Charles Birkin - Dark Menace

[Dr Terror]

Dark Menace (Tandem, 1968)

Dark Menace, Happy As Larry, S.O.S., The Jungle, T-I-M, The Life Giver, 'Don' t Ever Leave Me' , The Yellow Dressing Gown, Waiting for Trains, The Lord God Made Them All, The Accessory, Simple Simon; Siren Song

Waiting For Trains: "Would the horror of this war, even in its aftermath, never end?"

Dresselberg. At the close of WWII, George Barrow, a reluctant railway transport officer in the occupying army, is powerless to prevent a train crossing the border into Soviet territory due, in part, to the indifference of his superiors who can't be bothered to check one of the prisoner's credentials for fear of causing a diplomatic incident. The cattle trucks are crammed with young Russian immigrants who'd been conscripted into the German army and are therefore "traitors". When the train reaches Glenheisen they will be killed and buried in a mass grave, as have so many before them. Depressingly, this one is even bereft of the "relax - it's only a story" get-out clause.

Waiting For Trains: The war is over, but in a small station somewhere in Europe a British Transport Officer receives a message that a special 'movements' train will arrive shortly. Grim stuff firmly rooted in actual wartime occurrence. Roger Pile

Not yet had the pleasure of T-I-M but it sounds gloriously, unmissably horrible from that teaser!

T-I-M made me L.O.L.

There's another of Sir Charles's sci-fi stories in this one and a different photo of the author on the back cover.

[Dr Terror]

Dark Menace: Novelist Sir Cedric Brough and chums tour the Black Museum. Many years earlier Sir CB's daughter mysteriously disappeared without trace...

[Swampirella]

Mar 17, 2013 17:55:18 GMT Dr Terror said:

Dark Menace: Novelist Sir Cedric Brough and chums tour the Black Museum. Many years earlier Sir CB's daughter mysteriously disappeared without trace...

Allow me to continue with brief descriptions of the stories in this excellent Birkin book I just finished. A solid collection of horror/macabre.

Happy As Larry: Effie Barlow, 25, from Brisbane, visits Fazeley, the stately home owned by her grandfather's nephew. Upon arrival, she meets the elderly caretaker, gruff Miss. "Mardie" Manor and her friendlier sister Julia Grylls. But who is "Larry" and why is he kept out of sight?

S.O.S.

Colonel Cripps is worried about his best friend "Manders", or Major Manderville Colville, to give his full name. Both are bachelors getting on in years; Manders has developed stomach pains and his drinking is getting worse. A horror story about alcoholism.

The Jungle

The young Freeman children, Archie, Aubrey and Patsy leave their home at 14 Elm Road to go blackberrying on the wasteland (which they call "the jungle") where a new housing estate is to be built. Lonely, annoying, only child Ernie Lesley decides to "accidentally" show up and inflict his presence upon them. The kids don't take too kindly to this....

T.I.M.

Poor 5 year old Jimmy tries to phone for help for his mother, Elspeth Martineau, who's suddenly collapsed after a cerebral thrombosis. Just before passing out, she asks him to call "Dr. Tim" Rye". You can really feel the poor tot's frustration...

The Life Giver

Wealthy, childless Margaret Tenterden, wife of a wandering playboy husband, has invited plain New Zealander Julia Ives to spend Christmas with her. Her other guests are Dr. Kurt Goebling formerly of Germany in it's darkest period and now residing in Brazil, and his nurse Eva Schwarz. Mrs. Tenterden's newly built mansion rests on the " a rugged, narrow peninsula which stabbed out from the coast of county Clare" and has a hospital building attached, just in case it should be needed....

Don't Ever Leave Me

Roman building contractor Guiseppe Ricci has started excavation on some wasteland "between Rome and the airport" for a new block of flats. However, the excavation has been temporarily halted due to the finding of an ancient tomb. He bribes a few of his men to quietly bury the thing the next day, to "escape entanglement with interfering professors and a consequent hold-up in the completion of his contract". In the meantime, he has a bigger problem, breaking it off with his mistress Anna Rizetti, on the order of his future father-in-law, very wealthy Antonio Barbieri, so he can marry his strait-laced daughter Claudia.

The Yellow Dressing Gown

Unhappy Lilian Hammerton, wife of philandering Jason and mother of little polio-stricken Henrietta, decides to take a look at her crystal ball and see what her "modest psychic powers" can see. This is unfortunate as she sees something extremely unpleasant. I guessed the "surprise" right off, but it was still a pleasure to read.

Waiting For Trains

A brief introductory paragraph leads us to the main story of Lieutenant George Barrow, railway transport officer at the border control town of Dresselberg after the end of actual hostilities of WWII. Early one morning, a "special train" stops briefly at his station, filled with White Russians who had been conscripted into the German army and now being forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union and certain death. As this is based on actual events, it's even more horrific.

The Lord God Made Them All

Greystoke Towers is an expensive mental institution for the upper class. Jane Purdey is due to be released soon; her friend Zellie Seal is not happy about that and decides to take action.

The Accessory

66 year old Uncle Roland relates his last encounter with an old senior classmate, Will Mitchell, to his niece Charlotte and her husband Graham.

Simple Simon

Picture it: 1860s Scotland (?): Lord Simon Tamberley is not a nice man at all. "Somehow, he'd developed a savage, brutal streak" which he inflicts on poor Tom Bowman, young poacher in the making.

Siren Song

Seven-month pregnant Bella and Douglas Foster hire a caravan to celebrate their third anniversary. They plan to explore Salisbury and it's cathedral the next day, but before they can, an intriguing flying saucer lands nearby and they can't help going inside. Why, I can't imagine, as I'd run as fast as I could in the opposite direction...

 

[Dr Terror]

Well done, Miss S!
Here's the Beyond Midnight episode of The Yellow Dressing Gown as The Crystal Ball

[dem bones]

Thanks so much, Swampi and Charlie. The title story reads like a particularly cruel variation on the already deeply unpleasant The Harlem Horror. It might even be argued that poor little Zandra - raped, mutilated and ground up as pigswill - got the "better" deal. At least her suffering is at an end - or you'd like to think so.

[dem bones]

Dark Menace: Twenty years on from his daughter's abduction on her way home from school, Sir Cedric Brough, crime novelist, accompanies two actor friends on a tour of Scotland Yard's Black Museum. Their guide - "There's no objection to your smoking" - a retired detective, pauses at length before a print of Lance Heston-Harper, the sex murderer who molested and dismembered several children on his Bedfordshire farm. Sir Charles studies the victims' pathetic personal effects ....

T-I-M: "Telephone Tim .... telephone Dr. Rye." Elspeth Martinue suffers a stroke and lapses into terminal unconsciousness. Son Jimmy, five, does his best to phone for help, but all he gets is a nasty unhelpful woman who seems obsessed with telling him the time.

The Yellow Dressing Gown: Lilian Hammerton has lost her husband to gorgeous, ruthlessly ambitious young super-bitch Carola Haig-Dunfield, but 'La' is not the reason for her suicide. This afternoon, while gazing in her crystal ball, Lilian watched horrified as a figure wearing her new dressing gown suffocated her beloved daughter with a pillow. Is she doomed to murder her child while in the throes of dementia? As she fades from life on a lethal self-administered cocktail of pills and whiskey, Lilian chances one last look in the glass .... As Swampi remarks, and in common with so many Birkin stories, the "surprise" is no surprise at all, which is what gives his work its evil power.

[dem bones]

Perils of alcoholism I & 2. Second is a greatest hits contender.

The Accessory: Mixed fortunes of Wilfred Mitchell on expedition deep in the Mato Grosso in 1930. The fabled diamond mine proves elusive, he loses his rich, dipso wife, Nadine, and procures a priceless memento mori.

S.O.S.: Grim fate of war hero gone to seed, Major Manderville Ramsay Colville. "Manders" hit the demon drink in the wake of Flora's desertion with "some bandsman, a ghastly looking dago." Bedridden following extensive stomach surgery, he persuades a kindly nurse to sneak him a whiskey. When the DT's kick in, the old duffer imagines himself persecuted by alternatively a hell hound, a horse, a naked woman, and ....