The Beast Within (novel)
Encyclopedia
The Beast Within is a horror novel written by Edward Levy
. It was published in 1981 by Arbor House. The novel was selected for the Doubleday Book of the Month Club
when published, and appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List
for seven weeks.
It finds its way close to the home of Eli and Carolyn MacCleary, a young married couple. One night when Eli is at work Carolyn ventures outside and is knocked unconscious by the creature, which was hunting for food and became frightened at her approach. Some long-forgotten instinct awakens in the beast and it rapes her. After it has finished it leaves her alone in the forest to resume its search for food. It tries to catch a snake but is bitten and dies from the serpent's venom.
Carolyn becomes pregnant from the attack, but is unaware of her rape and so assumes that the child is her husband's. The baby is born and they name him Michael. Michael is an affectionate child, but they notice strange things about him. Animals have a bizarre reaction to him, and he is intensely claustrophobic. As he begins to grow, his parents discover that when night falls a strange transformation overcomes him, as if his entire personality has changed. He slips into trances and prowls the forest, killing the animals that he comes across. Eli boards up his windows to prevent him from escaping at night, and soon thereafter Michael's "spells" seem to relent...until he hits puberty, at least.
As a teenager Michael falls in love with a girl he knows from school, but he is also afraid of hurting her because of his transformations. However, he lets his guard down and even decides that he wants to marry her. Before they can leave together, though, he kills a bully at school who tried to attack him. Wanting to get out of town as soon as possible, he and his girlfriend drive to her house to pick up some of her things. As it turns out, her house used to be the home of Henry Scruggs, and from the moment he steps in the door the beast within him (which consists of the emotions, senses, and savage hungers of the creature that was his biological father) springs to the surface and he is left violently insane. Instead of confining him in a mental institution, his parents decide to keep him in the house's cellar, hoping for the day that he might recover.
Edward Levy
Edward Levy is an American horror novelist with three books published. Came a Spider was written in 1978, and The Beast Within followed in 1981. Reprints of both books are available at iUniverse.com. He wrote The People Next Door in 1983, but copies are very scarce...
. It was published in 1981 by Arbor House. The novel was selected for the Doubleday Book of the Month Club
Book of the Month Club
The Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
when published, and appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List
New York Times Best Seller list
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...
for seven weeks.
Plot summary
The book begins in the 1920s on the farm of Henry and Sarah Scruggs. Henry is a fanatically religious man who believes that people are vile and base, and that sex—even marital sex—is repulsive and sinful. Sarah, who is much younger than Henry, disagrees. One day a traveling salesman by the name of Jimmy Connors shows up at the farm, telling them that his car broke down. Feeling unusually hospitable, Henry gives the man some dinner and lets him sleep in the barn for the night. After she thinks that her husband has fallen asleep, Sarah sneaks out to the barn and is seduced by Connors. Unfortunately for the both of them, Henry catches them in the act and knocks Connors unconscious. When he awakens he finds himself chained in Henry's basement. Henry tells him that he has murdered Sarah and that he plans on keeping him prisoner for "a long time". Connors is held captive for over twenty years, and eventually the constant abuse, the grotesque food, and the horror of his situation drive him to become more beast than man. He loses all memory of who he once was and is simply an animal content to live its life in bondage. But Henry dies and the creature escapes from its prison into the surrounding forest in order to avoid starvation.It finds its way close to the home of Eli and Carolyn MacCleary, a young married couple. One night when Eli is at work Carolyn ventures outside and is knocked unconscious by the creature, which was hunting for food and became frightened at her approach. Some long-forgotten instinct awakens in the beast and it rapes her. After it has finished it leaves her alone in the forest to resume its search for food. It tries to catch a snake but is bitten and dies from the serpent's venom.
Carolyn becomes pregnant from the attack, but is unaware of her rape and so assumes that the child is her husband's. The baby is born and they name him Michael. Michael is an affectionate child, but they notice strange things about him. Animals have a bizarre reaction to him, and he is intensely claustrophobic. As he begins to grow, his parents discover that when night falls a strange transformation overcomes him, as if his entire personality has changed. He slips into trances and prowls the forest, killing the animals that he comes across. Eli boards up his windows to prevent him from escaping at night, and soon thereafter Michael's "spells" seem to relent...until he hits puberty, at least.
As a teenager Michael falls in love with a girl he knows from school, but he is also afraid of hurting her because of his transformations. However, he lets his guard down and even decides that he wants to marry her. Before they can leave together, though, he kills a bully at school who tried to attack him. Wanting to get out of town as soon as possible, he and his girlfriend drive to her house to pick up some of her things. As it turns out, her house used to be the home of Henry Scruggs, and from the moment he steps in the door the beast within him (which consists of the emotions, senses, and savage hungers of the creature that was his biological father) springs to the surface and he is left violently insane. Instead of confining him in a mental institution, his parents decide to keep him in the house's cellar, hoping for the day that he might recover.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
- The Beast WithinThe Beast WithinThe Beast Within is a 1982 horror film directed by Philippe Mora and starring Ronny Cox, Bibi Besch, Paul Clemens, L. Q. Jones, Don Gordon, R. G. Armstrong, Katherine Moffat, and Meshach Taylor....
was a 1982 horror filmHorror filmHorror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
loosely based on the novel. The film rights for the novel were quickly purchased, but when the film was released in 1982, the screen adaptation bore very little resemblance to the novel (such as the time setting was changed from the 1920s to the decade when the film was released).