Phantom Nights

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John Lee Farris (born 1936) is an American writer, known largely for his work in the southern Gothic genre. He was born 1936 in Jefferson City, Missouri, to parents John Linder Farris (1909–1982) and Eleanor Carter Farris (1905–1984). Raised in Tennessee, he graduated from Central High School in Memphis and attended Southwestern College (now Rhodes College) in Memphis . His first wife, Kathleen, was the mother of Julie Marie, John, and Jeff Farris; his second wife, Mary Ann Pasante, was the mother of Peter John ("P.J.") Farris.

Apart from his vast body of fiction, his work on motion picture screenplays includes adaptations of his own books (i.e., The Fury), original scripts, and adaptations of the works of others (such as Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man). He wrote and directed the film Dear Dead Delilah in 1973. He has had several plays produced off-Broadway, and also paints and writes poetry. At various times he has made his home in New York, southern California and Puerto Rico; he now lives near Atlanta, Georgia.Book List

Author's Website – Furies & Fiends

Other John Farris books currently available or coming soon from Crossroad Press:

All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By

Catacombs

Dragonfly

Fiends

King Windom

Minotaur

Nightfall

Sacrifice

Sharp Practice

Shatter

Solar Eclipse

Son of the Endless Night

Soon She Will Be Gone

The Axeman Cometh

The Captors

The Fury

The Fury and the Power

The Fury and the Terror

The Ransome Women

Unearthly (formerly titled The Unwanted)

When Michael Calls

Wildwood

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The italicized part of Ramses Valjean's lament is from a fellow sufferer named Lionel Johnson in his
The Precept of Silence
.

In a dark time,

the eye begins to see.

—THEODORE ROETHKE

Homecoming

Bad Blood

Death and the
Dixie Traveler

W
hen Leland Howard got out of his car in front of the homestead, he saw his half-brother, Saxby, and sister-in-law, Rose Heidi, on the front porch, either just arrived or about to depart; he wasn't sure which. At any rate Saxby had got there first.

Figures
, Leland thought. He'd had a deal of driving to do, Sax, all the way from Elizabethton. The Tri-Cities area, where Sax had his dealerships: Chevrolets and Case farm equipment.

July 30 and not a breath of air stirring. Not much rain in West Tennessee for a month, six weeks probably. But the deep front lawn and flowerbeds behind a white wrought-iron fence looked freshly watered. Magnolia and gingko leaves glossy as wrapped Christmas candy. There were artesian wells on the six-acre property, four blocks west of the courthouse square and midway down a wide street of mostly antebellum homes, some of which stood long unclaimed in the sun, suffering stupors of dry-rot.

Leland took off a cocoa-colored Panama hat and mopped his forehead while his man, Jim Giles, parked the Pontiac Eight in the shade of a monster cedar across the street. Got out and leaned against a high fender of the Pontiac. He was a lanky man, country-saturnine, simian hang to his arms, outsized hands, wearing a shiny blue suit a size too small for him. The suit spoke of a lifetime of meager gleanings, of hand-me-downs and thrift-store racks. Giles looked middling poor, but not servile.

Leland lingered on the sidewalk with a certain aplomb that had always come naturally to him, drawing everyone's attention up there on the shady porch. No hearse in sight, but one might be parked round back to spare the family's sensibilities. Doc Hogarth taking his ease in one of the chain-hung gliders, drinking lemonade, as was Rose Heidi beside him. She looked to be about seven months gone this time, setting herself down at every opportunity. They'd hauled along the children, all dressed up, so no fooling: Priest Howard's low state of health finally could be terminal, after all of the false alarms Leland often had not bothered to respond to.

The two kids around Rose Heidi were bored and acting up. A third boy, Sax's oldest, was off by himself reading a
Batman
comic book. Burnell the houseman hovered just behind the screen door and threshold he had never crossed in twenty-six years. One of those nigras every family of means had, been around so long he had a certain proud status in both of Evening Shade's communities, white and colored.

Spare me, Jesus
. Leland put his hat on and walked through the open gate, up the brick walk to the three-story Classic Revival house, his boyhood home. Gold toothpick in a corner of his mouth. Seersucker suit looking a little wilted this time of day. There was a ruptured duck in the buttonhole of his right lapel. Couldn't remind the voters of Tennessee often enough that he'd served his country well, shrapnel in his back to prove it. War wounds always a good subject of conversation at the VFW.

Half-brother Saxby coming down the steps to meet him part way. Sax had four-effed it during the last great world conflict, flat feet and nearly blind in his right eye. His face in the late afternoon sun was florid, overfed. And he'd developed a wheeze.

"Didn't know how quick you could make it, Lee; said they hadn't seen you up at the farm in a while. On the stump around Union City, your campaign people told me."

"That was seven-thirty this morning. Then I stopped in Dyersburg for a Rotary lunch, drove on down to Memphis pay a courtesy call on Boss Cramp. Which is where the sad news caught up to me, Sax; in the lobby of the Peabody."

Saxby offered to shake hands. Leland kept his hands hard and callused. Chopping wood was good exercise, another benefit. The farmers whose votes mattered to him as much as Boss Crump's captive wards in Memphis disliked politicians with pampered palms "slick as snot on a doorknob," a saying Leland recalled from his youth. That was what Sax's hand felt like, manicures a ritual along with his weekly hair trim.

"Boss Crump! I'll bet you snuck his endorsement right out from under Walker Wellford's nose."

"No way to carry West Tennessee without the Boss," Leland said comfortably.

"You know I been keeping my ear to the ground, but it looks too close to call in my neck of the woods without the
Knoxville
Sentinel
on your bandwagon."

"Expect I'll get their endorsement next week. And I surely do appreciate how you've been busting your hump for me in the Tri-Cities."

Saxby's customary smile resembled a wince. He stared past Leland at Jim Giles, leaning against the Pontiac.

"Still having convicts drive you around?"

"Parolees. It's in my nature to forgive another man's transgressions. The preachers and the church ladies go for that."

"What's that one there paroled from?"

"Manslaughter. Twenty years, mandatory eight."

"He killed somebody?"