John Llewellyn Probert - How Grim Was My Valley

[dem bones]

Available NOW from Newcon press

John Llewellyn Probert - How Grim Was My Valley (NewconPress, Sept. 2022).

Elena Betti

Author's Note
Ramsey Campbell : Introduction: Grim with a Capital N

On The Road
A Cruel Summer
Valley Interlude No 1
Still Death
Valley Interlude No 2
The Men With Paper Faces
By Any Other Name
Valley Interlude No 3
Learning The Language
Valley Interlude No 4
Somewhere, Beneath A Maze of Sky
Valley Interlude No 5
The Church With Bleeding Windows
Valley Interlude No 6
What others Hear
Valley Interlude No 7
The Devil In The Detail
Valley Interlude No 8
Forgive us Not Our Trespasses
The Road Not Taken

Grim, Grim My Valley Now: Afterword & Story Notes

Blurb:
Robert wakes up on the Welsh side of the Severn Bridge with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Determined to reclaim his identity, he embarks on an odyssey through the country of Wales, bearing witness to the stories both the people and the land itself feel moved to tell him. Every new tale brings him one step closer to learning the truth about himself.

John Llewellyn Probert delivers a gripping romp of a book, a portmanteau novel steeped in the myths and secret tales of his native Wales. A compendium of the sinister that draws the reader inexorably forward, as we share in Robert's quest to discover the truth, wherever that may lead

[ramseycampbell]

Be gripped by this romp immediately!

[dem bones]

I am! I am!

Thirteen years (!) on from The Catacombs of Fear. a new Lord Probert portmanteau horror novel!

On The Road: Robert recovers consciousness by the Seven Bridge, to find his car stalled on the Welsh border. What can have happened? Why doesn't he remember his surname or ... hardly anything? A passer-by — suspiciously familiar with this situation — drives him to the Celtic Manor Hotel to use a phone. Robert checks his pockets. A driving licence — if only he could read his surname in this dim light! — and a wallet minus cash and credit cards. He can't even afford a drink at the bar. Maybe a glass of water? No, that's strictly residents only. Embarrassed, Robert is collared by a gent named Thomas Jeavons who buys them both a double G&T. Jeavons has holidayed here every summer since his stag weekend of forty years ago. Why? Well, if Robert would be so kind as to humour an old man his fancies...

A Cruel Summer: South Wales, July 1976. To mark Tom Jeavons' impending marriage to Katy, his best man has arranged a stag weekend for four at the Celtic Manor Hotel. Booking includes a golf session on the famous course despite none of the party having any interest in the game. Tom's last vacation as a free man gets off to a bad start groom when he enters the hotel bar to find Molly, his clingy fling of two months ago, come to make a last play for his favours. Desperate to be rid of her, Bob agrees to a late night meet in her room post-golf tournament.

Out on the course, Tom slices a precision shot into the rough and enters the bushes to retrieve it. Somehow he gets very lost. Eventually, he arrives at the edge of a pit and ... is that someone calling?

Having no intention of spoiling it, I will only suggest that if you knew what was down there, you'd feel compelled to return as the haunted Mr. Jeavons.

Valley Interlude No 1: The mechanic can find no issue with the car which, sure enough, is working just fine. If Robert could just see his way to settling the call out fee? A hotel guest offers to foot the bill in return for a lift to Newport. Bernard Stokes, art dealer, needs to ready his gallery for reopening following that nasty business when the two student girls went missing after attending the Morgan exhibition ...

What a terrific start. A Cruel Summer is like no other story I've read to date. And as for the next up ....

[dem bones]

"The world is thinner in some places, and there are parts of Wales where the barriers are nothing more than tissue paper. This house sits on the borderland between one reality and another. They can come here, and we can go there, if we choose to."

Still Death: Gemma Parkin drives from London to Exeter to attend her brother-in-law's funeral. Tobias Morgan, the celebrated artist, killed himself shortly after wife, Maddy, finally rotted out of life, the victim of a vile necrotic disease as yet diagnosed by the medical profession. Tobias recorded Maddy's deterioration over a series of brilliant, if disgusting, canvasses now lovingly exhibited by his proud, pathologically possessive mother, whom Gemma and her late sister only half-jokingly re-Christened 'the Black Widow.' Ominously, Marion Morgan does not seem especially distressed at losing her son. Why, it is as if she expects to have him back at his easel in a matter of hours. Gemma is wishing she could be elsewhere long before nightfall, by which time, the terrible ones are a-stir in the grounds of the grim old house ....

[dem bones]

" ... if this account is to prove of any use at all to those who find it there must be accuracy, otherwise I may as well spend my final hours making up nonsense about sea beasts and tentacled monstrosities from outer space."

Valley Interlude No 2: Out of concern for Robert's memory loss and "strange visions," Stokes insists he visit his close friend, Dr. Rebecca Harrison, at her private Cardiff practice. The psychiatrist is not in the habit of receiving patients out of hours but, worryingly, in Robert's case she is prepared to make an exception.

Dr. Harrison suggests it might help him if first he were to read the testimonies of two previous patients deeply troubled by amnesia and nightmarish delusions ...

The Men With Paper Faces: (Justin Isis [ed.], Marked To Die, 2016). A patient recovering from eye surgery following an accident of which he has no recollection. Discharged from some rotting and disgusting version of St. Tristram's, the protagonist's heightened perception exposes him to the terrible truth that mankind is in the advanced throes of alien invasion. All over the city, humanoid replicas with mushy papier-mâché skin walk unnoticed among the despairing crowd to some terrible purpose ....

This novel is quite some departure from Dr. Valentine's homicidal frenzies!

[dem bones]

By Any Other Name: (Mark Howard Jones [ed.], Cthulhu Cymraeg 2, 2017). "I first saw them at the bottom of a drinking glass ..." Mrs Bryce has been persecuted by tiny, black aquatic creatures ever since husband Donald treated her to a bottle of perfume from a Cardiff antique store. What was released when she removed the stopper?

Valley Interlude No 3: Bewildered and not a little frightened by what he's read, Robert takes his leave of the unnerving psychiatrist, heeding her advice to drive North, avoiding West Wales "for as long as you can." Desperate for sleep, he stops at a sixteenth century pub near Abergavenny. His luck is in. A regular at The Winterman's Arms is funding tonight's drinks from his lottery winnings. When Robert admits to being penniless, the celebrant pays his board for the night. The best the landlord can offer is an attic room above the bar. There's no TV or radio, just a cassette player by the bed with a single tape should the noise from downstairs become distracting. Robert presses 'play.'

Learning The Language: (Paul Finch [ed.], Terror Tales of Wales, 2014). At the insistence of his parents, a twelve-year-old utters six word of the old 'dark Welsh' during mass at St. Peters, Llannenartha Citra. The dread phrase summons forth Ancient Gods who destroy both church and congregation, sparing only the boy for whom they have reserved a sacred duty. Henceforth English folk should be wary who they hire for a mountain guide.

Valley Interlude No 4: Spooked by what he's just listened to and the weird singing downstairs, Robert descends to the bar to request they keep the noise down. The party is still going strong, though the mood has taken a sinister turn. When he confirms that tomorrow he's driving on to Abergavenny, the locals take a gloating pleasure in cautioning him to be careful, "the wrong kind of people" tend to come a cropper crossing Brecon Beacon. Take that party of noisy young folk celebrating a birthday ...

[dem bones]

Somewhere, Beneath A Maze of Sky: Five youths wake up hungover and freezing on Brecon, birthday boy Simon Reynolds secured to a wheelchair with wire and plaster of paris. Seems his brother and pals spiked their drinks and dragged them up here for a great laugh. Lost, their compass busted, the party reach a wooden bridge over a sheer drop .... Approaching from the rear - at least to begin with - a cowled, clawed skeleton herding them toward a booby-trapped antiquated assault course ....

Valley Interlude No 5: Robert wakes up in the crumbling ruins of The Winterman's Arms - but how? At least his motor is where he left it in the now overgrown car park. Desperate to put distance between himself, Abergavenny, and his thoughts, he sets off on a two-hour drive to Swansea ...

The Church With Bleeding Windows: (Steve J. Shaw [ed.], Great British Horror 2: Dark Satanic Mills, 2017). Rev. Cyrus Protherhoe's reset/ rehab group at St. Gwilym's church hall comes under attack from a demon comprised of diseased human organs. A browse of author's notes reveals this as among his more divisive offerings: "From feedback I've had this one tends to be a love it or hate it story." Include me in former camp.

Swore from the moment it arrived that I'd take How Grim ... at a sedate pace - and that went to plan until somewhere around p100, whereupon I broke into customary rhino charge through three stories, as many interludes, and the author's notes to stories read to date.

[dem bones]

"With every story he was told, whether by the random people he met, or the stories that just wanted to tell themselves, each one felt like information he was being made aware of, information that was meant to fit into a cohesive whole, like a kind of unofficial gazetteer of the weirdness that lurked just beneath the country's seeming normality."

Valley Interlude No 6: Robert snaps out of his grisly dream - or was it? - to find he's parked outside St. Gwilym's. He daren't cross to the hospital for fear that the massacre was real.

What others Hear: (Mark Howard Jones [ed.], Cthulhu Cymraeg, 2013). Grim demise of William Martin, church organist, while convalescing by the sea at the Ragged Cross Inn, Llanroath following a Tinnitus-induced breakdown. Denied sleep by the incessant whispering in his ears, Martin takes a midnight hike to a woodland church. Surely it would do no harm to venture through the unlocked door and inspect the keyboard? Martin is transfixed by a painting above the altar, a ghastly depiction of Christ on the cross which seemingly animates as he plays ...

JLP's contributions to the two Welsh Cthulhu anthologies are more in sympathy with Arthur Machen's dark folklore than Lovecraft's mythos.

Valley Interlude No 7: Back in the car, heading North again to Aberystwyth. Robert arrives at a great old house on a cliff. What goes on here?

The Devil In The Detail: (Stuart Young [ed.], Demons & Devilry: Vol 4, 2013). Maxwell Chantry, Aberystwyth's answer Canon Copely-Syle is in desperate need of a virgin to sacrifice to Satan in a demon raising ritual. Just as he did when he needed rid of a nuisance on the Welsh assembly, Chantry relies upon Dr. Patrick Masters, torture-surgeon for hire, to provide the necessary. Ghoulish laughs ensue!

Valley Interlude No 8: Robert feels compelled to explore the Chantry house, but access is denied him. He returns to the car to find it, too, has gone AWOL. Nothing for it but to walk, keep walking through the night until he reaches a tiny graveyard by a church ...

We're running out of book!

[dem bones]

Forgive us Not Our Trespasses: (Charles Black [ed.], The Eleventh Black Book of Horror, 2015). How Grim Was My Valley is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend, Charles Black, to whom the author pays beautiful tribute in the story notes, so it is especially appropriate that a version of the penultimate story, arguably the grimmest of the grim, debuted in Charlie's final anthology.
Having decided that what they want most from life is a child, Alex Martin is irked at wife Laura's lack of cooperation, her perennial whine that having a gynaecologist shove all manner of instruments up her every orifice leaves her too sore for sex. Time to force the issue. To put her wife in a more receptive mood, Martin splashes out on an expensive holiday in West Wales to mark their second wedding anniversary. Tragically for both, he's booked a room at the Llanyrtyd Court Hotel, whose grounds back onto a long derelict Victorian hospital with adjoining church and infant cemetery .....

The Road Not Taken: Relax, I've no intention of spoiling it. Will merely mention — as JLP does — there's a clue to be had from a piece in a sixties' volume of the Pan Book of Horror stories and leave it at that.

As mentioned at start of thread, I'd been looking forward to another of the author's fix-up's (thank you for correct term, Mr. Campbell) since braving the horrors of Chilminster Cathedral back in 2009. These truly haunting stories most definitely repay the wait. Obscenely recommended.

[dem bones]

How Grim Was My Valley now available via Am*z**.uk. At least, it will be from Monday [publication day].