David A. Riley - Moloch's Children

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David A. Riley - Moloch's Children (Parallel Universe, 2015)

Hans Memling . Detail from Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation.

On a tip-off from the pub gossip, Teb, thirty years a poacher, tonight varies his route to take in the derelict Elm Tree house and stay clear of police and gamekeepers. But there are worse things than the forces of law and order, and what Teb sees that night brings on a stroke and enforced career change. So begins Moloch's Children, the first seven chapters of which were run - as Sendings -over Filthy Creations # 6 and #7 before the magazine again went quiet.

The novel centre's around self-styled "hack historical novelist" Oliver Atcheson's acquisition of the derelict property in Fenley Woods. Oliver is recovering from a nervous breakdown triggered by the death of his wife, Louise, in a car accident, and plans to establish an artists colony at Elm Tree House in her memory. But, although he bought the mansion for next to nothing, extensive renovation work is fast exhausting Oliver's fortune, and his close friend, Morgan Davies, worries that he's taken on too much too soon. There's also the matter of the bloody, horrific and undeniably fascinating legends attached to Elm Tree House and environs. Atcheson is openly grumpy where "rustic gobbledygook" is concerned ", but could it be, after that strange find by the builders, the stories are already playing on his fertile imagination?

Morgan embarks on a fact finding mission, first stop, The Hare And Hounds, where Bob the landlord is happy to tell all he knows. Following previous owners The Murdoch's rapid departure, "the Haunted House" stood vacant for two decades, and the surrounding woods have a dreadful reputation. Teb, the village wino, maintains that it was the touch of "something hard and brittle and dry" brought on the stroke that put an end to his poaching days. Of course, Bob pays no heed to such preposterous nonsense, and, besides, Mr. Atcheson has suffered no ill harm since taking up residence, so no cause for alarm.

Some months later, Morgan and wife Winnie accept Oliver's invitation to spend the weekend At Elm Tree House and meet his fellow creatives. These include Howard Brinsley, a temperamental but good-natured painter, Hazel Metcalfe, enigmatic poet, Tom Bexley, hale and hearty sculptor, and his wife, Alicia, who's taken on the role of house-keeper. Winnie loves the house but not the woods which have an oppressive, even disturbing aura about them. She's not best please that Morgan failed to mention the discovery of that strange artefact in the cellar. "The brass feet of Moloch" - Oliver dates them to the Roman conquest - suggest the basement of ElmTree House once served as a Satanic Temple.

With Oliver still ratty on the subject, the Davies' launch their own investigation, inviting the village Librarian Mr Nevil Wilkes to a pub lunch. Mr. Wilkes, a keen local historian, explains that Elm Tree House was built by Sir Robert Tollbridge, a thoroughly bad egg, on the site of a medieval Monastery. During the twelfth century, amid allegations of sadism and Devil worship, the Monks were taken out and lynched in Elm Tree Wood, and their chapel burned to the ground. The Abbot came off even worse, hung, drawn and quartered in the village square, his remains suspended in a cage until they vanished during a terrible storm. He and a "twig-shinned phantom" abroad in the woods are reputedly one and the same entity.

Wilkes assures them it's not Oliver's new home has the evil name, but the surrounding wood, where several murders have been committed. But has he told them the whole story?

To be continued ....

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Nevil Wilkes, local librarian, knows more than he's prepared to let on, but, just in case he should feel like confiding in the visitors, Tom Paxley, brawny sculptor, takes him aside for a violent reminder that a still tongue keeps a wise head.

Ted of the collapsed face and evil-reeking rags accepts a pint from Morgan Davies in The Squire's Arms in return for his account of what he saw in the woods that fatal night in the 'eighties. Morgan has no reason to doubt him as now he too has seen the skull-faced twig man looking up at the house. Badly shaken, he and Winnie resolve to leave for home the next morning. Oliver is crestfallen. He is still in angry denial that there's anything remotely wrong with Elm Tree House. The alleged fatalities are merely the fantasies of halfwit yokels and busybodies. And as to that balderdash about the misshapen doors and windows having been deliberately designed that way to bar entrance - or exit? - to a Demon! But Morgan and Winnie are not to be placated, and if he values their friendship, there'll be no more said about the matter.

Of course, driving away from the Elm Tree House is no simple business. Someone - or something - deliberately steps in front of the car, causing Morgan to veer off the road and into the trees. With the arrival of a very dubious Doctor, we have every reason to suspect that Oliver Atcheson's "artists colony" is a front for something far more sinister.

I've come to like Mr. Riley's Satanists very much. They always have that essential hint of Wheatley and the News Of The World about them.

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I reckon Bob 'The Duke' Rothwell would have appreciated Moloch's Children. There's an unmistakable hint of The Devil Rides Out about it now Professor Krakowsky and his scratch Satanist-busting team are on the case.

With Morgan Davies vanished and presumably readied for sacrifice by the Moloch mob, Nevil Wilkes, sixty-something action-librarian, rescues a drugged and starved Winnie from Atcheson's clutches, though she's not out of the woods yet. Such is the measure of their desperation, Wilkes, wife Marian and Winnie flee Endon for the Birmingham smog, hoping that thirty miles will put them beyond the Coven's reach. But Atcheson's commune are no posturing trendies. That night they unleash a cowled, leprous, sewage-stinking entity to entice Winnie back to Elm Tree House. Wilkes thwarts their diabolical ruse with a well-aimed hotel Bible, but realises his luck won't hold for ever. He turns to his parish priest, Rev. Francis Quigley, who recently sermonised on the evils of the dark occult. Quigley, likewise completely out of his depth, seeks guidance from Professor Joseph Krakowsky who has made it his life's work to combat the Satanic forces. Despite his advanced years and crippled legs, Krakowsky proves a formidable, half-cracked leader in the Duc de Richeleau/ Abraham Van Helsing mold. He travels in the company of a pretty young personal secretary, Vivian Connors, a denim-clad, sad faced girl who, it's hinted, has some previous horrible experience of the Order of the Hidden Way or outfits like them.

Having secured Winnie and Marian as best he can inside a pentagram, Krakowsky leads his rag-tag crew to Endon for a confrontation with Atcheson and his cronies.

Meanwhile, the village bobby is conducting his own independent surveillance of the artists commune. P.C. Merriman is sure Atcheson is up to something dubious but has no idea what. To be honest with you, I'm a bit worried for the chap's safety, but it's Winnie and Marian who face the direst peril ....

Sixty pages to go ....

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Somehow Marian Wilkes survives the horrors of the hairy pentagram, but Winnie, who panics, is spirited away on bony fingers to be prepared for human sacrifice. Krakowsky's party likewise fall into the diabolists clutches. In truth Atcheson is but the deep pocketed stooge of the Order whose true figurehead is the fanatically evil and deadly powerful Ramon Tarradellos, ably assisted by Mr. & Mrs Paxley and Hazel Metcalfe of the torture porn poetry. Tarradellos has the Professor's measure, and it is only the bravery of Rev. Quigley saves the Satanist hunters. But their ordeal is only just beginning.

The same can be said for Police Inspector Peter Dickinson, who, investigating the murder of the local village bobby, falls under the mesmeric influence of Tarradellos, with devastating consequences.

I greatly enjoyed the Grudge End novel, The Return but Moloch's Children is, if anything, more of a Vault Mk I novel. Despite the mid-nineties setting this is very much a 'sixties "Good versus Evil" throwback, generous with the horrors (supernatural or otherwise) and capture-escape cliffhangers, although Dennis Wheatley would sooner have joined the Transport & General Workers Union than conclude one of his black novels on so pessimistic a note. Bad things happen to essentially sympathetic people in Riley books, and, as Professor Krakowsky ultimately discovers, sometimes the only choice comes down to the lesser of two terrible evils.