R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Tales From Beyond

[dem bones]

R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Tales From Beyond (William Kimber, 1982)

ionicus

A Living Legend
Markland the Hunter
Shadow On The Wall
One Extra
The Painted Door
The Swing


Blurb:
Britain's 'Prince of Chill' once again lifts the veil between this world and the supernatural to give us a new collection of tales likely to cause even the most stalwart spine to shiver.
Behind that veil he reveals Caroline Fortesque, world famous novelist of the nineteenth century and apparently still living, the horrors behind the painted door, the terrifying spectre of the shadow on the wall, the golden-haired girl on the swing.
Farewell the tranquil mind when you read these outstanding stories, for a garden swing, a beach, and a woodland footpath well will never look the same again ....

A Living Legend: Bramfield Manor. Brian Radcliffe of The Daily Reporter is sent to secure an interview with Caroline Fortesque, a late-Victorian author of some repute. By his reckoning, the recluse is 117 years old, and her condition - when he finally persuades her sole companion, Jenkins the butler to allow him to see her - suggests he's correct. "Wouldn't she be better off dead? That ... that is nothing more than a slowly rotting corpse" he groans when confronted by the semi-mummified relic stinking out the bedroom. The ever-loyal Jenkins assures him that madam has her good days when she is relatively sprightly and capable of speech.

During the night, Radcliffe encounters Cathy, a beautiful young girl in white. When he mentions this to Jenkins, the old man pleads with him to stay away from her and on no account allow any physical contact. Such is the power of Mrs. Fontesque's romantic imagination that's she's brought her characters to life, but what will happen if the reporter fails to heed Jenkins' warning?

Markland the Hunter: Sara, the unhappy young wife of Elder Josiah Sullivan, spiritual leader of the local fishing community, wanders Cranston Point calling to the immortal Markland to free her from her misery. The corpse-like ghost walks out of the sea and unleashes his soul-stealing skeleton crew of the villagers, whose response is to burn Sara as a witch. A night of mayhem ensues before he returns to his watery grave. "Perhaps I only exist in fear-fevered imaginations. When the chain of bigotry and superstition are broken, possibly then I will die. It is conceivable that your God and I will die together."

Thanks, Chrissie!

[dem bones]

"To start with she's fundamentally a les ... All loving girls together stuff. When I found her she was shacking down with a whip-me-to-death-with-a-lettuce-leaf-butch-bitch who was due for a thrombosis if a man so much as breathed on her ... Now, take my word for it there's no animal under the sun so susceptible to a spot of mature masculine charm, than the submissive half of a les set-up."

One Extra: Nosey Parker author Carlton Matthew, is recuperating from a broken leg. Propped before his bedroom window, he spends the day studying those who pass below in the street. Matthew grows obsessed with a well dressed man and much younger woman who he correctly assumes are having an affair. On occasion, the lovers are joined by a silent third party, who tags along beside them, glaring hatefully at the man the while. Much to his astonishment, they remain oblivious to her presence. A ghost! Must be the chap's wife. What's he done with her?

Leg out of plaster, Matthew attends a party where he is introduced to Anthony Ferris, monstrously wealthy chairman and managing director of several film & TV companies. Matthew recognises him as the male half of the haunted lovers. Ferris being the worse for drink, Matthew helps him back to the love nest he shares with bit-on-the-side Pauline Mayfield, twenty years his junior. Whoever their phantom stalker is, it's not Mrs. Ferris who is is alive, well and employing two private detectives to obtain photographic evidence of her husband's infidelity.

Ronald's Rear Window homage begins strongly, but takes a plunge out of a high window long before we learn that a lead player has done likewise.

One for 'men of the world'

[dem bones]

Shadow On The Wall: "My function is to provide a body for a homicidal ghost ..." Rather than take up residence in a care home, ageing widower Roland Pearce moves in with son Gerald and family for an extortionate £100 a week rent. Gerald and wife Stephanie are all "it's no trouble - be our guest!" to Roland's face, so it's left to his demon grand-daughter, Marcia, sixteen, to explain the situation. "The reason they invited you to stay here is because of your money. Father is expecting to get the lot once you push off. If he gets it, he'll give Mother as little as possible, then leave us. Move in with a girl he's been having it off with. I know all about her. Followed him from his office ..."

Marcia has a much better idea. Dear Granddaddy can rewrite his will, leave everything to her, then commit suicide. If not, she'll use diabolical powers to unleash 'Strangling Charlie' - and he really wouldn't like that.

Proper horror story, this, one of RCH's most powerful if we overlook a glaring plot inconsistency (don't ask: these notes are a week old and I've already forgotten what it is). Marcia is a truly hateful creation, all greed, malice for its own sake, and middle class swearing.

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"Your immortality will be different. Boy who killed his mother and father - waxwork figure - books with long words - and maybe a funny song. In a way you too will never die. "

The Painted Door: "The dreams of youth are painted doors. Open one - and a skeleton walks out."
Bloodiest story in book to date by a stretch. Brian Howlett falls in love with a woman captured in a series of photographs. Unfortunately, Michelle Allen, a cousin of his grandmother, died fifty years ago, aged twenty, in the garden of the house where he lives. When the local churchyard is torn down to make way for the new motorway, the exhumed coffins are stored in a shed before reburial at a new site. Brian breaks in one night, makes away with Michelle's beautiful, miraculously preserved corpse. He takes it home and hides her in the attic.

Next morning, the churchyard ghoul's antics are the talk of the town. Mrs Howlett wants to know who could do such a thing. Her husband is pretty up on this stuff. "Degenerates. Black magic, devil-worshippers and such like. Though what they want with a skeleton is beyond me."

Michelle's surviving brother pays the Howlett's a visit. Henry Allen is a joyless Bible basher with no love for his late sister. According to him, Michelle was a scarlet woman and "blasphemer" who drove their parents to an early grave, "souring my soul into a lifelong distaste for the female sex." Little can he realise that, even now, the undead Michelle is corrupting Brian to do her evil bidding ...

Still have one story to go, but of those I've read, would rate Tales from Beyond, much of The Cradle Demon and the Clavering Grange effort, Tales from the Other Side, as the most consistently entertaining of his William Kimber collections.

[dem bones]

Another powerful one to end on. It's as though RCH had a word with himself to cut out the "zany" stuff for one book and see how it went with the readers (all of them old grannies, apparently).

The Swing: "I dread being alone with her. Funny, I only feel safe on the swing. I guess maybe it reminds me of my childhood. Sometimes I go out on a moonlit night and swing back and forth and try to imagine that John will soon come out of the trees. I think K. watches me even then".

The ageing Parker spinsters, holed up in a house much too large for them. Kathleen, pushing sixty, is the elder by five years. Short, plump and plain, she detests bullying, cantankerous Martha, not least for seducing and then destroying her fiancee shortly after the war. The feeling is mutual. Martha was very beautiful in those days, everyone said so, but that's hardly the case now! Kathleen's sole pleasure is in relaxing before the rotting garden swing. If she watches long and hard enough, sometimes she is transported back to happier times when the girl with golden hair swung to and fro in the wind ...

Recently kindly Mr. Robertson has been trying to persuade Kathleen to forget her impossible sister, move into a home where she can be properly cared for. Kathleen won't hear of it. Much as evil Martha good as killed dear John and makes her every hour a misery, blood is thicker than water, and "We've only our hate to keep us warm."

We eventually learn the truth behind a sequence of tragedies via entries in Martha's diary for 1947.

Maybe one for Valancourt to consider.

[Johnlprobert]

Aug 19, 2019 15:07:40 GMT dem bones said:

"Your immortality will be different. Boy who killed his mother and father - waxwork figure - books with long words - and maybe a funny song. In a way you too will never die. "

The Painted Door: "The dreams of youth are painted doors. Open one - and a skeleton walks out."
Bloodiest story in book to date by a stretch. Brian Howlett falls in love with a woman captured in a series of photographs. Unfortunately, Michelle Allen, a cousin of his grandmother, died fifty years ago, aged twenty, in the garden of the house where he lives. When the local churchyard is torn down to make way for the new motorway, the exhumed coffins are stored in a shed before reburial at a new site. Brian breaks in one night, makes away with Michelle's beautiful, miraculously preserved corpse. He takes it home and hides her in the attic.

Next morning, the churchyard ghoul's antics are the talk of the town. Mrs Howlett wants to know who could do such a thing. Her husband is pretty up on this stuff. "Degenerates. Black magic, devil-worshippers and such like. Though what they want with a skeleton is beyond me."

Michelle's surviving brother pays the Howlett's a visit. Henry Allen is a joyless Bible basher with no love for his late sister. According to him, Michelle was a scarlet woman and "blasphemer" who drove their parents to an early grave, "souring my soul into a lifelong distaste for the female sex." Little can he realise that, even now, the undead Michelle is corrupting Brian to do her evil bidding ...

Still have one story to go, but of those I've read, would rate Tales from Beyond, much of The Cradle Demon and the Clavering Grange effort, Tales from the Other Side, as the most consistently entertaining of his William Kimber collections.

Slightly naughty, of course, that this story had seen publication just a couple of years previous in RCH's Fontana collection Tales of Fear & Fantasy, but under the title The Resurrectionist!