Conjure Wife

Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber (1943)

Norman Saylor, a Hempnell College ethnology professor, discovers his wife Tansy has secretly practiced protective folk magic — Negro conjure formulas, graveyard dirt, hair, silver, knots, hidden "hands" — for the ten years of his rising career. Confronting her, he learns she began casting charms out of nervous compulsion before his hiring, then continued through his book acceptances, his pneumonia, and countless career crises, always convinced only results, never blind faith, guided her. Using rationalist argument, Norman persuades her to burn every charm in the house. That same night, disaster cascades: a flunked student attacks him with a pistol, a student worker falsely accuses him of seduction, a colleague's old thesis "coincidentally" duplicates his own work, and he loses the sociology department chairmanship to the mediocre Hervey Sawtelle. Meanwhile three other faculty wives — Mrs. Carr, Mrs. Gunnison, and Evelyn Sawtelle — are revealed via a bridge-table scene as fellow practitioners of "the Art," alarmed that Tansy has dropped her defenses and may be plotting something. Norman, an unbelieving scientist, begins noticing impossible details: a cement dragon gargoyle atop Estrey Hall keeps shifting position on the roof, and self-destructive "accidents" (razor cuts, a gun going off near him) accumulate. During a bridge party at his house, lightning strikes and destroys the animated dragon just as Tansy — unconsciously working protective knot-magic — snares it, saving him. Afterward, drunk and happy on a nostalgic outing, Norman carelessly tells Tansy "everything I have is yours," unknowingly letting her ritually take his death-curse upon herself. She flees, leaving notes about a doom "in two days... then the Bay," referencing her lifelong premonition of drowning. Norman follows her by train and bus to Bayport, improvises a countercharm from her fragmentary instructions in a hotel room, but arrives at the station a minute too late: Tansy returns from the water soulless, her body animated but empty, informing him "He Who Walks Behind" and a rival agent fought over her, and that Evelyn Sawtelle now holds her captured soul. Norman brings Tansy's empty body back to Hempnell, questioning it about the mechanics of magic, souls, and the secret sisterhood of faculty wives who use sorcery to advance their husbands' careers. He learns Evelyn is dominated by prestige-hunger and fear, Mrs. Gunnison by tyrannical appetite, and Mrs. Carr's motives remain unclear. A phone confrontation with Evelyn triggers a magical backlash that nearly maims the animate phone/Tansy's body. Visiting the Sawtelle house, Norman learns Evelyn was mysteriously attacked in the night — the same reactive violence from his countercharm — and discovers Evelyn does not actually hold Tansy's soul: Mrs. Gunnison secretly took it as a hostage, having distrusted Evelyn. Norman then works late into the night with elderly mathematician Professor Carr, who unwittingly helps him distill universal cross-cultural magical formulas into underlying equations using symbolic logic, to conjure out a soul and control another's. That night, while Norman studies the formulas, the crude, hostile spirit possessing Tansy's body — the same soul that had animated the stone dragon — attacks him with a fire poker and then a kitchen knife in the darkened house; the two grapple on the kitchen floor as the text breaks off.

By Fritz Leiber · First published 1943 · Genre: Horror, Fantasy, Psychological Thriller · 17 chapters · 61,659 words

First lines

"I keep wondering if she knows about Us," said the woman with black button eyes. She played the queen of spades.

The queen of hearts trumped the queen of spades. "You can put your mind at rest," said the silver-haired woman sweetly, gathering in the trick. "She doesn't. Tansy Saylor plays a lone hand. Like most women, she thinks she's the Only One. Co-operation such as ours is rare."

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fantasy · horror · occult · witchcraft · supernatural · suspense · psychological · marriage · jealousy · power · male-female dynamics · urban fantasy

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