THE CENTURY'S BEST HORROR FICTION #87: A review of "Evil Water" by Ian Watson

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Ian_Watson.jpg/220px-Ian_Watson.jpg


This has become such a trend that one shouldn’t be surprised anymore. Here is another example of Pelan choosing a primarily SF writer for this anthology. Yet once again, his instincts prove true.



Paul and Alicia Philips are new to this small English town. They are looking forward to an idyllic existence in which to raise their son, who is still being formed inside Alicia’s belly. But there’s trouble in paradise: Alicia won’t let Paul fuck her. She always seems to have some kind of complaint, like a headache or back pain. But Paul really, really wants to get some. So much so that it’s starting to conquer his mind. He starts hitting on women at work, and he starts obsessing about a young woman he meets at the local pub.


Here’s the problem: Sally believes herself to be a reincarnated witch. Back during the witch hunts, their main test was to throw a woman into Pook Pond. If she sank, she was innocent. If she didn’t, she was a witch. Well, one day, the woman floated, and they really didn’t know what to do with her, then. They decided to boil her alive, and when her flesh fell off her bones, they fed the stew to dogs. But she was a water witch, and since human beings are mostly water, she managed to survive through the centuries until she found her way into Sally’s body.


She gives Paul what he wants. A flash of tit in the moonlight by Pook Pond, and he’s so hard he ejaculates into a well on his property, unknowingly giving her part of himself. Before long, he finds himself hallucinating. In one very effective scene, he thinks there’s a new slot machine in the pub, and he plays it as hard as he can . . . because if you win, the three pictures join together to show off a naked woman. Not any naked woman, though: Sally.


He wins and flees into the night, where she finds him, and the two fuck like fiends. Here is where she tells him her story, and she sees him as her ticket out of this miserable small town. Since he works in insurance, she wants to take out life insurance policies on her parents. She’s then going to use her witchcraft powers to kill them, at which point she will collect and get the hell out. He finds the idea absurd, and he starts putting her off.


When it becomes apparent that he’s not going to help her, she stops hanging around. In the meantime, Alicia gives birth, and during the baptism, something really, truly ugly happens. SPOILER ALERT: As soon as the holy water touches the baby’s head, it starts screaming and swelling up. The vicar’s finger swells up and starts squirting blood out the tip. In this horrifying scene, the baby dies when his throat swells closed. The authorities decide it was some kind of allergic reaction and they let it go, but Paul knows better. He remembers the story of a water witch and wonders what she did to the holy water.


Sally meets with him again by Pook Pond, demanding that he now help her out before something worse happens to his family. His response: to beat her to death with a rock and drop her body down the well.


Not a good idea. Remember, she’s a water witch. Before long, through a series of spells, she gets the attention of the police. When they open the well and find her body, they do a few tests to discover she was pregnant with Paul’s child. They put two and two together and arrest Paul. But Watson has one more surprise for the readers in the very last sentence of this story. Read it for yourself to find out. END OF SPOILERS.


Nasty, no? So far, very few of these stories feature sex as a main ingredient. This is kind of odd, considering how Pelan was also responsible for DARKSIDE, a collection of hypersexed horror stories. Clearly he’s a fan of them. Here, he doesn’t let us down. Take heed, husbands: when your wife is pregnant and won’t let you get any, please don’t turn to the local water witch to get your poke.


[This story first appeared in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION and cannot be read online at this time.]