David H. Keller - Tales From Underwood

[dem bones]

David H. Keller - Tales From Underwood (Neville Spearman, 1974)

Cover photo: Katya Koutrouboussis

Introduction

The Science Fictioneer

The Worm
The Revolt of the Pedestrians
The Yeast Men
The Ivy War
The Doorbell
The Flying Fool
The Psychophonic Nurse
A Biological Experiment
Free as the Air

The Fantaisiste

The Bridle
Tiger Cat
The God Wheel
The Golden Bough
The Jelly Fish
The Opium Eater

The Psychiatrist

The Thing in the Cellar
The Moon Artist
Creation Unforgivable
The Dead Woman
The Door
The Perfumed Garden
The Literary Corkscrew
A Piece Of Linoleum

Blurb;

This collection contains twenty-three of the best fantastic short stories of Dr. David H. Keller. The stories divide clearly into three groups : science fiction, weird fiction and an intriguing selection which have their roots in Dr. Kellers long career as a practising psychiatrist.
The tales of the science‑fictioneer and the fantaisiste seem to combine in those of the psychiatrist, so that this book will appeal to the broad spectrum of devotees of fantasy in its varied forms. The novel ideas of the writerof science-fiction contain a strong note of social criticism as well as of prophecy ; the stories of the psychiatrist reveal a deep and penetrating knowledge of the secret recesses of the human mind.
Particularly outstanding individual stories from this long out of print collection are The Worm, The Thing in the Cellar, The Dead Woman, A Piece of Linoleum, The Revolt of the Pedestrians and The Yeast Man.

Apparently, Keller's experiences as a psychiatrist left him with a morbid dislike of women who he almost invariably depicts as scheming sadists (Tiger Cat, A Piece Of Linoleum and - not included in this collection - The Seeds Of Death, etc.) . This can make his work hard going and might explain why his stories are not as well known as he should be.

The Thing In The Cellar: From the age of three months, young Tommy Tucker has been terrified of the cellar. His parents take him to see Dr. Hawthorne who learns that the child’s fear is rooted in his belief that there’s something lurking down there. Hawthorne advises the Tuckers as to what they should do to disillusion the boy of his ridiculous fancy.

The Dead Woman: Mild mannered book-keeper Mr. Thompson’s wife, Lizzie, is dead. The problem is, nobody - not her mother, sundry doctors, or even the undertaker he calls to the house - will believe him. When the flies and worms get busy he decides that drastic measures are called for.

The Seeds Of Death: The Duke of Mercia, down on his luck, agrees to investigate a series of disappearances around the Andoran castle of Lady Helen. A demon flower tale which makes fine use of Gothic paraphernalia and also scores by having the bad guy - or girl - come out on top.

In Memoriam: Dr. Brown interviews the reclusive Prof. Moyers, a man with a very peculiar tobacco bowl - the hollowed out skull of his wife. Brown is greatly relieved to leave in one piece. “Only once before I had known such a pall of horror to depress me - after a visit to an asylum for the hopelessly insane.”

A Piece Of Linoleum: Why would John Harker commit suicide when he had such a loving wife? Read this and discover why "The coroner absolutely refused to consider any other verdict"

The Ivy War: Sci-horror: Vampire plants wage war versus Pennsylvania, draining the blood of any creature unfortunate enough to get in their way!

[dem bones]

Three Conte Cruel's, all delightfully macabre!

The Jellyfish: Prof. Queirling is detested by his pupils for his superiority complex. To prove to them that he's a God among men, he uses his superior brain power to shrink to microbe size and enters a droplet of rainwater populated by various bacterias and a jellyfish known as the Bishops Mitre while the pupils watch his antics on a cinema screen. From that moment you're gleefully anticipating the outcome and Keller doesn't disappoint. I'm not sure if the author was aiming for hilarity but The Jellyfish certainly worked for me.

Tiger Cat: Sorona, Italy. The beautiful Donna Marchesi has always been proud of her Opera-standard singing voice, but on the one occasion she performed to a private audience in New York nerves got the better of her and some of the crowd were unkind enough to hiss. Now she keeps twenty-plus starving men chained to pillars in a cavern beneath her mountain villa, each of them blind thanks to a slash of her claws and trained to applaud loudly as she gives her nightly recital or face a taste of her dog-whip. But what would happen should the men's chains be removed? Incredibly vicious!

The Doorbell: Jacob Hubler, steel millionaire and electronic genius, pays struggling author Henry Cecil $500 to visit him at his Canadian mansion to hear his story. It begins with the coldblooded murder of his mother and brother by four desperadoes when he was an infant. Three of the killers have since paid the ultimate price at the mansion, and now Cecil is about to bear witness to the torture murder of the fourth. Method of execution involves a doorbell, a huge electromagnet, and some medical capsules, administered by a drunken doctor, which Hubler has had shipped in specially from New York.

[dem bones]

Bindings Deluxe: (Weird Tales, Jan. 1943).

John Giunta

"I don't like women."

That's the opening line.

It began when the beautiful Lady Leonora Sonada applied to join the newly formed, International Association of Book Binders. Lady Sonada she knows all there is to know about the profession as she's read an entry on the subject in her beloved twenty-six volume set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The chaps laugh her out of the room. Her Ladyship does not take ridicule lightly. One by one over the space of a three years, twenty-five of the founder members mysteriously disappear, until the narrator is the last man standing. Which is when he receives a romantic invitation to join Lady Sonada at her Spanish castle.

"So I sat there, expounding largely on the strange behaviour of women which I had observed in my medical practice: called them traitors: cited history to prove them scheming, devious and cruel.

All the while I was talking thus I was glad I was in the bathhouse instead of my own home, where my wife might hear me. Of course she would have known I was just egging him on but she never did like it if I gave my opinion of her sisters."

Sadly, not included in Tales From Underwood, and it really should have been, if only because the story is so laugh out loud misogynistic you wonder why Grinderman have yet to provide a soundtrack.