Dark Sister (1992), a tale of contemporary
witchcraft that rivals the classic Conjure Wife
(1952) by Fritz LEIBER. An abused woman dabbles
in witchcraft as a means of ridding herself of her
domineering husband, but she is unschooled in the
arcane arts and is overwhelmed by powers beyond
her control.
House of Lost Dreams(1993) has a more subtle
plot. Two tourists in Greece are drawn into a mys-
tical reenactment of the story of Orpheus and Eu-
rydice. Joyce’s fourth and probably best novel is
Requiem(1995), a sometimes surreal tale set in
modern Jerusalem. The protagonist learns of the
existence of ancient documents that offer an alter-
native version of the life of Christ. The Tooth Fairy
(1998) turns the familiar children’s fantasy into
something entirely different. The protagonist is a
young boy who gains the power to see her, and he
is the only one who knows she is a horrible, fright-
ening creature. Although filled with disturbing im-
ages, the story that follows the shocking revelation
is less engaging than Joyce’s other novels, and the
feeling of menace is uneven and ultimately dissi-
pated. Stormwatcher(1998) is similarly unfocused
at times, a story about multiple realities intersect-
ing and causing considerable tension.
Indigo(2000), although only marginally fan-
tastic, is much more coherent and intriguing, de-
scribing an international quest for the secret of
invisibility, in this case in the form of a color that
human eyes cannot see. The fantastic content of
Joyce’s novels continued to decline, with only a
brief, ambiguous piece of possibly authentic magic
in Smoking Poppy (2001), the story of a man
searching for his missing daughter in Southeast
Asia. The Limits of Enchantment(2004) is another
story of contemporary witchcraft, but not as effec-
tive as Dark Sister.Joyce’s occasional short fiction
has been collected as Black Dust(2001). He is a
powerful though not prolific writer whose work is
not easily described or categorized. His best work
often involves hallucinations or visions and their
impact on the characters experiencing them.
“Jumbee” Henry S. Whitehead(1926)
Although several horror writers have invoked
voodoo in their stories, few of them have taken the
time to study that belief and ground their stories in
authentic folklore. Hugh CAVEis the most signifi-
cant exception, but the same is true of Henry S.
Whitehead, who lived much of his life in the Vir-
gin Islands and drew heavily on local folk tales and
superstitions in his supernatural fiction. The
events in his short stories are often highly melodra-
matic but as in this, his most famous story, related
in an almost casual, unemotional manner.
Granville Lee retires to the West Indies after
his lungs are damaged during World War I. There
he becomes fascinated with local legends, particu-
larly belief in the jumbee, a kind of zombie. Lee’s
inquiries lead him to a distinguished islander
named Da Silva, who describes his encounter with
the disembodied spirit of an old acquaintance who
came to him to honor a pact between them in
which each, having died, promised to warn the
other of impending danger. That danger comes all
too soon. While on his way to call on the widow,
Da Silva observes another harbinger of doom, the
hanging jumbee, three ghostly figures whose legs
end at the ankles.
Doubly forewarned, Da Silva is careful and
observant. When he later notices an old woman,
he almost makes a fatal mistake, for she is a sheen,
a weredog, who transforms and grows larger as she
attacks. Through luck as much as skill he is able to
drive her off and escape the death that had been
intended for him that night. The story concludes
without an explanation of the reason why Da Silva
was marked, perhaps because the doings of the su-
pernatural are not governed by rational plan. As
the character himself remarks, the West Indies are
unlike any other part of the world, and the normal
rules do not necessarily apply there. Whitehead,
who was also a member of the circle of writers that
surrounded H. P. LOVECRAFT, was interested in de-
scribing accurately an element of the system of su-
perstition that prevailed in his adopted homeland
and wrote a story whose terrors are derived from a
non-Christian mythos.The Jungle BookRudyard Kipling(1894)
Rudyard Kipling was a prolific writer who wrote
classic adventure novels such as Kim(1901), effec-
tive stories of the supernatural such as “THE PHAN-186 “Jumbee”