Michel Parry - The Devil's Children

[dem]

Michel Parry - The Devil's Children: Tales of Demons & Exorcists (Orbit, 1974)

Michel Parry - Introduction

Robert Bloch - Enoch
R. H. Benson - Father Meuron’s Tale
Ramsey Campbell - Vacant Possession
Guy De Maupassant - The Horla
H. P. Lovecraft - The Thing on the Doorstep
August Derleth - Saunder’s Little Friend
'Roger Pater' (Dom Gilbert Roger Hudlestone) - A Porta Inferi
Henry S. Whitehead - The Lips
Richard Matheson - From Shadowed Places
Robert Bloch - The Unspeakable Betrothal
J. A. Cuddon - Isabo
John Collier - The Possession of Angela Bradshaw

A bastard offspring of Michel's Mayflower Books Of Black Magic from Orbit who were publishing some tidy paperback horrors at the time - Richard Davis's Orbit Book Of Horror Stories, Dave Allen's A Little Night Reading, Peter Haining's two-volume Black Magic Omnibus, etc (see Orbit listing). Another strong selection, even if the de Maupassant and Lovecraft stories were by now becoming over-familiar. Needless to say, The Exorcist was rather popular at the time ...

Henry S. Whitehead wrote some excellent voodoo stories for Weird Tales in the 'twenties and 'thirties, and The Lips is arguably his masterpiece (but try his pirate novella Seven Turns In A Hangman's Rope if you get the chance). J. A. Cuddon would go on to provide lengthy introductions to both the Penguin Book of Horror Stories and the Penguin Book of Ghost Stories in 1984 but i don't think i've found any of his fiction elsewhere. 'Roger Pater' was rescued from obscurity by Montague Summers who included three of his stories, including this one, in his indispensable The Supernatural Omnibus. i'll maybe leave R. H. Benson contribution to Chris as i seem to recall he's sweet on the Monsignor's The Necromancer. Too thoughtful for my own good, that's my trouble.

Robert Bloch - Enoch: One of Bloch's most effective variations on Psycho. Simple Seth has an invisible friend who lives on the top of his head and compels him to take his hatchet to anyone unwise enough to take a detour home via the swamp. When young Emily Robbins disappears, the Sheriff finally nails Seth and drives him past a welcoming lynch mob and safely into jail. The unlikely drama unfolds ...

Ramsey Campbell - Vacant Possession: The empty mind of a simpleton (and rapist? not sure if i got that right) proves the perfect vessel for the elemental summoned by the beautiful white-robed sorceress of the forest. Possessed, the miserable creature is a slave to his mistress's every whim, until a fatal encounter with an exorcist - fatal, that is, for the exorcist - frees him of her shackle, setting us up nicely for a red hot kiss off.

Despite the forest setting, fans of of H. B. Marriott-Watson's similarly dreamlike The Devil Of The Marsh who've ever wondered what would have happened had the narrator yielded to temptation and suffered the consequences, might like to imagine this as the horrible alternate ending!

'Roger Pater' - A Porta Inferi: Father Philip Roger Pater, recently assigned a parish in the north of England, recognises an inmate of the local asylum as a disreputable spiritualist with whom he shared an adventure twenty years earlier. The man is possessed by the spirit of the violent Dick Lushington, the thirty-years-dead leader of Belfast's most feared criminal gang, who took his own life rather than be arrested for murder. Between them, Pater and the Doctor set the unhappy soul free on his deathbed.

Henry S. Whitehead - The Lips: A strangely erotic take on Edward Lucas White's Lukundoo. St. Thomas, Dutch west Indies. Luke Martin, captain of the slave ship Saul Taverner, delivers his human cargo to a plantation. When one of the negro women takes too long fussing over her infant, he strikes her viciously. She casually turns to him, whispers a word in his ear - 'L'kundu' and, without warning, nips the skin of his shoulder between her teeth. Martin sets sail for home - he's due to be married on his return to Boston - but there's something weird happening to the wound ....

John Collier - The Possession of Angela Bradshaw: When ordinary Angela sets fire to her mothers curtains and assaults wealthy fiance Angus Fairfax as he tries to restrain her, it's all a bit of a worry. An alienist can find nothing wrong with her mentally but eventually a mystic madame gets to the bottom of it: she's possessed. Angela cheerfully admits to sleeping with the devil. The fiend, speaking through Angela, introduces himself as William Wakefield Wall. He's no puny demon, but a far more terrible species altogether ....

August Derleth - Saunder's Little Friend: Aunt Agatha dies, leaving a nice house in Stepney and her lovely fortune to grasping nephew, the lawyer Rainleigh Saunder. Her one stipulation is that he doesn't disturb anything in her favourite room. Of course, being a dabbler in the Black Arts all those years, Aunt Agatha knew a bit about human nature, the despised Ranleigh's in particular, and sure enough he can't help but clear the table of the clay mess she was working on when death struck her down. Suddenly he finds himself involuntarily moulding a dreadful figure which he disposes of in the aunt's trunk along with a strange book and other bizarre paraphernalia. Subsequently, Saunder is haunted by a ghastly monkey-like entity which is visible to all save himself - until finally they come face to face when he can no longer resist a look inside the trunk ...

[cw67q]

Dem:
>i'll maybe leave R. H. Benson contribution to Chris as i seem to >recall he's sweet on the Monsignor's The Necromancer. Too >thoughtful for my own good, that's my trouble.


I might have read his story, I tend to get the AC and RH Benson stories all confused together. Only Fred stays clear in my mind (apart from that bleedin' book above).

Is the RHB in the Wordsworth book?

- chris

[dem]

yes, it's in there. Can't start The Temple Of Death thanks to you! Any time I pull it from the shelf, I think "The Necromancer!" and hastily shove it back. Wouldn't mind, but I read his The Watcher not so long ago and actually liked it!

To date, the story I've enjoyed most from The Devil's Children this time around is the 'Roger Pater' offering. It's been many moons since last I read him and I'd forgotten how much I rated his three contributions to Montague Summers' Supernatural Omnibus - in fact, think I was mixing his stories up with those of 'Jasper John'! Doesn't one of Pater's - A Soul From Purgatory perhaps - involve another case of possession, on this occasion the person afflicted being a nun?

[Dr Strange]

Aug 27, 2010 14:11:40 GMT cw67q said:

Is the RHB in the Wordsworth book?
- chris

It is - it's about an exorcism. I think the story that's narrated is set in the French West Indies.

[cw67q]

Actually I read a few of the tales form this colelction and quite enjoyed them (though I couldn't tell you which brother wrote what or any titles except for Temple itself). It is really just the novel that killed me.

- chris

Aug 27, 2010 14:41:36 GMT dem said:

yes, it's in there. I can't start The Temple Of Death thanks to you! Any time i pull it from the shelf i think "The Necromancer!" and hastily shove it back. i wouldn't mind, but i read his The Watcher not so long ago and actually liked it!

To date, the story i've enjoyed most from The Devil's Children this time around is the 'Roger Pater' offering. It's been many moons since i last read him and i'd forgotten how much i rated his three contributions to Montague Summers' Supernatural Omnibus - in fact, i think i was mixing his stories up with those of 'Jasper John'! Doesn't one of Pater's - A Soul From Purgatory perhaps - involve another case of possession, on this occasion the person afflicted being a nun?

[dem]

J. A. Cuddon - Isabo: If you like your horrors awash with vomit, excrement, and played out to an "appalling stench of putrefaction, more nauseating than acute gangrene" then you'll think all your Christmas's have come at once with Isabo. At 26 pages the longest story in The Devil's Children, know I've read it before but, incredibly, had no recollection of the mucky goings-on whatsoever.

Sid Voulters, a Wandsworth shoe-salesman, is so concerned by the behaviour of the women in his life that he breaks the habit of an agnostic lifetime and seeks advice from the church. His wife Doreen being a Roman Catholic, he consults her parish priest, Father Isted of the Sacred Heart, Battersea, who doesn't want to hear what he's being told.

It began with the misconduct of his daughter Flora, who had taken to snarling like an animal or maintaining world record silences. Just as suddenly, Flora snapped back to her old, pleasant self only for whatever was afflicting her to pass to his wife. A "pretty, plump woman in her thirties", Doreen Voulters's eyes have taken on a look that is too old for her face. She blasphemes. She utters profanities. She even spits at her husband. Worst of all, at night she's taken to holding conversations with herself in Latin. Sid thoughtfully tape-recorded one such session and has transcribed it as best he can for the Priest's dubious benefit. It's glaringly apparent that Doreen has been possessed by a devil who goes by the name of Isabo and has promised "I'm staying in you forever. You belong to me."

That night, Father Isted suffers a dreadful nightmare in which he's trapped in the confessional box with the roof and walls closing in, Mrs. Voulter stood watching the while from the other side of the grille.

Time to seek outside help.

I had a good time with this pitch black comedy. Cuddon introduces a number of colourful characters including Albert Doak, Mystic, healer and pet-shop owner, Dr. McMahon the blase physician and hero of the hour Father Petroch Bowen, whisked in from his Hertfordshire priory to conduct the ensuing marathon exorcism.

Isabo first appeared in Alex Hamilton's Splinters in 1968, and, as far as I'm aware, it's Cuddon's only published supernatural fiction. As well as editing and introducing The Penguin Book Of Horror Stories and The Penguin Book Of Horror Stories, he also seems to have had a hand in selecting the stories for the [cassette only?] Penguin Book Of Supernatural Stories (Penguin Audiobooks 1995) voiced by Nigel Davenport, Rula Lenska, Andrew Sachs and David Rintoul. Can anyone provide details of this?

R. H. Benson - Father Meuron’s Tale: ... concerns the French Priest's experiences as a missionary on a Caribbean island in 1891 when he accompanies the veteran Father Lasserre on an exorcism at the hut of a negro couple. At first the know-it-all Meuron believes the wife, a recent convert to Roman Catholicism, is suffering from epilepsy, but it transpires that she is indeed very spectacularly possessed, frothing at the mouth and shrieking in agony as the Holy Water dispensed by Lasserre burns her skin like vitriol. Meuron finds it painful to watch and turns his face away to the loaf and plate of mutton on the table - which is just about the worst place to look!

If Peter Haining was determined to include one of Benson's stories in The Unspeakable People ("Twenty of the World’s most Horrible Stories”), perhaps it should have been this one over My Own Tale (which, it seems, didn't make the cut for The Temple Of Death *, a book I'm more inclined to dip into now!)

* Correction: it is included in The Temple of Death. See post immediately below.

[Dr Strange]

Some of the RH stories in "The Temple of Death" lay on the theology a bit too heavily for my taste - Father Meuron's Tale is definitely one of the better ones.

[cw67q]

Aug 28, 2010 20:36:15 GMT Dr Strange said:

Some of the RH stories in "The Temple of Death" lay on the theology a bit too heavily for my taste - Father Meuron's Tale is definitely one of the better ones.

I'm pretty sure from Dem's description that i haven't read this one. I mean my memory is bad, but I suspect even I would have thought oh yeah, that one from the post above

- chris

[marksamuels]

Robert Hugh Benson is a fucking awful writer, and I say that in all conscience, as a fellow RC author.

He preaches even more than your bog-average Trot seller of the Socialist Worker.

It's a shame, because I had high hopes for The Necromancers.

Mind you, Russell Kirk might be even worse.

Mark S.

[marksamuels]

Apologies for my last post.

I actually should have said that Russell Kirk IS, in fact, even worse.

Mark S.

[Johnlprobert]

Good old Vault! Here's another book I've never heard of that I now MUST own, if only because Dem has convinced me I have to have Cuddon's Isabo in our collection!

I've read some of these before - Enoch is a classic (and one of the first Blochs I ever read - lucky me) and The Lips popped up (or rather in the context of the story, out) recently in a Fontana GGS volume.

I've also read "Roger Pater's" little Ash-Tree volume and while I can remember none of it I seem to remember it was pretty good.

Robert Hugh Benson is a f**k**g awful writer,

Why has that sent my to the shelves to discover to my delight I possess both The Necromancers and The Temple of Death? Is there a name for the condition in which a sufferer cannot take someone else's word that a book or a film is rubbish but must find out for themselves? And not just that but with a shiver of pleasurable anticipation at doing so?

I actually should have said that Russell Kirk IS, in fact, even worse.

Oh goody I've got him as well. Better and better. Yum yum yum.

[cw67q]

Can't agree with that Mark, at least as far as most of Kirk's ghost stories go. I'm not fond of the one selected by Aickman for the Fontana's and a couple of others leabve me cold, but for the most part they're good reads. I have the two ATP volumes, otherwise I'd havepicked up a copy of this omnibus:

www.amazon.co.uk/Ancestral-Shadows-Anthology-Ghostly-Tales/dp/080283938X/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t

this used to be available new at great reductions, so shop around if you are interested in the volume.

I've not read any of Kirk's novels, but a freind on another forum has mentioned that Kirk's prejudices come through more obviously in the longer form to the detriment of the tales.

- chris

Aug 28, 2010 23:01:29 GMT marksamuels said:

Apologies for my last post.

I actually should have said that Russell Kirk IS, in fact, even worse.

Mark S.

[Dr Strange]

The only Russell Kirk that I know for certain I've read is There's A Long, Long Trail A-Winding, which I read in "The Dark Descent". Dunno, I think I just didn't really "get it" (maybe). It didn't make me feel I wanted to hunt down anything else by him.

[marksamuels]

Aug 29, 2010 11:57:20 GMT cw67q said:

Can't agree with that Mark, at least as far as most of Kirk's ghost stories go.

That's alright. Each to his own. Around five or six years ago I used to own a couple of Kirk's books (Arkham House I believe) and flogged them on ebay, because for me, I didn't find them effective and they had a whiff of moralising about them that put me off. However, in order to cite examples I'd need to refer to copies I don't have anymore. Ermm. So I'm a bit stuffed really. From memory I suppose it was a case of my seeing Kirk as an author who was knocking out, in horror fiction, something close to parables.

Mark S.

[marksamuels]

Good luck with Robert Hugh Benson's The Necromancers, Lord P !

And when you're bored rigid don't say I didn't warn you about his stuff.



Mark S.