Here’s 2 horror novels about Catholic priests and the roles they play in bringing about the Apocalyspe.

In the Name of the Father – John Zodrow

A cardinal finds a little boy in a cave in China and adopts him. The kid, Peter, carries a weird stone idol and speaks of an imaginary friend, but nobody pays much attention to this. People also fail to notice the many accidents that seem to happen to people who get in the kid’s way. When the kid is old enough, he becomes a priest, much to delight of his adoptive father. After being ordained, he begins to work miracles, and anyone who gets in his way soon meets with an unfortunate end. He seems destined to become Pope, and it’s pretty clear from early on that he’s the Antichrist spoken of in the Book of Revelation.

The whole thing is very Omeny, but the difference here is that Peter is actually a good guy. He doesn’t commit acts of violence against anyone. That’s left to 3 teenage girls who taunt and pester him. At one point, he has a dream about one of these girls taking a big shit on his chest. Then he wakes up with a massive boner. This attention to detail really made him a believable character. I’m sure that is a nightly occurrence for Catholic priests.

It’s only been a couple of weeks since I finished this, but I’ve actually forgotten how it ended. I distinctly remember being disappointed though. My goodreads review says that I enjoyed it up until the last 35 pages.

Dark Angel – Sean Forestal

When I first read Paperbacks from Hell, I made a list of all the books featured therein that I absolutely had to read. (The Cipher, Feast, Brotherkind, Satan’s Love Child, The Kill Riff and The Satan Sleuth books were all on that list.) At that point, one was still able to go online and find copies of most of those books for relatively cheap. The one exception I found was Dark Angel. The only copy available at the time was more than $1000 dollars. Today, I can’t find a single copy for sale. There has been a scanned pdf version online for years though, and it only took me about a decade to get around to reading it.

This book was really good, and I’m not surprised that it’s sought after. I am surprised that it has not been reprinted. (After writing this review, I saw that Grady Hendrix once listed it as one of his favourite horror novels, so I assume he has tried to get it reprinted under Valancourt’s Paperback From Hell line.)

A Succubus rapes a Vatican Cardinal and gets pregnant. Only Father Joe O’Meara knows about this, and he leaves the Vatican to hunt her down to prevent the end of the world. The problem is that she is a total babe, and he soon falls in love with her. Soon after he loses her virginity to her, he discovers a side to himself that he has long suppressed. This dude loves feet, and pretty soon he is sucking his girlfriend’s toes to warm them up at every given opportunity.

The problem here was that I was invested in this as a romance. (I can’t remember what it was, but I remember experiencing similar emotions when I was reading some other novel about the devil.) I was genuinely happy for the guy. This girl is so dirty that he has to mutilate himself to stop himself from cumming. Imagine being celibate for decades and then finding a partner who satiates all of your kinky desires. They made such a cute couple too. This fucking idiot has to go and ruin his relationship with a rich, extremely horny babe just so that he can save Catholicism. What a stupid loser!

I found this quite well written. It’s long but entertaining, and I genuinely enjoyed the story. It gets into the psychology of Catholic attitudes toward sex, and I wasn’t quite sure what side of the argument the author comes down on. I don’t really think the book is pro Catholicism.

Even though the book doesn’t end as I would have liked (the priest and Succubus riding into the sunset to destroy the Vatican with kinky sex), I did find some satisfaction in the final chapter. I wanted a romance, but this ends as a horror novel should. Honestly, I really enjoyed Dark Angel, and I recommend you read a copy if you can.