Not until I started reading John Saul this year did I come to understand that there is a more disturbing horror writer than Stephen King (I say that with some dramatic effect because Jack Ketchum’s books are messed up, too). Saul’s books I’ve read thus far, including most recently, Saul’s 1977 debut novel, Suffer the Children, are disturbing particularly because the horror revolves around children, and in this case, is committed by a child. King, of course, has notably written about children, but even his most infamous child scene in It doesn’t compare to what occurs in Suffer the Children.
The book is about the Conger family curse and how that curse hangs over the heads of the modern Conger family. Set in 1952, husband and wife, Jack and Rose, and their two daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah, are trying to navigate this curse. Sarah is considered a mute paranoid schizophrenic after something happened to her a year prior. We learn that the curse is a male Conger raping and killing his daughter before killing himself, and the incident that happened a year prior is that Jack beat Sarah in the woods (causing the muteness) and he fears, he also raped her, or at least, he fears that he wanted to rape her.
On the Conger property are the woods where both incidents occurred, and a dangerous embankment that leads to water. There’s also talk of a cave, but it’s become urban legend among the Congers and the wider town of Port Arbello.
Elizabeth is 13, and seems more capable of taking care of Sarah, and understanding Sarah, than either of her parents, who are struggling with their lives and with each other after Sarah became mute. When children go missing in Port Arbello, it’s Sarah they start to suspect much to their sinking dismay: She’s disturbed, so maybe she’s violently disturbed, the thinking goes. Instead, it’s Elizabeth, as possessed, I think, by the demonic force that killed the original girl 100 year priors, killing more children and dumping them in the aforementioned cave. This could also be voodoo because voodoo gets mentioned in the book by a doctor, and also, there’s the matter of the doll on the cover of the book, which is also later in the book discovered in the attic of the house. In either case, Elizabeth doesn’t remember the things she does. Sarah’s made all the more disturbed because she often witnesses Elizabeth in this altered state. This is also, I believe, what happened to the father when he beat Sarah since he doesn’t quite remember it and attributes the action instead to his drinking.
The brutality of the scenes will stick with me. Elizabeth kills the family cat and then tries to have a tea party with it and the 100-year-old child skeleton (or maybe it’s the father?) in the cave a makeshift rock table. Later, when she tricks another girl, and then a boy to go down in the cave, she essentially rapes the 7-year-old boy with the cat’s corpse. Finally, she brutally stabs and bludgeons the girl, the boy, and then later, another teenage boy. So much so, that Sarah emerges from the cave, too, with the severed arm of the 7-year-old. That cements it for the Congers: Sarah is disturbed and needs to be institutionalized. Instead of being the culprit, we also learn that it was Sarah who was keeping the girl and the 7-year-old alive while they were in the cave. Nonetheless, we fast-forward 15 years later, and Sarah is better and talking and happy. Then, construction on new apartments in the woods unearths the cave and it all comes back to Sarah, rendering her mute again. Along with that, we learn that Jack and Rose are no longer alive because of an apparent murder-suicide on a boat. Elizabeth also seems to suffer the Conger curse anew. There are no happy endings with this Saul book. There is no redemption.
Suffer the Children was plotted a little slower than some of the other Saul books I’ve read this year, but it was still gripping and disturbing. He’s clever in the most macabre way. If you want to take your horror reading up a notch, you have to read Saul’s debut book. It’s essential horror book reading.
Milam's Musings 