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Post by piglingbland on Jun 22, 2013 18:54:41 GMT
THE WHISPERING HORROR
By Eddy C. Bertin
Shadow Publishing 2013
ISBN 978-0-9539032-7-6
Contents:-
Cover Artwork: Harry O. Morris
Introduction by David A. Sutton
The Whispering Horror
The Man Who Collected Eyes
A Taste of Rain and Darkness
I Wonder What He Wanted
Like Two White Spiders
The Taste of Your Love
Composed of Cobwebs
A Whisper of Leathery Wings
Behind the White Wall
Something Small, Something Hungry
Ten
Dunwich Dreams, Dunwich Screams
Belinda's Coming Home
My Fingers Are Eating Me
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Post by David A. Riley on Jun 22, 2013 20:44:06 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Apr 11, 2017 6:31:33 GMT
Eddy C. Bertin - The Whispering Horror (Shadow Publishing, 2013)  Harry O. Morris
Composed of Cobwebs
Ten
A Taste of Rain and Darkness
I Wonder What He Wanted
A Whisper of Leathery Wings
The Taste of Your Love
The Whispering Horror
The Man Who Collected Eyes
Belinda's Coming Home
Like Two White Spiders
Dunwich Dreams, Dunwich Screams
Behind the White Wall
Something Small, Something Hungry
My Fingers Are Eating MeBlurb: NIGHTMARE TALES...
Fourteen stories of dreamlike terror, madness and out and out freezing cold horror!
Something small, something hungry is haunting Circus Morbani... And killing. Boro the odd job man knows something, but he isn‘t telling. Yvana the fortune teller knows something and horror awaits her. And detectives Gary and Roy are stumped. A mysterious and shocking tale set in an old fashioned circus. Something Small, Something Hungry
In the town of Dunwich on the windswept east coast, Henry VIII's soldiers are implementing the king's decree at Greyfriar's Monastery. But Dunwich holds a terrible secret... What is the monstrous thing that comes from beneath the waves? A tale in the tradition of H. P. Lovecrafts Cthulhu Mythos. Dunwich Dreams, Dunwich Screams
Danny Veermeet is in the UK writing a story on old London. The Underground looks like a great theme for his magazine article, but there's something terrifying down there that no one else has noticed. Danny is drawn into a horror so grisly that the truth has been withheld from the authorities... A novella that brings HPL's Cthulhu Mythos into the heart ol the metropolis! My Fingers Are Eating MeHave read versions of seven of these stories in various anthologies and magazines, but over a period of years with some distance between each. I say 'versions', because Eddy C. Bertin is a tinkerman, ever modifying and re-translating his work, so chances are that the thirteen pieces collected in this anthology have since been reworked elsewhere. As alluded to in the introduction, masks are big in Mr. Bertin's horror fiction, so too webs, rainfall, darkness, ghosts of the living, guilt, self-loathing, isolation, loss, and .... tentacles. Proper horror, morbid as you please, spiked with a ghastly sense of humour. Composed Of Cobwebs: (Hugh Lamb [ed.], Return From The Grave, 1976). Some years ago, Allan was responsible for the death of Marciella's boyfriend when he overturned the car while driving home drunk in the fog. Marciella, the only woman he ever loved, took a fatal overdose shortly afterwards. Tonight Allan roams the streets, desperate for someone to talk to, but each house he visits is empty. He comes to believe the entire town is dead, and that the slug-like shadows will destroy him if he's left alone. When a kindly policeman tells him to go home and sleep it off, Allan's frustration and resentment boils over into violence. Memo to road-workers. Don't leave a pickaxe hanging around where some fool madman can grab it in an emergency ... Ten: (Richard Chizmar & Robert Morrish [eds.], Cemetery Dance #52, 2005. As When You'll Be Ten). There can't be many babysitters would have the nerve to bring strawberries, cream and an inflatable sex doll to work, but then Bart Franklin is not your average student. Since flunking his degree in highly contentious circumstances, Franklin has spent years methodically plotting revenge on his former tutor, Professor Emanuel Scheerens. This night he plants the seed of his diabolical vengeance. A Taste Of Rain And Darkness: (David A. Sutton [ed.], Weird Window #1, 1970). Every November 7th he is forced to re-enact the events of that terrible night down to the minutest detail. I Wonder What He Wanted: (Richard Davis [ed.] The Years Best Horror #1, Sphere, 1971). A Haunted House story told in diary entries. Miss Francis Denver, a schoolteacher recently engaged to Georges Vaarberg, moves into her new home in Nowhill Street. From the first she has a feeling of being watched and gradually comes to realise the place is haunted. A face stares at her from the mirror. A cat she buys to get rid of any rats in the attic dies within a day, a ghastly expression on its face. At bottom of the garden she discovers a tombstone bearing the name of a previous occupant - Francesca Denverra, a horror author of some repute who died in 1917. Francis obsesses over the earlier tenant, loaning Denverra novels from the library and poring over the unpublished manuscripts in the loft (including The Whispering Thing and A Taste Of Rain And Darkness) even though she finds them revolting . Meanwhile the late author decides it is time to begin work on a new book ... A Whisper of Leathery Wings: (Jonathan Bacon [ed.], Fantasy Crossroads #9, Stygian Isle Press, 1976). A huge golden faced bat-thing stalks Denwood, dealing death to those who give offence to the widow Duveuille, aka 'Old Woman Spidernose.' Colin Barker is playing a dangerous game. It wasn't like he set out to seduce Myriam, the witch's innocent daughter, but what's done is done, the gal's a tremendous lay, and as long as Ma doesn't find out ain't no cause for alarm. Besides, Myriam has inadvertantly suggested a means by which he can finally get even with Ludo, the official village bully. Of course, thieving the demon mask - source of Spidernose's power - is a risky business, but oh, to watch his enemy grovel in the dirt! It's the night of the full moon. As mother and daughter set out for the woods to do their thing, Colin climbs in through the window ...
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Post by Shrink Proof on Apr 11, 2017 9:08:48 GMT
I really wanted to like this book but it felt like wading through treacle. I still can't understand why as I reckoned that it should tick all the boxes. Weird. Maybe I should give it another go...
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Post by dem bones on Apr 11, 2017 12:27:26 GMT
I really wanted to like this book but it felt like wading through treacle. I still can't understand why as I reckoned that it should tick all the boxes. Weird. Maybe I should give it another go... My first thought was to reacquaint myself with an old favourite ( Composed Of Cobwebs and one I'd not read ( Ten) then cut back to Elizabeth Walker. Seven stories later and still not flagging! The heavy duty Cthulhu Mythos stuff may yet bemuse and bewilder my tiny uncosmic mind but will cross that bridge when we come to it (I find Mythos fiction a very mixed bag. It either thrills or bores me rigid, no "yeah, that was OK" middle ground whatsoever). Otherwise, have been loving it.  "God sees all"? Not any more, he doesn't. : (Herbert Van Thal [ed], The Ninth Pan Book of Horror Stories, 1968). Little Harvey Denner and narrator Dan discover the entrance to a cellar close by a ruined house in the woods. Harvey, the braver of the two, descends to find the whispering man, 'Stake', who claims to be two hundred years old. "He had been very sick, and he had been so long in the dark that the sun hurt his eyes". Harvey visits his new friend every day, even sneaking out of the house at night, and all the while people are remarking how pale and thin he's become ... The day after Harvey's funeral, Dan stops off by his grave to find it desecrated, the coffin dug up and what's left of his friend's body hanging over the side. The men folk arm themselves, track the horror to its lair ... The Taste Of Your Love: (Richard Davis [ed.] Years Best Horror III, DAW, 1985). A serial-killer with a long history of torture-murders picks up his latest intended victim at a disco in Riccione and takes her back to his lodgings for a night of passion. But the girl with 'the finely drawn features and dark lonely eyes' is every bit his match. Soon she has him pinned to the bed in a grip of steel. And then ... She flicks her hair aside to show him the left side of her face .... The Man Who Collected Eyes: (David A Sutton [ed.], Shadow Fantasy Literature Review #6, 1969: R. A. W. Lowndes [ed.], Startling Mystery Stories #16, Summer 1970). That evil hour every obsessive collector works toward but dreads above all other. Claes Perquoi has placed ticks against every item on his wants list. No single rare specimen eludes him. Horror of horrors, a complete collection. Life no longer has a purpose! There is nothing for it but he extend the perimeters of his Ommatomania beyond the furtherest reaches of "sanity". Belinda's Coming Home!: (Eddy C. Bertin [ed.], Dunwich Dreams #2, Dec. 1982). Hilariously vile diary of Karen whose parents' marriage has been under a terrible strain since Belinda was taken away to a special place after what happened with that stupid boy Dan who had a funny thing in his trousers. But now Belinda must be feeling better or stopped being a "retard" or something because, joy of joys, she's coming home this Saturday! Like Two White Spiders: (Richard Davis [ed.], The Year’s Best Horror Stories No.3, Sphere, 1973). The protagonist is detained in a madhouse ("why shouldn't I call it by its real name ?") following the murder of his sworn enemy, Howard Bretner. But how can you strangle a man when your arms terminate in bloody stumps? |
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Post by dem bones on Apr 14, 2017 17:36:12 GMT
"The dead, the drowned ... the changed ones who are neither man nor sea creature. The people of Dagon are ringing the bells."
Dunwich Dreams, Dunwich Screams: (Robert M. Price [ed.], Tales Out of Dunwich, Hippocampus Press, 2005). Why did H P Lovecraft relocate the events chronicled in The Dunwich Horror from a quiet little Suffolk coastal village to a entirely spurious New England settlement? Did he fear the grisly retribution of the Great Old Ones should they suspect him of revealing trade secrets via his "fiction"? A Belgian tourist arrives in East Anglia seeking answers. Our man (Eddy, or somebody very like him) takes a room at at The Dunwich Inn and initially rues a wasted journey. The original village is long lost to coastal erosion, its replacement (pop. approximately 120) a glorified tourist trap for occultists and oddballs who take their Cthulhu mythos extremely seriously. All that remains of the original "Dun'ich" is a blackened tombstone. His meditation at this gloomy spot is interrupted by the arrival of an aged stranger in chatty mood who relates long-suppressed facts concerning the doom that came to Dunwich in 1537, a direct result of Henry VIII's dissolution of the Monasteries. This fellow certainly knows his history. It's almost as though he were there when Sir Lewis's troops razed Greyfriars Abbey to the ground!
As mentioned in previous post, Mythos stories have a tendency to trip me up, but this novella hits all the right spots. The travelogue is a joy - "bloody boring Ramsgate," London with its stupid licensing laws (since revoked) and tasteless lager (still the same) - and the stranger's tale, narrated in fluent pulp, is eleven quick-fire chapters of witchcraft persecution, proper nasty sadistic butchery, heroic defiance and big-tentacled weirdness.
Behind The White Wall: (W. Paul Ganley [ed.], Weirdbook #12, 1977). Death calls from the madhouse again (men in white coats are never far away in these stories). Paul involuntarily dials his home telephone number, desperate to talk to wife Martha. She's been dead four years. A woman picks up ....
At five pages the shortest piece in the book. Packs a mean punch.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 20, 2017 11:40:18 GMT
Something Small, Something Hungry: (W. Paul Ganley [ed.], Weirdbook #13, 1978).
"Mother!,' a shocked voice said behind her. 'You once said you would never use the Mgai-ritual again, not together with the Eibor manuscripts"!
Needs must in a crisis, son, and this is a crisis. Death stalks Marco Morbani's Circus, picking off the performers one by one. With her dying breath, trapeze artist Elairie Cauber warns the Carnies that a "vampire" walks among them, but this particular specimen is far removed from the traditional bloodsucking old count in a cloak. Hers is the eighth bizarre "accidental" death in recent weeks - it won't be the last. Brute that he is, Frank Cauper takes the tragedy in his stride, but for Boro, a corpulent, foul smelling moron employed by Morbani as circus handyman, it is as if all beauty has been taken from the world. Elairie's kindness was all that's kept him going through the lonely, cheerless days of his excuse for an existence.
The police investigation is hampered by the usual wall of silence. The fortune teller, the three-armed clown, the knife thrower, the lion tamer and the rest of the 'freaks' prefer to keep their business in house and Gary and Lon of the homicide department must penetrate a wall of silence. Fatal inexplicable mishaps continue to befall the company. Whoever, whatever is responsible is striking with impunity. Only Boro and Yvana the witch have an inkling that the enemy is other than human, but can a combination of her black magic and his suicidal recklessness destroy the phantom menace?
Meanwhile, Lon's wife, Liliane, is expecting their first child, so we wish them well with that!
My Fingers Are Eating Me: Almost thirty years since the top level cover up surrounding a spate of appalling cannibalistic murders on the London underground, Glen Canmoor, retired police inspector, turns whistle-blower, selling his story to the press to finance his alcohol dependency on condition he remain anonymous. To corroborate his unbelievable testimony he submits documentary evidence - various police statements, a grisly polaroid, and, crucially, the diary and (ultimately hilarious) transcript of a cassette recording by the late Danny Vermeert, a Belgian magazine reporter who'd travelled to the capital to research an article on The Unknown London.
Danny's scribbled observations on certain irritating absurdities of London life are as funny - and accurate - as those of his unnamed compatriot and fellow Old Speckled Hen fan in Dunwich Dreams, Dunwich Screams. Having dutifully suffered the questionable joys of Madame Tussauds, The London Dungeon, a Ripper Walk and The Ten Bells pub, Danny finally stumbles upon what he's after in the unlikely form of a malodorous tramp making the most of a one day travel card to ride the tube. There's something revoltingly not right about the skin on the man's hands ...
'The Unknown London' has found him. Very soon he'll wish it hadn't.
Turns out my reservations were in vain. The novellas, in particular the two Euro-Mythos entries, are arguably the stand out stories in a consistently entertaining collection. Circus shocker Something Small, Something Hungry introduces a near unstopable parasite who draws nourishment from agony and hatred. My Fingers Are Eating Me is an instant classic horror on the underground pulp in the tradition of the Death Line and Creep movies. A decade on since last I read them Composed Of Cobwebs is miserable as ever and climax of The Taste Of Your Love still freaks me out.
Any chance of a volume two?
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Post by dem bones on Apr 30, 2018 7:02:27 GMT
Stephen Jones (ed.) - Dark Horizons #10 (British Fantasy Society, Autumn/ Winter, 1974)  David Lloyd
Fiction
Mike Chinn - The Second Dragon
Glen E. Symonds - Children Singing
John Hurley - A Shade Upon The Radiance
Verse
Stephen Walker - Of The Rings Of Jar Coon
Gordon Larkin - Come To Clay
Peter Wilcockson - A Prisoner Of The Snow
Articles
David A. Sutton - The Cosmic In Films
The Writer In Fandom: Eddy C. Bertin
Mike Ashley - The Unsuccessful Successor: A Look At Fantasy Fiction
A Checklist of Fantasy Fiction
Letters of Comment. Tony Francis, Alan Hunter, David A. Sutton.
Artists this issue. David Lloyd, Jim Pitts, Stephen Jones, Alan Hunter.Included here purely for The Writer In Fandom: Eddy C. Bertin, the first half of which was first published as a guest editorial in David A. Sutton [ed.], Shadow #13, May/June 1971, it's sequel appearing here for the first time. "You really thought you could be an author in your own country?" Eddy on the impossibility of selling macabre fiction to Belgium publishers from the late 'fifties to then present day, rejection slips from around the globe, and the difficulties of writing porn novels when you don't like them. Contains startling revelation that The Whispering Horror was rejected by Badger Books' Supernatural Stories (!).
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Post by mcannon on Jun 3, 2018 4:13:51 GMT
I've been a bit scarce lately, so I don't know if it's been previously mentioned, but according to the latest edition of David Langford's SF fanzine "Ansible" (https://news.ansible.uk/a371.html), Eddy Bertin passed away on 19 May, aged 73. RIP.
Mark
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 3, 2018 8:40:16 GMT
I've been a bit scarce lately, so I don't know if it's been previously mentioned, but according to the latest edition of David Langford's SF fanzine "Ansible" (https://news.ansible.uk/a371.html), Eddy Bertin passed away on 19 May, aged 73. RIP. Mark Yes, I saw that there too. By the time Ansible comes out each month, I'm usually well up on the genre deaths mentioned there (mainly since I read the wonderful File 770 every day), but Eddy's was news to me. Sad. |
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Post by dem bones on Jun 3, 2018 10:53:27 GMT
Sad news for sure. RIP Eddy C. Bertin. Some small consolation that at least he lived to see The Whispering Horror published and well received.
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Post by David A. Riley on Jun 3, 2018 11:07:15 GMT
Stunned and saddened at this news. Though we never met face to face, I first got into contact with Eddy through Dave Sutton's fanzine Shadow back in the late 60s. We did, for a time, correspond, though we lost contact a few years later. So glad Dave Sutton was able to publish his brilliant collection of short stories, The Whispering Horror.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 3, 2018 12:02:39 GMT
From what I can gather, ECB seems to have been a regular contributor to the 'fanzines, particularly in the 'sixties and 'seventies? Was really pleased when Charlie secured an original - The Eye in the Mirror - for The Second Black Book of Horror. It's just a shame so little of his work was translated. |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jun 3, 2018 13:50:26 GMT
From what I can gather, ECB seems to have been a regular contributor to the 'fanzines, particularly in the 'sixties and 'seventies? Was really pleased when Charlie secured an original - The Eye in the Mirror - for The Second Black Book of Horror. It's just a shame so little of his work was translated. He was Belgian? I had no idea. Which is not saying much, of course. |
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Post by Middoth on Apr 16, 2019 18:17:14 GMT
Yes, he is.
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