TERROR TALES OF THE COTSWOLDS

Thanks for the good show, D.

Hope you enjoy. We've got some good stories in there, if I say so myself.

The second in what is already shaping to become a favourite series of mine. To give you a flavour, the anti-heroes and heroines of these stories include a debauched toff with a deadly skeleton in his wardrobe, teenage emissaries of the standing stones, a vengeful sixteenth century abortionist, an enormous, cycloptic slab of roast meat, and a crazed Richard III lookalike back from the grave with murder foremost on his agenda. Themes: witchcraft, demonology, male rape, petrification .... As with the original Fontana Tales Of Terror series, each of the stories is interspersed with a brief account of a macabre legend associated with the district. The advertisement at back advises that future additions to the series include Terror Tales Of East Anglia and (especially pleased about this) Terror Tales Of London.

Alison Littlewood - In The Quiet And In The Dark: Mum has deserted for a life's toy-boying in Italy, leaving young Steph and her father to quit London for the remote delights of Willow Cottage, Long Compton. Steph hates it on sight, wonders how she'll cope at a new school next term, but is soon befriended by Holly and Anne, who spend the holiday hanging around the Rollright Stones. Slowly she's drawn into their seemingly innocent world, and that of Kix, a strikingly handsome youth who seems to have taken a shine to her. But these kids say some very peculiar things. Steph sometimes wonders if they're affiliates of the fairy folk, said to drag children beneath the stones ....

Gary McMahon - Straw Babies: "I think Fred West lived near here." Just the words you want to hear when you're renting a desolate cottage in the Forest of Dean for a week, but then the craven Derek has a habit of making insensitive comments. Samantha, his far younger mistress, is still wondering if she did the right thing in terminating her pregnancy. She regrets agreeing to this jaunt even before he cheerfully announces that their love nest was home to Mother Stagfoot, a deformed hag who served the community as a healer and abortionist until the witch mania reached the Cotswolds. The discovery of a hideous straw doll hidden in the rafters heralds a series of disturbances. Noises in the night. A voice calling to her in grotesque mockery of a distressed infant pleading for its mother and what sounds like something wearing stilts prancing across the roof. Some of the goings on are clearly the work of three mischief-making Blair Witch Project casualties but who - or what - is that terrible misshapen thing approaching the cottage?

Reggie Oliver - Charm: A deeply unpleasant Hooray Henry horror story featuring not one remotely likeable character. In his day - the 'seventies - boorish aristocrat Roderick Foxe-Walter was a notorious party animal, rogering (© Dennis Wheatley) débutantes with impunity while holding court over anyone who was anyone on swinging Chelsea scene, etc. This, fatally, brought him into the orbit of the South London criminal fraternity, namely the infamous Freeman brothers (an extremely unpleasant amalgam of the Krays and Richardsons) with whom he became chums.

The reasons behind call-me-Roddy's subsequent fall from grace are something of a mystery, but now he lives as a recluse, renting out the family home, Stonehill Manor, to fund his high maintenance alcohol dependency. When the latest tenants, Oxford Professor Arthur Bertram and his wife Pauline, begin to show an interest, Roddy resurfaces for long enough to stir the ghost of his youthful victim from the shadows.

Christopher Harman - Hoxlip And After: Attractive tour guide Kate is especially knowledgeable on the subject of the Beast of Hoxlip. Schoolteacher Kevin, enduring a tedious holiday in the Cotswolds, takes little interest in legends of the local devil, preferring to spend the hours stalking her around the community. When, much to his surprise, Kate agrees to sleep with him, he can't help but notice that her skin has a crisp, dry texture. And what's the story with that pram she's forever wheeling around?

Simon Clark - The Shakespeare Curse: The McMahon and Oliver stories are particularly powerful, but this Amicus-style horror is my pick of the five read to date. Clive and Verity Cheadle move into their dream home, Glover's Yarn, a seventeenth century cottage in Stratford-Upon-Avon, after he sneakily sells off his shares in the family business. Redecorating the bedroom, Clive removes a section of panelling to reveal a door - bearing the legend 'Despair and Die' - which leads onto a secret chamber. Three centuries ago, a hunchback was imprisoned and left to starve here by parents who'd read too much Shakespeare and equated deformity with evil. Their poor victim evidently survived a long time down there, as the walls are covered in crude but powerful designs depicting the sob story of his life and what he plans to do to everybody when he finally gets loose ....

You seem to be enjoying so far, D. Keep it up, my man ; )

darker and darker ....

Joel Lane - The Silent Dance: Leamington. Daniel and fellow staff at Neotechnic had been relatively contented with their lot until the arrival of new broom Laura Ferguson, whose aggressive management style drove a stake through the peace and harmony of the children's book department. Among her victims, Alice, Daniel's best friend, bullied from the workplace and now living abroad. Laura's reign of terror ended abruptly when she took a fatal tumble down a flight of stairs, but she'd achieved her worst.

Now Daniel sets out for a concert in Warwick, passing the hideous Neotechnic building on the train. All the bitter memories come flooding back - and so too, the cause of them. Laura Ferguson remains as spiteful and manipulative in death as she was during her brief heyday.

The most Britain in 2012 story in the book to date. The sequence involving Morris Men, Mummers and a gifted folk singer are especially effective.

John Llewellyn Probert - A Taste Of Honey, A Horror Of Stone: Cornerstone Village, near Moreton-on-the-marsh. Sally's unscheduled visit to the standing stones attracts the interest of the ever-vigilant Piskies, the child-stealing winged monstrosities who may have been the basis for the fairy legend. First they steal her handbag, replacing it with a lump of the yellow Cotswold stone, then they invade her dreams. Soon Sally is seeing the wasp-like terrors crawling everywhere, while all around her remain oblivious. She insists that they've selected her as the conduit by which they will return to the world and carry on their dreadful ways. Husband Mark worries that she's going as crazy as his half-demented mother, and even the Reverend of St. Vespers thinks she's taking these fanciful tales too seriously ...

we're only two books into the series but this is shaping up like it's going to be my favourite since Dr. Terror's Black Book Of Horror.

delighted to hear it, Mr. Finch.

Gary Fry - The Lurker: Following the death of his American wife Kate, Arnold, sixty, takes up with widow Pam. Had it not been for Kate, it's possible that Pam would be the love of his life, but they share few common interests. He's particularly disappointed that Pam cannot share Kate's passion for England's cultural heritage.

Disastrously for their relationship, Arnold coerces Pam into accompanying him on a sight-seeing tour of Gloucester. The holiday sees Arnold distracted to the point of rudeness, while Pam's recent adoption of Trash TV Americanisms infuriates him. Is she mocking his bereavement? What he could never have guessed is that Pam's indifference to the Roman remains in the Eastgate Street shopping centre has enticed an infuriated Kate from her grave. When Pam goes missing from their hotel, the only person to witnesses her departure is a local tramp who makes the episode sound like something straight out of Dracula ....

Steve Locksley - Wassailing: Amidst all the misery, of all things, a feel-good Christmas story, albeit one with its share of blood-letting. The house cider at The Black Bull has elixir of life properties, but it comes at a high price - to outsiders. George Harty, whose wife Anne is among the beneficiaries, suffers a crisis of conscience when affluent Londoner Alex Carmichael buys Orchard Cottage. The trees on his new property demand their Yuletide tribute and Carmichael is just another despised townie, except George is quite fond of him. Do he and Anne stick with tradition or will their guilt over yet another ritual murder win out?

I found the two final stories well up there with the very best of the Cotswolds terrors. Being a pushover for anything from the 'surly villager community versus solitary city slicker' case-files, Wassailing was always gonna go down well with me. The Lurker, another best-in-book contender, reads like a contemporary variation on Poe's Ligeia, the narrator's current love interest not so much possessed as ultimately consumed by her dead predecessor.

Thoroughly enjoyed that, Craig. Have yet to begin Terror Tales of East Anglia, but can highly recommend Terror Tales of The Lake District. Remind me to add Cotswolds to my best of 2012's, because it was one of 'em.