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Post by endo on May 12, 2017 17:47:19 GMT -5
"We begin in a quiet house, after the joyous occasion of a baby’s baptism. An innocuous question—why is one of the house’s beams so withered and small?—leads to the unraveling of a dark story involving unjust cruelty, desperate choices, and satanic vengeance. Many fantastical stories of the 18th and 19th centuries feature such plot devices, but none of them reach the viscerally horrific heights of Jeremias Gotthelf’s The Black Spider. This titular character is the villain of a moral nightmare, written by an actual pastor in the mid 19th century. His story starts in a medieval village, overseen by a cruel landlord who makes an impossible demand of his tenants: to uproot a distant grove of trees and replant them near his castle. Driven to desperation, they encounter a seeming savior in the form of a green-clad woodsman. He promises to complete their task for them, if they grant him the next born child. The townspeople accept the offer, but when a fierce young woman plots to deceive the woodsman, they find a far crueler force descending upon them. The woodsman unleashes his vengeance in the form of a foot-long arachnid that ravages the countryside, unstoppable except by supreme sacrifice." link
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