Nick Sharman - The Surrogate

[dem bones]

Nick Sharman - The Surrogate (NEL, Nov 1981/ NAL 1980)

Blurb:
The old man was dying. Shivering; rug-wrapped, his body wasted, the limbs already skeletal. His room was filled with the sweetly nauseating smell of decay.
Money he had had, ambition, power, intelligence and an icy determination. Always others had been bent to his will. Now these things would no longer serve. But one thing more he had.

Hate.

An absolute hatred of the one person who had defied him in his life. And now the power of that hatred would allow him to stretch out from beyond the grave and seek to destroy. The victim: his own grandson. A child.

Central Radio Talk Show host Frank Tillson has never forgiven his tyrannical father for making his childhood a misery and driving his beloved mum to suicide. Since walking out in his early teens, Frank has never once contacted the old bastard and, up until recently, his life was all the better for it. Then tragedy struck: wife Kathie was killed in a motoring accident leaving Frank to raise their son, Simon, alone. He's making a good job of a difficult situation. Simon, just turned eight, is thriving at school where he's popular with teachers and pupils alike. He's into the usual Spiderman, The Hulk, The Muppets, Dracula models and football (Dad takes him along to watch QPR to cure him).

Which is how it stands when Reece, taciturn butler to Tillson the elder, contacts the prodigal Frank. His father is dying of cancer and wants to see him just one last time. Against his better judgement, Frank agrees to pay the despicable old sadist a final visit. As anticipated, even with his dying breath, the semi-mummified, stinking thing in the chair wants to talk business. In short, he's named the grandson he's never met as his heir. Henceforth, Simon will be schooled in business and, on coming of age, take his Grandfather's place in the boardroom.

Frank tells him what he can do with that idea and storms out.

Eddie Raymond, Frank's producer, has procured a psychic, Sella, Masters, to appear in the fun Friday guest spot. Eddie, a shambling alcoholic, is not only Frank's trusted lieutenant but his best friend. Eddie has recently been dating Angela, his low-wattage assistant. Utterly useless at her job she may be, but she's half his age and a looker. He's finally ready to settle down.

Sella proves a brilliant guest - Frank takes an instant fancy to her - and, post-broadcast, proves she's no phoney by relating an exact reenactment of Kathie Tilson's final moments. Jump cut to a funeral scene where a nasty old guy keeps staring at her. This vision so affects Sella that she bolts from the studio.

Simon is terrified when a man in a Limo pulls up outside the school gates, tells him that he's his grandad and that he is going to make him very rich. Frank, furious, calls Reece who assures him that, whoever has been pestering the boy, it can't be Tillson senior as he's dead .....

To be continued ...

[dem bones]

The studio equipment inexplicably malfunctions; a wreathe is left for Simon; Dead Dad (or someone very like him) shows up in a photograph when he has no business doing so; telephone's dispense white noise worthy of an early Velvet Underground bootleg. Poltergeist activity, Black Magic or just a scorned phone-in warrior out for vengeance? It's got Frank so, he no longer trusts anyone. Perhaps Dead Dad has recruited Eddie, Angela, Reece and Sella for an orchestrated campaign of persecution, because, no matter that he's rotting in his grave, he ALWAYS has to win. As stark raving paranoid as this sounds, it could well be the case. But there's a genuine 'supernatural' aspect that isn't so easily explained away, as when Kathie's rag dolly comes to life and tries to strangle him: Even the novel's solitary bad-sex interlude takes a necrophiliac turn.

And so The Surrogate twists and turns toward it's eerie and, for once, satisfying conclusion. Hard to believe thar this is the same 'Nick Sharman' who wrote The Cats (and was once very publicly - and wrongly - outed as St. Pierce 'Eat Them Alive' Nace!).

Very recommended.