The Right Hand of Evil

In a career spanning more than twenty years, New York Times bestselling author John Saul has terrified us with his chilling, psychologically charged novels. Now, in The Right Hand of Evil, Saul plumbs the icy depths of darkness--and gives us his most frightening, compelling novel yet. Don't turn out the light. . . .Just as their troubled marriage is reaching the breaking point, Ted and Janet Conway receive tragic news that unexpectedly gives them a chance to start again. After the lingering death of his estranged aunt, Ted inherits the Conway home in the small Louisiana town of St. Albans, an imposing structure that has been in the family for more than a century. With nothing to hold them in Shreveport, the Conways move with their teenage twins, Jared and Kim, and eighteen-month-old daughter, Molly, to the promise of a new beginning.But the house has a life of its own.Abandoned for the last forty years, surrounded by thick trees and a stifling sense of melancholy, the sprawling three-story Victorian house seems to swallow up the sunlight, along with people's lives. For deep within the cold cellar and etched into the very walls is a long, dark history of the Conway name--a grim bloodline poisoned by suicide, strange disappearances, voodoo rituals, and rumors of murder. But the Conways know nothing of the soul-shattering secrets that snake through generations of their family's past. They do not know that terror awaits them.All that will change.A child's haunting cries do not seem to be coming from Molly. The twins, who have always shared a special sympatico connection, now find that mental link abruptly severed. Now, Kim awakens with nightmare visions she prays are only imaginary. Now, as Ted throws his energies into renovating the house, Janet notices a difference in Jared--the once-outgoing teenager has become cold and hostile, full of rage and resentment. Is this a symptom of adolescence or something far more sinister? The answer lies in a horrifying truth that, once revealed, will threaten to consume every living soul in its fiery wake. For with each generation of the Conway name comes a hellish day of reckoning.A master of supernatural suspense, John Saul knows what transpires in the black folds of night--and who will be touched by The Right Hand of Evil.

Amazon.com Review

John Saul has been giving readers the jitters since the publication of Suffer the Children in 1977. His 22nd twisted tale, The Right Hand of Evil is another nerve shaker. The Conway family is in deep financial trouble. Ted Conway would rather knock back bourbon than support his family, and Janet Conway's career as an artist is going nowhere. Happily, the three Conway children--toddler Molly and 15-year-old twins Jared and Kimberley--seem well adjusted. Of course happy children to not make for good horror material, so dark times are just around the corner. Ted receives an unexpected call from a Louisiana sanatorium, where his aged Aunt Cora is dying. Cora wants to convey a final message to her only surviving family members. She rasps out the ominous words, "I can see it. Stay away! Stay away from here!" Her words are futile--the financially strapped Ted moves his family into Cora's old house, a house deeded to them in a family trust. Young Kimberley instantly feels a dark presence in the dilapidated Victorian house: "Suddenly her skin was crawling, as if a large insect were creeping across her neck." Tragedy upon tragedy strikes the family. Kim's beloved cat disappears and is sacrificed in a black-magic ceremony; an evil presence takes over Jared's mind--transforming him into the most rotten of bad seeds; the wails of a dead infant fill Kim's head, driving her to the edge of insanity. The family has fallen victim to a centuries-old curse--a curse that threatens to wipe out the Conway name. Although there is nothing particularly original or earth shattering about this haunted-house story, The Right Hand of Evil is still a welcome piece of escapism. Read it at your peril. --Naomi Gesinger

From Publishers Weekly

Saul has trawled the trenches of the Gothic many times before (The Blackstone Chronicles, etc.), but this whopper of a nightmare tale has been fished from the region's purplest depths. Infanticide, insanity, miscegenation and black magic are in the mulch that nurtures the Conway family tree by the time Ted Conway moves his family to the small Louisiana town of St. Albans and into the house bequeathed him by his weird Aunt Cora, who was institutionalized for 40 years following the suicide of her husband and the disappearance of her newborn child. An alcoholic who can barely hold a job, Ted blossoms under the cursed house's influence and begins restoring it with a plan to turn it into a hotel. By contrast, Ted's teenage son Jared absorbs the taint that has infected generations of his ancestors and spits it back out in acts of juvenile delinquency and ritual animal sacrifice. Among the folks convinced that the transformation of both father and son are due to the same malignant presence are the parish priest, determined to drive the Conways out of town, and a voodoo practicing next-door neighbor, whose father was lynched by one of Ted's forebears. The spooky moments, which culminate (not surprisingly) on Halloween weekend, never quite add up. But Saul juggles clich?s at truly dazzling speed, and almost persuades readers that the holes in the plot are for catching one's breath while trying to keep pace with his dizzying twists. Doubleday Book Club main selection; Literary Guild selection. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

spanning more than twenty years, New York Times bestselling author John Saul has terrified us with his chilling, psychologically charged novels. Now, in The Right Hand of Evil, Saul plumbs the icy depths of darkness--and gives us his most frightening, compelling novel yet. Don't turn out the light. . . .Just as their troubled marriage is reaching the breaking point, Ted and Janet Conway receive tragic news that unexpectedly gives them a chance to start again. After the lingering death of his estranged aunt, Ted inherits the Conway home in the small Louisiana town of St. Albans, an imposing structure that has been in the family for more than a century. With nothing to hold them in Shreveport, the Conways move with their teenage twins, Jared and Kim, and eighteen-month-old daughter, Molly, to the promise of a new beginning.But the house has a life of its own.Abandoned for the last forty years, surrounded by thick trees and a stifling sense of melancholy, the spr

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Alive.It was still alive.She could feel it inside her. It was moving again, twisting and writhing in her belly.She'd hoped it would die.Hoped. And prayed. Since the moment she first felt it inside her, she'd fallen to her knees, begging God to deliver her from the evil within her--desperate prayers that continued through long days and longer nights. Sleep never came, for she dared not ever let down her guard, not ever relax her vigilance against the evil even for a few seconds of blessed release from the terror. Lying awake on dank sheets, listening to the whine of insects beyond the window, how many times had she gotten up from her bed in the meanest hours to stand at the window, gazing out into the black abyss, wondering if she shouldn't open the screen and let the predators in?Once, she slashed through the mesh with ragged nails, ripping the screen to shreds, tearing open her nightgown as if to a lover, presenting her tortured body to the horde of tiny creatures that spewed forth from the night to settle on her skin in a thick and pulsating scum: clinging to her with piercing barbs; miring in the oily sweat that oozed from her; pricking with stinging needles. Producing a thrill of pain as she willed them to suck out her blood, and along with it, the evil that pervaded her every pore.But the vileness within her had prevailed, as even against her own will she swept the insects away, slammed the window shut, and stood beneath a scalding shower for hours in a vain attempt to cleanse herself of the poisons.She had returned to the bed, cursing herself and the man who lay beside her, but most of all cursing the disease that ruled her.Disease.Truly, that was what it was: an illness cast upon her in retribution for sins so vile that she had repressed even their faintest memory, leaving only the corruption inside, the monstrous horror that was metastasizing through her, consuming a little more of her every day."Dear God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"The words--the cry of anguish that should have shattered the very air--dribbled from her lips like the mewling of a baby, a pitiful, weak sound, but enough to drive the life within her wild. It sent her screaming and stumbling from the house, where her balance deserted her and she dropped to her knees, skinning them on the harsh paving of the driveway. Moaning, she sprawled out, and for the tiniest moment of ecstasy thought she might be dying. Then the fury within her eased, and after a while her ragged panting mellowed into a rhythmic breath. Deliverance was not yet at hand. She struggled back to her feet and stood staring at the house.She had thought it beautiful once, with its high-peaked roof and many gables, the broad veranda that wrapped around it with the fullness of a petticoated skirt, the shutters and gingerbread that decorated its face like the millinery of an age gone by. Now, though, she saw the fancywork for what it was: a veil that only barely covered the wickedness that lay within; a mask peeling back to reveal the slatternly face of a whore.A whore like me.The words rose unbidden from the depths of her subconscious, in a choking sob.The evil within her tested its strength, and the woman's body convulsed.She staggered forward, driven by pain. At the foot of the steps leading to the veranda--and the cavernous rooms beyond--she stopped.Not inside.The certain knowledge that something was different, had changed in the seconds since she'd fled outside, made her turn away.Behind.It's behind the house.As if under the power of an unseen force, the woman slowly groped her way around to the back of the house. The sun, close to its zenith now, beat down on her, making her skin tingle and burn in an angry, itching rash that spread scarlet from her belly across her torso, down her arms and legs, like claws scraping at her from the inside, pushing to tear free from the confines of her body.Then she saw it.Her hands rose reflexively to her face as if to blot out the vision before her, or even to tear her eyes from her head. Then they dropped away, and she gazed unblinking at the specter beneath the ancient magnolia tree that spread its limbs over the area beyond the house.It was the man.The man she had married.The man who had brought her to this house.The man who had delivered the disease upon her.The man who had lain unconscious beside her as she'd prayed for a salvation she knew would never come.Now he was gone, his body, stripped naked of even the tiniest shred of clothing, hung from the lowest branch of the tree, a thick hempen rope knotted tightly around his neck.His head hung at an unnatural angle, and his lifeless eyes were fixed upon her with a gaze that chilled the remnants of her soul.The knife with which he'd slit open his own belly was still clutched in the stiffened fingers of his right hand, and his entrails lay in a bloody tangle below his dangling feet.A swarm of flies had already settled on his disemboweled corpse; soon their eggs would hatch, releasing millions of maggots to feast upon him.He had found his escape.He had left her alone.Alone with the disease.Nearly doubled over by a spasm of terror and revulsion, the woman turned away and lurched toward the shelter of the house.Muttered words, unintelligible even to herself, tumbled from her lips. By the time she escaped the brilliant noon sun, her entire body was trembling.Hide.Got to hide.Hide from him.Hide from it.The corruption inside leaped to life again and, no longer aware of where she was or what she was doing, she obeyed the dictates of the foulness within.A door opened before her, and she stumbled, then fell, plunging into the shadowy darkness, feeling blackness surround her, welcoming the release of death.Her body slammed against the coldness of the cellar floor. She lay still. Against her will, her heart once more began to beat, her lungs to breathe.And now the final agony--the agony she had always known would come.It arrived as a point of white heat deep within, which spread and burned as it raced through her, igniting every nerve in her body into a fiery torment that sent a scream boiling up from her throat, instantly followed by a stream of vomit.Every muscle in her body cramped. Limbs thrashing, hands and feet lashing out as if at some unseen tormentor, she was engulfed by the growing pain."NOOOooo ..." The single cry of anguish burst from her, then trailed off into hopeless silence.For a long time she lay unmoving, as the fire withdrew, leaving at last an absence of pain. A blank emptiness where the disease had been.She pulled herself up and gazed at the tiny thing that lay between her legs.Still covered with bloody tissue, the baby stretched its tiny arms, as if reaching toward her.The woman stared at it, then reached out and picked it up.She cradled it in her left arm, and with the fingers of her right hand she stroked its face.Then, her eyes still fixed upon the infant, her fingers closed around its neck.She began to squeeze.As her fingers tightened, she heard herself say the familiar words that lifted her spirit and filled her soul with peace. "Our Father, who art in Heaven ..."The baby thrashed against her grasp, its fingers instinctively pulling at her own."... Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us ..."The baby's tiny fingers fell away from hers; its struggles weakened."... Deliver us from evil."The movements stopped. The infant lay still in her hands."Amen."They found her just after sunset.She was still praying, but of the baby, there was no trace to be found. Indeed, it was as if the infant had never existed at all.She offered no resistance when they lifted her to her feet, none as they led her from the house and put her in the ambulance.As the ambulance drove away, she did not look back.Her face was serene; she hummed softly to herself.Deliverance, finally, was hers.SeptemberCHAPTER 1Janet Conway felt the first flush of humiliation even before the clerk spoke. She was already calculating the amount of cash in her wallet as he picked up the phone and listened to what Janet had long ago come to think of as the Voice. The Voice was always the same. Perfectly pleasant. Perfectly reasonable. So familiar she could easily have limned a sketch of the face that belonged to it--a bland face, mostly round, with the kind of soft features that were the most difficult to draw, and devoid of any emotion whatsoever. The pronouncement of the Voice would be final: "The credit limit is exceeded."She felt her face redden with embarrassment. You should be used to it by now, she told herself. After all these years, you should expect it. Unwilling to meet the clerk's eyes, she scanned the meager pile of supplies she'd put into her shopping basket: five tubes of paint, three of them shades of blue. She really needed only the cobalt. And she could do without two of the brushes, but the other one was absolutely necessary.More necessary than food for tonight?Her flush deepened, her humiliation turning into anger. Her gaze shifted from the artists' supplies on the counter to the young man--no more than two or three years older than her twins--who looked even more embarrassed than she felt. "It's not your fault," she assured him. And it's not mine, either, she could have added, but didn't. "We don't air our dirty laundry in public," her mother's voice--stilled by cancer five years ago--echoed in her mind. "I'm sure it's just a mix-up," she told the clerk, forcing a smile that she hoped might cover her true emotions, and ...

About the Author

JOHN SAUL's first novel, Suffer the Children, published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. He has since written nineteen successive bestselling novels of suspense, including The Presence, Black Lightning, Guardian, and The Homing. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles, initially published in six installments, but now available in one complete volume. Mr. Saul divides his time between Seattle, Washington, and Maui, Hawaii.

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