Horror Review: The Ritual by J.N. Williamson (1983, Leisure Occult / 1979 Nordon Publications)

Good evening, and welcome to my review of J.N. Williamson's "Absolutely Not The Omen"!

William Peter Blatty, along with Thomas Tryon and Ira Levin, was one of the primary authors of the twentieth century who grabbed the horror genre by its ears and dragged it out of dingy closets and mildew-soaked crawlspaces and into the cultural mainstream, where people could get a good look at it. Along with The Other and Rosemary's Baby, Blatty's 1971 novel The Exorcist stoked the fires of what would come to be known as The Satanic Panic in the 80's. This was a time when all you needed to sell a particular villain was the concept of demonic possession, and Blatty kicked his narrative up a notch by putting irreverent words and copious quantity of split pea soup into the mouth of a pre-teen girl. Yes sir, as long as you blamed the devil for your woes, there were no depths of depravity to which one's characters could not sink.

"The Devil Made Me Do It" was the ultimate Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card for villains in a horror novel, and writers were quick to jump on the bandwagon to beat it to death with their own typewriters, especially when the possession involved the most innocent among us. One of them was David Seltzer's The Omen from 1976, and this is what, I presume, gave rise to J.N. Williamson's first novel, The Ritual.

---

Back in 2017, I read Tower of Evil and lamented that its author, James Kisner, was the only mainstream horror writer of the period whom I was aware set stories in his home state of Indiana. Lamented, because Tower of Evil was a colossal let-down of a story, but nevertheless presented a look at downtown Indianapolis from the eyes of someone who worked there during the late 20th century. As a Hoosier native who made his appearance on the grand stage back in the late 70's, and who moved to Indianapolis in the 80's, I could appreciate the setting and remember the landmarks.

When I discovered J.N. Williamson was also an Indiana native who wrote stories set in my home state, I was thrilled. Maybe, I told myself, I didn't have to hang every hope on James Kisner to represent the 19th state in modern horror fiction. I then set out to track down as many of his books as I could get my hands on. Turns out Williamson was ridiculously prolific during his active years, 1979 - 2005. And as I started looking at the cover art, I realized why the name was so familiar.

Will Errickson wrote about him (specifically the terrible cover art gracing many of his novels) on his Too Much Horror Fiction blog all the way back in 2011. Grady Hendrix also had more than a few nods to Williamson's material in his book Paperbacks From Hell from 2017. Seems like everybody knew about Williamson except for me. Time to fix that. With my shelf now cursing under the added weight of some twenty-odd new arrivals, I plucked his first novel from the heap and sat down to read.

That's how I came to know The Ritual.

---

The Ritual is not only the first novel Williamson published, but the first in a three-part series following protagonist Martin Ruben. Ruben's a non-practicing Jew in his late thirties, unmarried, and employed by Badler University (a thinly-veiled analog for the real-life Butler University, where Williamson studied Journalism) as a full-time professor of Psychology. Ruben likes psychology well enough, but what he's really interested in is parapsychology--stuff that goes beyond the norm. He's petitioned Badler for years to open up a Parapsychology Department, where he would serve as head, but he's had little success on that front. The only concession he's received from the school on this front is permission to deliver one lecture every few weeks on Parapsychology for his students.

Martin's received the case he's always hoped to have dropped in his lap: a young boy of thirteen who appears to be possessed by a devil. Not just any devil, mind you, the Devil, with a capital D. Robert Meggitt comes from a loving home where he lives with his parents, his younger brother, and his doting grandmother. Lately though, changes have come over Robert...and I don't mean puberty.

Robert, as Martin discovers, was born on a particularly terrible day, astrologically speaking. This less-than-fortuitous birthday portends great devastation for the planet, even as the Age of Aquarius prepares to sweep humanity into an age of enlightenment and prosperity. But on his fourteenth birthday, Robert's soul will have been completely taken over and corrupted by The One. He will go forth and produce great works. He will rise as a leader of nations. He will heal the sick, return the dead to life, and all who meet him will see the Second Coming of Christ in his pure countenance.

There's just one problem...his soul will be the literal amalgamation of Hitler, Napoleon, the Marquis de Sade, and dozens of other distasteful historical characters. All of these disreputable characters and their multiple personalities are held together by Lucifer himself, waiting for the moment when their combined might can unleash Hell upon Earth, with Robert serving as the Anti-Christ.

But before all that can happen, little Robert has to go about the usual business of carnage by murdering classmates, teachers, family members, and other sorts. Meanwhile, the fact Satan has manifested himself on Earth (specifically in Carmel, an at-the-time up-and-coming suburb of Indianapolis) is driving everyone in the city into heights of general depravity and lawlessness heretofore unseen. Old men exposing themselves to young waitresses at the local Steak 'N' Shake, cops allowing criminals to buy them off, sex orgies and attempted rapes in the homes of otherwise pious religious folk, and of course, criminals doing their criminal things.

Regardless, Martin's interactions with the child include a hypnotic session, where he confronts the various voices in Robert's head, and he forces them to lay out, in precise and truthful detail, the ways they're going to bring out the world's destruction. But knowing how it will happen and being able to stop it are two different things. Martin enlists the help of some colleagues, with academic, law enforcement, and religious backgrounds, but it soon becomes obvious the forces of good are caught between a rock and a hard place: killing Robert can stop Satan's plans, but the murder of an innocent child would clearly doom their souls to Hell; by contrast, allowing Robert to live his life will permit the Devil to exert complete control over all humanity, dooming the world to darkness.

---

One of the things I love about reading first novels, especially those by writers who go on to be prolific (and Williamson certainly qualifies in that category) is their naive charm and pretension. Williamson clearly wanted us to know he was a scholarly and erudite man, so he peppers The Ritual with quotations aplenty, everything from Shakespeare and the Bible to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Robert Browning. The quotations are, for the most part, aptly selected and applied, either at the start or conclusion of each chapter. I'm a huge fan of the epigram, but this seems a bit excessive. And yet, there's something to be said for the enthusiasm Williamson clearly has for the style. Here's a guy who found a lot of different speakers who had already said what he was trying to say, and used their own words to tie his together in neat little package with pretty wrapping paper.

As if that's not enough, Ruben's physical characteristics make him a close enough ringer for Basil Rathbone that people continuously remind him that he looks like Sherlock Holmes. Because of this (and because of Williamson's own love for Doyle's literary resident of 221B Baker Street), Martin Ruben also adopts a Holmes-like predilection for observation and deduction. Several times throughout the story, he comments on various aspects of different characters' lives which catch them completely off guard. Williamson's clearly enjoying his playground pastiche, and I have to admit, I liked it too. Ruben manages to be impressive without being pretentious, a difficult line especially for first-time novelists to walk, but Williamson does a fine job.

Equally fine is the storytelling, related through an omniscience perspective that allows the reader to peek in on the lives of other characters, though Williamson usually provides this service only long enough that we can watch them succumb to whatever horrifying death he's concocted for them. There's no character too innocent, and no act too savage, for Williamson's pen...the first act of murder committed by the possessed Robert Meggitt is that of a classmate, who gets his head stuffed into an oven with the gas turned on full blast. Not even family members are off-limits, as Robert's father finds to his chagrin late in the novel.

Drowning, burying, suffocating, mutilating...all make their appearance here, along with a little bit of rape, because what's a horror novel from this time period without some sexual assault on the menu? If you're looking for lurid descriptions of violence and mayhem, however, you may be disappointed. While there's certainly a decent body count, Williamson relates most of the details similar to the way you might read about them in a sordid amateur news story. There are details, but he always stops well short of anything resembling "too far". Even the climactic battle between Good and Evil at the book's conclusion feels subdued, which is unfortunate because this is where the reader really wants an author to pull out all the stops and bar no holds. Splatterpunk this ain't, although once writers like Ketchum, Laymon, and Skipp & Spector arrive on the scene a few years later, it'll be interesting to see if Williamson decides to take a few more risks.

A few sex scenes crop up as well during the story, but you can tell Williamson was...if not uncomfortable than at least wary when writing them. Most of them are over and done with quickly, with a few nods to the respective anatomical elements fitting into their respective tabs and slots, and very little in the way of foreplay. Nothing erotic here; they're about the most PG-13-level R-rated sex scenes you could imagine, if that makes any sense.

The last thing I was expecting to find with this read was the classic trope of an ending that is a resolution, but only a temporary one. The Ritual delivers here too, with an Epilogue chapter not dissimilar to the one Stephen King used in The Stand. Martin and his cohorts have beaten back the evil, but the victory they sought is far from total, and the Devil has plenty of other sheep to choose from in humanity's flock.

All told, I enjoyed The Ritual. Even going by the date of its first printing, it was nothing new in the plot department though Williamson certainly does his best to doll up the storyline and beef up the Devil's plans. Ruben is a fun, fascinating main character, and I'm actively interested in reading the other two books in his trilogy--in fact, I've got The Premonition sitting on top of my to-be-read pile as I write. His prose in here is sometimes overwrought, and like many first novels it feels more bloated than necessary. Also, whoever did the copy editing for Leisure should have been forced to attend church and confess their sins...I've never read a professionally-published book with so many typographical errors, misspelled words, and missing or improper punctuation. Now I'm curious to see if other editions retain these problems, or if these were issues introduced by Leisure's own printing staff. My money's on the second--Leisure in the early 80's was similar to Zebra, in that they were small, not terribly worried about quality, and willing to print just about anything with a beginning, middle, and ending. They got better as the years went by, but they're still a fledgling offspring of Dorchester at the time of The Ritual's printing, and it shows.

If you can overlook the flaws and keep your expectations well in check, there's an entertaining story here doing its best to ape The Exorcist and The Omen. I give The Ritual four severed fingers out of five. Yeah, you always want to be careful with those table saws in the basement.