When I originally posted this, I didn't realise that someone else had done a good job of covering it before. If I can find their thread, it might be nice to add it here.
Sphere, 1970. First published 1969
When Dudley Renton, Bishop of Lanchester, is killed by a hit-and-run driver outside his cathedral, it seems that the last obstacle to the opening of Martin Railstone’s 18th century tomb at Caswell Hall has been removed.
Railstone was a poet, author of
The Inner Darkness, an artist and a scientist. Known as “Little Boy Blue” because of his skin, darkened by the dropsy, for 15 years before his death Railstone did not publish or permit a single canvas to be exhibited; but he was known to be hard at work following a line of scientific inquiry “so startling that it must be kept from the world till humanity was ready to receive it”.
The loyal members of The Adherents of Sir Martin Railstone and the Openers of the Caswell Tomb believe that the tomb is full of priceless works of art and scientific theses. Lord Marne’s friend Archdeacon Brownjohn has promised to open it when he's made Renton’s successor at Lanchester.
Unfortunately Brownjohn gets a better offer. And then Marne learns of the Cass River Scene – which will leave Caswell Hall submerged by a new reservoir.
Another of the Caswellites, George Banks, decides to find his own way into the tomb and has become a regular guest on guided tours of the house, which “seemed to crouch miserably in a hollow like some trapped animal waiting for the hunters to put an end to its tortured life”. When the other tourists are gone he begins to dig through the ancient wall. But when he breaks through to the vault, sealed for centuries, he touches something
warm...
More to come...
Enjoyable so far, this one!
Caswell Hall, Nov. 21st. A sad return from London to find Kate three days dead and rotting in her bonds. In life she was a worthless vagrant and has proved as worthless a subject for my purpose. In future I must be more selective and seek only those with the exact physical requirements that have been given to me.
Nov. 22nd. Kate’s body is disposed of and my boy, Tom, has made pure the laboratory with sulphur. But the stench of decomposition still persists in the house to add to my sense of frustration.William Norseman, the Dean of Lanchester, is a former military man, standing six foot three and weighing seventeen stones; known to colleagues as ‘The Bison’ he believes in evil and God and has no intention of allowing the Caswellites into the vault where Martin Railstone’s body and last works are entombed. Norseman has found a fragment of a diary, and it has convinced him that Railstone was a murderer and possibly in league with the devil.
Also present at a meeting between Norseman and the Caswellites are historian Mary Carlin and journalist John Wild. Mary’s researches have led her to suspect that possibly the tomb contains an ancient Christian relic - possibly the greatest one of all - stolen from Abbot Vulfrum’s medieval grave.
One of the Caswellites, Erich Beck, was acquitted by the Nuremberg tribunal for lack of evidence, but many believe that his work in the concentration camps had included horrible experiments to investigate the rapid decay of the brain’s cells when deprived of oxygen. Beck is fascinated by Railstone’s well-known mysterious resurgence of physical and mental powers that had allowed him to suddenly produce so much work in his last years of life. Some of Railstone’s poetry and notes suggest that he had knowledge of micro-organisms long before Pasteur and Lister. Beck is afraid that what lies in the tomb might not be treasure.
When Norseman refuses to allow the Caswellites to enter, they have no recourse but to try to find the none-existent descendant who Railstone had insanely referred to in his will “...my body and my works must lie undisturbed till a red-haired woman of my blood and my two physical infirmities is found to claim them.”
But impossibly, she is found; and Norseman, with Mary Carlin and John Wild, enters the tomb – Norseman is determined to destroy any evil there before the Caswellites can retrieve it.
But in one of the most grotesque scenes of violence in print...
Nancy Leame has been in and out of hospitals and mental asylums all her life. Red-haired, a sufferer of dropsy and sharing the same skin complaint as her ancestor, she is no beauty; but now she feels like a queen as the time approaches when she will come into her inheritance, Caswell Hall and the treasures of her ancestor’s tomb.
In one of the most grotesque scenes of violence in print, the Dean of Lanchester has been impaled by a bronze phallus when he attempts to break into the tomb. His attempt to destroy the evil there has failed, and now Nancy Leame bends to kiss the mummified face of Martin Railstone, as if believing that the lines of his poems will come literally true and he will wake like a sleeping prince.
And there
is a relic in the tomb; a strange chalice that Mary Carlin believes might be the Grail itself. But before she has time to investigate it, a new threat invades the place where she and Nancy Leame are spending an exhausted night. Until now the novel has walked the boards of a gothic horror stage with grave robbing, madness, murder and lunatic Nazi concentration camp experiments.
Now the story moves into Hammer X The Unknown territory. Something terrible has been seen escaping Nancy Leame’s bungalow and disappearing into the rain, and soon isolated victims are meeting horrible deaths. The army is called in, but the moving carpet of evil cannot be contained.
Once Blackburn has introduced the X the Unknown menace, he brings the novel fairly quickly to an end, but he does nonetheless paint some memorable scenes of barely glimpsed horrors as it moves across the countryside. I wasn’t sure what I’d think of this novel after so long, but I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it and hereby nominate it for the Vault of Evil’s highest award - a ‘Kevin’! ;D
Later, after some thought: Beginning to have doubts about this award... maybe a Charles Black sock puppet to put on the mantle instead, perhaps?
Or one of Bushwick's Doc Martins...
