Warning: this post contains hidden secret information. Arf.
Cold Print by Ramsey CampbellThis one collects together the more Lovecraftian tales, many of them dating back to his first book, 'The Inhabitant of the Lake, & other less welcome tenants'. Some of the earlier tales I struggle with a bit, although many of them contain glimpses of what is to come later. The latter half of this collection is made up of stories which are more recognisably pure Campbell, although still fixed to some degree in the work of Lovecraft. The collection ends with 'The Voice of the Beach' which is to my mind one of RC's best stories ever.
Some people, mainly devotees of HPL, take this collection to be the most interesting of Ramsey Campbell's output and I have to say that these tales of Goatswood, Brichester and Temphill do have a certain charm about them. It is certainly pretty amazing that they were written by a teenager!
The introduction is great. In it RC takes a clear, unembarrased look at his early stories, and even quotes some really bad bits from ones not included in the collection. August Derleth gets an affectionate mention. He also recalls his attempt to break all links with Lovecraft's work to find his own voice, which in the end proved unnecessary, as the later stories in the collection show.
The Scream Press edition 1985:
The Grafton edition 1987:
The Tor edition 1987:
The Headline edition 1993:
BLURB (from the Grafton edition):
SUDDENLY ITS GIANT SOLITARY EYE OPENED...
When Sam Strutt strode into a sleazy bookshop in search of exotic porn, a macabre many-mouthed creature made an occult proposition that cooled his blood - as he realised the deadly price of refusal...
The Carter family had parked their trailer for the last time. But when his new friend June showed him a certain old book, young Michael began to wonder what had kept his parents on the move...
Ingels dreamed of a city that would rise from the sea, of sea-gods who would inherit the earth once more. A wandering planet's passage through the heavens seemed irrelevant, until he stumbled on a bizarre diary and a telescope trained on the sky...
THESE ARE SOME OF THE HORRIFYING VISIONS SPELLED OUT IN BLACK AND WHITE IN COLD PRINT. TALES WRITTEN WITH A QUILL OF FIRE - TO MAKE YOUR BLOOD RUN COLD.
"Britian's answer to Stephen King... surely the most sophisticated stylist in modern horror"
- Washington Post
The Church in High StreetTrouble in Temphill. The narrator sets off to visit his friend Albert Young, who lives there - only to find that he has gone missing. A strange man who lives across the road from the now deserted house, tells him that the disappearance may have something to do with the strange church, and the unpleasant rituals that take place there. After reading through the strange set of notes that Young has left behind, he eventually sets off to explore the church himself...
First appeared in an anthology called 'Dark Mind, Dark Heart', published in 1962.
The Room in the CastleAfter reading some of the Necronomicon and some local history in a library, the narrator sets off (despite his friend's warnings) to find the remains of a castle where there is rumoured to be some kind of creature locked away in a dungeon. Silly boy.
The Horror from the BridgeStrange events in Clotton. The Phipps family have, over the years developed a reputation for strangeness, and the son is convinced that there is something sealed into the bridge which he wants to release into the world. This ends badly for him, and leaves the local scholar and a few helpers in the position of having to attempt to undo the damage.
The Insects of ShaggaiProbably my favourite of the earlier stories.
After a drunken boast, a man finds he has no choice but to go into the woods to find a supposedly powerful cone which had previously sent the last person to see it raving mad. He finds it, and one of its occupants invades his brain, and his is given a view of the creatures history, on a variety of far-off planets.
Told with some enthusiasm, and pretty inventive.
The Render of the VeilsTwo men decide to look behind the veils of reality, to see what lies beyond. After performing the correct rituals, using the correct equipment, they are sucessful - but what they see obviously doesn't agree with them.
A tape recording made of the incident by one of the men provides some clues, but also raises some questions...
The Inhabitant of the LakeCartwright, an artist with leanings toward the weird, moves to a house opposite a lake with a bad reputation. Local gossip says the lake was originally formed by a giant meteor landing there, but there was something odd about it, and now whatever accompanied the meteor is alive and well under the water. Things come to a head when Cartwright finds that he cannot leave time, and phones his friend from out of town for help.
The Will of Stanley BrookeStanley Brooke dies, and annoys his whole family by leaving everything to a complete stranger. But when the stranger turns up, he looks suspiciously like the recently deceased...
The Moon-LensA doctor who has made the news for advocating euthanasia is visited in his office by a man who wants him to kill him. The man, Roy Leakey, then tells the doctor of his experiences when he found himself stuck in Brichester, and the mysterious lens device that stands outside the hotel - and shows the doctor exactly why he wants to die...
Before the StormA man wanders into a tax office, but he seems to be off on a planet of his own. A couple of workers try to interview him, but it quickly becomes clear that he needs help. Unfortunately, he sights and sound that the man is seeing are, in a way, all too real.
Cold PrintSam, a teacher with a taste for pornographic books, is led to a bookshop where he finds a novel much to his taste. The bookseller doesn't seem to be about, but Sam leaves the money for the book, meaning to return soon to see if there was any more stock of interest. He does so, and the bookseller proves to be very odd, and indeed threatening...
(after mentioning the end of this story to one of my daughters, she has since spent the day walking round with mouths with pointy teeth drawn on the palm of her hand!)
Among the pictures are these:A pleasant, if somewhat surreal and disturbing, interlude. This piece (not a story as such) is made up of descriptions of the picture RC found in a note book which he had drawn in years earlier. Paragraph by paragraph, the strangeness becomes more overpowering, maybe because of the deadpan descriptive style used.
According to a piece in 'Ramsey Campbell, Probably', this is one of the only works he wrote directly under the influence of marijuana... shock horror!
The TuggingIngles, a writer for the local paper visits an art exhibition in Lower Brichester. One picture grabs his attention - it is of a city rising up from the sea, and it matches a place that he has seen in his dreams.
Meanwhile, news of a inexplicable 'planet' which has wandered into the solar system has broken, but Ingles has more immediate problems - with his girlfriend, with his dreams, with his parents. He is also drawn to an old theatre, and discovers an old news story that involved the theatre, weird rituals, and his own grandfather. The building is now a furniture warehouse, but, using his reporter credentials, he manages to pursuade the manager to let him explore the attic for any traces of what went on there...
The Faces at Pine DunesA young man, Michael, in his early twenties has travelled his whole life with his parents in a trailer, stopping at seemingly random places. At last they settle down at Pine Dunes. His father seems pleased with this, his mother less so - in fact she seems eager for him to leave.
In the meantime, Michael has met a girl called June whom he has fallen for in a big way. She gives him a book about witchcraft and, with a little bit of research, he finds that the places he has so far lived might not be that random after all. But for all of that, he feels at home at Pine Dunes, ready to find out more about himself...
Blacked OutLamb stops for an evening at a hotel in a odd village somewhere near Munich. Once in the hotel, he finds that the chambermaid seems to be taking an interest in him. Later that night, she lures him on until he finds himself in the church graveyard - at which point the lady leaves Lamb to what is lurking out there in the dark...
The Voice of the BeachWell, what can I say about this one? It's a classic, a superb piece of writing. It's one of those stories that you just have to read to get the full flavour of it. Any short description cannot convey the build-up of the horror of the patterns spreading up from the beach as something attemps to enter the world, something huge and unimaginable and unstopable...
LSD influenced this one - the feeling of ever shifting patterns is the most obvious link I can see.
A seriously strange and creepy tale.
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...And since so many of the stories in this volume (seven of them, I think) first appeared in Ramsey Campbell's first book, here's a cover scan and contents. The book was published by Arkham House in 1964, when Ramsey was still in his teens. This was the only edition, and now goes for silly prices... (I don't actually own a copy of this one, unfortunately)
The Inhabitant of the Lake (Arkham 1964):
(Illustrated by Frank Utpatel)
A Word From the Author
The Room in the Castle
The Horror from the Bridge
The Insects from Shaggai
The Render of the Veils
The Inhabitant of the Lake
The Plain of Sound
The Return of the Witch
The Mine on Yuggoth
The Will of Stanley Brooke
The Moon-Lens Right, I'm off to read the 12th volume of the 'Revelations of Glaaki.'
