FICTION
“Dark Debts
by Karen Hall
Simon & Schuster
416 pages; $27
When, at midpoint, the word appears — POSSESSION! — Karen Hall’s “Dark Debts,” takes off, untethered, with a helium blend of Roman Catholic mania and devilish terror.
Snatching its title from a line in a Gary Gilmore poem (“Too few dark debts are ever paid”), it’s the story of Michael Kinney, a renegade Jesuit from Atlanta, and Jack Landry, a small town Georgia boy with an inexplicably criminal family past.
Bound by unsuspected “Satanic bloodlines,” they barrel through “Dark Debts” toward a sulfurous exorcism in … Acworth. Yes, that’s right, and what better spot than Cobb County for a monster Latinate clash between Michael and Jack and their vengeful nemesis: a clever, rampaging demon whose speaking voice is by turns “guttural” and “effeminate.”
As an infant, Michael survived Atlanta’s Winecoff Hotel blaze of 1946, in which his parents and other family members perished (119 were killed in the actual conflagration, still America’s deadliest hotel fire). Later, his beloved grandfather, Vincent, prepped him for a career in the church, and he studied at St. Louis University, a prestigious Jesuit institution.
Michael enjoys being a priest, but he has doubts about the man upstairs and the bogey down in the Pit. He describes celibacy as “a stupid and antiquated concept,” and, for sure, he’s more than tempted by Tess, a New Yorker editor whose “legs are a near occasion for sin.” (Like all sex in “Dark Debts,” the inevitable friar frolic takes place offstage.)
Michael disappoints the Jesuit hierarchy when he participates in a forbidden exorcism that leads to a triple homicide. Having “disregarded authority,” he is exiled to Barton, a country hamlet south of Atlanta, which just happens to be the hometown of Jack Landry and his tragic clan.
Jack and his siblings are smart, even artistic, but they suffer from “weird dreams” and engage in violent activities, as if controlled by some remote force, which, of course, they are. One brother murders three Catholic worshipers on Christmas Eve; another shoots a clerk and jumps to his death; Jack tries to rob a store for no reason and is sentenced to 10 years in jail.
As “Dark Debts” begins, Jack is back wandering around Barton, while Michael settles in as the local parish priest.
Following his grandfather’s death, Michael uncovers a shocking secret: Vincent’s daddy was the high priest of a “transgenerational cult” in Charleston, apparently a domain for hardcore Satanism in the early 20th century. Forced to engage in a “virgin ritual” — and who in the Lowcountry has not undergone that terrifying confirmation? — the remorseful Vincent spirited away the spawn of his seed, which, after a reasonable amount of time, turned out to be Jack’s grandmother, and so forth.
A demon is summoned to destroy Vincent’s aberrant lineage. He sets fire to the Winecoff and torments the Landry family for decades. It’s now up to Michael and Jack, revealed to one another as half-cousins, to settle the dark debt. Jack is strapped to a bed at the Acworth villa for the showdown, and the reader is left gnawing on a Valium the size of a flying saucer.
When “Dark Debts” first appeared in 1996, it became a Book of the Month Club selection. (So far, it has been Karen Hall’s only novel, though she has written for such shows as “Hill Street Blues” and “The Good Wife.”) The current 20th anniversary version has been modified substantially — the prose streamlined, a character dropped, and a different ending.
Commendably, it doesn’t update its references to ’90s technology or pop culture. The demon uses the telephone to deliver his best threats to an “answering machine.” (“Salsipuedes,” he whispers; translation: “Get out if you can.”) Jesus still appears in Michael’s visions wearing a flannel shirt, standard issue of the grunge era. As for Hall’s fin de siècle Atlanta and its correspondence to the present day, the Ritz Carltons are still the Ritz Carltons, though the old Winecoff Hotel, derelict at the time of the original publication, has since been renovated as the “boutique” Ellis Hotel.
The plotline of “Dark Debts” is exquisitely tortured and full of theological invention — the author has designed several pages of Venn diagrams to explain “possession theory.” Other convolutions include a fine piece of grandiose claptrap: “The Biblical account uses narrative categories to express distinctions of moral and metaphysical significance, rather than bioanthropological generation.”
However, “Dark Debts” succeeds best as an adolescent thriller; it has plenty of sophomoric persiflage, like this rendering of a quickie confession: “Acts of Contrition, Hail Marys, absolutions, good to go.”
And when things get serious, Hall pours on the fervor like Salsipuedes, 100 proof and fiery hot. We always know when the demon is in the room, because he’s preceded by his diabolic cologne — sulfur — which has one hell of a smoky finish. He’s an impudent dandy charged by negative ions. “Where’s your hope now, Padre?” he asks. “We need to clear up a few things about who’s running the show.”
Suddenly, time stops for an electrifying exchange between the D and Michael’s obnoxious colleague, Gabe.
Gabe: “Quad nomen est tibi?”
Demon: “Ana-Sin-Emid.”
It’s enough to make a man non compos mentis, and there’s no doubt about what’s coming: “I command you, unclean spirit, whoever you are, along with all of your minions …” which is followed by an “enormous boom,” and Michael is left polishing Vincent’s old rosary.
Pagan shamanism offers more subtle procedures than the Roman Catholic playbook for evacuating evil spirits, yet exorcism, Vatican-style, always will be a stratospherically camp kick, and so it remains in “Dark Debts.”
As Donald Trump says, let’s close the borders, “until we can figure out what’s going on.” Try that one on a demon sometime!
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