Witch Bottle by Tom Fletcher
(Joe Fletcher Books, 2021)
Reviewed by Kate Onyett
A witch bottle is a protection against evil that is buried at the doorway to secure the home. This is old belief and older magic, and with these Fletcher weaves a strange, folkloric horror tale through the surprisingly claustrophobic byways of the north country. Despite a wilderness as wide and wild as any viewed by the Romantics, dread comes clenching along the miles of walled-lined lanes, and we cannot look away.
Like rats running a maze, watched by some lurking presence, the narrow streets are a metaphor for life; the repetitive journeys, keeping heads down, just ‘getting by’. We rarely break out of our rut unless challenged by something extraordinary. Even without the supernatural, Fletcher shows the waste and sadness of lives lived on just one looping pattern with few rewards.
Daniel lives in a small house in the depths of Cumbria. He drives a milk round and is estranged from his wife and daughter. There are hints of potential domestic violence in his past, and his present is one of depressed single-mindedness. Daniel has started to have nightmares of a giant, under the earth, consuming huge piles of flesh. He’s also stared seeing a ghost, but he’s not the only person thereabouts to start seeing them. Seeking help from a local witch, the witch bottle she makes him may not hold back the rolling dark.
Contemplatively written with a first-person narrator who is caught in the selective, amnesiac mists of depression and self-recrimination. His unfolding personal history brings a tale of losing love and connection to a landscape where fear is rising and hope diminishing. While big, organised industry is presenting a threat economically to the small delivery outfit, it is less of one than the scarcity of people to give meaning to the lives of those still there. It is a place of loners and loneliness. The ghosts of past distress become literal hauntings, scouring those that see them with regret.
For structure: a positively mythic, Camelotian tale of salvation. Daniel is the fallen and guilt-laden knight and the world is the expression of his guilt; it is a monster, eating him up. He’s not alone: all the local drivers (the other paladins) are broken people, worried, violent and burdened. The land and its people are being leeched of life. Most of those left are old and fading, trapped in their dwellings. It is a place poisoned and cursed. Thus, we have the pre-redemption world.
Daniel is sorely tested and receives clarity of vision. He sees through the horrific, tweed-clad clichés of country squires for the demonic servants they are. These are the collectors of dead stock, taking away sacrificial carcasses to feed the giant, dark thing. Fear and haunting are Daniel’s purgative test. By facing his past honestly, he becomes the purified knight errant, able to slay the giant. Like all great knights, he even has his guiding lady-light: beneficent worker of charms and seller of baked potatoes.
Be warned, dear reader! Like all good folklore, this is an unreliable tale with a somewhat uncertain ending. It’s unreliable because Daniel is our narrator even until the absolute last, consumed moment. This is the stream of his consciousness, and how reliable is a single, emotionally rocky mind? Is any of this real, or is he having the mother of all breakdowns? Daniel’s only objective recorder is the white witch. And while she is the last witness to the place where final events occurred, she did not see what actually happened.
And this is the spiritual uncertainty on which to ponder. Is the giant of pain and hunger truly sealed in and defeated? Or is it just delayed for a time? Maybe this all we can do: re-engage, delay and push back, knowing life does not conform to an ultimate victory or defeat?
Review from BSFA Review 17 - Download your copy here.