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Post by dem bones on Jun 16, 2010 17:36:40 GMT
this one's for you, KC ... Shaun Hutson - Spawn (Star, 1983) Fifty pages down and it's fair to say Hutson hits the ground running, cramming more unpleasantness into the opening chapter than most authors manage in an entire novel. in 1946 when he was just fourteen, Harold Pierce accidentally set the house alight while he was merrily torturing crane-flies with a box of Swan Vesta. In the resulting inferno, his infant brother Gordon was cremated in his cot while Ma died screaming with her bubbling, blackened flesh falling off in lumps. Harold lost and eye and one half of his face. He's been a patient at Exham Mental Hospital ever since, but now the crumbling old building is to close and Harold is to rejoin the outside world. Meanwhile, deranged, flint-eyed killer Paul Harvey, 29, is at large having absconded from Cornford Prison. Harvey was convicted of two random murders and they never did find all the pieces of the people he sliced up. Harvey has a grudge against the Exham population and that's where he's headed. Armed with a sickle. So far he's only stolen some youngsters sandwiches and eaten a couple of rats - raw, naturally - but you can tell that's just him warming up. Kindly Mr. Coot at the asylum fixes Harold up with his first ever job. Luckily Fairval Hospial were in the market for a guy with a hideously disfigured face to be their trainee abortion cremater .... To be continued .... |
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Post by killercrab on Jun 16, 2010 21:21:57 GMT
Take one for the team Dem ! - anyone else ?!
cheers
KC
p.s. sounding good to me!
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Post by dem bones on Jun 18, 2010 10:16:46 GMT
the slam-bang opening chapter apart it's been all build up so far. i'm sure Mr. Coot meant well but was it really such a smart idea landing Harold a job that involves feeding abortions into a furnace? Harold is a surprisingly sympathetic character. Every time he incinerates a foetus - needless to say, Hutson doesn't scrimp on the minutiae - all the poor bloke can think of is that he's burning baby Gordon alive all over again.
Four months into her pregnancy, graphic artist Judith Myers is intent on a termination as a baby would only get in the way of a promotion. Boyfriend Andy Parker is attempting all manner of emotional blackmail to make her change her mind.
Meanwhile Paul Harvey has woken up in the hayloft clutching his trusty sickle which he's yet to put to work on anything human. But he's feeling hungry again now, perhaps there'll be some food in the farmhouse ....
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Post by killercrab on Jun 18, 2010 15:21:12 GMT
This is shooting up my list of Hutson's to read! I saw Relics for sale yesterday which sounded interesting too. However since GNS has just gatecrashed my reading plans I feel a barney in the air between the two writers for my immediate attention.  KC |
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Post by dem bones on Jun 18, 2010 19:23:29 GMT
it's picking up again now.
Harold can't stand it any longer. With head porter Greaves occupied elsewhere he rescues one of the surrogate Gordons from disposal in the furnace. Late that night he carries the tiny foetus to the open field out back of the hospital and buries it beside an electricity pylon. When next we catch up with him he's repeated the operation a further seven times.
Lynn Tyler, 19, dressed in just her XL Judas Priest t-shirt, has broken the news to metal-head Chris that she's pregnant with his child. She'd stopped taking the pill as a devious ploy to entice him into marriage. It doesn't work. Lynn arranges for an abortion.
Dole queue kids Keith Todd and Penny Walsh are getting down to some serious bad sex in the back of Kieth's dad's car when Harvey creeps up on them for a crafty perve ....
A heavy thunderstorm. Lightening strikes the pylon, snapping a cable which sends a billion volts of electricity into the sodden soil ...
Later
All that high voltage works wonders on the fetuses, three of whom crawl out from their grave and follow Harold home to his hut on the Hospital perimeter. The walking abortions have fearsome telepathic powers and their first demand on their unwilling guardian is that he give them sustenance - in the form of his blood. Part one comes to a close with Harold taking a knife and gouging open his chest .....
Paul Harvey has been on the run for six weeks now and, although he's yet to harm anyone, Inspector Ian Randall is worried. The man is dangerous. His concern proves to be justified when Harvey finally soils his sickle on the throat of Ian Logan, a barman at The Black Swan, who fatally opted for a short cut home. Harvey keeps his head as a souvenir. Randall almost vomits when the pathologist peels back the sheet to expose the bloodied stump. "The ambulance is on his way", a PC assures him. "They'll take the body to the hospital"!
Winston Greaves, "the coloured head porter", concerned at Harold's deathly pale pallor, pays him a visit at the hut. He finds his colleague collapsed on the bed, blood oozing from his wounds. The three fetuses surround Winston and concentrate their terrible power on him. He dies of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Harold has lost the closet thing he's ever had to a friend.
What else? Lynn, the one who skipped her pill in an unsuccessful bid to land mean metal mutha Chris as a husband, has had her abortion but she's still suffering agonising stomach pains.
it's all looking rosy for a stirring second half.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 20, 2010 21:09:07 GMT
...and these all pale into insignificance when put up against... ...'Nick Blake' 'Chainsaw Terror' !!!!!!! (Star 1984)... ...£2 for a nice crisp copy with just a wee coffee-mug ring on the cover. Absolutely made up. Was considering biting bullet and paying a fiver-ish from amazon for this one too. I've started reading it, and like everyone has said, it's great, really pervy and gruesome, no boring preambles and straight into the action. Prefer this to the early 'proper' Hutsons I've read (and I like those too, don't get me wrong). Also there are no references to heavy metal yet, which I found very restrained of Shaun! that's the only thing restrained about this book, though... incredibly, despite the subject matter, so far he's been a model of restraint in Spawn although i've still a third of the novel to go (it's a cruel 280 pager). example; so far he's twice set the scene for a mindless slaughter only to have the sitting duck potential victims escape unharmed. So help me, he even works in moments of sheer pathos. The abominable trio now good as control Harold whose mission is to prevent his fellow porters "burning the children". His pathetic demeanour attracts the sympathy of angelic consultant gynaecologist Dr. Maggie Ford. Maggie has her work cut out trying to persuade him to remove his shirt during an examination. All those deep cuts in his torso and arms. And what's with the creepy purple love bites ... ? Liz Maynard is sat up in bed reading a horror novel about a flesh-eating fiend. Husband Jack is unimpressed. "How the hell can you read this sort of rubbish? ... i don't know whats more disturbing, the fact that people part with good money to buy the damn things or that there's someone somewhere who dreams them up. I mean, what sort of mentality must a bloke have to write a book like that?" The sound of smashing glass downstairs. Someone has broken into the shop! Jack takes his rifle from under the bed and sets out to explore .... |
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Post by dem bones on Jun 21, 2010 21:11:32 GMT
the distraction provided by the world cup has meant reading Spawn has become a stop-start, KC-versus-The Wood endurance test where the more i read the more book i seem to have left! just past the p.200 mark and Harvey has left two further headless corpses for the police, but the major development concerns the hapless Harold Pierce.
Mick Calvin is driving his wife and kids to visit the dreaded mother-in-law. He pulls up by the field next to Exham Hospital to allow the boys to take a slash. They discover the worm-eaten fetuses the power surge failed to revive and raise the alarm. It takes little time for Dr. McManus to identify Harold as the culprit. Harold is dismissed from his job and therefore his hut, so he and his abortions repair to the now abandoned Mental Hospital, home sweet home. Our lady of gynaecology Maggie Ford, concerned for his well-being, sets out to find him.
Meanwhile Lynn Tyler picks up a guy at a disco and brings him home for (a boring missionary) seeing to. Agonising pain shoots through her abdomen at the point of orgasm and when whats-his-name withdraws his swollen member a geyser of blood spurts from between her legs.
Christ, i don't fancy eating tonight after that.
Eighty pages to go ....
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Post by killercrab on Jun 22, 2010 8:11:05 GMT
the distraction provided by the world cup has meant reading Spawn has become a stop-start, KC-versus-The Wood endurance test where the more i read the more book i seem to have left! >>I'm stuttering around the 200 mark with Erebus ! My excuse is The Island.  KC
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Post by dem bones on Jun 22, 2010 19:33:14 GMT
Inspector Randall gets off with Dr. Maggie Ford (amazingly Hutson doesn't go into detail; they merely "make love"). We learn that Randall lost his wife and daughter in a car accident five years ago and Maggie is the first woman he's been with since the tragedy. For her part, Maggie confesses to having never enjoyed a proper relationship until now, preferring to pick up a man whenever the mood takes her. Now she realises that she's been a slag and what she's wanted all along is a baby.
Meanwhile, back at the derelict asylum, Harold's abortions give every impression that they are dying. His blood isn't enough to keep them going. They need something else. But what?
Judith Meyes of the pulsating abdomen dies, quickly followed by Lynn Tyler. Cause of death in both cases, a fallopian rupture even though both women aborted seven weeks earlier. Is Exham about to be subjected to an epidemic of lethal psychosomatic pregnancies?
At last PC's Charlton and Reed track Paul Harvey to the decrepit farmhouse, but he's ready for them, sickle poised. This chapter would make for a decent stand alone horror short with Hutson using his descriptive powers to best effect (he's particularly adept at evoking the "appalling stench" of "steaming entrails" and the like). In the ensuing skirmish, one man loses his intestines before the maniac, his skull fractured, is apprehended, but still he's not done. En route to the hospital, he bursts out of the ambulance and escapes into the woods. The cops discover yet another decapitated corpse shortly afterward. Harvey's! A spotty eyewitness describes the murderer. Randall and Maggie drive out to the asylum where Harold and his fetus friends await ...
Which sets us up for a Scanners-style climax and a revelation so completely out of keeping with what's gone before as to be almost worthy of Pierce Nace. Having played it relatively restrained throughout the novel, Hutson now trowels on all the blood, vomit, crunching bone, excrement, splattered brain and frying flesh you could possibly wish for, like he's suddenly remembered what his then audience expect of a novel from the-man-who-wrote-Slugs. Finally, a two-page coda, every bit as unlikely as the 'what became of the missing heads?' saga, sees Spawn end on a creepy last line.
a strange one and no mistake!
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