Guy N. Smith - Wolfcurse

[dem bones]

Guy N. Smith - Wolfcurse (Nel, April 1977)

Steve Crisp

Blurb:
BLOOD.
The sight of it, darkly streaked and spattered on his face.
The feel of it, stickily encrusted round his mouth.
The smell, cloying, stifling.
The taste, warm and sweet in the throat.

BLOOD.
But whose? Dear God, what had he done?
He dropped to his knees and howled his despair and anguish.

Raging Fury!

It begins with Ray Tyler, timid bank cashier, steaming into three lairy hooligans vandalising his Viva. One frenzied bout of arm breaking, throat tearing, non-surgical castration later, and it is home to miserable council house and wife Lillian, who ain't the looker she was twenty years ago. Face it, life's not been worth living since their little boy, Dillon, was taken out by a passing car as he rode his toy scooter in the road. Now she just sneers at him all the time. God, how he wants to smash her face in!

What has come over him? Bad case of nicotine withdrawal? Or could it be something to do with the book he picked up for £2 in Rowleys during his dinner hour?

Ray dreams of becoming self-sufficient. What wouldn't he give to jack the wretched job, leave Lil, the Mildenhall Estate, and the rat-race far behind! Fat chance, 'specially now nosey neighbour, Fred Walton, has reported him to the council for keeping hens. Ray gets a protrusion in his trousers just thinking about he'd like to do to the snivelling old creep.

Ray consults his recently acquired book concerning customs and folk beliefs of the Middle Ages (title, author and publisher withheld, n.d.). A chapter devoted to the werewolf both thrills and appals him - it seems so relevant to this evening's shamefully exhilarating confrontation.

Maybe he should get rid of it?

Lying in bed that night, unable to sleep, he feels an overwhelming urge to visit the park. On all fours.

[TBC ...]

[dem bones]

Lillian, rashly demanding to know where he's been, accuses Ray of picking up a prostitute. Truth is, he doesn't remember what took place in the park, just that something did. In an ecstasy of hatred he tears off his clothes and thrusts his gentleman's equipment in her horrified face. "Would I be like this now if I'd been with another woman .... It's about time I took you the way a woman should be taken, Lil. No more of this gentle under-the-sheets stuff, once a week if I'm lucky for me!"

The following morning. Against his every inclination, Ray shows up for work where the tyrannical manager, George Henshaw, picks today of all days to provoke him. Henshaw gets off lightly with a broken nose. Ray's excuse for a career in banking is so behind him he doesn't even wait for the disciplinary hearing.

Lillian, a mass of bruises from last night's rape, is convinced her husband needs psychiatric treatment. She phones the surgery. The line is permanently engaged. Nothing for it but to pay an indefinite visit to her mother.

Ray, the madness passed, is peacefully tending the garden ... until Fred Walton kicks off about the hens yet again. It really doesn't pay to pick a fight with this new hostile Tyler when he's holding a garden fork. Again the adversary flukily escapes with his life, but we've 120 pages for author to put that right.

Later that night, the thing Ray has become dines in an abattoir.

[TBC]