Mark Morris - Toady

[dem bones]

Mark Morris - Toady (Corgi, 1990: originally Piatkus, 1989)

Chris Moore

Blurb:
WELCOME TO THE HORROR CLUB a world of werewolves and poltergeists, psychopaths and shape changers, the unquiet and the living dead...

A fantasy world, of course, for Richard, Robin and Nigel, the club's members, are ordinary boys from ordinary families, who just happen to share a taste for the macabre in films and videos, books and comics. And then they admit a fourth member to their club — Toady, a far from ordinary boy. From the moment he lures the others into a nerve-jangling seance in a house with a chilling reputation, their lives are blighted by worse horror than they have ever imagined.

Terror stalks the familiar streets of a sleepy seaside town and waits to invade the safest home. The pervasive stain of evil spreads like ripples on a pond, leaving a trail of sacrilege and death in its wake. One by one the members of the Horror Club are forced into a netherworld, halfway between illusion and reality. It is up to the final member to fight alone against the evil they have unleashed — until, in the final battle, he is joined by an unexpected ally...

`A strikingly imaginative mixture of horror and fantasy, with a real sense of supernatural terror and with scenes of horror so strange they border on surrealism' - Ramsey Campbell

"I am all. I am the Shuggoth, the Manitou, the Vampire, the Demon .... I am the hungry wolf of your dreams."

Winter at the desperately dull seaside resort of Starmouth. Heavy snowfall. Adrian 'Toady' Tibbett is a fat, friendless, painfully awkward, fourteen-year-old bully magnet. The closest thing he has to any mates are two boys in the same class, Richard Gardener and Nigel Figg, who, learning that he shares their love of horror films and fiction, invite him to join their club. The only other member is Robin Treadwell, two years their senior, who is leaving school at the end of term to take up full-time employment. Robin is an acne factory on legs, terrified he'll never have a girlfriend. He works weekends as a shelf-stacker in the local supermarket - where he's bullied. The Horror Club hold regular meetings in a cave along the beach. Before long Toady is getting on all of their nerves on account of his superiority complex and generally unpleasant demeanour, but they can't bring themselves to kick him out.

Rusty Oates, the official school bully and all-round psycho, despises Toady. They live close to each other on the notorious Piling Hill Estate in the bad part of town. When the Horror Club intervene to try prevent their sort-of-mate getting yet another hiding, Rusty and his thug hangers-on target all of them for rough treatment. It looks like they've had it until Richard's big brother, Neil, steps in and breaks Rusty's nose. Now they are really in trouble.

Rusty, Mo the skinhead, Ratz and the rest of the gang meet up at their local, The Glamour, to ogle the stripper, drink themselves stupid and plan bloody revenge.

Toady has learned that the derelict, roofless house on King Street was abandoned by it's owners in 1979 on account of alleged "poltergeist" activity. What a wonderful place to hold a seance, especially if he can contact the entity! Trouble is, his fellow Horror Clubbers are reluctant to get involved. Richard has informed his elderly psychic friend, Olive Pierce (aka 'Madama Zara - Fortune Teller') of Toady's intentions. She has one of her turns and strongly advises against participation. But, of course, Toady gets his way.

Their very amateurish efforts are only too successful. They unleash a shape-changer of stupendous power.

Violence, murder, arson and a walking snowman come to Starmouth. It really does not pay to get too close to the cast of seemingly hundreds (and Mr. Morris has a flair for believable characters, sympathetic or otherwise) as there's no guarantee they'll be with us for much longer. I mean look what that "girl" did to Alfie Bessie, the popular local tramp ....

Up to page 460 now (of 702!). It's been bloody brilliant so far. I don't do epics as a rule, but this one is so pacy you fairly fly through it.

An abundance of pop culture references - Ramsey Campbell, Carrie, Kate Bush, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Fangoria, The Chicken Song, the Ragettys, Peter Cushing, Blankety Blank, Eastenders, Emmerdale Farm, Siouxsie & The Banshees, & so on. Even The Maggots cover artwork makes a brief but scene-stealing guest appearance!

[dem bones]

Toady was published in Great Britain in 1989, and Bantam released it in the U.S. in 1991, under the title The Horror Club. Is it true that the American release was cut by a third?

Yes, though I did the cutting, and it was all from the latter, more fantasy-oriented section of the novel.

- From Lisa Morton's interview with Mark Morris, Nightmare Magazine #21, June 2014.

"We all have problems, Richard. Existence itself is one enormous problem."

Seems like I took a breather at an opportune moment. After close-on 500 pages of pure supernatural horror novel, Toady subtly shape-shifts into a surreal fairy tale, gingerbread cottage and all! With three of the four Horror Club members hovering between life and death, the action alternates between the coma ward of Starmouth Hospital and the astral plane - "no time" - as the lost boys desperately seek a means to return to their bodies. Help arrives in the form of a tiny old woman with a psychedelic beard and her son, an enormous talking hound (I'll admit to coming over a little worried at this point but, no, all good stuff). Adrian is not too sure about the odd couple. They seem trustworthy, but ... The trio have no alternative but to tramp on through the enchanted forest, the nightmare tropical jungle (beware of the bacon sandwich), the mean streets of a town called Red where punk rock gargoyles keep humans as slaves ....

Meanwhile, back in Starmouth, Richard, the last man standing, takes the fight to the enemy. He has endured so much over the past ten days, it has rid him of fear, but that may not necessarily be a good thing.

All roads lead to the hospital for a desperately exciting, suspenseful and ultimately horrific climax which, like the fantasy sequence, I didn't see coming.