Paul Huson - The Keepsake

[dem bones]

Paul Huson - The Keepsake (Corgi, 1984)

Blurb:
It started with a visit to Ireland. Angela picked up a small stone in the shape of a head from beneath a holy cross - and her living nightmare began. For the souvenir embodied the ancient terror that walked in darkness - and try as she might, Angela could not get rid of it. It returned to her inexorably. The blood of humans and animals could not appease it - and Angela's greatest fear was for the safety of her unborn child ...

You'd be surprised at the things that still go on.

A borderline 'film crews in peril' entry - Angela Casey pockets the deadly relic while working on a documentary in Ireland - and possibly the first horror novel ever to address our ultimate fear, namely: is the Blarney stone a cannibal vampire?

Angela and her lover of four years, Sean Kittredge, head a team who travel from Boston to Dublin to shoot a low-budget film on Ireland in legend and lore. It is while they are photographing the Rock of Cashel, the ancient stone cross where the Munster kings were crowned, that Angela slips, bruises her ankle, and dislodges an odd-looking stone.

Funny. It had a face: whitish, round as a small orange with two little mounds like popping eyes, a small pit for a mouth rounded into an O of surprise. Or was it a grin?

She bags it as a souvenir.

That night she breaks it to Sean that she is almost certainly pregnant. Much to her relief, he is delighted, and suggests they marry immediately on return to the States.

With the documentary complete and the happy prospect of becoming a mother, Angela has never felt more contented. But still something nags at her, some awful premonition of .... what, exactly? And she's worried about Feather, her Siamese cat. Ever since she and Sean returned home, he's been acting hostile and weird, fast wasting away to skin and bone. Maybe she ought to call in a vet? But first, there's her wedding day to get through ....

To be continued ....

[dem bones]

The wedding reception passes relatively smoothly although Angela would prefer if the main topic of conversation were something other than cattle mutilation. The Siamese freaks out - cats are fine-tuned to sense the evil in their midst. As she and her very stoned hubby are leaving for home, Fiona, Angela's best friend, slips what we now know to be the Hexton Head into her pocket thinking to have it mounted as a bonus present for the happy couple. She should have realised that good intentions don't get you very far in a horror story - unless you include the morgue. That their car should tragically veer off the road comes as little surprise when the guests recall how much Gerry had to smoke, but that doesn't explain the state of Fiona's corpse!

The evil stone finds its way back to the Kittredges mantelpiece without them ever realising it had been out gallivanting.

I first read The Keepsake over a decade ago and rated it highly at the time. It's been no disappointment on second reading. Mr. Huson won't be rushed, and its unlikely we'll be mistaking him for Pierce Nace any day soon, but he tells a good story and the nasty bits are properly nasty.

[dem bones]

The killer pebble is totting up quite a score; drunken party-goers, domestic pets, simpleton infants, nosey parkers - all grist to its bloodthirsty mill. But Mrs. Sullivan, the Kittredges' housekeeper is onto it, having encountered another "fairy stone" back in the old country (incidentally, this one is not the 'Hexton Head' after all but a close relative). Will she risk her continued employment and who-knows-what terrible fate by throwing the thing on the garbage truck?

On collecting the latest decapitated corpse, the man from the animal shelter suggests Angela and Sean have a raccoon problem and sets a primitive trap in the form of an upturned milk-crate set at an angle and baited with a saucer of milk and marshmallows ("Go crazy for 'em" - who says you learn nothing from reading horror fiction?). It captures ... the stone with the fiendish face.

[dem bones]

Just when you thought you had human enemies enough, news just in. Stones fucking hate you too.

As absurd as the premise may sound, to Mr. Huson's great credit he provides much historical "evidence" of fairy stones, elementals and boggats to authenticate his horrific tale (no surprise that he has written several works of occult non-fiction; his only other supernatural novel seems to be The Offering, Authors Choice Press, 1984). Huson also has a way with suspense and, as mentioned, the murders - he's not an author who shies away from slaughtering sympathetic characters - are gory in the extreme. Decent ending, too.

Here's his website: Paul Huson

[Craig Herbertson]

Jan 25, 2015 11:37:30 GMT dem bones said:

Just when you thought you had human enemies enough, news just in. Stones f**k**g hate you too.

As absurd as the premise may sound, to Mr. Huson's great credit he provides much historical "evidence" of fairy stones, elementals and boggats to authenticate his horrific tale (no surprise that he has written several works of occult non-fiction; his only other supernatural novel seems to be The Offering, Authors Choice Press, 1984). Huson also has a way with suspense and, as mentioned, the murders - he's not an author who shies away from slaughtering sympathetic characters - are gory in the extreme. Decent ending, too.

Here's his website: Paul Huson

Great premise.

I have tinnitus. Basically something is broken in my ear due to loud noise and the nerves scream out; there is no response from their buddies and this seems to produce a continuous irritating loud whistling noise in my ear as they try harder to contact the broken bit.

I'm being treated by a crani-sacra specialist. She applied a stone to my ear to dampen the energy in my head. Later that night I noticed that the noise had changed character completely - from hollow wind to a single piercing shriek.

She treated this as a sideline to my many other ailments.

The interesting thing is that it was only when I told her that the tinnitus had changed did she mention that she had used this stone as a test. I had no idea she was trying it and didn't see the stone as my eyes were shut during the treatment. I don't say I believe in the power of stones but something changed the nature of the noise.