When the woman stumbles onto Annette Ruthie Klein and her husband Frank’s farm, she cuts a strange figure. Naked, untouched by the relentless sunshine, and carrying a cavalry saber. The woman needs help but is unable to speak, so Annette takes to calling her after her odd accoutrement. Saber is welcomed into their house thanks to a preternatural ability to subtly convince people to lower their guards.
However, that evening, Annette wakes to discover the pale woman and her husband sharing a homicidal perversion of congress. Instead of simple sex, Saber has used her namesake weapon on Frank. Annette flees into the night, searching for help. She instead discovers Balthazar, a man in preacher’s duds. Though she pleads for help, the preacher is far more concerned with the signs of Saber’s passage. As soon as he identifies some kind of mark on Annette’s soul, he produces a dagger fashioned from a crucifix and strikes her down.
The wound should be grievous, but after a brief blackout, she wakes strong enough to stumble into the town of Low’s Bend. There, she immediately goes to Slim’s Respite, the saloon and boarding house. Trouble is coming, and if Saber does not kill everyone she encounters then Balthazar might. One is hunting the other, and each is deadly to any who cross their paths.
Annette and her allies, the infamous bounty hunter Gloria (was also once Annette’s lover), a penitent sex worker called Treasure, the establishment’s owner, Slim Santiago–Beltran, and a handful of others will have to learn the truth behind these strange beings. They walk like people but are not quite human. And if they hope to survive, then they must uncover the strangers’ weaknesses. However, the ultimate answer might lie not on this earth but in another place altogether …
Hailey Piper turns their gleeful eye for mayhem and rich LGBT characterizations to the Splatter Western genre with the highly charged horror-western novel Cruel Angels Past Sundown.
Although clocking in at less than two hundred pages, there is a lot going on in Hailey Piper’s book. The author does not necessarily play with the familiar tropes of the shoot ‘em up or the westward expansion. Instead, the book plays with the myth of the west in metaphoric ways. The landscapes are especially blasted, the sun relentless, the inky nights full of terrors, and the towns little spots of civilization in otherwise barren wastes. This is the kind of legendary landscapes Sergio Leone shot for his famed spaghetti westerns (that director even earns a mention in the dedications), and the story balances survival in such landscapes with some deeper philosophical and theological questions. No surprise on the latter, coming from the author of the wildly cool and thoughtful No Gods For Drowning. Pairing such considerations with a western’s motifs, however, results in a striking juxtaposition of bodily terrors and spiritual matters.
The queer characterizations are an easy fit here, as well. Annette might be married to a man (and truly loves him), but she has lovers as well, including kindly Treasure and the gorgeous but lethal bounty hunter, Gloria. Consider this emotionally charged recollections that arise after Annette arrives at Slim’s Respite for a rest:
She recalled the first time she and Frank had both joined Treasure in this bed. They had come to town on errands, and Frank got to drinking downstairs while Annette found her way to the boarding room, her head aflutter with confusion and curiosity. Treasure’s perfume had filled the air with flowers, as it filled her room now. Annette had worried she smelled too much of hay, dirt, and animal, but Treasure had waved those worries off. She had been patient and tender while Annette discovered the contours of a softer woman’s body and liked them.
They had both been touching each other when Annette realized Frank stood in the doorway. Panic had been odd; she’d made to cover herself with this same blanket and couldn’t remember why. He was the one man who had already seen her in the nude, and she had felt silly later that evening after the panicked rattle in her chest gave way to an altogether different thunderous rhythm.
After he’d strode into the room. After he’d closed the door behind him, and taken off his hat and boots, and in the dim light, he had looked so thoughtful and innocent, Annette couldn’t have been sorrier. He seemed born with a heart made for breaking sometimes. She reached for one weathered hand, squeezed his thick fingers, and then drew him close without realizing it. He didn’t stop her.
They had never made children together, but that night they planted the seed of what they would call their understanding. Annette didn’t have any other word for it, but sometimes when they returned to the boarding rooms, apart or together, Treasure’s room or Sylvia’s, an energy wove between them and filled their souls. Treasure had mentioned it, too. Sylvia hadn’t, but there was a calm in her. These were secret places for wild and loving hearts.
Delicate, too, and changing, like when Gloria came into the picture, with her odd England quirks and bravado and glorious smile. And then when Gloria had eyes only for Annette. That time had strained Annette the worst, but right when she thought the fragile understanding might break, it held. So had Frank, still loved, still loving her. They had their needs and passions, and it was fine. Everything had been fine.
Until tonight. Now he was a knotted, twisted pattern in her head of shifting bone and spilled innards. Not a man anymore, but pieces. (Cruel Angels Past Sundown, pp. 27-28)
The sequence is rich with past as filtered through present pain. The yearning in those lines is palpable, intoxicating. The conclusion is a scream from the heart of darkness.
Piper’s prose is like that throughout the book, rich with meaning and layers. And yet it is nevertheless unafraid to include sequences of brutal violence and supernatural horror in the mix. The action sequences are well orchestrated (we can almost hear the Ennio Morricone music score highlighting some of these scenes), and Annette’s journey from a farm to larger and larger venues is a lovely metaphor for her expanding understanding of the wheels and cogs grinding away at creation itself.
Those looking for a more traditional western with blood and guts will best be served elsewhere. Piper’s book is much more interested in playing with mythic themes and dark fantasy touches, reserving the west for backdrop and metaphoric linkages. Readers in search of a thoughtful exploration of the western as a vehicle for gruesome, chilling, and heartbreaking storytelling will find plenty to enjoy in the pages of Cruel Angels Past Sundown.
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Cruel Angels Past Sundown is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook editions.
Next, we will take a look at Warren Wagner’s decidedly queer road novel, The Only Safe Place Left Is the Dark. It is available in paperback and eBook editions.
“The Divine and the Profane: Hailey Piper’s Cruel Angels Past Sundown” is copyright © 2024 by Daniel R. Robichaud. Quotes and cover image taken from the Dead Sky Publishing eBook edition, released in 2023.
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