Kenneth Rayner Johnson - The Homunculus

[dem bones]

Kenneth Rayner Johnson - The Homunculus (NEL, July 1982)

A grossly endowed evil dwarf. A man-like creature of insatiable sexual appetites.

Blurb:
BIRTHS
SINCLAIR - On June 24th at Burntwoods Hospital, to Elaine and Peter, a son.
DEATHS
SINCLAIR - On June 24th at Burntwoods Hospital, in childbirth. Elaine, beloved wife of Peter.
He had arrived, blood-streaked from his dying mother's womb. Medically normal except for the thin membrane that webbed the fingers of the right hand. Normal except for the eyes. The old, chillingly cold eyes that looked with blank malice on the outside world.
Normal except for his conception: misbegotten and created out of evil. The ancient, ungodly dream of the alchemists come to pass. The Homunculus.

And only a woman, gasping in the final spasms of death, felt a bone-deep chill of premonition. Screamed, for herself and for the hideous future of mankind.

No messing about with The Homunculus. We're thrown straight into the delivery room where Elaine Sinclair is undergoing the agonies of Hell giving birth to .... something. Husband Peter has to leg it from the room as his wife's swollen vagina reminds him of an evil jellyfish. At close of play the weird-eyed child-thing with webbed hands lives. What's left of his mother is hastily wheeled away before Peter can see the wreckage of her lower abdomen and throw up all over again.

Cut to the home of Brand Kinsella, something to do with flogging laser technology, and his problematic, bra-free 17-year-old daughter, Angie, a volunteer on the psychiatric ward at North London's Burntwoods hospital. "I just wish you could see some of the visions she seems to hang around with lately. Freaks. Weirdos. They don't even talk the same language. All that make up - boys, too - and silly hair and clothes." Mrs. Brand quit the family nest a decade back, and Brand is now sleeping with Gemma Barnes, librarian. He frequently imposes on Gemma to move in with them. She refuses, explaining it would be unfair to Angie.

Gemma bumps into an old college chum. Sarah Trevel, journalist, is currently investigating a witchcraft cult operating out of Potters Bar. Sarah asks Gemma to listen out for any word on a clandestine and reputedly sinister group, Supra Obscurans, based in St. John's Wood. These hooded fellows, we learn, are disciples of the Master Regigno, the all-pervading power, the Cosmic all, etc., for whom they have prepared a superior homunculus. The Master made flesh has the appearance of a nine year old boy. Those who displease him are punished with lunacy. From the obscene design branded beneath her breasts, it seems Angie has fallen under his spell ...

Pop culture references to date include Peter Haining's Anatomy of Witchcraft; H. T. F. Rhodes The Satanic Mass; Zabriskie Point; Woodstock. Fashion tips: Angie's "sloganed tee-shirts" (No Wuckin' Furries, Bullshit, "Fly United - and a cartoon of two ducks copulating ecstatically while on the wing."). Sarah's leftover hippie wardrobe ("... blue denims, a man's shirt beneath a sagging, vee-necked sweater, and an Afghan coat which looked like a relic from the psychedelic era.") From the location, Burntwoods hospital is almost certainly based on Edgware General (RIP), on Burnt Oak Broadway.

[dem bones]

"The Great Work is about to proceed," declares the dark mini-messiah as he plunges his enormous member inside one of the ten chosen sisters. The recipient duly screams in "exquisite pain." It is the master's mission to "implant the seed for the entire repopulation of the planet with a race of new men. Supermen"

Kinsella's electronics company faces a brighter future now some company or other has brought into his idea of projecting holographic pictures onto shop window mannequins. He's looking to hire Roger Moore, Racquel Welch, Bo Derek, James Caan, and Robert Redford as clothes horses. Not sure if this has any importance to the story but thought I'd best mention it just in case.

Sarah breaks the story of the nine-year-old and his secret magical cult across the front page of the local paper. She has had a lucky break in meeting loose tongued Jennifer Hewson, nineteen, a recent recruit to Supra-Obscurans. Jennifer is among the chosen ones - or was until the Master discovered her betrayal. He ushers her inside the Sanctum Sanctorum for a jolly good rogering, deliberately wrecking her vagina in the process. Somehow Jennifer makes it to Sarah's Finchley flat, only to be mown down by a hit and run driver. With her dying breath she informs the journo that the cult's meeting place is the old priory behind the hospital on Forge Lane. The brand between her breasts vanishes with her life force!

Halfway through now (p 91 of 181). Had high hopes for this novel having greatly enjoyed KRJ's The Succubus, and so far, so thoroughly unpleasant. Our likeable action-librarian is making noises about infiltrating the cult. Sarah reminds her of what happened to poor Jennifer, specifically her womb, but Gemma reckons its all a load of hocus pocus mumbo jumbo. She'd not be surprised if Boy wonder wears a strap on.

[dem bones]

"There was no reason why the mother should have died. A freak over-haemorrhage. Internal bleeding. Profuse. The tearing of unusually delicate internal tissue. A weak artery." - Nine years on, Dr. Alexander Brosse, the obstetrician who tended Elaine Sinclair, is still mystified as to why she failed to survive giving birth.

Having interviewed Dr. Brosse, Gemma rashly investigates the lodge after dark. She is dragged inside the gates by a hooded, robed trio and presented to the kid she's heard so much about. "Gemma Barnes ... you have expressed a wish to join our secret order. to be initiated into its sacred mysteries. So mote it be."

The mini-Messiah commands her to strip and lay across the altar while he burns the familiar phallic symbol (and the number 10) between her breasts. With his eyes. Then he gets down to business. So much for a prosthetic member!

Tipped off by Sarah, Brand Kinsella sets out in search of the missing Gemma. Getting no joy from Dr. Brosse who has no idea where she went after their interview, Kinsella acts on a hunch and Kinsella scales the wall separating the hospital from the ruins of the old lodge. His luck is in! Prowling the grounds, he chances upon the alchemist's laboratory and can't resist a nosey around. Supra-Obscura have meticulously recorded their activities in a ledger, including incriminating details of the medical malpractice at Burntwoods which saw Elaine artificially inseminated with "the secret menstruum." A particularly affecting chapter ends with a horrified Kinsella examining the monstrosities swimming in the huge jars lining the laboratory walls. And then his world goes black ....

Bound and hoodwinked, Kinsella is manhandled inside the chapel where, under the sadistic Master Regigno's spell, he is compelled to watch as the over-exuberantly endowed boy-god gives Angie (number 5) a proper seeing to with that notorious "sacred lance."

The next morning, Kinsella awakens in his own bed with a splitting headache. Were the events of last night real or a massive hallucination? Gemma calls around, all smiles. Everything is rosy until she strips off, exposing the "tattoo" beneath her bosom ...

Forty pages to go. Very recommended. If anything, this novel is more suspenseful and horrific than The Succubus.

[fritzmaitland]

Jings. Superb stuff. I'd forgotten how good this delirium could be. Things are vaguely coming back. I read "Jack Cannon"'s The Hammer Of God on holiday -


and fell into arguably the most politically incorrect world ever. Twas good.