The Scare Salon

But Brom is also a novelist, and as far as I’m aware, all the novels he wrote also feature his gorgeous illustrations. I get the impression that his most popular work is 2012’s Krampus: the Yule Lord, but for whatever reason, I had never dipped a toe into his written work until just recently, when I picked up a copy of his 2021 novel Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery on a recommendation from a friend.

If you’re at all into historical horror or folk horror, and especially if you loved Robert Eggers’s The Witch, then Slewfoot will be right in your wheelhouse, and I would recommend diving into it as soon as possible. It’s a harrowing, immersive story with a fantastic lead character and a fascinating narrative that deals with witchcraft, religious intolerance, and the nature of humans’ relationships with their gods.

The story is set in a Puritan village called Sutton in 1666, and our protagonist is a young woman named Abitha Williams. She’s originally from London but was essentially sold off by her father as a wife to a Puritan in the New World who she had never met. Luckily for her (at least at first), her husband Edward is a kind, gentle man, even though he is quite a bit older than she is and is very reserved and introverted. The pair lives on a farm in the wilds outside of town and work together to try to make the farm profitable.

Abitha is a strong-willed, independent woman, and is having a hard time adjusting to the strictures imposed on her by the Puritan morals of Sutton. She’s been reprimanded several times and threatened with the stocks, and she does seem to be genuinely trying to fit in for the sake of her husband, but she often finds that she can’t keep her opinions to herself, which has put her at odds with most of the other townsfolk, who still see her as an outsider and a troublemaker.

There’s also a very sticky problem that emerges near the beginning of the story, in the form of Edward’s horrible older brother Wallace. See, when Edward and Wallace’s dad died, he left two farms; both are in Wallace’s name, since he’s the eldest, and Edward was given the shitty, smaller one to live on, while Wallace got the big nice one. Edward and Abitha only have one more payment to Wallace and they’ll own the small farm free and clear. However, without telling anyone, Wallace put up the farm Edward is living on as collateral for a tobacco-growing business venture that didn’t work out, and now his creditors are asking for payback. He arrives at Edward’s farm and tells his brother that Edward and Abitha now owe half their yield every season to Wallace’s creditor, Lord Mansfield, for the next twenty years. Their dreams of owning the farm outright have gone up in smoke.

Obviously, Abitha is furious about this, but this was 1666 in a Puritan stronghold, and women were supposed to keep their mouths shut. Frustratingly, though, Edward is kind of passive, used to his bullying older brother kicking him around, and doesn’t stand up for himself. Later on, Abitha convinces Edward to go to the town magistrates and see what can be done, and this does actually work out in their favor; the magistrates agree that it was a dick move for Wallace to put Edward’s farm up against the loan instead of his own, much nicer, farm. Wallace is livid, accusing Abitha of poisoning Edward against him, and vows to go over their heads to the higher-ups in Hartford, who he’s pretty tight with, unfortunately.

Edward and Abitha can seemingly keep their farm for now, but then an unimaginable tragedy takes place that throws everything into chaos. One of the couple’s goats wanders off and falls into a very deep, very creepy hole that seems to have a bunch of whispery voices emerging from it, and when Edward tries to retrieve the valuable animal, he falls into the pit and dies, leaving Abitha a very vulnerable widow in a town full of people who don’t particularly like her.

Wallace, naturally, swoops in immediately following his brother’s death, trying to get his grubby mitts on the farm. He also offers to marry Abitha off to his son Isaac, and have her essentially be an indentured servant in his household until her “debt” to him is paid off.

The resourceful Abitha, however, argues to the magistrates that she should be allowed to run the farm on her own, as she is legally Edward’s representative. The magistrates provisionally give her permission, but no one thinks she’s going to be able to bring in the entire harvest by herself, so Wallace figures it’s only a matter of time before the farm is his anyway.

For a while, it would seem that his prediction is correct, for Abitha is having a hell of a time working the farm alone, and to make matters worse, there’s a significant lack of rain over the summer, and her corn is refusing to grow. She stubbornly works herself to exhaustion and near starvation, but she’s gotten to the point where she thinks she might as well give up and hand the farm over to Wallace, and maybe just do away with herself to boot.

At her lowest point, though, she is seemingly offered something of a lifeline. Up until this stage in the story, there have been sections written from the point of view of some kind of creature called Father who doesn’t appear to remember who or what he is. Father is accompanied by three smaller creatures, who call themselves the wildfolk and are trying to get him to revert to his true bloodthirsty nature and feed a sapling in the forest that they call Pawpaw with human blood. These three creatures are Forest, Creek, and Sky, who are an opossum, a fish that swims through the air, and a raven, respectively; all of them have the faces of human children. It turns out that these wildfolk fed the missing goat and Edward to Father in the process of trying to awaken him and get him to remember who he is.

Abitha, for her part, is the daughter of a cunning woman, who had taught her various charms and spells when she was a child. Abitha sometimes makes little love potions and remedies for the women in Sutton, though this is all kept on the downlow, as it’s not really approved of.

So just when Abitha is at the point of giving up everything, she happens to meet Father, who is fascinated with Abitha because he senses her magic and believes she can help him discover his identity. Forest, Creek, and Sky insist that Father kill her, as humans are never to be trusted and will destroy the forest and the wildfolk if they’re allowed to, but Father is too tormented by his lack of memory to listen to their admonitions, and establishes an uneasy partnership with Abitha instead, helping her channel her unused magic in ways that will help her farm, in return for her aid in sorting out his nature, whether creator or destroyer.

As you can imagine, Abitha befriending a horned, goat-legged forest spirit that definitely kills people and feeds on their blood isn’t going to sit too well with the priggish ninnies of Sutton, and a lot of very, very bad shit happens before the tale is done.

This was a great story all around, and the prose placed you right in its brutal but magical world. The mythology surrounding Father and his ambiguous stance as either noble protector or merciless slayer was amazingly well done, introducing a more nuanced god that better reflects the uncertainties of nature itself. I also loved the development of Abitha’s unusual friendship with Father, and her constant turmoil about whether she really was consorting with the Devil.

The largely horrid people of Sutton were also outstanding antagonists and demonstrated what religion can do to people’s common sense if taken to extremes. Wallace Williams in particular was intensely hateable, and part of the fun of the book was waiting for him to get his richly deserved comeuppance.

Though the buildup of the story is somewhat slow, I didn’t mind at all, as I was very invested in Abitha’s character and got outraged on her behalf every time some new indignity befell her. Living as a woman in this time period and environment would have been an absolute nightmare, and this book does a chillingly excellent job of conveying just how hopeless Abitha’s situation would have been, and making the reader understand why someone might want to join forces with a presumed demon if it meant she could gain just the tiniest sliver of an advantage over her tormentors.

Keep in mind that the final third of this book is quite violent and bleak, featuring women being tortured, people having their guts ripped out, and one particular scene of cat death that made me want to cry. It’s not the most graphic thing ever, but it does get a little gnarly toward the end, so just a heads-up.

Anyone who has any interest in witch trials or ancient American folklore should love this, and I absolutely recommend it without reservations. The paintings interspersed among the text are also stunning, and show what all the characters look like, which made me picture the story that much more vividly. I’ll definitely be picking up more of Brom’s work in the future, because I enjoyed this one immensely.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.