David A. Riley - His Own Mad Demons

[dem]

David A. Riley - His Own Mad Demons (Hazardous Press, 2012)

Their Own Mad Demons
Lock In
The Fragile Mask On His Face
The True Spirit
The Worst Of All Possible Places

About the author

Blurb
David A Riley's first professionally published story was in the 11the Pan Book of Horror Stories in 1970. Since then, he has been published in numerous anthologies from ROC Books, DAW Books, Robinson Books, Corgi Books, Doubleday, Playboy Paperbacks, and Sphere. Two recent notable anthologies in which he has appeared are The Century's Best Horror Fiction, from Cemetery Dance, and Otto Penzler's Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, from Vintage Books.

In 1995, David and his wife. Linden edited and published Beyond, a fantasy/SF- magazine. His stories have been published in magazines such as Aboriginal Science Fiction, Dark Discoveries, Fear, Fantasy Tales, Whispers and World of Horror

The Lancashire Witches are gone but their malign influence on Grudge End, Edgebottom is as potent as ever it was .....

Their Own Mad Demons: Petty criminals Nobby and Stinko are hired to carry out a risky transaction with the imposing Reggie Gorton and his marginally less psychotic family at a remote moorland junkyard. Nobby is given a gun by his boss for security - fat lot of good that will do him when it all goes tits up, but it's better than nothing. Inevitably, Reggie's preferred business procedure is to relieve the go-betweens of their delivery, frog-march them to a cabin at rifle-point and torment them some before murdering them. Nobby shoots Gorton's cousin and makes a break for it but Stinko, older and out of condition, is not so lucky. The Gortons drag him screaming to an isolated farmhouse, and what they do him ...

Nobby walks miles to reach an on-off girlfriend's place where he can stop a while. Once he's stolen her car, he'll drive the length of the country and put this terrible experience behind him. But the ghost of Stinko - or rather, the ghost of Stinko's stink - catches Nobby up, vows to haunt him to the grave unless his murder is avenged. It was, after all, a hideous and protracted one.

Reluctantly, Nobby heads out to the farm. It won't be easy. Far from mere run of the mill multiple murderers, the Gortons have another weapon in their armoury. They are powerful Satanists .....

The True Spirit: Grudge End in Edgebottom is infamous for a horrific machete massacre in 1983. Paul Maguire, twenty-two, butchered his parents and three younger siblings before taking his own life as the culmination of a Black Magic ritual. This last came as little surprise as the history of Grudge End is steeped in Witchcraft & Satanism and it remains a hotbed of clandestine Devil worship, animal torture and sporadic outbreaks of violence to the present day.

In the direct aftermath of the slaughter, among the first to arrive at the house in Randall Street was ambulance driver Harold Briscombe, and the carnage he witnessed so upset him that he suffered a breakdown and never returned to work. Now long retired and in ill-health, Harold's one pleasure is the allotment he tends with his wife, Alice, a woman devoted to feeding the neighbourhoods community of stray kittens. This brings her into conflict with her next door neighbour and fellow pensioner, Edwin Gaskin, a whisky-sodden former resident of Grudge End who despises everything equally, though he's prepared to temporarily elevate cats above all other forms of life and threatens to kill any of them stupid enough to venture onto his premises. When two of Alice's favourite kittys are murdered (including Blakey, "so named because his face always reminded her of the lanky inspector in On The Buses") and a third disappears, Gaskin is the obvious suspect, but then his corpse is discovered, the cantankerous old git having apparently fallen downstairs in a drunken stupor. The police find Black Magic paraphernalia and a dead cat among his effects.

Meanwhile, the Biscombe's patch on the allotment is among several vandalised by, its thought, the yobs from the decrepit council estate which overlooks it. An amiable twenty-something who introduces himself to them as Peter Hopkirk helps to put right the damage and soon becomes a fixture of their lives - he even offers to move in as 'protection' from whoever is behind all this recent unpleasantness (the police now realise that Gaskin was murdered). Alice, at first suspicious of their new friend, soon falls under his spell but the normally laid back Harold isn't so sure. Having caught the young man out in a lie regarding his supposed family and place of residence, Harold follows Hopkirk to the house in Randall Street, just as the young man intended him to ...

Lock-In: The Potters Wheel, Edgebottom, on the outskirts of Manchester. Sam Sowerby, the landlord, has recently let a room to 'Albert Durer' who, unknown to Sam, is a Black Magician adept in conjuring forth Cthulthoid monstrosities. Durer's latest ritual sees the pub plunged into a void surrounded on all sides by an impenetrable blackness. Regular Tom Atkins takes a step outside to investigate, has the face torn from him for his trouble. Next to try his luck. the teacher, Harold Sillitoe: he bleeds to death after his arm is picked clean as if by acid. Now Sam and his four elderly friends - affectionately known as 'The Grudgers' after the area they hail from - are left with a desperate choice: either stay here and die of starvation or find some way of getting through the black shroud ....

The Worst Of All Possible Places: (David Sutton (ed.), Houses on the Borderland, BFS 2008). Went into a down about some stuff over Christmas, was just crawling back up when i made the mistake of reading this suspenseful, beautifully paced novella. It's excellent, of course: David Sutton is not one to fill his anthologies with rubbish any more than Mr. Riley is a man to write it - but, if you're feeling depressed ....

As a desperate alternative to homelessness and against the advice of a diligent housing officer, Bill Whitley takes temporary accommodation in due-for-demolition Daisyfield House on the outskirts of Edgebottom. Bill was recently fired from his teaching post at St. Cuthberts after lashing out at the class bully, and a suspended sentence means he's unlikely to find similar employment this side of the grave. True to it's reputation, Daisyfield House is a foretaste of Hell, "a dumping ground for junkies and psychos and local down and outs", whose notoriety was cemented when a twelve-strong cult led by a fellow named Chambers committed mass suicide. Forgotten to history is that the block was built on the site of a church where, in 1612, a minister and his followers took similar steps to avoid a witch trial. It soon transpires that the maniacal drug-fiend next door is the block's least appalling proposition. The dead of Edgebottom don't stay that way for long, and they're ever eager to add to their number. Bill learns too late he'd have been better off taking his chances on the street.

[dem]

All finished now. If Lurkers At The Abyss, the forthcoming bumper selection from Shadow publications, is likely to go down as the must-have David Riley collection, then His Own Mad Demons is a tasty warm-up act. 'The Grudgers' are back - albeit as peripheral figures - in The Fragile Mask On His Face, again partially set in The Potters Wheel. Helen Taylor and her friend Joyce frequently drop by the pub after their weekly accountancy course at Night School, and it's here that Joyce, recently split from her boyfriend, Tony, is needlessly rude to awkward loner, Mat Denton, whom she's nicknamed "Goggle-eyes" on account of his passing resemblance to a young, Goatee-bearded Peter Lorre. No surprise that Mat is yet another of Edgebottom's black sorcerers, specialist subjects, face-skinning, demon-raising. When Joyce disappears, a worried Helen and Tony learn they've recently shared a nightmare centred around a decrepit farmhouse on the moors ....

[David A. Riley]

Thanks for that, dem.

The Lurkers in the Abyss collection is set for being launched at the World Fantasy Convention later this year. Just received a copy of my contract for it from Dave Sutton so everything is going ahead smoothly. It's great working with someone as professional as Dave.

Cover artist will be Paul Mudie, which is really exciting. His covers for the Black Books have been fantastic and I'm looking forward to see what he does for mine.

The TOC will definitely be different to what was previously listed as three of the stories will or have already been published by Dave Sutton's Shadow Publishing: The Satyr's Head, of course, in the anthology of that title, and both The Farmhouse and A Bottle of Spirits will be in his bumper reprint of volumes 1 and 2 of New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural. I have therefore added a couple of more recent stories. I'll let everyone know what the new TOC is when Dave and I have agreed on it.

[Craig Herbertson]

Jan 7, 2013 13:10:08 GMT David A. Riley said:

Thanks for that, dem.

The Lurkers in the Abyss collection is set for being launched at the World Fantasy Convention later this year. Just received a copy of my contract for it from Dave Sutton so everything is going ahead smoothly. It's great working with someone as professional as Dave.

Cover artist will be Paul Mudie, which is really exciting. His covers for the Black Books have been fantastic and I'm looking forward to see what he does for mine.

The TOC will definitely be different to what was previously listed as three of the stories will or have already been published by Dave Sutton's Shadow Publishing: The Satyr's Head, of course, in the anthology of that title, and both The Farmhouse and A Bottle of Spirits will be in his bumper reprint of volumes 1 and 2 of New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural. I have therefore added a couple of more recent stories. I'll let everyone know what the new TOC is when Dave and I have agreed on it.

This is all good news

[dem]

Shall look forward to the Lurkers ... TOC with interest. In the absence of The Satyr's Head, Farmhouse (still my personal favourite), A Bottle of Spirits and, i'm guessing the five from this His Own Mad Demons, there should be enough room for most of your remaining published short fiction to date?

It was The Very Worst Possible Place's unflinching depiction of tower block living that got to me. In my experience, people can and too often do go crazy in such environments. Could be, in several cases, the poor sods were already so damaged it would have happened regardless of where they lived, but the isolation and paranoia these places breed can't have helped. The one I'm particularly well acquainted with is no palace, but neither is it anything like as bad as 'Daisyfield House', though have squatted, rented or worked in North London and Upton Park equivalents. Perhaps the most hideous and downright dangerous, a bottles throw from West Ham United's ground, has, mercifully, long been demolished, but in its latter years it was surely annexed to Hell. Perversely, I used to look forward to delivering there as a great adventure, because you could never prepare for who or what specimen of human debris you might have to step over on the stairwell. But then, of course, when the shift was done, I had a comparatively benign estate to return to, unlike a handful of increasingly terrified single mums who were stuck with it.

Our block's long-term problem tenant has not been seen since the week leading up to Christmas ....

[David A. Riley]

I did base the block in Worst of all Possible Places on a now demolished one in Queens Park, Blackburn where my son temporarily lived some years ago. The chainsaw murder of a bloke by his girlfriend happened there. It was this that gave my son the incentive to leave, strangely enough. And the description of unloading stuff to the block is based on taking my son's furniture there too.

As for Lurkers, there are more than enough stories available for this, plus I have set a number of others to one side for a possible third collection, though that's still in the air. I'll mention more about that later when and if things develop favourably. Fingers still crossed on that.

[Swampirella]

Jan 6, 2013 15:17:22 GMT dem said:

David A. Riley - His Own Mad Demons (Hazardous Press, 2012)

Their Own Mad Demons
Lock In
The Fragile Mask On His Face
The True Spirit
The Worst Of All Possible Places

About the author

Blurb
David A Riley's first professionally published story was in the 11the Pan Book of Horror Stories in 1970. Since then, he has been published in numerous anthologies from ROC Books, DAW Books, Robinson Books, Corgi Books, Doubleday, Playboy Paperbacks, and Sphere. Two recent notable anthologies in which he has appeared are The Century's Best Horror Fiction, from Cemetery Dance, and Otto Penzler's Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, from Vintage Books.

In 1995, David and his wife. Linden edited and published Beyond, a fantasy/SF- magazine. His stories have been published in magazines such as Aboriginal Science Fiction, Dark Discoveries, Fear, Fantasy Tales, Whispers and World of Horror

The Lancashire Witches are gone but their malign influence on Grudge End, Edgebottom is as potent as ever it was .....

Their Own Mad Demons: Petty criminals Nobby and Stinko are hired to carry out a risky transaction with the imposing Reggie Gorton and his marginally less psychotic family at a remote moorland junkyard. Nobby is given a gun by his boss for security - fat lot of good that will do him when it all goes tits up, but it's better than nothing. Inevitably, Reggie's preferred business procedure is to relieve the go-betweens of their delivery, frog-march them to a cabin at rifle-point and torment them some before murdering them. Nobby shoots Gorton's cousin and makes a break for it but Stinko, older and out of condition, is not so lucky. The Gortons drag him screaming to an isolated farmhouse, and what they do him ...

Nobby walks miles to reach an on-off girlfriend's place where he can stop a while. Once he's stolen her car, he'll drive the length of the country and put this terrible experience behind him. But the ghost of Stinko - or rather, the ghost of Stinko's stink - catches Nobby up, vows to haunt him to the grave unless his murder is avenged. It was, after all, a hideous and protracted one.

Reluctantly, Nobby heads out to the farm. It won't be easy. Far from mere run of the mill multiple murderers, the Gortons have another weapon in their armoury. They are powerful Satanists .....

The True Spirit: Grudge End in Edgebottom is infamous for a horrific machete massacre in 1983. Paul Maguire, twenty-two, butchered his parents and three younger siblings before taking his own life as the culmination of a Black Magic ritual. This last came as little surprise as the history of Grudge End is steeped in Witchcraft & Satanism and it remains a hotbed of clandestine Devil worship, animal torture and sporadic outbreaks of violence to the present day.

In the direct aftermath of the slaughter, among the first to arrive at the house in Randall Street was ambulance driver Harold Briscombe, and the carnage he witnessed so upset him that he suffered a breakdown and never returned to work. Now long retired and in ill-health, Harold's one pleasure is the allotment he tends with his wife, Alice, a woman devoted to feeding the neighbourhoods community of stray kittens. This brings her into conflict with her next door neighbour and fellow pensioner, Edwin Gaskin, a whisky-sodden former resident of Grudge End who despises everything equally, though he's prepared to temporarily elevate cats above all other forms of life and threatens to kill any of them stupid enough to venture onto his premises. When two of Alice's favourite kittys are murdered (including Blakey, "so named because his face always reminded her of the lanky inspector in On The Buses") and a third disappears, Gaskin is the obvious suspect, but then his corpse is discovered, the cantankerous old git having apparently fallen downstairs in a drunken stupor. The police find Black Magic paraphernalia and a dead cat among his effects.

Meanwhile, the Biscombe's patch on the allotment is among several vandalised by, its thought, the yobs from the decrepit council estate which overlooks it. An amiable twenty-something who introduces himself to them as Peter Hopkirk helps to put right the damage and soon becomes a fixture of their lives - he even offers to move in as 'protection' from whoever is behind all this recent unpleasantness (the police now realise that Gaskin was murdered). Alice, at first suspicious of their new friend, soon falls under his spell but the normally laid back Harold isn't so sure. Having caught the young man out in a lie regarding his supposed family and place of residence, Harold follows Hopkirk to the house in Randall Street, just as the young man intended him to ...

Lock-In: The Potters Wheel, Edgebottom, on the outskirts of Manchester. Sam Sowerby, the landlord, has recently let a room to 'Albert Durer' who, unknown to Sam, is a Black Magician adept in conjuring forth Cthulthoid monstrosities. Durer's latest ritual sees the pub plunged into a void surrounded on all sides by an impenetrable blackness. Regular Tom Atkins takes a step outside to investigate, has the face torn from him for his trouble. Next to try his luck. the teacher, Harold Sillitoe: he bleeds to death after his arm is picked clean as if by acid. Now Sam and his four elderly friends - affectionately known as 'The Grudgers' after the area they hail from - are left with a desperate choice: either stay here and die of starvation or find some way of getting through the black shroud ....

The Worst Of All Possible Places: (David Sutton (ed.), Houses on the Borderland, BFS 2008). Went into a down about some stuff over Christmas, was just crawling back up when i made the mistake of reading this suspenseful, beautifully paced novella. It's excellent, of course: David Sutton is not one to fill his anthologies with rubbish any more than Mr. Riley is a man to write it - but, if you're feeling depressed ....

As a desperate alternative to homelessness and against the advice of a diligent housing officer, Bill Whitley takes temporary accommodation in due-for-demolition Daisyfield House on the outskirts of Edgebottom. Bill was recently fired from his teaching post at St. Cuthberts after lashing out at the class bully, and a suspended sentence means he's unlikely to find similar employment this side of the grave. True to it's reputation, Daisyfield House is a foretaste of Hell, "a dumping ground for junkies and psychos and local down and outs", whose notoriety was cemented when a twelve-strong cult led by a fellow named Chambers committed mass suicide. Forgotten to history is that the block was built on the site of a church where, in 1612, a minister and his followers took similar steps to avoid a witch trial. It soon transpires that the maniacal drug-fiend next door is the block's least appalling proposition. The dead of Edgebottom don't stay that way for long, and they're ever eager to add to their number. Bill learns too late he'd have been better off taking his chances on the street.

Just finished this; it was fantastic!

[benedictjjones]

Still love "Lock In" - a wonderful piece of "pub horror"