Paul Finch - Enemies At The Door

[dem bones]

Paul Finch - Enemies At The Door (Gray Friars, Sept. 2012)

Eleanor Finch

When .....
Slayground
Those They Left Behind
We, Who Live In The Wood
The Faerie
Daddy Was A Space Alien
The Doom
Blessed Katie
Elderly Lady, Lives Alone
The Ditch
The Poppet
Enemies At The Door

Blurb:
The grinning horror with the plastic face . . . The eerie cries from the haunted wood . . . The baleful presence in the old tenement . . . The underground lair of murderous brutes . . . Twelve chilling tales to remind you that danger and evil can lurk around each and every corner . . . A bumper book of novelettes and short stories from a master of horror.

Gray Friars Press has been especially busy in the run-up to FantasyCon with the publication of the first titles in the exciting New Blood series (Stephen Bacon's Peel Back The Sky and Thana Niveau's From Hell To Eternity), Terror Tales Of East Anglia, and this desirable new collection from Black Book (and Zombie Apocalypse) regular, Paul Finch. Fans of the Black Book's will remember The Doom from Volume six. Paul has also provided Vault-style minimalist synopses of each story on his blog, Walking in the dark, and you can order your copy direct from Gray Friar Press

[Dr Terror]

Started reading this on my journey home from Brighton, and it's another cracking collection.

I would have loved to have had Those They Left Behind in a Black Book.
Daddy Was a Space Alien is a great title and a great story.
And, When... has a lovely opening line to start the collection off!

I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of the book.

[Craig Herbertson]

Oct 4, 2012 13:13:22 GMT Dr Terror said:

Started reading this on my journey home from Brighton, and it's another cracking collection.

I would have loved to have had Those They Left Behind in a Black Book.
Daddy Was a Space Alien is a great title and a great story.
And, When... has a lovely opening line to start the collection off!

I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of the book.

Mr Finch is a top class writer, Haven't read anything by him that fails to hit the mark.

[dem bones]

I'm with you, Craig. Following in the footsteps of Dr. Terror ....

When .....: A representative of the Inner Flame - "our mission is to to keep the Christian message alive in modern schools" - interviews Matthew Compeyson, a bright but disturbed 14 year old Catholic Kid who has, uh, made an exhibition of himself in the school library. Matthew assures him that indecent exposure the very least of his sins ....

To give anything away would ruin it, but When ... is a delightfully horrible opener and, as Charles alludes above, you are strongly advised not to read the first line with a mouthful of tea.

Those They Left Behind: Staples Market, Chalk Farm. Old Elsie Dawkins buys a life-size hangman's dummy from a street-trader on account of the face resembles that of her son, Tommy, hanged in 1965 as 'The Camden Killer' for the murder and dismemberment of a local girl. Tommy freely confessed to the crime, but forty years on, Elsie stubbornly proclaims his innocence.

Shirley, a glam home help, first grows suspicious that the dotty old dear has a new man in her life when the long neglected allotment is tidied, and several minor repairs carried out in the house. When Shirley asks after Mr. Right, Elsie curtly dismisses her on the flimsy excuse that she no longer needs her services.

A week later, on a freezing November night, a half-dressed Shirley is enjoying a pub crawl with the girls on Camden High Street, when she spots Mrs. Dawkins struggling from the Off-Licence with a case of beer. She decides to pay her a late night visit ...

Daddy Was A Space Alien: (David A. Green (ed,) Nasty Piece of Work # 7, March 1998). Tabloid editor Max Horribin hatches yet another sure-fire circulation booster. Rob, our narrator, is tasked with fabricating the story, then sets to rounding up Britain's ten ugliest women to pass off as the progeny of sex-crazed extra-terrestrials and their tragic human abductees. What could possibly go right?

Those They Left Behind particularly impresses as an inversion of Psycho, or so it seems to me. Daddy Was A Space Alien scores with a show of human dignity when you least expect it and When ... is a short, sharp shock straight from Pan Book of Horror territory.

[dem bones]

Another violent and properly horrible 19 pages of suspense and sadism from Finchland. The Ditch: Nicolette, a Bethnal Green prostitute and former junkie, has been outed as the tart who snitched on Sonny Doolan's mob, and now feared pimp Tommy Wand and his psychotic father, Billy, have been handsomely paid to make an example of her. Dooley will leave it to them to dream up a suitably hideous death, his one stipulation is that they capture every last grisly moment to video. One shocking beating later, and Nicolette is lowered into a slimy pit at the site of the original Houndsditch, where King Canute reputedly wreaked terrible vengeance on alleged wannabe Regicide, Earl Elric. Nicolette is pursued through the sewage pipes by three starving dogs, each in turn more vicious than the last until, torn and bloodied, she comes face to bloodied stump with an altogether more terrifying adversary ....

Elderly Lady, Lives Alone: To the outside world Chockton is one of the few personable, clean-cut youths in a dangerous neighbourhood. There's certainly nothing about the young man to indicate his favoured past-time. Over recent years, several female pensioners have been attacked in their own homes, brutally beaten with knuckledusters and what have you. Chockton, of course, flies so far beneath the police radar he's never once suspected and goes about his hobby unhindered. Tonight it's the turn of one lucky resident of Silverlight Avenue ...

I shudder to think where Charles Birkin would have taken such a premise. As it is, Elderly Lady, Lives Alone is likely to have those with ageing relatives squirming disconsolately throughout.

[dem bones]

The Poppet: A terror tale from the Lake District. Dean Purlock persuades fellow Oxford undergraduate Richard Henderson to buy a faceless wooden doll for his little sis from 'Poppets' in Bleaberry Beck village. Rich has just confessed that he's been seeing Francine, the unrequited love of Dean's life, and worries that this may terminate their friendship, but after a few initial snide comments, Dean seems to accept the situation. The dolls, he explains, hail from the time of the Cumberland witch trials, and the originals were carved from the gallows. According to local lore, on no account should you ever give your poppet a face.

When Rich returns to Oxford a fortnight ahead of his fellow students he discovers Dean, who is not the forgiving type, has been busy with his felt tips. Finally, furious at having been stalked through the night by a three foot, limping mannequin in a headscarf, Rich turns on his pursuer. The prelude has already warned that something goes terribly wrong, but even when you think the horror is over, it isn't.

Monker, if you're reading this, i reckon you'd find The Poppet very much to your taste! Maybe it's time we revived the malevolent dolls & Co. thread from Vault MK. 1.

[dem bones]

Back with the fiendish Mr. Finch, and Slayground reads like an ultra-violent take on a 'fifties sci-fi B movie, albeit given a particularly pessimistic twist.

Noon, a hot Tuesday in June 2006, and a light aircraft comes down in central London. Red Team, a six-strong crack police firearms detail led by Sergeant 'Mitch' Croker, arrive on the scene to find a riot in progress. The streets are littered with the corpses of three cops and several citizens, death toll increasing by the minute. If this is an al-Qaeda attack, then they've upped their sophistication level since the previous summer's tube and bus bombing.

A lone cloaked figure, shrink-wrapped in what appears to be a plastic suit and space helmet, is stood in the middle of the street, firing off rounds at window dummies. His ammunition never exhausts. Mitch and the boys hit him with everything they've got, but their bullets have no impact, unlike the enemies, which destroy the armoured response vehicle and cut second-in-command Big Bernie in half. Six-strong Red Team is soon whittled down to two-strong Red Team, and it falls to George, the rookie of the outfit, to take down this seemingly indestructible assassin. He slips inside the evacuated Madame Tussauds where the enemy, unable to distinguish between humans and wax replicas, blasts the Royal Family from their plinths. Posh Spice is knocked to the ground, presumed irreparably damaged but mercifully, Kylie seems to have escaped unscathed. Out back of the Chamber of Horrors, the assassin survives immersion in a vat of molten wax and once again, Gary runs for his life, this time down onto the platform of a deserted Baker Street station ...

[dem bones]

We, Who Live In The Wood: When Sonja Kelman suffers her third miscarriage in two years, husband David, a BBC producer, decides that what she needs is a weeks convalescence on Dartmoor to raise her spirits. West Dart cottage - which stands on the cusp of an adder-infested wood, locally famous for its ghostly funeral processions and "Yeth Hounds" - seems ideal, and before you can ask "what can possibly go right?", Sonja is lured into the trees by the cries of phantom children seeking their mother. Hayley Ferrel, a conscientious district nurse, informs David that the Yeth Hounds are not the pack of Devil Dogs the name implies, but the ghosts of unbaptised infants. She strongly advises him to forget the holiday, drive Sonja back home to Islington while he still can. David protests that he has next to no belief in religion, far less in all the mystical New Age rubbish the country folk peddle to gullible tourists. Hayley counters: "You think that changes anything? You think that what you personally believe makes any difference to the Universe?" Sonja is convinced that the Yeth Hounds are her own unborn children, and very soon her husband will believe the same ....

[dem bones]

Don't know why, but I woke up this morning thinking of the word 'DITCH.' So;

The Ditch: Father and son East London gangster outfit Billy and Tommy Wands are hired by the jailed Doolan brothers to murder a working girl turned snitch. Billy Wands, big on English history, is an admirer of King Canute, who fed his enemies to packs of savage dogs. Now Nicolette, the grass in question, is to suffer the same fate - on camera.

Appropriately nasty. The patrons of The Ragamuffins Rest, Bishopsgate are in for a slimy, foul-smelling surprise.

[dem bones]

The Faerie: (Traps, 2008). Another of Mr. F's excellent supernatural horrors for Christmas - there are possibly enough by now to fill a 'Mammoth Book of ...' Unable to endure more of wife Moira's abusive behaviour, Arthur Cross, 38, makes off in the car with Gabby, their seven-year-old daughter. Perhaps they can see out Christmas at his sister's place in Sheffield - at least she'll not ruin it. The car breaks down in the Peak District, stranding father and daughter on the moor in a snow blizzard. Their only hope is the a lonesome house in the distance. Gabby prefers to take her chances in the car - the place looks too much like the gingerbread cottage in her book of fairy tales - but Dad is insistent, especially when he claps eyes on their hostess, Phoebe. "She reminds me of Nigella Lawson ... you know, the Domestic Goddess." Phoebe plies them with food and drink, even introduces a weird pink poodle puppy for Gabby to pet, but this Mrs. Wonderful is far deadlier than any bosomy celebrity foodie ...

Enemies at the Door: (Andy Cox [ed.], The Third Alternative #16, 1998) Craig, 38, a former paratrooper who suffered brain damage at Goose Green, has since turned his life around, marrying Kathy, working for a Christian Periodical, and publishing Enemies at the Door, an unvarnished account of his army experience. All is relatively calm until he discovers a secret door in his office leading onto a massive movie set. His deepest hidden suspicions confirmed. So that's it! Everything has been staged for his benefit. From the moment he was born, he's been manipulated by actors engaged in a global conspiracy versus himself. It's enough to drive a man over the edge!

The Truman Show gone maniacal.

[dem bones]

Longest story in the book, a powerful tale of a non-existent madwoman's ghost!

Blessed Katie: When she was a little girl, elder brother Danny would scare them both silly with his creepy story about Blessed Katie, the lunatic who lived in the back bedroom. Now Madeleine, 36, moves back to the house on Victory Terrace, East Middlewich, where she spent her childhood. Hardly have the family settled in, than she is terrified by a spectral figure emerging from the "haunted" room. The matted long hair and ragged, soiled nightdress are all too familiar - it's Blessed Katie for sure - but how can that be when Danny fabricated her from his own dark imagination?

Madeleine confides in her GP who prescribed tranquillizers, something which domineering husband Tom is not happy about. When can he expect her to get back to normal?

The ghost - presumably - attacks baby Roberta in her cot, raking the infant's face with sharp claws. No matter that Madeleine keeps her fingernails trimmed short and could not have inflicted such damage, a furious Bob walks out, taking their child with him. He suggests his wife consult a psychiatrist.

When the local Catholic priest and a medium both fail her, Madeleine turns to her brother - now a successful horror novelist - for help. As it was he who invented Katie, maybe he could un-invent her?

[finchinfin]

“Blessed Katie” is probably the highlight of the collection so far, for me.

[finchinfin]

Okay, now that I’ve finished the title story is my favorite. Probably. This was a great collection and more than half of them made my To Re-Read list.