Evil (novel)

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For the novel from 1981, see Jan Guillou and the film adaptation Evil (2003) .

Evil (Original title: The Girl Next Door , 'The girl next door') is a 1989 published novel by the US writer Jack Ketchum .

action

After 14-year-old Meg and her younger sister Susan barely survived a car accident that cost their parents their lives, they move in with their aunt Ruth (37). Meg has some scars from the accident, while Susan has more serious injuries and has to wear leg braces. Meanwhile, Ruth was a divorced and single mother who raised three boys, Woofer (10) and the twins Willie and Donnie (12). She was considered an ideal mother among the children of the unnamed small town, as she occasionally provided the children with beer and cigarettes.

The appearance of the new children starts a downward spiral especially for Ruth and she gradually goes mad - she hates men who leave their wives in the form of children only work and only want sex. She takes out this hatred more and more on Meg and Susan. Meg is just a nymphomaniac slut in her eyes, while the helpless Susan serves herself as a sexual object of sadomasochistic fantasies. At first it's just insults, then she starts beating the girls, usually with a belt. When Meg dares to speak to a policeman, the situation escalates: She can get rid of the policeman - but now a week-long ordeal begins for Meg when Ruth locks her in the cellar. Not in a normal cellar; it's 1958 and Ruth's husband had dug a bunker at the height of the atomic bomb paranoia. Meg now lives there, isolated from her sister and the outside world (it's school holidays and nobody misses her) - helplessly at the mercy of her new family, which quickly begins to torture her.

The story is told in retrospect from 1987 by the boy next door at the time, David, who saw Ruth's decline into madness, but only recognized it to its full extent far too late.

He witnesses how Meg has to spend the night hanging on ropes in the bunker, how one undresses and humiliates her. David never takes part in this "game", as the neighbors call it, but feels a terrible fascination and cannot sleep for nights because of the excitement, especially because Ruth's boys enthusiastically participate in the torture and obviously get away with it.

It is getting worse and worse: Meg is put on food withdrawal, if she becomes rebellious, Susan, who is disabled after the car accident, is beaten in her place. The physical torture becomes more cruel: Ruth puts cigarettes out on Meg's body, burns them with the iron and, with the help of her three sons, puts them under a steaming hot shower that covers her entire body with blisters.

David still sees himself powerless and now believes that he is an accomplice because of his long inactivity. Intervention seems impossible for David, but the situation worsens for Meg when Ruth's sons initiate their friends and bring them with them. Suddenly, Meg is tortured by three other children who beat her and urinate in her face. Meg remains strong and doesn't break when she is forced to eat dog poop.

When one of the boys asks casually whether Meg shouldn't just be killed, David can't go on and decides to help Meg. During the night he breaks into the neighboring house, releases Meg and escapes. But Meg doesn't get far: she wants to help her sister and is caught doing it. The nightmare escalates: Ruth lets her boys rape Meg. Together they burn the words I FICKE FICK ME into her stomach with a glowing sewing needle.

When David sees this, he wants to flee, but he is stopped and now locked up with Meg and Susan. His torture is that he has to watch what happens now: Ruth is satisfied that Meg will be disfigured for a lifetime with her scars and will no longer be attractive to men - but now she wants to make sure that Meg doesn't have any Men want more. With a red-hot iron she lets one of the boys burn Meg's clitoris.

That night when a broken Meg tries to dig her way through the concrete floor with her bare fingers, David must act. He sets a fire in the bunker and wants to knock Ruth down in the ensuing chaos and smoke with Susan's walking aids. But not only Ruth comes, her three sons are also there. You easily catch David by surprise. When Meg tries to help, Ruth hits her head against the wall with all her might - afterwards they put out the fire and lock the three up again. A few hours later, Meg succumbs to her injuries.

David's parents miss their son and turn on the police. A policeman remembers Meg's testimony and suspects Ruth - after all, the two children and the dead Meg are found in the bunker. Ruth initially refuses to testify, but then yells that Meg inflicted the injuries on herself and didn't deserve it any other way. David can't take it any longer: when he reaches the top of the stairs, he pushes Ruth down, breaking her neck.

Since David wanted to help in the end and there is no evidence that he was involved in the torture, he is acquitted. The others go to the juvenile detention center, one of them will later become a rapist again. For years, David cannot cope with the fact that he did not intervene beforehand.

Effect and authenticity

Especially the fact that the book is written out of the first person makes the book so intense and sometimes almost unbearable to read, because the narrator at the beginning feels nothing but desire and fascination and feels unassailable. While the reader wishes he would finally act, David is fully absorbed in his role as a spectator and describes this without remorse. In one of the core messages of the book, however, David also brings the reader into play as a viewer and expresses a persistent desire to know how the story continues. It is precisely this reason to pursue the book further that makes the reader jointly responsible for what happened. Likewise, Ketchum David leaves out the heart scene in his story, the burning out of the clitoris is not described, David merely states that this was the cruelest experience of his life and that he will not speak or write about it. The torture sequences are relentless, Ruth is rather apathetic, almost pragmatic - she only does what she thinks is right.

The novel is based on a true story. In 1965, Sylvia Likens, then sixteen , was tortured to death by her foster mother Gertrude Baniszewski and her children.

filming

The book was filmed in 2007 under the title Jack Ketchum's Evil directed by Gregory M. Wilson . US writer Stephen King said: "The first really shocking American film that I have seen since Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer 20 years ago." (Quote from the cover of the German DVD)

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