The Venomous Serpent By Brian Ball

The Venomous Serpent by Brian Ball

The Work

The Venomous Serpent was written by Brian Ball, and published by the New English Library Limited from Barnard's Inn Holborn, London E.C.I. in 1974. The book was made and printed in Great Britain by C. Nicholls & Company Ltd. This book is a fiction, horror book about vampires. The alternative name of the book is The Night Creature.

The Author

Brian Ball was born in the United Kingdom in 1932. He is perhaps best known to SPACE: 1999 fans for writing the first-season novel The Space Guardians, based on the episodes Missing Link, Force of Life, and The Guardian of Piri. But this is only a small part of a writing career spanning forty years and dozens of books, ranging from his trilogy Timepiece, Timepivot and Timepit (1968-71) to 1972's The Probability Man, the Keegan and Witchfinder series, and young adult SF and fantasy novels from Sundog (1965) to Stone Age Magic (1989). He is also an educator, and anthologist. Brian Ball has written many children books and mysteries.

Characterization and Relationships

Andy Thomas and Sally Fenton are the main characters of the novel. Sally is a heart-shaped faced, tall, blonde, German girl with blue eyes. Andy and Sally are not married but they live together. They are very lovely couples. They are living in the same house and earn money from same job, crafts shop.

The Knight Lord Humphrey de Latours and The Lady Sybil de Latours are couples who lived in Stymead centuries ago. Lord Humphrey is not a handsome man, he is short and fat. But Lady Sybil has a very beautiful body, she is tall, and black haired-girl with blue eyes.

Mr. Cunningham is the vicar of the St. James's in the village. He is a tall, thin, old, furious man.

Mr. Postlethwaite is a police officer. He is very sympathic with his red face.

Mr. Judson is the neighbor in the village. He is a very angry person. He has many lambs in his own farm in the village.

Mrs. Harris is very helpful and kind lady in the village. She is their neighbor.

Furry Queens is the name of their twin kittens. They are very warmth and lovely kittens.

Cornelius is their accurate dog. He is very big but not terrible.

The Event

The weather is very bad at that time in Stymead, thunders are growling, and it is raining. All of the villagers come to the church this night because there is a creature in the village. The priest tries to relax the villagers by reading some words from Holy Book. They believe that the creature is the soul of the Knight Lord Humphrey de Latours, and the way of killing him is cutting his head just after his heart. All of them are in fear of being killed by the creature, and they tries to send him back to his grave. And they succeed it. But Lady Sybil de Latours is still alive.

Sally and Andy met at the art school in 19 years old. They leave the art school and rent a place which is a stone barn built around 1710s in High Peaks region. They want to sell crafts there; they also want to live there. They are trying to sell some interesting junks which they have found in industrial places, in old churches, in wreckages, and places like these around the village. One day Sally finds a very worthy brass-rubbing of Lord of Stymead Humphrey de Latours and his wife Lady Sybil de Latours in an old church of Stymead village. There is a lapdog at the Lady's feet, and a lion at the Knight's feet. The lion shows some signs of being fine, but the dog shows signs of odd things. And this brass-rubbing has not been recorded yet. But there is a strange thing that the church is abandoned, and it is collapsing slowly day by day. But normally the church authorities never allow a church to collapse. Sally has the feeling that she has seen the church before.

One night Andy sees a nightmare, and wakes up suddenly in fear. It is raining and thundering. The moonlight is very strong and it is reflected on the brass-rubbing. He sees that the lapdog is moving, and he tries to touch it. But Sally does not let him to do this. She is unacceptably very strong.

One day later he finds one of their twin kittens' dead body, and there is blood on lapdog's fangs. They decided to go to the church to solve the mystery of the brass-rubbing. But Andy does not exactly want to go there. At the end, they go to the church, and find the original engraving, but someone realizes and starts to watch them. Fortunately Andy succeeds to persuade Sally to go back to their crafts shop. While passing through the village they see an odd sign which is "The Black Nigget" on a pub's wall.

One night again Andy sees a nightmare about the brass-rubbing and he decided to burn it to finish these nightmares. In the morning a strange man comes to crafts shop and warns them not to go to the church anymore, and leaves the crafts shop. At the same time Sally goes to library to look for meaning of nigget. She finds meaning of the word "nigget" which means "a familiar, a