THE CENTURY'S BEST HORROR FICTION #72: A review of "The Price of a Demon" by Gary Brandner

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Granted, Norman Spinrad is still active in the SF genre, but Brandner is the first writer we’ve come upon that is still active in the horror genre. (Matheson’s been retired for years, remember.) He’s got amazing staying power, even if he doesn’t usually write short stories.



This one is the tale of the Fieldings. Paul’s wife Claire is a bit kooky. She’s drawn to the supernatural and is even taking witchcraft classes. Paul thinks it’s kind of goofy, but who is she harming? He lets her indulge these weird impulses.


Then comes the day that Claire discovers a strange little green book full of demon summoning spells. Paul comes home to find her chanting from it in their backyard with a bunch of Druid symbols drawn on the cement in chalk. They have a joke about it, and then they go about their business.


Except . . . at night, Claire is startled awake by being bitten. Paul could have sworn he was asleep (and even apologized for sleep-biting), and when they wake up the next day, they are both surprised to see some bruises on her body. Thinking it to be nothing more than accidentally being a bit too passionate, they dismiss it, and Paul goes to work.


While there, he gets a frantic call from Claire, who tells him that she’s being bitten repeatedly by an invisible monster. He rushes home to find her covered in bite marks, and she tells him that she actually saw the demon doing this briefly, that it was all hair and teeth.


That’s a pretty startling thing to think about, at least for a reader in the ‘Seventies. Think back to the shower scene in PSYCHO. Why did that freak people out so much? Because back then, people thought that their house was their safe place, especially the bathroom. Bad things aren’t supposed to happen to you while you’re taking a shower. Naked. With no protection and no one to help you. Brandner takes it a step farther: imagine that you’re not safe in your own home from a demonic monster you can’t see that insists on biting you . . . and you DON’T die. You have to live with this. Pretty fucked up, no?


Paul doesn’t exactly believe in demons, so he takes her to a doctor. The doctor suggests that she is actually epileptic and tells him to take her to a shrink. However, when they get home, Paul actually sees some invisible entity bite into his wife’s leg, and all bets are off.


SPOILER ALERT: Paul takes Claire to the teacher of the witchcraft course, who seems to be their only hope. Aurelia Cord claims to indeed be a witch, but she says that she doesn’t teach anything too dangerous; she just teaches enough for lonely housewives to feel a bit “kinky.” She is very familiar with the dangerous stuff, though, and she recognizes the book as one thought to have been burned a long time ago. Sadly, there’s nothing she can do. “But for every demon there is a price,” she says. “Your wife is paying hers now.”


Paul can’t let it go. Finally, Aurelia admits there is one thing she can do, but she doesn’t recommend it: she can summon a bigger demon to chase the biter away, but that would leave Paul with a price to pay. He doesn’t care. He wants his wife to be safe. Aurelia gives in, and soon, Claire finds the demon has gone. Then, on the way home, Paul feels something touching his face. Something invisible. He hopes that he can get home before paying his price. END OF SPOILERS.


There is a bit of comedy here, but nothing that hurts the effect of the story. The dialogue in the beginning is terrible, though. It’s more like the inane chatter you might see the anchors on your news show of choice using. Real people don’t talk that way. But if you can get past that, you will be richly rewarded.


[This story first appeared in THE YEARS BEST HORROR STORIES #2 and cannot be read online at this time.]