And now, let's travel to Smoke Island, ME to dive into the fresh hell that is Elizabeth Ergas's 1989 novel from master-trash imprint, Pinnacle...The Shapechanger.
Chip Windsor is a gifted artist which you can tell because, like most of fiction’s gifted artists, he's a whiny pain in the ass, complaining that everyone is stupider and slower and less talented than he, as he drives to Puffin Landing, ME with his wife, Kate, and their dog, Natty Bumppo (see cover). We also know Chip is a talented artist because he’s won the coveted Voss Estate Grant, established by the world famous artist Lothar Voss, in 1932, allowing recipients to live on the abandoned Voss Estate, located on Smoke Island, a scenic lump of rock just off the coast of Maine, where he can paint and emotionally abuse his wife in peace, all summer long.
Previously awarded only in 1935 and 1957, the Voss Estate grant was confusingly established by the widow of Lothar Voss after she was raped on Smoke Island by a shapechanging doppelganger of her husband, who murdered himself and the shapechanger by leaping off a cliff with the monster clasped in his arms, after discovering the beast humping her on their front lawn. Its stated goal is to give young artists “a proper atmosphere in which to nurture and develop their talent” which is a weird way to memorialize getting dorked against your will by a supernatural monster, but artists are weird.
The minute Kate and Chip arrive in Puffin Landing the ominous omens start piling up. First, there are no puffins in Puffin Landing. Where did they go? Why did they leave? A mystery! Then Chip pulls up at a gas station to get directions to the chief of police's house where they'll pick up the keys to the Voss House. The second he goes inside, a grizzled local leans in the car window, asks Kate if she has any children, then strokes her hair and murmurs, “Pretty,” before growling, “Go not to yon island. He waits for you. Go away. Go home. Death waits there. Death…and more…Listen, missus. Listen to Old Nate.”
Because they're idiots, Kate and Chip ignore this warning and head over to the chief's house where they meet Sheriff Daniel Sheridan, who's “several inches over six feet” with a “trim and athletic build...gleaming blue-black hair curled in damp disarray...and sleeves rolled up displaying well-muscled arms baked walnut brown by the sun.” Sooner or later he's going to paddle Kate's canoe, but first he engages in racially-charged macho jousting with Chip.
“If it’s not too much trouble, Chief,” Chip says. “I’d like to get the keys to the house now. My wife and I would like to be settled out there before it gets dark.”
Sheridan demands to know the meaning of his question. Confused Chip asks what he means and Sheridan says he knows exactly what he's referring to.
“Like what?” Chip asks.
“My Indian blood,” Sheridan says.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a Native American curse novel. But get ready to pour some ice down your pants, because it's also a bodice-ripping romance novel, too!
Chip and Kate settle on Smoke Island and Chip secludes himself in his studio and becomes immediately obsessed with his work in the manner of artists in every horror novel from The Shining forward. Kate can't get Chip to spend time with her no matter how many pizzas she makes or cookies she bakes, because he’s a slave to his art, but soon she doesn't care because she's having erotic dreams in which she's a Native American woman named Little Sparrow, making love to her hunky dream warrior, Great Bear, who has “piercing coal-black eyes” that stare at her with “burning intensity.”
Pretty soon, Kate's sleeping 20 hours a day, and why not?
“His lips skimmed across her chest, his tongue licking the valley between her breasts. Then he shifted his weight, moving down her body, using his lips and tongue to blaze a path of fire. Kate writhed under Great Bear’s clever tongue….his hands held her shoulders, pinning her down, allowing him unrestricted access to all her tender places. She felt the pointed end of his tongue enter her navel…she was almost sobbing with need…He rotated his hips, torturing her with the little circling movements, only allowing her part of himself. She wanted all of him, deep within her…He was magnificent, the muscles beneath his heated skin sliding beneath her fingers like ropes of silken steel.”
Incidentally, this book is dedicated to the author's mother and father.
Kate's dreams are so erotic that when her brother-in-law and his kids visit she falls asleep on the beach and gets herself off in her sleep, right before the astonished eyes of their children.
“Close your legs,” Chip hisses at her.
But that's okay because then the kids are struck by lightning and catch on fire and get gruesomely burned, so they've got other things to worry about than Auntie Kate’s num-num dance. Kate's erotic dreams get so compelling that even Natty Bumppo starts having them, apparently, since the overheated dog tries to make love to Kate after she gets out of the bath one night. Before woman and dog can consummate their disgusting act of interspecies passion, a bee stings Natty B. to death. Turns out, there's a shapechanger on the island!
It's up to Sheriff Daniel Sheridan to spell out the legend of Smoke Island around a campfire one night, “The legend of Smoke Island is a tale so old, so powerful,” he says. “That many believe today that what happened here long ago is but yesterday, and what happened yesterday can happen again today.” Which is as confusing as it is vaguely racist with its stilted fortune cookie diction. Turns out, Indians used to live here. Real Indians! Usually in a Native American curse novel, the evil Native Americans are some ancient tribe that existed before any we're familiar with, but in this case the real Little Sparrow and Great Bear were Algonquian. Cue a lawsuit for sexy defamation from one of our largest indigenous nations.
Back in the day, Little Sparrow and Great Bear's lovemaking was so hot that it caught the eye of Iye, a shapechanging shaman. Shocked that he wanted to sex up a warrior's wife, the elders stranded him on Smoke Island. Now he turns into bees, dogs, and plumes of smoke, while also causing wet dreams, mostly because he's a horny dickhead. He also possesses Wilma Thompson, Chip's agent who comes to visit. Under Iye’s evil influence, Wilma heads down to the beach with Kate where she tries to lesbian rape her.
Despite being married to an artist, Kate's not into it.
“No woman had ever touched her that way. She gagged as bile rose in her throat…A new wave of revulsion swept her, causing sickness to churn in her stomach.”
Turns out, it’s not just Algonquians who should be offended by this book. Undeterred, Wilma fondles Kate’s boobs.
“So soft, so good. Ah, yes, yes. Yeeeessss.”
“Oh, God, no.”
“Sweet. Oh, so sweet. Open to me. Let me feel you. Let me in. Sweet, oh so sweet, so sweet, sweeeet.”
Then Kate drowns Wilma and runs away, feeling “unclean.” She's so haunted by her lesbian experience that when she finally abandons her “charade of a marriage” with Chip and falls into the arms of Sheriff Daniel Sheridan, she can't consummate the act without thinking of Wilma. Fortunately, Sheridan knows that “there was still one thing to do, one place he must make whole.” Then he oral sexes her. Which works.
She lifted her hips, hinting of her impatience to move, to begin the love dance.
“Impatient girl,” he whispered in her ear, but he gave her what she wanted, what they both craved.
Once they're done, he insists on relentlessly calling her “love.”
“What love?” he says. “But me no buts, love.”
“Take your time, love.”
“Hush, love.”
“Let me make love to you, my love.”
“Morning, love.”
This would make most women drown their spouses in the tub, but it gives Kate the fortitude to return to Smoke Island and confront Chip, who impales himself on a fir tree branch (I think? It's confusing) and then Iye takes Chip's form and engages in a two page, nonconsensual boob-fondling scene with Kate before she sets him on fire and does a swan dive off a cliff into Sheriff Sheridan's boat.
“It’s all over,” he murmurs. “All over, my love.”
Apparently for Kate, the nightmare is just beginning.