Guy N. Smith's name appeared on sixty-three novels before this one, from 1974 to 1993, and all but one of them were published in the UK. That exception was 'Der Ruf des Werwolfs', only published in Germany at the point 'Witch Spell' came out, though Black Hill Books would publish it in the UK in 2012. His pseudonymous work, if you ignore the books missing the N in his name, was all done in porn, with eight digests published under a variety of names including Anonymous. However, 1993 is the point where both those traditions would change, starting here.

'Witch Spell' was credited to Guy N. Smith as usual, but it was released by Zebra Books, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp. in the U.S., a market Smith had been keen to conquer long before this. Zebra would put out four of his books and, at present, none of them have seen a reprint in his native UK. Next month, I'll tackle 'The Plague Chronicles', another Piatkus hardback, and then it's two pseudonymous works to wrap up 1993: a children's animal novel, 'Badger Island', as Jonathan Guy, and a thriller, 'The Hangman' as Gavin Newman, though the latter has been reprinted under Guy's own name.

While this was only published Stateside, it tells a very British story, especially given that most of it unfolds in a boarding school in the British countryside. We start out in Lichfield, the setting for 'The Unseen', 'The Black Fedora' and parts of a bunch of other novels, though it isn't named this time. We have to work that out because we see the plaque to Edward Wightman, the last person to be burned at the stake in England for heresy. It's in St. Mary's Market and it's actually highly appropriate to mention it in this book because he was an Anabaptist who got into trouble for his radical theology, his undoing being his rejection of the Trinity.

There isn't a theology more radical than Satanism, in its traditional form of deliberate inversion of everything Christian and this book is a war waged between a white witch and a black one over their daughter, Bobbie. The suspenseful opening chapter gives us the background there: Yvonne Wheeler is the white witch, though she prefers healer, clairvoyant, exorcist. Her ex-husband Alec is the black witch, who worships Satan, apparently obviously enough that it cost his job lecturing at college and has now attracted the attentions of the press. It also cements us in a world where God and Satan are real. Demons are real. Everything after that is built on that bedrock.

Bobbie is almost sixteen and Yvonne sends her to Willington College because it's a long way away from her father and whatever the press will conjure up. The headmaster there, Daniel Royle, has a debt to her, one generated by a successful exorcism, so he welcomes here in mid-term. That may be why Alec takes the step of raising a demon in a cabalistic circle drawn in his house. It works but it costs him his life and, a week or so later, the place burns down around his corpse. However, that isn't the end of Alec. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi, once he's dead, he only becomes more powerful.

With Yvonne staying home and Alec dead, our focus shifts firmly to Bobbie, who's discovering her powers, presumably inherited from her parents, and faced with the ultimate choice: light or dark, black magic or white, the left hand path or the right? Hey, puberty's a bitch already. How better to deepen that experience within the framework of a horror novel?

Her first taste of power is her revenge on Miss Jeavons, her ballet teacher. The mistress picks on her during a training session and she falls, hurting her arm. Angry, she lashes out psychically with the effect that Miss Jeavons flies off her foot stool and into the piano. Just a concussion, but it's an impactful beginning. Then she gets horny and seduces fellow student Tom Duckett, then feels ashamed, accuses him of rape and stabs out psychically, leaving him dead on the ground. It's seen as a heart attack so no suspicion falls on her, but his mother accuses her in the school sanitarium, during his funeral, of murdering her son, then joins him in the afterlife.

If that sounds like a British reworking of 'Carrie', you're not entirely wrong, but this goes in a very different direction, starting when Bobbie takes a walk and encounters a stranger with no shadow. He tells her to read a book by Desmond Gilson, 'Book of Knowledge', stating that she'll absolutely find it in the school library. She does and she reads it, realising that he was the long dead author, sent by her own dead father to help her. Smith gives us samples, about the Mark of Satan, eating babies and ritual circumcisions. She finds her own mark after that, masturbating in the bath.

She's already been seduced by head girl Jane Elton, using cannabis and lesbian sex, but she gains confidence after reading the book and dominates Jane into becoming her first disciple. She has a mission. God is dead. Satan lives. This is the first year of our Lord. Year One. She baptises her with a ritual and the Obscene Kiss. Then it's the Terrible Three, the slacker element at Willington, who she seduces, dominates and organises. She even orchestrates a human sacrifice during a boys vs. girls hockey match, the wannabe priest, Carl Inde, receiving a hockey ball to the face.

She escalates everything, seducing and persuading her way through the student body and even a sampling of the staff, the caretaker a crucial player in her dastardly plans. In step, the standards at Willington drop, whether we're talking discipline or academic achievement. The headmaster is aware of the slides but not why and feels helpless to reverse these growing trends. And we realise that this is almost a flipside to 'The Master'. Instead of 'Witch Spell', which is a weirdly vague but still fair title, this could have been called 'The Student'. What's different is that there aren't any obvious heroes to save the day. Mr. Royle and the matron, Mrs. Weston, are good people, but not obvious heroes. The rest of the staff are easily manipulated or even turned.

There are other nods back to earlier Smith novels. The battle between Yvonne and Alec Wheeler, whether they're alive or dead, for the spiritual direction of their daughter is reminiscent of the similar battle for Joby in 'The Neophyte'. There's a point where Yvonne tries to go to Bobbie but can't leave her house because of a sudden assault of agoraphobia and that's right out of 'Phobia', but she centres herself, remembers she's a powerful white witch and breaks out of that trap. The psychic utilisation of a weak minded driver as a murder weapon isn't new either.

Of course, all these recognisable pieces are shuffled around and reassembled in a new order with plenty more original material thrown into the mix. Only 'The Master' remains undeniable as the source of the novel's template, albeit in reverse. While the cause of everything evil at Willington prompted by the student rather than the master, the setting's much the same and the end result not wildly different either. Even the escalation is relatively consistent and it's almost impossible to think of 'Witch Spell' without also thinking of 'The Master'. In fact, they're so close that it's not easy to separate them, even in levels of quality.

There's arguably more plot here but 'The Master' had a better idea of sides among the living, not reliant on the dead. It felt more authentic to its setting too and it had a deeper focus on the staff than the students, while this digs a lot deeper into the students and largely neglects the staff. It's probably even on horrific scenes, some of them very similar, while this has more sex. The setpiece moment is here though, Bobbie instigating one staff member to rape and murder another, then hurl her body on top of the school cenotaph, dying beneath her. That's gloriously grotesque. The most obvious flaw here is a very short ending, even more so than 'The Master'.

While the two plots are technically not connected in any way, they really work well as companion pieces and I will now think of them as a pair of bookends. Certainly, if you love one, you'll love the other. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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