The Festering

by Guy N. Smith

For Mike and Holly Mannion, the tumbledown cottage in a quiet country village seemed the ideal retreat from the rat race. But when a team of contractors is hired to drill a water-well, a deadly plague is unleashed - a macabre, terrifying entity that had lurked in the bowels of the earth for centuries. The Festering Death had risen from its burial place ...

Genres: Horror

192 pages, Paperback

First published December 7, 1989

About the author

I was born on November 21, 1939, in the small village of Hopwas, near Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. My mother was a pre-war historical novelist (E. M. Weale) and she always encouraged me to write.
I was first published at the age of 12 in The Tettenhall Observer, a local weekly newspaper. Between 1952-57 I wrote 56 stories for them, many serialized. In 1990 I collated these into a book entitled Fifty Tales from the Fifties.

My father was a dedicated bank manager and I was destined for banking from birth. I accepted it but never found it very interesting. During the early years when I was working in Birmingham, I spent most of my lunch hours in the Birmingham gun quarter. I would have loved to have served an apprenticeship in the gun trade but my father would not hear of it.

Shooting (hunting) was my first love, and all my spare time was spent in this way. In 1961 I designed and made a 12-bore shotgun, intending to follow it up with six more, but I did not have the money to do this. I still use the Guy N. Smith short-barrelled magnum. During 1960-67 I operated a small shotgun cartridge loading business but this finished when my components suppliers closed down and I could no longer obtain components at competitive prices.

My writing in those days only concerned shooting. I wrote regularly for most of the sporting magazines, interspersed with fiction for such magazines as the legendary London Mystery Selection, a quarterly anthology for which I contributed 18 stories between 1972-82.

In 1972 I launched my second hand bookselling business which eventually became Black Hill Books. Originally my intention was to concentrate on this and maybe build it up to a full-time business which would enable me to leave banking. Although we still have this business, writing came along and this proved to be the vehicle which gave me my freedom.

I wrote a horror novel for the New English Library in 1974 entitled Werewolf by Moonlight. This was followed by a couple more, but it was Night of the Crabs in 1976 which really launched me as a writer. It was a bestseller, spawning five sequels, and was followed by another 60 or so horror novels through to the mid-1990's. Amicus bought the film rights to Crabs in 1976 and this gave me the chance to leave banking and by my own place, including my shoot, on the Black Hill.

The Guy N. Smith Fan Club was formed in 1990 and still has an active membership. We hold a convention every year at my home which is always well attended.

Around this time I became Poland's best-selling author. Phantom Press published two GNS books each month, mostly with print runs of around 100,000.

I have written much, much more than just horror; crime and mystery (as Gavin Newman), and children's animal novels (as Jonathan Guy). I have written a dozen or so shooting and countryside books, a book on Writing Horror Fiction (A. & C. Black). In 1997 my first full length western novel, The Pony Riders was published by Pinnacle in the States.

With 100-plus books to my credit, I was looking for new challenges. In 1999 I formed my own publishing company and began to publish my own books. They did rather well and gave me a lot of satisfaction. We plan to publish one or two every year.

Still regretting that I had not served an apprenticeship in the gun trade, the best job of my life dropped into my lap in 1999 when I was offered the post of Gun Editor of The Countryman's Weekly, a weekly magazine which covers all field sports. This entails my writing five illustrated feature articles a week on guns, cartridges, deer stalking, big game hunting etc.

Alongside this we have expanded our mail order second hand crime fiction business, still publish a few books, and I find as much time as possible for shooting.

Jean, my wife, helps with the business. Our four children, Rowan, Tara, Gavin and Angus have all moved away from home but they visit on a regular basis.

I would not want to live anywhere other than m

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Centuries ago, in the village of Garth, a young woman's lover returns from the city after months away, now the carrier of a foul, skin-eating plague. As with any sign of evil back in those days, he is hung and the townsfolk are instructed to bury the body as deep as they can.
Present day: Inspired by friends, Holly Mannion convinces her husband, Mike, to break free from the city life and escape to a slower, more peaceful lifestyle. They sell their house and purchase rundown Garth cottage on 1 1/2 acres of wilderness.
When their reservoir runs dry, the Mannion's have no choice but to have a well drilled. When the process begins however, there is a hideous stench unleashed - the likes of which neither the workers, nor the Mannion's have ever smelled before.
Holly begins to feel like things are changing around her new idyllic home after the drilling starts; she has a bad headache, is feeling badly depressed, and can't get over the smell - and it's not just a smell that was unleashed, but a deadly plague.
After work is completed, Mike gets the water tested, only to find it is very badly contaminated. One after the other, both workers on the well get very ill and have gross sores and rashes. When they both die, Holly is convinced the well is responsible.
Their water is still contaminated, and all the workers the company owner sends are getting infected. What was meant to be a simple convenience for the couple turns into a chain of never-ending consternation, plagued by death and disaster.
Can the couple somehow manage to stop the spread of this age old plague before it kills anyone else?
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This was my first ever Guy N. Smith book and I definitely wasn't disappointed. I really enjoyed this, and I can't wait to get my hands on more. I like the simple, straight-to-the-point plot; nothing confusing and I LOVE a Cabin Fever type plot.

[Michaël Wertenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

A silly story about a well infected with a flesh-eating plague.
It never really generated any momentum but did deliver a decent closing scene.

[Dreadlocksmile · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published back in 1989, ‘The Festering’ found itself following on from a huge line of deliciously pulp horror novels by this master of the genre, each with similarly over-the-top themes to truly sabotage any literature morals the reader may still have.

The novel begins in medieval times within the small village of Garth (more of a forgotten hamlet of tumbledown hovels than a village in reality), where a man known as Tabor returns to the village grounds after travelling south in search of fortune. Upon arriving, the village people see that Tabor’s flesh is covered with a mass of festering sores that ooze with a foul stench of decay.

Two days later and with autumn now upon the village people, a Witchfinder draws into the village to perform his annual cleansing of the village. Tabor is subsequently hung by the village’s people under the direction of the Witchfinder and his cancerous corpse is subsequently buried deep within a pit that was dug to hide this festering plague for all time.

The tale now jumps to the present day, where Mike and Holly Mannion have recently moved to a quaint tumbledown cottage known as ‘Garth Cottage’. The couple soon discover that their newly purchased cottage, due to its somewhat isolated setting, is barely covered by the regular water supply. Learning this, they decide that they need a water-well drilling behind their property, before it can become properly habitable. A team of local contractors under the management of a Frank Bennion are brought in and begin drilling into the ground.

With the drilling underway in search of an underground water supply, a foul stench soon begins to emanate from deep within the earth. The foul stench lingers on, so the Mannion’s decide to call in Bill Kemp from the Environmental Health Department to test the water supply. The initial results bring back a positive test for Salmonella and a host of other worryingly unidentified bugs.

Soon enough the local contractors begin to develop festering rashes with open sores that continuously ooze pus. Tommy Eaton is the first to become infected and as the cancerous rash develops, so a deep seated evil slowly consumes him. With his mind now totally succumbed to this festering evil that has ravaged his body, Tommy pays a visit to his girlfriend, Penny, so that she too can succumb to this all consuming and ancient evil.

Whilst this is going on, Mike Mannion is called away from Garth Cottage on business, leaving his wife Holly in the cottage with Bennion’s contractors still working on the water-well. The local plumber Nick Paton starts plumbing in the new water supply, although with the water likely to still be contaminated, it will be undrinkable for some time to come. Holly’s affections turn to the plumber, but amidst this developing affair, the ogrish contractor Jim Fitzpatrick also begins to make lustful advances on her. However, a pus filled boil is now developing on Fitzpatrick’s lip, and it is only a matter of time before the festering evil consumes him, ending his life and very likely those who find themselves close to him.

All of those employed to work on the Mannion’s water-well are now developing strange boils that develop into a contagious rash which ultimately leads to a horrifically painful death. During this period the victim’s mental state turns much darker and more sadistic, whereby anyone close to the contagious individual is likely to fall victim to their lust fuelled savagings.

With Holly now developing a nasty looking boil at the base of her spine, which may well now have been transmitted to her husband, the dark evil that has been left festering deep under the grounds of the Garth Cottage seems to be spreading fast. The question is what is the extent of the evil that has been released from deep underground and more importantly, how can it be stopped?

From the very outset, Smith sets down a dark air that screams of the contagious evil that dominates the storyline. The first glimpses of this festering plague are depicted with such a morbid desire to appal. Smith develops on the dark and corrupt atmosphere that overhangs the entire storyline, allowing for the unnerving qualities of the ever-present atmosphere to flourish like the cancerous boils described so vividly throughout the text.

With both of the Mannion’s participating in their own lust fuelled affairs behind one another’s back, the reader feels somewhat set away from the tale, without having an ‘untainted’ point of reference in which to truly latch on to. This only further helps to develop on the general tone of despairing corruption that Smith has so painstakingly set down from the outset, never really setting a base in which the reader can feel secure from.

The characterisation throughout the tale is well developed in each and every case, even in those characters who find themselves falling victim to the festering plague early on.

The pace of the storyline is a gradual one that builds up with tension throughout the tale. Barely a page goes by without some further tragedy befalling the Mannion’s and their laborious task of making their new home habitable. Combing this unrelenting misery with the constant ominous threat that overhangs the characters, results in the reader clawing at each page with a need to uncover more of this evil is lurking throughout.

All in all, Smith has managed to produce a novel that breaths a constant air of putrid terror, even within the more mundane points of the book. The tension is constantly mounting, until the full extent of the horrific evil that awaits the reader is finally unveiled. As the pace quickens, so does Smith’s desire to deliver more grotesque and gut wrenching depictions of the flesh devouring plague. The novel crescendos with a litany of horrific events that Smith ties in, until the tale finally concludes to a well delivered ending.

The storyline throughout the tale is unashamedly and outrageously over-the-top, even for that of a pulp horror novel. In this story alone, Smith proves that he truly sets the bar from which other pulp horror authors should be judged by. The novel is nothing short of a triumph to pulp horror nastiness.

The tale runs for a total of 191 pages and was first published through Arrow Books.

[Gavcrimson · Rating 4 out of 5]

When it comes to the honour of being Guy N Smith’s most mucus splattered, puss ridden book, 1989’s The Festering must surely lift the prize. Written in the aftershock of the AIDS crisis, Smith’s pitch to his publishers here was presumably along the lines of ‘what if a disease worse than AIDS came along...and what if it emanated from a borehole in the Welsh countryside’. Exit the AIDS crisis, enter ‘The Festering Death’.

Before tackling that contemporary topic though, The Festering takes us back to ye olden days, where sad wench Rachel pines for the return of her true love, handsome forester Tabor, who has gone to London to seek his fortune. When Tabor returns however, he comes, not baring riches, but oozing ulcers and weeping sores, all but confirming Rachel’s father’s suspicion that “the fellow has gone to London in search of whores”. Since love and compassion for your fellow man were in short supply back then, the diseased, barely human Tabor is ostracized by the village, and falls foul of the type of Witchfinder who “never left a village without a hanging”. Sure enough, Tabor is soon hung from the nearest tree, and having been judged to be carrying ‘the festering death’ by the Witchfinder, his corpse is hastily buried in a deep grave by the terrified villagers.

The Festering then fast forwards to 1989, and takes on a semi-autobiographic tone as the focus shifts to Mike and Holly Mannion. A young couple who’ve been seduced away from the bright lights of the Midlands in favour of moving to the sticks, and renovating a small, semi- derelict stone cottage in the remote Welsh countryside. All of which echoes Smith’s own experiences leaving city living and the banking industry behind him in the mid-1970s, and moving to a converted barn in the hills of the Shropshire/Wales border. In a cheeky, self-referential touch, Smith has Mike Mannion cite his influence for the move as a friend who “had been a clerk with reasonable prospects but he had thrown them all overboard for a five acre smallholding that was mostly Welsh mountain scrubland”. What follows is a relatively realistic ‘fish out of water’ tale, as the naive couple struggle to adapt to the colossal change of life they’ve taken on, the romantic notion of the ‘self-sufficiency’ lifestyle quickly giving way to a harsh reality. The Mannions are met with condescending attitudes from the locals, who nevertheless see them as the source of rich pickings, especially when a hydraulic ram fails the couple, requiring the creation of a borehole in order to supply the cottage with running water. Soon the Mannion’s peace is shattered by noisy drilling equipment, uncouth labourers Tommy and Jim, and the arrival of Nick Paton, a sexually inexperienced plumber who can’t keep his mind on the stopcocks when Holly is around “he found himself fascinated by the rear view of her in those ragged cut-off denim shorts. Suddenly he was glad he had answered the phone that morning and hadn’t gone straight to fix Mrs King’s toilet”. It all proves an unwanted distraction for Mike, who like Smith himself, moved to the country to pursue his creative side. In Mike’s case, painting landscapes, and is financially able to keep his head above water by knocking those out at a speedy rate, much to his employer’s delight.

Given these close parallels to Smith’s life, you do have to wonder if part of his motivation for writing The Festering was to settle a few real-life scores. In his 1996 book ‘Writing Horror Fiction’ Smith does admit to basing certain characters on real people, while advising budding horror authors to follow his lead ...but make sure to cover your tracks slightly “change a few mannerisms and give a different physical description from that of your acquaintance”. Frank Bennion, the head of the drilling firm that the Mannions are paying to work on the cottage, is Smith’s main source of hostility here. The dapper Bennion arrives on their doorstep with pound signs in his eyes, having clearly gotten rich from out of their depth townies in dire need of a borehole. Bennion notes that this is the 601st borehole he was worked on. Anyone who ever did labouring work at Guy N Smith’s place may also have been inclined to take him off their Christmas card list after reading The Festering. Jim, the older of Bennion’s two man workforce, is described as “a gorilla dressed in filthy human work clothes, dragging his feet, head hung low, long arms swinging at his sides”. Coarse oaf as Jim might be, Smith still gifts him the greatest, sleaziest, line of the entire book. After co-worker Tommy admits that his girlfriend is no oil painting, Jim still encourages Tommy to screw her, on the reasoning that “you don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire”. Classic Smith.

Any impatient punter questioning ‘where’s the horror, Guy?’ is rewarded when the book splits from reality and the Festering truly hits the fan towards the end of chapter six. Drilling down to Tabor’s resting place results in the festering plague becoming airborne and unleashed upon the modern world. The first to catch a dose of it is Tommy, whose flesh is soon a mass of ulcers, sores and puss “the stuff came out in never-ending syrupy streams”. Since the disease attacks his loins first, Tommy mistakenly diagnoses himself with an STD, and puts the blame for his condition on his “poxy whore” girlfriend. As his body falls apart, Tommy takes a vengeful drive to visit his girlfriend, who is already naked, and having started without him “she played with herself in a crude attempt to arouse him”, finds herself being mounted by the incredible melting man.

As the Mannion’s workforce begins to literally disintegrate, so does their relationship. Mirroring Tabor before him, Mike Mannion takes off to London for a time. There he fulfils a lifelong ambition to have sex with a prostitute, whose services he seeks out thanks to a pricey ‘Contacts’ magazine “Christ, it was eight quid. So it had to be the real thing”. While the cat’s away, the Festering works its unholy mojo on Holly too. Rather than reduce her to a sticky mess though, the disease gives her the opportunity to cause several sticky messes of her own. The Festering causing Holly to develop a high sex drive, that is turned in the direction of Nick the Plumber “for a few seconds everything else was forgotten, the borehole, the deaths, even the decorating”. Thus allowing The Festering to follow in the footsteps of 1975’s The Sucking Pit, and become another of Smith’s “Help! My bird has turned into a raving nympho” books.

The spectre of AIDS casts its dark shadow over The Festering. Doing his bit for AIDS awareness, Smith has a character apply a condom at one point (not that it does this individual much good in the long term). While Tommy suffers mental anguish for having had unprotected sex with his girlfriend “she might just be two-timing him, screwing with some dirty sod on the side. And there were worse things around these days than VD”. A few of Smith’s sexual concerns here do feel a little past their sell by date for the late 1980s though. The unfortunately placed rash that the Festering initially inflicts on male victims evokes that 1970s bogeyman, the clap, and as Tommy himself points out men of the 1980s have a whole lot more to worry about than that. Whereas Tommy’s fear that his girlfriend only wants to have unprotected sex with him in order to get pregnant and tie him to a life of married drudgery and financial dependence –a scenario Smith had previously tormented his male readership with in The Slime Beast and The Walking Dead- harkens back to a 1960s kitchen sink drama.

The Festering is yet another book that sees Smith indulge in his always entertaining trait of having his characters’ guilty conscience interrupt their chain of thought. A device that allows Smith to give his characters a firm slap on the wrist for their transgressions, adopting the tone of a strict headmaster by referring to them by their full names. “Get a bloody grip on yourself, Nick Paton”, “How bloody stupid and childish can you get, Holly Mannion”. Nothing gets Guy N Smith riled up into fist shaking mode, quite like female nymphomania though “tit for tat, Holly my girl, because whilst he’s been away you’ve been having your arse shagged off”.

Smith is unsparing when it comes to describing the effects of the Festering itself “a squelch of bursting ulcers, the poison spraying in all directions, spotted the off-white walls with treacly grey and crimson”. These disgusto body horror elements eventually fusing with Smith’s usual appetite for sordid sex, with predictably messy results “he pulled her to him and felt her body squash against his protruding swollen navel- a moment of agony followed by a deluge of something warm and sticky between their pressed bodies”.

Smith, of course, never wrote horror with the sensitive in mind, but if you love books to gross you out, then Smith here is a fearless tour guide leading us through an avalanche of puss, mucus, puke, blood and other bodily fluids. In its quieter moments, The Festering also serves as an insider account of the trials and tribulations of a rural relocation to the middle of nowhere, written by one who knew and mastered that terrain.

During the 1980s I daresay you could learn more about country living from Guy N Smith books than you could do in school. You could also learn a great deal about pipe smoking, nymphomania and giant crabs from them as well...although in fairness they never teach you about things like that in the classroom.

[Mikepottz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Festering from the depths comes a putrid, vomit tasting stench that brings evil to a small cottage. Copious amounts of pus will ooze and people will succumb to its evil. The air is rotten and permeates into the throat and lungs. And the cover rocks!

[Signor Mambrino · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the finest novels ever written.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun little read. I hated every character in the book so didn't care for who lived and who died. I would like to see this story continued with a larger scale sequel, but that is never going to happen now that Mr Smith has passed away.

[Lorna Moyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourites, a sense of dread throughout.

[Egghead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Small town with big stench
horny plague, gooey bodies
witchfinder error

[Rafal Gluchowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guy N. Smith – Festering (1990)

"Escape To The Country" goes wrong… 100% Guy in full Guy mode, pure delight for die-hard fans


Idyll that reeks… of rotten corpses

A pair of freelancers from London decide to start a new life in the countryside. Sounds like a pastoral dream? Not quite. A sweltering summer and a sudden pump failure kick off a spiral of events straight from the darkest nightmares. No water? Annoying. But when a newly drilled well starts spewing out foul-smelling, undrinkable liquid, things turn truly vile. And that’s just the beginning.

Death water and festering lust

The local contractor, determined to get paid for his job, throws himself into the task of clearing the well. But one by one, workers begin to disappear—taken down by illnesses, freak accidents, and violent fits of murderous rage. Boils, pustules, ulcers, and pus – Smith goes all-in on the gross-out descriptions.

Meanwhile, the couple’s marriage begins to rot too: the wife falls into a passionate affair with the village plumber, while the husband, during a trip to London, finds himself driven by a strange urge to visit a prostitute. Of course, both end up infected with the same revolting boils and festering sores.

A local doctor, noticing the wave of disasters, starts digging into the village’s history and uncovers a chilling truth: back in Cromwell’s days, a man returned from London covered head to toe in oozing boils and was executed for witchcraft. His body was buried—where else?—right where the modern workers are drilling.


Classic Smith – gleeful, grotesque, and gross

For GNS fans, this is home turf: a small village, a spooky historical backstory, and the usual brew of berserk violence and sexual madness. Throw in a cast of grotesque weirdos, a straightforward but tight plot, and Guy’s trademark sarcastic humor – and you’ve got yourself a pulpy joyride.

The title – Festering – is beautifully self-explanatory. Not just literal pus and boils, but a metaphor for moral rot and social decay. And in his vivid descriptions of skin lesions, Smith is in top form—pus, stink, and all.

A small minus for the book’s structure: starting with a full account of the “festering curse” spoils the surprise. Readers know exactly what’s going on from the jump. But hey – even masterpieces get that critique (would The Count of Monte Cristo hit harder if we didn’t know the mysterious stranger’s secret?). Every structure has its merits.

For outsiders – utterly forgettable.
For the #smithlunatics – essential reading!

PS.
It’s a shame Festering never made it to Polish shelves during the Golden Age of Phantom Press. It would’ve fit their catalogue like a rotting glove. Sure, it’s just another mid-tier Smith novel – but what a ride it was.