Robert Alexander - The Soul Eater

[dem bones]

For those who reckon there's too much Peter Haining content on Vault. Here's his brother.

Robert Alexander [Robert Haining] - The Soul Eater (Corgi, 1980: Souvenir Press, 1979)

Oliver Frey (?)

Blurb:
THE MOST SPINE-CHILLING HORROR STORY OF THE YEAR

When Michael and Sal Read decided to move from the city to an idyllic country village called Stevely, they had no idea of the delirium of evil menace that awaited them.
But soon after their arrival, their young son Julian died in an accident in the churchyard - and their peaceful country home became a place of fear and terror...
Why was the village church crumbling into ruins? Was Stevely the centre of a ring of ritual desecration — and Devil worship?

The Reads were caught up in a titanic struggle between the forces of good and evil ... brought to the brink of insanity by an unspeakable abomination — THE SOUL EATER

Sal had an uneasy feeling about the village on their initial house viewing, but the three bedroom property is seductively within budget and entirely suited to their needs. Now, six months after they moved in, Julian, their youngest, dies in a freak accident, striking his head on a gravestone while playing in the churchyard with school pals. Michael, 36, a university lecturer, is all for moving, but Sal won't hear of it. She feels Julian's spirit lives on here, and refuses to abandon him.

All Souls church has been in a constant state of collapse since a new tower was erected in the 1920s, with fresh cracks and fissures opening in the brickwork on a regular basis. No-one has been able to establish why. The Vicar, Rev. Allan Stevens, a nice old chap, approaches Michael, requesting that he seek advice around the University. We learn that two of Rev. Stevens' predecessors died in freak falls, the first from the church tower, the most recent from a scaffold while cleaning the church. As the tragedies occurred almost sixty years apart, there seems nothing to link them beyond grim coincidence — until one realises both men were researching the parish history when they died. PC Brown, a regular at The Red Lion, has always maintained the Rev. Soames — who pieced together the most detailed chronicle and also plotted a map of church desecration within a twenty miles radius of All Souls — was murdered, although he was almost laughed out of his profession for suggesting as much at the time. These jumped up country bumpkin bobbies and their superstitious mumbo jumbo!

Michael overcomes his initial disinterest. He makes the acquaintance of enthused local historian, David Russell, who loans him a copy of Dr. Wesley Wakefield's Monsters & Myths of Rural England (1931), which includes a chapter devoted to 'The Stevely Monster,' " ... a bat-like creature, yet too large to be a bat, being more nearly of the dimension of a large bird, such as a buzzard or kite." So far, nothing too alarming, but then the author adds that the creature's hairy head and malevolent glare is that of the Devil Incarnate! Everyone is in agreement that this is perhaps fanciful, and yet the book is otherwise a model of restraint.

The Rev. Stevens narrowly escapes death when felled by falling masonry. He swears to sensing an evil presence in the church which, for several months, has made him so depressed as to be unable to pray until back home in the vicarage.

P. 96 of 190.
TBC ...

[dem bones]

"Old Molly Dell, she came from Hell
To eat the eyes of every child
She ate their arms and ate their legs
She ate their feet and then their necks."

Michael Read visits the churchyard at neighbouring Fenbury, as highlighted on Dr. Soames' map. The rector confirms it has been desecrated three times since 1948. Could it be that, despite Rev. Allan Stevens' scepticism, the rituals of black magicians may be behind the baffling erosion of All Souls? Sally is upset when local "weirdoes" invite their children to join them on the village green. Rev. Stevens identifies them as The Temple of the Open Air, crank cultists who believe God is no longer present in All Souls church - "His House is empty" - and now conduct their worship in the great outdoors. What upsets him the most is that he agrees with them that his church is a mausoleum.

Read's research leads him to the grave of Molly Dell, the so-called "witch" of Stevely. When Rufus Whiteleafe, farmer, was arrested for murder, he pointed the finger at the village scapegoat as the leader of a cult devoted to sacrilegious and obscene practices, including child murder and cannibalism. The community took Whiteleafe's side — anyone with a face like that has to be evil. The vicar, in despair of their cruelty, publicly exonerated her of all guilt. When she died in 1843, Molly Dell's bones were laid in consecrated ground.

A gargoyle falls from the roof during the summer fate, missing Helen Read by the narrowest of margins. Rev. Allan is still convinced it was the infamous Stevely Monster put him in hospital. So many false leads. Are the stressed vicar and his bereaved reluctant parishioner reading too much into dubious local legend and a series of bizarre but entirely unrelated coincidences? it's only when, out of sheer desperation, they perform nocturnal exhumations in the sacred soil that the true horror of Stavely is finally revealed.

I got along fine with The Soul Eater without it really blowing me away, though, on reflection the midnight exhumation episode is likely to stick. Far as I'm aware, it was Haining 2's first novel. Time/ stamina permitting, will make a start on the second, Demon-Strand soon ...