R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Cradle Demon

[dem]

R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Cradle Demon & Other Stories Of Fantasy & Terror (William Kimber, 1978)

ionicus

"I still think it's the best" - RCH, 1990

Introduction: R. Chetwynd-Hayes

The Pimpkins
A Walk In The Country
The Brats
Why?
The Chair
My Very Best Friend
The Cradle Demon
Reflections
My Mother Married A Vampire
Mildred And Edwina
Tomorrow At Nine
The Creator
The Sloathes

My Mother Married A Vampire: Domestic bliss in the suburban household of the Count and Countess De Suc-Little and their son Marvin is threatened by the unwelcome attentions of the blood squad, also known as 'the Bleeney', led by an over-zealous Priest. Reverend Pickering nails his man, but the vampire Count has the last laugh. This one formed the basis for a 'comedy' episode in Milton Subotsky's The Monster Club.

The Cradle Demon: The Jones' toddler Adam attempts to rape Mavis, the pretty seventeen year old babysitter. Less jokey than usual, although RCH cheats a little with the introduction of a crippled niece who, conveniently, suffers from mental blocks and can't run. The baby is deliciously evil, mind.

The Chair: The narrator, one of RCH's least sympathetic, buys the antique from the proprietor of a second hand furniture shop who lets on that it "came from a house with an unfortunate history." Sure enough, hardly has he returned home with his prize than a beautiful woman materialises on the seat, beckoning to him from across the room. Our man, a misogynist, throws an ornament at her and she vanishes, but immediately he regrets his actions and wishes her back. Her reappearances are fleeting and drive him to distraction until he returns to the furniture salesman demanding to know who his ghost was. At the Twilight Home for Distressed Ladies, he learns the tragic history of Miss Emily and Mr. Ascot of Bedford Park, but a further horrible revelation awaits.

RCH ends this one on such an enjoyably melodramatic note it made me wonder if he'd imagined it as a shoe-in for another Subotsky anthology movie.

Why?: a hyper-inquisitive little girl interogates a gravedigger about the family who reside in the vault over yonder which, she tells him, happens to be her home. He relates a diluted history of the hundred years dead Henry and Elizabeth Hargraves, who, local legend would have it, were a pair of ghouls. When the child's constant probing and gruesome descriptions of her mother's leprous condition get too revolting, the cemetery man threatens to smack her. She tells her mummy.

The Creator: "That goat was a good friend to me ..."

An unemployed young man puts the skills he's learned as apprentice butcher and petrol pump attendant to good use when he resolves to create a modern Frankenstein monster. With his granddad safely liberated from the funeral parlour, Charlie decapitates a goat, pinches the wheels off a go-cart and, after much burning of the midnight oil, proudly unleashes 'Oscar' on an unsuspecting Uncle George and Aunt Matilda ("It's all this television. Sets the young a bad example. What with Z Cars and that awful bald-headed man who will ruin his teeth with lollipops, it's a wonder we aren't all murdered in our beds.") .... whereupon RCH seems to have run out of ideas what to do with the story.

A Walk in The Country: Somewhere within a thirty mile radius of Faversham, long distance walker John Evert chances on a tiny village whose inhabitants - the usual motley crew of inbreds - devote their lives to gruesome botanical experiments. John is trapped in the sacred greenhouse amidst the misshapen but terribly familiar potted plants. One of them turns its crumpled face toward him: "Kill me. K...i ....l....l....l .... m...e ...e.... e ..."

My Very Best Friend: An orphan's progress. Following the death of his parents in a car accident, the narrator is shunted from puritanical relative to puritanical relative, his constant companion a beautiful woman who others sometimes sense and fear but only he can see. She acts as his Guardian Angel, a malevolent one at that, prone to playing cruel pranks but invaluable for settling scores and maiming school bullies. On the minus side, she's fanatically possessive and won't have him lusting after pretty Josie Bakewell now his hormones are kicking in. By the close of his teens he wants rid of his benefactor and approaches Clapham's finest, Madam Orloff, Psychic Extraordinary (The Elemental, The Holstein Horror & Co.) to peform an exorcism. Free to wed his childhood sweetheart, he has Josie as far as the altar before the parson gets it into his head to give the ceremony a "forgive thy enemy" theme. Caught up in the moment, our man absolves his Fallen Angel who immediately marches down the aisle and karate chops his bride with the result that "I must be the only husband who was made a widower before the register was signed."

RCH confides that some of the non-supernatural content is autobiographical and, depending on which bits he's alluding too, his childhood probably wasn't a bed of roses.

Mildred And Edwina: In many ways, Donald reflects, his wife Mildred is perfect - reasonable cook, grants him sexual favours once a week, quite content to while away her time nosing out the window or watching General Hospital. There's just one problem: she bores him stupid. Until, that is, she's hit by a bus and the blow to the skull unleashes her evil, sex-crazed alter-ego, Edwina Hyde!

The Pimpkins: Yet another confirmed bachelor comes to grief - this one virtually interchangeable with the 'hero' of The Chair with whom he shares certain traditionalist views, especially where women are concerned. Contrary to popular belief, clumsy people aren't accident prone, they're actually being persecuted by millions of minuscule "bouncing lumps of evil" whose existence is dedicated to rearranging household objects and bringing chaos and disorder to a previously smooth-running household. Mortimer Carstairs, a rich, 51-year old accountant bedridden following a near fatal struggle with pneumonia, realises this, but he has a hard time trying to convince his nurse, the maid or anybody else. For reasons not explained, he christens this strange species the Pimpkins.

[dem]

The Sloathes: Philip and Marjorie are delighted with their new home, Woodbine Cottage, but she will insist on him removing the ugly stone cross which disfigures the garden so. Philip resignedly breaks it up to use as a rockery, discovering too late that he's released the Sloathes - lethal, balloon-headed ghouls of immense strength - conjured forth by that old reprobate Baron Von Holstein (of The Holstein Horror disrepute). Philip destroys all but one of them ....

Really nasty ending sees Philip lose his sanity and turn on his wife, effectively sending her to her doom, and for once the absurdity of the monsters adds rather than detracts from the horror. The impression this left on me was of something M. R. James might come up with were he suffering a severe attack of delirium tremens.

The Brats. Not being over-keen on SF, I deliberately left reading this to near the end and - what do you know? - it's very enjoyable in a morbid kind of way, Chetwynd-Hayes's I Am Legend in miniature (although he soon expanded it into a novel of the same name), minus the vampires but plus stunted, spiteful ghouls.

Twenty-odd years after the nuclear holocaust, and the few survivors are picked off by wild dogs, mutant rats and those pseudo-humans born after the big bang, the brats: "The inhuman old-men faces, the long eye-teeth, watery eyes in which were reflected a light of pure evil .... [he] spent the remainder of the night listening for the sinister giggles that were always the prelude to a kicked-in door, the howl of triumph, the tearing long-nailed fingers."

We follow Peter as he goes about his lonely, hazardous existence until the day he descends into the sewer system under his bolt-hole and rescues a girl, Lydia Maxwell, from a gang of the sadistic little monsters, just as they're about to eat her alive. United, their lives become one long grim, valiant struggle to postpone the inevitable until tomorrow. It's the hope that kills you.

This bleak prognosis for mankind would appear to be very much in keeping with RCH's pessimistic viewpoint as expressed in that Skeleton Crew interview I really must shut up about! And I adore the brats' war-cry: "K ... i ...i .... l ....l .....D .....a .... a ...a ...a ... d.'

Reflections: Beaufort Grange, mid-nineteenth century, and young John Kimberley-Beaufort is tormented by twin glaring 'eyes' that appear to only him. With the help of his pragmatic, occult-fixated uncle Lomax, he overcomes his terror and goes rushing to meet the apparition as it hurtles along the path - only to be mangled when it runs over him. The spectre wasn't from the past after all.

It's another of those stories which bear out Chetwynd-Hayes's claim that he wrote everything blind. More-so than the disappointing The Creator, the build-up is compelling with splendid characterisation - the alternately flirty and ferocious Lady Marcia's sparring with Lomax, the man she would seduce, is very well drawn - but the see-it-coming-a-mile-off climax lacks power.

Tomorrow At Nine: Whenever Roger falls asleep, he reawakens back in 1906, trapped in the body of the Clapham murderer, Daniel Dyson, mere hours before his execution. The only man who can prevent Roger imminent hanging is a mysterious character who we're already strangely familiar with. He offers Roger some double-edged advice how to avoid his fate but gloatingly informs him of his penchant for a twist ending ...

Not sure I'd agree with RCH's assessment of The Cradle Demon as his 'best' collection - of those read that would be The Unbidden, Cold Fear or Terror By Night - but I'd rate it the most consistent of his William Kimber collections after A Quiver Of Ghosts.

[Johnlprobert]

I agree it's one of his best Kimbers, probably because it was the first and he was probably still in Fontana mode.

Also, the earlier paperbacks were written for a horror audience whereas I think I read somewhere that Kimber specialised in the 'little old ladies who like reading ghost stories from their public libraries' market and may have given RCH instructions regarding the same. Certainly some of the stories in the Kimber volumes are (gasp!) a bit...boring actually.

Does anyone know if it's the same William Kimber as the one obsessed with morris dancing who was buried in all his apparel? Now there's a subject for a ghost story...

[dem]

Jul 10, 2011 8:37:16 GMT Johnlprobert said:

Does anyone know if it's the same William Kimber as the one obsessed with morris dancing who was buried in all his apparel? Now there's a subject for a ghost story...

Sadly, it's a different fellow altogether. The morris dancing William died in 1961 while ours survived him by thirty years. Still good material for a horror story though, and it would be in good company as three I can think of offhand are David Campton's Cold Spell in Fontana Horror 13, Merry May by Ramsey Campbell ("Britain's most respected living horror writer" -Oxford Companion to English Literature) and The Morris Men by Franklin Marsh ("the master of the macabre" - Filthy Creations).

[andydecker]

Here is the German edition:

Der Dämon in der Wiege - Nine Horrorstories for Goosebump Fans (Pabel, 1970, Vampir Horror Paperback 80)

This was the next to last paperback of the monthly edition. As always this came without any information about the writer and excluded four stories because the edition had the fixed length of 160 pages.

As I already wrote somewhere (a few times I fear) I don't really "get" Chetwynd-Hayes or why he is so beloved. Back then in the 80s I couldn't stand his work. By chance I saw "The Monster Club" on Youtube recently for the first time, which motivated me to pull the few German editions of him I own from the shelves. In the movie I really hated My Mother married a Vampire. I read the original and still thought it childish nonsense.

On the other hand I read No One lived here in another of these editions - Pabel did six collections, someone must have loved his work, one is an original collection taking most of the earlier left out material - and liked it a lot. It is far removed from these parodies (?) or satirical take on the genre. So I guess I will read some more.

[dem]

I can live without the bulk of his often desperately unfunny 'humorous' offerings, but commentators tend to overlook the fact that his work includes several seriously grim and lonesome pieces - it's these that most do it for me. The likes of The Ghost Who Limped and An Act of Kindness are reward for surviving Great Granddad Walks Again, My Mother Married ... or Francis & Fred at their most unbearable (i.e., 99% of the time). Now that Stephen Jones has provided us with what is essentially a 'greatest hits,' I'd most like to see a selection entirely focused on these more miserable moments.

[humgoo]

Feb 19, 2020 10:18:58 GMT dem said:

[...] but commentators tend to overlook the fact that his work includes several seriously grim and lonesome pieces [...]

That's the problem. RCH wrote so much that there's always a considerable chance that a reader's first encounter with him is one of his zany stories, and said reader is thus put off. I was lucky. "The Ghost who limped" was the first RCH tale I read, and you can imagine how impressed I was. Then I read the mixed bag that is The Monster Club, and began to get an idea of his zaniness. But at least I was not put off at the very beginning. A psychoanalyst may say that his zaniness is just a cover-up? Read "The Ghost Who Limped", "An Act of Kindness", "Acquiring a Family" and "The Jumpity-Jim" etc and one will see how bleak, sad and cynical RCH's world is.

[andydecker]

Feb 19, 2020 10:18:58 GMT dem said:

I can live without the bulk of his often desperately unfunny 'humorous' offerings, but commentators tend to overlook the fact that his work includes several seriously grim and lonesome pieces - it's these that most do it for me. The likes of The Ghost Who Limped and An Act of Kindness are reward for surviving Great Granddad Walks Again, My Mother Married ... or Francis & Fred at their most unbearable (i.e., 99% of the time). Now that Stephen Jones has provided us with what is essentially a 'greatest hits,' I'd most like to see a selection entirely focused on these more miserable moments.

I got Phantasmagoria this week and read Someone is dead for the first time. You are right, Francis & Fred are unbearable. After reading the half of the story I just wished someone would banish them to Dimension X and throw away the key.

[dem]

Feb 19, 2020 10:35:53 GMT humgoo said:

Feb 19, 2020 10:18:58 GMT dem said:

[...] but commentators tend to overlook the fact that his work includes several seriously grim and lonesome pieces [...]

That's the problem. RCH wrote so much that there's always a considerable chance that a reader's first encounter with him is one of his zany stories, and said reader is thus put off. I was lucky. "The Ghost who limped" was the first RCH tale I read, and you can imagine how impressed I was. Then I read the mixed bag that is The Monster Club, and began to get an idea of his zaniness. But at least I was not put off at the very beginning. A psychoanalyst may say that his zaniness is just a cover-up? Read "The Ghost Who Limped", "An Act of Kindness", "Acquiring a Family" and "The Jumpity-Jim" etc and one will see how bleak, sad and cynical RCH's world is.

This is so true. For all that the recent Phantasmagoria: Chetwynd-Hayes special edition really is a lovely, celebratory thing, it does kind of perpetuate this idea that RCH found everything in life a great giggle, that his raison d'etre was dreaming up ever-more infantile monsters. Sure, some of that stuff can be very entertaining, but for me he's at his best in those stories where you're waiting for a laugh that never comes. A compilation along those lines could attract an entirely new audience. He deserves better than to be remembered as some wacky village idiot pulling faces all the time.

[humgoo]

Feb 21, 2020 11:48:13 GMT andydecker said:

I got Phantasmagoria this week and read Someone is dead for the first time. You are right, Francis & Fred are unbearable.

It's not doing RCH's reputation a service to reprint the Francis & Fred stories, I suppose. The idea, I guess, is (on the part of RCH's copyright holders) to let the Francis & Fred stories get more attention in the hope that they can get filmed. They've been optioned twice but never filmed, if I'm not mistaken. Whether they're worth getting filmed in the first place is another question.

[andydecker]

Apr 5, 2020 6:11:37 GMT humgoo said:

It's not doing RCH's reputation a service to reprint the Francis & Fred stories, I suppose. The idea, I guess, is (on the part of RCH's copyright holders) to let the Francis & Fred stories get more attention in the hope that they can get filmed. They've been optioned twice but never filmed, if I'm not mistaken. Whether they're worth getting filmed in the first place is another question.

Come to think of it, the terrible duo would be great for the small screen. As there is an increasingly need for period piece material, which can be toned down offensive without being offensive as it is period, Franics and Fred would be terrific and lively material for a tv show. Fred's rich snobby braless swinging sixties attitude and Francis' insuffarable arrogance would make great tv.