R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Night Ghouls (Fontana, 1975)
Gordon Crabb
The Ghost Who Limped
Danger In Numbers
Something Comes In From The Garden
The Man Who Stayed Behind
Christmas Eve
Building Site Manuscript
No Need For Words
The Wailing Waif Of Battersea
The Holstein HorrorNightmares of shuddering horror ...
The terror-crazed ghost of Battersea ...
A monster that feeds on virgin's blood ...
The evil Black Riders who hunt by night ...
A midnight feast of the ghouls ...
Echoing down the eerie centuries, tales of mortal fear to curdle the blood by a master story-teller ...The Ghouls:
"The voice was a gurgle that began somewhere down in the constricted throat and the words seemed to bubble like stew seething in a saucepan .. Edward Goldsmith receives an unwelcome visit at home from a long-haired, unkempt figure in a grimy overcoat and stained corduroys who smells like "bad milk and dead roses." With some difficulty he informs Edward that he used to live here, but now "I am dud." He is 'Charlie', well known to the local constabulary as a harmless derelict and suspected meths drinker (how else to explain his green complexion?). In reality, of course, he is a ghoul, a resourceful one at that, as, when the terrified Edward implores a friendly bobby to search the house for him, he hides in the wardrobe like he was auditioning for
No Sex Please - We're British or something.
The story reads like an early attempt at what would become
The Humgoo in
The Monster Club, except in this instance the Ghouls are much further gone than their loughville brethren, decomposing on their feet, many missing limbs and some with fractured bones protruding from their skin. They're actually being mass-produced by the Government to replace the working class who've got above themselves by forming trade unions and demanding three weeks paid holiday a year.
The Ghost Who Limped: Mother and father dote on seven year old Brian at the expense of his sensitive, sixteen year old sister, Julia, who can never do anything right. Their garden is haunted by a benign spook, 'Mr. Miss-One' (as in 'miss one step' on account of his limp) who is entirely oblivious to their presence as he goes about weeding his invisible flowerbeds and washing his ghost car. Unfortunately, being a Goth has yet to be invented (even the punk explosion is further away than at first appears) so Julia wills herself to fall in love with him and, after another blazing row in which she finally lets slip that she hates her mother, the family send her to Coventry. Julia decides that if Mr Miss-One can't come to her, she will go to him, and sets off to the garage to hang herself ....
To say any more would be to ruin it, but Mike Ashley has described
The Ghost Who Limped as "possibly his best" and it's certainly as good as anything of RCH's I've read up until now.
Danger In Numbers: Jennifer is dumbfounded when she finds husband Robin sitting across the breakfast table from her reading the
Daily Mail. She consults psychiatrist Mr. Hunglebert-Chiffinch over this worrying turn of events (not his choice of reading matter, you understand, but the fact that she poisoned him some months before). The shrink advises her that Robin is a guilt induced apparition and, should he show up again, she should sit on his lap and he'll vanish. However, when she gives this a try, she doesn't sink through him and Robin bawls her out. Exasperated, she recruits her mother (a staunch Tory and prime mover in the local, mass husband-murdering Women's Guild) to rid her of the tenacious ghost. This Mrs. Jones accomplishes by sitting on his face and burying his corpse under a huge slab in the cellar ... but that only leads to bigger problems, double trouble in fact.
Building Site Manuscript: Brentford, Middlesex, summer of 1970. Bramwell Francis Coldwell commits suicide by sticking his head in the gas oven, but the "true death" he craves eludes him thanks to the Frankenstein-style dabbling of black magician Lord Emmwood. Back in 1780, he and his henchmen have been stockpiling and reviving the corpses of hanged felons to use as hosts for the elementals who roam the afterlife. Bramwell finds himself trapped within the body of handsome young Donald 'the Dip' Lym, an executed pickpocket. When the living dead he shares his cell with realise he's a live one, only the timely intervention of his jailors saves him from becoming their cannibal feast.
Christmas Eve: Andrew Nesbitt's festive spirit is smithereened when he's picked up by a strange girl in
The Royal George Hotel, Manville. Janet Gurney insists that he is one of her kind and must assist her in freeing a fellow "nursling" from his cocoon. This involves lots of cutting away at a fleshy sack with a knife and power tools. Until tonight, Nesbitt had always thought of himself as a middle-aged loner with a wanderlust spirit, but now he has to wonder what species he is and what he will become. It's probably very cleverly done, but this type of miss-mash of horror, SF and fantasy brings me out in hives.
No Need For Words: Barbara and Neil are captured by the Scarlet Leader and his cowled cronies who, by means of some black magic ritual, transform them into baying, dog-faced creatures like themselves. Nightmarish and, for once, played deadly straight.
The Holstein Horror: Fake medium Count Louis de Rohan buys an oak chest from an antiques dealer - the equally fraudulent Mr. Chippendale - and unwittingly releases the tall, long-haired black demon therein during a 'seance'. Clairvoyant Madame Orloff, quoting from Conrad Von Holstein's
The Unnatural Enmities And Their Disposal, explains to the Count (or Arthur Watkins as she knows him) that the creature: "doth hunger for the blood of the summoner." In short, if he has not placated the Demon with a pint of virgin's blood in three nights time it will "pluck forth the summoner's wind-pipe and lay it on his breast and then feed mightily on his blood."
