TERROR TALES OF EAST ANGLIA

[paulfinch]

Paul Finch (ed.) - Terror Tales Of East Anglia (Gray Friars, Sept. 2012)

Steve Upham

Very pleased to be able to announce that TERROR TALES OF EAST ANGLIA, the latest in my regional horror antho series is now available to pre-order from Gray Friar Press. To find out a lot more, including full artwork and links straight through to the purchase point, check out my blog: paulfinch-writer.blogspot.co.uk.

East Anglia – a drear, flat land of fens and broads, lone gibbets and isolated cottages, where demon dogs howl in the night, witches and warlocks lurk at every crossroads, and corpse-candles burn in the marshland mist …

The giggling horror of Dagworth
The wandering torso of Happisburgh
The vile apparitions at Wicken
The slavering beast of Rendlesham
The faceless evil on Wallasea
The killer hounds of Southery
The dark guardian of Wandlebury

And many more chilling tales by Alison Littlewood, Reggie Oliver, Roger Johnson, Steve Duffy and other award-winning masters and mistresses of the macabre.

The book contains ten works of original horror fiction set in East Anglia, and three classic reprints. It also features the usual anecdotal tales concerning supposedly true incidents of East Anglian terror.

Loose by Paul Meloy & Gary Greenwood
The Most Haunted House in England
Deep Water by Christopher Harman
Murder in the Red Barn
The Watchmanby Roger Johnson
The Woman in Brown
Shuck by Simon Bestwick
The Witchfinder-General
The Marsh Warden by Steve Duffy
Beware the Lantern Man!
The Fall of the King of Babylon by Mark Valentine
The Weird in the Wood
Double Space by Gary Fry
The Dagworth Mystery
Wicken Fen by Paul Finch
Boiled Alive
Wolferton Hall by James Doig
The Wandering Torso
Aldeburgh by Johnny Mains
The Killer Hounds of Southery
Like Suffolk, Like Holidays by Alison Littlewood
The Demon of Wallasea Island
The Little Wooden Box by Edward Pearce
The Dark Guardian of Wandlebury
The Spooks of Shellborough by Reggie Oliver

[weirdmonger]

Sept 21, 2012 8:09:05 GMT paulfinch said:

Paul Finch (ed.) - Terror Tales Of East Anglia (Gray Friars, Sept. 2012)

My real-time review of this book:
nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/terror-tales-of-east-anglia/

[noose]

I know that Paul would never say anything - but if anyone has bought a copy of any of the TALES OF TERROR series, would you be so kind to put a review up on Amazon, any blogs etc. All reviews can turn into sales and all sales are a massive boost to any small press series - Charlie's Black Book of Horror included - so if you have the time, then please do!

[dem bones]

Not only is East Anglia nearing the top of my 'to read' pile, i'm genuinely looking forward to tackling it, but am self-sworn to finish Paul's Enemies At The Door and Thana's From Hell To Eternity before beginning a third recent Gray Friar's publication. Blame Gary Fry for publishing four top titles in a very short space of time (plan to grab Stephen Bacon's Peel Back The Sky after the hols).

It comes back to the 'everything is published to coincide with FantasyCon' thing. This year, a quick consultation of the programme revealed a record breaking sixteen items of personal interest. Think i've nabbed eight to date and they sure don't read, or write about, themselves. It must be very frustrating for the authors as time passes and the reviews are so slow in coming but you don't have to look far to find people posting of coming away from the convention with books by the crate load. Where do you start?

[dem bones]

Mr. Finch recently announced on his Walking In The Dark blog, that the next in the series, Terror Tales Of London - featuring stories by Christopher Fowler, Barbara Roden, Nicholas Royle, Gary Fry, Marie O'Regan, Anna Taborska, Mark Morris, Jonathan Oliver, David Howe, Nina Allan, Adam Nevill, Roger Johnson and Rosalie Parker - will be published "around Easter", so best get my skates on with this one.

Off to a bright start:

Paul Meloy & Gary Greenwood - Loose: Tomas, a Lithuanian chef of dubious accomplishment, is new to England and struggles with the language barrier. Consequently, he finds himself bullied in the hotel kitchen, where only easy-going Dan is prepared to stand up for him. Tomas adores his "friend", and is concerned that recently, he seems worried about something. As well he might.

Turns out Dan's bit of fun with amorous fellow employee Kasia has taken a turn for the pregnant, and Kazimerz Mazur, her vicious, man mountain of a brother, has threatened to cut his balls off. Kazimerz catches up with lover boy in a pub, drags him outside, but before he can do any irreparable damage, the huge Pole is himself taken out - by a wolf.

Tomas tells all about the "wolf-strap", fashioned from the skin of a hanged man (those who've read Joseph McCord's Weird Tales/ Not At Night WWI shocker, The Girdle, will know the type of thing), which enables his transformation. The hotel manager, who knows of his secret, keeps him on the payroll in return for a larder stockpiled with meat. But, as always, a downside. Thomas stole the strap from his brother, a dangerous gangster, who is bound for England to take it back ....

Roger Johnson - The Watchman: ".... now he could see clearly the figure that towered over him, so that he let the cross fall from his hand and, overcome by the daemonic horror of the thing, he slumped to the cold, hard floor. Then the other bent down over him and began to do certain things." - From Quaint Historical Anecdotes & Legends of Suffolk, compiled and retold by Rev John Davey, D.D. (privately printed, 1847)

Illo: Tony Patrick: The Watchman. From Richard H. Fawcett (ed.), The Best Of Ghosts & Scholars, Haunted Library, 1986)

In 1924, the entire west side of St. Michael & All Saints Church at Stockbrige Minister near Leiston, is destroyed by a stray bomb. When restoration work commences in 1953, the Rev Wheatley decides upon an original statue of St. Michael as far preferable to a replica of the particularly gruesome, gargoylesque figure lost to the blast. One night Bob Chater, the dogged old watchman, is alerted to a disturbance in the vestry. He easily apprehends the youthful and potentially violent intruder who, badly shaken, is only too glad to see "another human face" after what he's been through. If Rev. Davey's annals are to be believed, the would-be burglar got off lightly. He records that, during the reign of Edward IV, a scoundrel named Thomas Drinkall, who had recently lost the fortune he'd amassed through ill-gotten means, was horribly mutilated during a similar attempt on the ecclesiastical loot ....

[dem bones]

Four stories in, four hits!

Simon Bestwick - Shuck: Poor, pathetic, downtrodden, head-full-of-trendy-New Age-hippy-crap Maggie!

Abandoned by bully-boy husband Martin because, to cap it all, she miscarried their baby, now she's threatened in her own cottage by a demented, knife-wielding teenage thug while a huge black beast attempts to smash its way in. Bet Martin and his smug, nubile, PREGNANT trophy wife MK II are loving all this!

The intruder, Joseph, an aspiring Black Magician, has summoned the Hell Hound, intent on unleashing it versus .... well, his despised Dad for starters. But Shuck (our cover star), proves resistant to the idea, and the wolfsbane won't keep him at bay for much longer. The situation calls for a blood sacrifice. Poor, pathetic, downtrodden, head-full-of-trendy-New Age-hippy-crap Maggie!

Paul Finch - Wicken Fen: After the hideous transsexual gargoyle with the magnificent breasts, the shapely mer-women whose faces come as a horrible disappointment ...

Trevor English and Gerry Axewood, Dagenham lads in their late forties, share a weekend boating jaunt from Ely through to Cambridge while wives Josie and Carly take in London's theatre land. Enjoying a pint in a waterside pub, Gerry gets to moaning about Carly, how her body ain't as great as it once was, how the sex is too samey, how both he and Trevor are forever held back by their wives. As if in answer to his gripe, two scantily clad smashers materialise at the bar. Gerry, eyes on stalks, makes lots of manly "Phwoar! I could do with a piece of that" noises, nips off to the Gents. Trevor, the level-headed one, hopes it isn't to buy rubbers. He's hugely relieved when the young women leave. By the time Gerry returns, their flashy river cruiser has already disappeared upstream.

That night Trevor suffers a nightmare in which he drags aboard a male corpse, coiled in kelp and naked from the waist down, the face and torso hollowed as though sucked dry.

The following day, a drunken Gerry falls asleep at the helm and The Sunny Dawn strays onto the Wicken Fen. Much to his delight, he spots the gorgeous pair from 'The Kingfisher Arms' nude sunbathing on the headland. Despite Trevor's anger, there's no holding him back. He grabs a six-pack and, encouraged by their laughter, runs to join the girls. When Trevor goes in search of him, as worried as he is furious after discovering the rusting wreck of the river cruiser, all he finds are the six unopened beer-cans lying where they fell.

And then the fibreglass bottom of the boat is torn open on the rocks .....

Plenty of pop culture references including The Woman In White Shrek, Wicked, Gerry's ancient but serviceable Motorhead t-shirt, and "It was a near comical image, like something from a Carry On movie; middle-aged Gerry skipping through the woods, an eager dolly-bird on either arm."

There's many a guilty grin to be had from non-fiction/ "non-fiction" interludes, too. Cases in point, dastardly Squire Corder versus (not so) saintly Maria Marten, inspiration for the Tod Slaughter classic, The Murder In The Red Barn, and the grim fate of Mary Gay, accused of poisoning her mistress in 1532. Before an avid audience of ghouls at King's Lynn's Tuesday Market Place, Mary was boiled alive - "an act so unimaginably brutal that it is scarcely possible to think about it without shuddering"; they even ripped it off for Killtest - until she burst and her heart splattered against a wall. Even the least discerning sadists thought that was going too far.

[dem bones]

Alison Littlewood - Like Suffolk, Like Holidays: Perfect. Everything about beautiful, impossibly understanding Angela is perfect. Naturally this extends to her choice of holiday idyll (now Darren has lost his job, she cheerfully finances the entire enterprise), an impeccable mock-Tudor cottage in heavenly Thorpeness village. But Darren's had enough perfect to last him a lifetime. Every minute in her company is like living an episode of The Darling Buds Of May gone Suffolk, and bloody fucking bloody immaculate Thorpeness is the final straw. The absence of garbage bags, of one single, precious instance of imperfection, are beyond human endurance.

James Doig - Wolferton Hall: Hugh Terne, Medieval History scholar, is delighted when the present day Marquess Throgmorton not only grants him access to the family archive, but the run of Wolferton Hall for the duration of his research. From the first, Hugh is fascinated by the fresco that adorns the great hall, in particular two panels depicting the funeral of a murder victim and a skeleton in pursuit of a terrified man ....
The archive is a mountain of random documents, but Hugh, too diligent for his own good, gets stuck in and unearths the family skeleton. In 1452, Sir Charles Throgmorton swindled the deeds to Wolferton House. The rightful owner, Thomas Shackleton, a reputed Black Magician, promptly laid his curse on the family in perpetuity, and vanished shortly afterward. Sir Charles put it around that Shackleton had embarked on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but the fresco suggests otherwise.

The exact details of the curse are lost in the mists of time. Some say the Throgmortons are caught up in a 'Monster of Glamis' situation, others that Black Shuck is on their trail. Whatever the truth, the Marquess feels obliged to reside abroad between Christmas and Easter, and Hugh would be well advised to follow suit while he still can ...

[dem bones]

Two further Jamesian escapades.

Johnny Mains - Aldeburgh: Joseph Payton, son of the late Percival, approaches M. R. James in the school yard at Eton with an extraordinary allegation. James murdered his father at Aldeburgh to obtain the supposedly mythical third crown of East Anglia, and then published a thinly veiled account of the deed - changing the doomed treasure-hunter's name to Paxton - as A Warning to the Curious. To support all this, Joseph produces a yellowed newspaper clipping and a damning photograph of the provost and his father in conversation at The White Lion. James, for his part, assures the troubled younger man that, while he based the story on what his father had told him, even, distastefully, spicing up his death with a dash of violence, his is a work of supernatural fiction. Joseph is not to be placated, and, when James next returns to Aldeburgh, again makes a nuisance of himself - and this time he's in possession of a gun.

The pair finally separate at the Martello tower, Joseph to seek out the Anglo-Saxon crown his father had been so desperate to return to it's guardians, James to retrieve the copy of John Gawsworth's New Tales Of Terror By Eminent Authors he'd dropped further along the beach, even though - Richard Middleton and M. P. Shiel aside - much of the content is "utter tripe, obviously written by hacks who had no understanding of the finer points of the English language."

Edward Pearce - The Little Wooden Box: Mr. Robertson, a mechanic by trade with a passion for antiques, would be most offended if you were to call him a thief. Liberating valuable historical artefacts from those who don't look after them as they should is hardly theft! That said, he feels a little guilty about his latest acquisition, an ancient brass-bound box the size of a toaster, borrowed for safekeeping from a church on the Norfolk marshlands. Could be that he's not used to pilfering from sacred ground, but Robertson has an uneasy feeling that somebody, or something is out to get him. A series of inexplicable "accidents" at the garage, do little to lighten his mood and Robertson, like 'Mr. Paxton', wonders if maybe he should return his prize.

[dem bones]

Reggie Oliver - The Spooks of Shellborough: "Good God! Did you see that? Some fellow is flashing from the clubhouse!" While those around him are busy being M. R. James, Reggie O trumps all with a masterly take on H. R. Wakefield!

Retired MI5 Jack Wentworth, moves to a quiet Norfolk coastal resort to improve his golf handicap and hunt down 'Sapper', Dornford Yates, and William Le Queux paperback's in Martins second-hand bookshop. All is well until the arrival of his once commanding officer, Sir Frederick Homer, bad egg and beastly cad, all cheerful, self-deprecating bluster as he plants the knife in your back. There is unfinished business between the two dating back to an incident during "the Troubles" when Wentworth fell in love with an informer. 'Bridget', a red headed vision of beauty, was the daughter of an IRA chieftain and, it seems, "call me Freddie" had the hots for her. When the Provisionals received an anonymous tip-off, 'Bridget' was abducted and, once they'd done torturing her with chip fat, she was vision of beauty no longer. Death, as so often the case, came as a mercy.

"Call me Freddie" does what he does best, ingratiating himself with the nobs, racking up chairmanships of this or that exclusive club. All he needs now is to crush Wentworth on the golf course.

Martin, sympathetic to Wentworth even if he doesn't much like him, is unnerved that, whenever they share a round, he spots a thin red-head in low slung-jeans and tiny t-shirt, ever holding a hand before her face. Eventually he persuades Jack to accept Sir Freddie's challenge and have done with it, the old bastard won't let him alone until he has had his way. Much to Sir Fred's irritation, Wentworth gives a decent account of himself and there's not a lot in it as they approach the seventeenth hole ....

An instant 'Sport is horror' masterpiece, no question.

And while we're about it, Vault exclusive!, we can reveal that the cover of the forthcoming Terror Tales Of The Seaside will look absolutely fuck all like this.

Marion Bondage

[dem bones]

Steve Duffy - The Marsh Warden: Defying public opinion and an appeal from the parish priest, Mr. Hinckley, genial landlord of The Marsh Warden, sets to clearing the patch of wasteland known as Gad's Acre, which he plans to redevelop as a beer garden. Hinkley, originally from Canning Town and untainted by Essex superstition, neither knows nor cares that he's disturbing both a plague pit and, worse, the resting place of one, Jonathan Gadd, a medieval Black Sorcerer who sold his soul to Satan.

Hinckley first unblocks the well by the church wall, whereupon his regulars boycott The Marsh Warden as one. A horrid stench permeates the pub, at its worst, "an open London sewer could hardly compete with it in point of vileness and perseverance." His solitary paying guest, Mr. Rushall - antiquarian and church historian - swiftly finds alternative accommodation after a brush with the pub grub: His breakfast egg is off. Same thing with his lunchtime salad. And his pint. Betsey the barmaid quits, unable to endure the ghastly reek. When an unseen something snaps Bob the mastiff's neck during the night, the landlord might be forgiven for rethinking his strategy. Happily for the reader, if not himself, Mr. Hinckley does not know when to quit.

Gary Fry - Double Space: "It's supposed to be a curse. The idea was that if you added this phrase at the foot of any printed missive, the recipient comes to an unpleasant end." What a charming plaque to display on your office wall within full eye-shot of impressionable clients!

While Jim's away in Norfolk, researching his next book, wife Meg will play, and, to add insult to injury, it is Brendan, Jim's fellow author and closest friend, who benefits from her mid-life crisis. Of the two, Jim is far the more successful in terms of book deals, so why would Meg risk their marriage on that loser? What's he got that I haven't?. So when the proprietor of 'James Monty, Printers' explains the significance of the wall plaque, Jim includes the wording in an email home, but it's Brendan - who's hacked into Meg's account - who receives it, and dies in the most embarrassing circumstances. Is it mere coincidence and, if not, will the deadly spell rebound on the sender?

The name of the printing establishment notwithstanding, the spectre of MRJ is less prominent in this one, though there's an element of techno age Casting The Runes about it. A highly original ghost and an EC comic feel to the proceedings add up to another best of book contender from a very strong selection.

[dem bones]

Christopher Harman - Deep Water: More literary "Stars In Their Eyes", or at least, there are passages in Mr. Harman's black sorcery novella that put me very much in mind of Ramsey Campbell. It's another cracker, too. Celine Belloes has gone missing. It's not as though they're close, but husband Pete is concerned for her safety. Celine is an author who adapts East Anglian myths & legends as children's stories, but her work in progress, featuring the evil Seagrim, is a walk on the dark side. The strange fellow in the pork-pie hat, grubby rain-mac and slimy plimsolls who introduces himself as Detective Inspector Trench is not the least reassuring. His reading of the Seagrim shocker is that it's a cryptic suicide note and Celine has thrown herself into the sea on account of Pete's ongoing affair with Elise a young concert flautist. When Pete attends Elise's latest public performance, who should be glaring from the audience but the drenched spectre of his wife ....

Mark Valentine - The Fall of the King of Babylon : "It would have been the greatest haul ever made, something to boast about in The Anchor for years to come. Except that, it was all wrong; for the first time in their lives, they had no need to go out for their catch. It had come to them. "

Deliberately left Mr. Valentine's contribution until last as his stories rarely lend themselves to my pitiful anti-talent for plot summary, and true to form, this may well be the strangest When seafood attacks! story we've encountered to date.

Mother Shears is never wrong, so when she drops by at the village pub to inform the locals that "eels is rising," the fishermen pack their tools, head for the mud flats and never mind that they're drunk to a man. But this time the eels are ready for them. Elias Smith, tyrannical self-styled 'King' of the small community, is about to meet the true monarch of Ely, and it is neither pretty nor merciful.

And that's about it for Terror Tales of East Anglia, perhaps the strongest selection of stories to date in what has already become a personal favourite contemporary series of The Black Books of Horror proportion. And it's Terror Tales Of London up next.