I don't know what was going through Guy's head back in 1987, but he must have been in a mood to revisit old glories. After eight standalone novels in a row, he chose to switch gear and write three sequels. Inevitably, one was a 'Crabs' book, the infamous 'Crabs: The Human Sacrifice' the sixth in that bestselling series. However, before that were a pair of sequels to books he published in 1980, neither of which was really set up to be expanded on. That prompted him to write new stories built on the same horrors rather than strict continuations and that shared approach makes them more similar than they had any right to be, often easier to compare to each other than their originals.

For instance, there were only five years between 'Thirst' and 'Thirst II: The Plague' in story terms, but ten between 'Deathbell' and 'Demons'. In both instances, that could be seen as generational, the horrors of their predecessors over and firmly relegated to the past. Both are set in villages in Guy's beloved countryside, but, until those horrors return, Bryn Gawr had fared a lot better than Turbury. It had found a new normal in 'Thirst II: The Plague' and still had a future even after a new bout of the Thirst takes down a lot of them. Turbury, on the other hand effectively died after the effects of 'Deathbell', continued to decline and is finally killed off here.

In both books, that gave Guy plenty of opportunity to explore country issues, merely from a pair of perspectives. One village succeeded in moving on, meaning this, that and the other. However, the other failed, meaning X, Y and Z. Anyone who's lived in a village knows where the lifeblood comes from and it's been gradually taken away from Turbury. The church has closed. The school followed suit. Even the bank is now gone. There's no pub, the locals having to settle for the Pole, which isn't that far away, or drive into the next town. And now they're going to flood the village entirely, turn it into a reservoir.

Before that happens, three young poachers spark the story. It's not the same trio that brought a catch of Thirst-infected fish to the Winking Trout in 'Thirst II: The Plague', but it's a new riff on the same approach. Here, it's Dai Charlton and a couple of cronies who decide to visit the burned out wreck that is Caelogy Hall. They find the deathbell on the floor, its clapper detached but close by. They figure out how to re-hang it and then leave rather than toll it. Maybe that's the step too far they're not willing to take. Instead, they adjourn to the Smiths' smallholding to steal turkeys and receive their comeuppance.

Now, Guy N. Smith had his own smallholding in the Welsh border hills but I don't recall a blanket full of fish hooks strung up as a booby trap on my visits to it. It takes Dai down effectively and his cohorts soon crash into a tree during their getaway, driven mad by the first ring of the deathbell. So it doesn't get the first kill but it makes sure of the next two and, as you will no doubt expect, it isn't close to being done, even with no cultists left in Caelogy Hall to serve its agenda. As a bell of pure evil, it has agency of its own and it reaches out to the village.

While I found 'Thirst II: The Plague' a much more enjoyable romp than its depressing predecessor, 'Demons' can't match the majesty of 'Deathbell', one of my very favourites from Smith's prolific output. There's nothing here to match its most powerful scenes, though there are still some that prove highly effective. It also feels episodic, as if Guy was making it up as he went along. However, he was a plotter not a pantser and I know he worked from a synopsis because I own one with many of Guy's handwritten corrections. He did play with the tempo, merging some planned chapters but also inserting others. Even in synopsis form, though, it feels episodic and the ending was always a quick one.

So we start out with Turbury and Dai Charlton re-hanging the deathbell in Caelogy Hall. There's a nightmarish scene in the churchyard and a gruesome suicide, lending the book early promise. The latter is old Tom Williamson, who doesn't want to evacuate so hangs himself on the clapper of the deathbell, which decapitates him. That's nothing compared to the churchyard, though. The goal is to move the recently buried dead before the village is flooded, but a priest falls into one exhumed grave, only to be crushed by a JCB that slides on top of him. The drivers scatter in horror, the truck spilling its load of coffins and driving over corpses, lending the scene a broad Hieronymous Bosch feel. And that's just chapter two!

Then the village is flooded, bringing in Aden Darrell as the new water bailiff. He'll be stocking the reservoir with trout to enable copious amounts of fishing. He quickly connects with Vicki Mason, a young lady who's lost herself now that her school is gone. They're the romantic angle for this book and there's clearly more to come on that front. However, time skips forward and a drought dries up the reservoir that's only just been created, meaning that Turbury rises like a ghost town from the water. And that means new characters, like writer Lawrence Benson, who penned mountains of porn in the early seventies just like Guy, though he's unlike him in every other way.

While some subplots continue from one section to another, most obviously Vicki and Aden and the relationship she has with her landlord's family, others arise almost out of nowhere and then drop back down out of sight. There's a whole section where Richard Lee marches a group of locals down to the newly reachable village to destroy the deathbell, but they're taken out by the elements in a huge storm. There's another with a mass of hippies and travellers who arrive at Bryncalid Common for their Magic Mushroom Festival, only to be moved on by the authorities to Turbury, where they decide to sell the deathbell as scrap metal. Guess how well that turns out.

These sections come and go and unfortunately steal focus away from the core of the story. There's therefore little depth to the bell this time, only hints that it's recruiting villagers into the Tibetan cult known as the Seekers of Silence. After all, its powerful evil may be able to call to people but it can't give them robes and teach them rituals. There's an odd section in which Gwyn Jones meets a water nymph that actually works rather well but doesn't seem to fit with everything else.

And that's where the book really ends up, as a collection of moments that often work on their own merits, but fail to coalesce into a single coherent story that works at book length. I'll remember 'Thirst II: The Plague' not only for its moments but for how everything clicked together. This one is going to stay with me only as moments: the churchyard scene, the water nymph, the scene where one character commits suicide by leaping into the reservoir, which he suddenly realises isn't there any more on account of the drought, leaving him broken but alive.

Oh, and there are no demons. I have absolutely no idea why the book is called 'Demons' and I have no idea what information Arrow gave to the unknown cover artist, because that scene is nowhere to be found in its pages. Frankly, it would probably have been a better book if it was. As it is, what it does best was done better in 'Thirst II: The Plague'. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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