up another opportunity to read another one of his books.
