The Parasite

There is just something unique about Campbell's writing that continues to draw me back, even though I sometimes find myself floundering in his prose. Although I sometimes lose track of who is speaking to whom and find myself plodding through a miasma of words that sometimes lose my full attention, inevitably there are moments of brilliant insight or wide-eyed instances in which I realize that Campbell has lulled me into a sense of false security as a conscious means of entrapping me within a mental padded cell of his deft creation that make me glad I paid for the ride. The Parasite, published in 1980, is one of his older novels, and it seems to offer, in a way, both the best and worst of the writer. Although it seems somewhat rushed, the prologue is a gripping little presentation of a ten-year-old girl's terrifying though somewhat nebulous encounter with something called up from a seemingly playful Ouija-induced séance, a force she alone encountered inside a darkened, locked room after her older companions abandoned her to whatever horror they had unwittingly summoned. After this electrifying start, the bulk of the book plods along at a sometimes tedious rate, very slowly preparing us for the last hundred pages of ever-intensifying mental anguish brought to bear upon our grown up little girl as she is not only compelled to remember the things her mind has tried to lock up forever but to deal with forces of an almost cosmic nature that threaten her life and marriage from the outside. Even this pales in comparison to the real evil here, though, in the form of a long-dead practicioner of black magick (which is worse than just magic) who resides inside her own mind. In a way, this novel is one of self-discovery, with a grown up Rose finding her seemingly placid life as a teacher and writer drawn unstoppably toward matters of an occult nature. Her terrifyingly new out-of-body experiences come in time, with study and practice, to empower her, and she begins to feel strengthened in some way by the unnatural talents she reluctantly admits to possessing. Then her world falls apart before her eyes, and she realizes that her new powers were never really hers to begin with but instead belong to the parasite that has lived within her own mind undetected for twenty years. Some part of her inner strength saves her from a total breakdown, but the mad scramble of the final major section of the book proves an increasingly unnerving experience for the reader seeing the world through her eyes. Even the ending is not really the ending, but that is only to be expected from a man of such insidious talents as Ramsey Campbell. While far from his most exciting novel, The Parasite more than satisfies the seeker of psychological horror who stays with it until the end.

This is my favourite Campbell novel without a doubt. The story revolves around Rose who begins to have weird out of body experiences years after using a oujiboard. This book like all Campbells work is unsettling, well written and has great characterisation with well drawn, realistic relationships between characters in contrast to Koontz et al cardboard cut out stereotypes. More than any of his other novels this has some deeply scary and memorable scenes that will stick in your memory for a long time.

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