David A. Riley - A Grim God's Revenge

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David A. Riley - A Grim God's Revenge (Parallel Universe, Nov. 2021).

Jim Pitts

Dead Ronnie and I
Corpse-Maker
The Urn
Gwargens
Retribution
The Bequest
They Pissed on My Sofa
Old Grudge Ender
A Girl, a Toad and a Cask
Scrap
Lem
A Grim God’s Revenge
Grudge End Cloggers
Hanuman

Blurb:
Fourteen tales of the supernatural, horror, fantasy and the weird.
"None of the TV broadcasts had shown the rioters up close and had only hinted at their infection. It was only now I realised it was worse than I had imagined. The man's face was a disgusting mess of torn flesh and exposed gristle. One eye had been torn from its socket. The other stared with such intense hatred I felt a shiver run down my spine."

"She glanced at the page in front of her. "Kill him! The words, as she read them, were echoed by the voice, harsh and firm. Shocked, she slammed the book shut, trembling with fear. 'No," she whispered. 'No, Father, no!""

Attractive new paperback from Mr. Riley includes some old fiends from Advent Calendars past. Particularly looking forward to making the acquaintance of the Grudge End Cloggers — at least, I think I am ...

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Dead Ronnie and I: (Barry Skelhorn [ed.], Sanitarium #44, 2016). The zombie virus reaches the Outer Hebrides. Two partners in a shipping company are set upon by a mob of flesh-eaters as they board their amphibian seaplane. Ronnie Martin, fatally gouged in the skirmish, revives to attack his friend, our narrator, who fights him off but at cost of the plane which plummets into the sea. Narrator washes up on a glorified rock, only for Ronnie to emerge from the water, the slave to an insatiable appetite to feast on human. In desperation, the intended meal takes to the sea aboard a chunk of debris, miraculously escapes to Spring Island, where the contamination is yet to strike. Alas for him, the inhabitants plan to keep it that way. He is banished to the rock until such times as there is not enough left of rotting Ronnie to continue its unrelenting pursuit.

Corpse-Maker: (David A. Sutton [ed.], Weird Window #2, 1971). Voodoo-powered murder spree Eustace von Offen, barber of Schallenberg, is likely to survive his demise thanks to a neighbour's fortuitous discovery of his doll mortuary. A jolly, macabre horror comedy when you least expect.

The Urn: (Stuart David Schiff [ed.], Whispers #1, July 1971). Rudyard Steeples, collector of ancient funeral ornaments, meets with a predictable doom after acquiring a midnight black urn from a London antique dealer.

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Gwargens: (David A. Riley [ed]., Beyond #3, 1995). The Gwargens may be the most disgusting, unhygienic, incontinent life form in the galaxy, but they also provide budget price space-travel to those seeking a swift getaway. Farren the Terran, on the run from a loan shark, signs on as a crew member. He regrets doing so even before the discovery of a stowaway in the form of a blob-like sack of grey fungus ....

Retribution: (Stuart Hughes [ed]., Peeping Tom[/url] #3, 1991). An angry young faerie takes up guerilla warfare versus the usurpers. 1-0 to the Little People. Loved this one.

The Bequest: (Pete Coleburn & Jan Edwards [ed]., Dark Horizons #52, Spring 2008). After fifteen years of joyless, living death marriage, Gwen Farnworth bloodily rids herself of drunken, bellicose Daniel. Gwen receives assistance from an evil spirit masquerading as her late father, the vicar, who, during his later years, was inexplicably bequeathed the library of a notorious local Satanist.

They Pissed On My Sofa: (Robert Essig [ed.], Malicious Deviance, 2011). When a youthful gang of housebreakers trash his Wood Green villa, Neville Dearden, lifelong crime fiction aficionado, swears bloody retribution. The wilful destruction of his library is unforgivable, the accusation scrawled on the wall worse, but it's the use of his couch as a public latrine sends Neville completely gaga. Very much in the Pan Book of Horror/ Black Book tradition. Nastiest so far.

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Old Grudge Ender: (Johnny Mains [ed.], Screaming Book of Horror, 2012). "Have you ever had a dozen men stamp on your hand with clogged feet, one after t'other, till your hands were mincemeat?"
American author Bob Ingersol visits a district of Edgebottom intent on devoting a book to it's long and bloody history of alleged witch cult activity and ritual murder. Reluctant interviewee, Old Harold Sowerby, a regular in The Potter's Wheel confirms that fell foul of the Grudge Enders when he pried too deeply into his brother's disappearance. Ingersol persuades Bob to pose before the derelict church where the cloggers danced on his fingers all those years ago. Eerie roadside watchers take a keen interest in their activities (they remind me of the characters in photo below. An inspiration for [some of] the story?).

Photo: David Henderson, Thurrock Gazette. See The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-hikers.

A Girl, a Toad and a Cask: (William Meikle [ed.], The Unspoken, 2013). Captain Gordon and his ten-strong band of fugitive mercenaries descend upon a lonesome cottage in the woods whose sole inhabitant would appear to be a young woman, Salwayn, who is hardly likely to put up much of a fight. Witchcraft and butchery.

Scrap: (Sharon Lawson & Anthony Rivera [eds.], Dark Visions: A Collection of Modern Horror: Vol. 1, 2013). Following their father's hugely popular fatal overdose, teenage brothers Gary and Eddie leave behind their mates at Blackburn to move to miserable Edgebottom with drink 'n drug-addled mum and the latest creep boyfriend. Desperate for cig money, the boys take to raiding scrap metal from the condemned Victorian slums of Hope Street, Grudge End, as avoided by the entire community on account of it's evil reputation. The boys' discovery of a mouldering, decapitated corpse revives a pram-pushing elemental in Teddy boy regalia to perpetrate yet more appalling black magic murders.

Lem: (Charles Black, [eds], Eleventh Black Book of Horror, 2015). A gormless wannabe New York mobster and his reluctant accomplice, break into the home of an aged loan-shark, demand at gunpoint that he hand over his savings. Old Samuel's remains composed throughout, safe in the knowledge that he has the protection of a loyal companion from his early days in the Austrian ghetto.

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Welcome to Grudge End

A Grim God's Revenge: (Shaun Kilgore [ed.], Mythic, Fall 2017). As punishment for their temerity in attempting invasion, Mentrifar, the bloodthirsty Bithanian commander, leads a campaign of torture and slaughter against the Northmen. On his orders, several High Priests are lashed to standing stones and burnt alive before their Heathen temple. The martyrs die calling upon their hideous idol of skin and bone to avenge them.

Grudge End Cloggers: (M. Leon Smith [ed.], Scare Me, 2020). This time its the turn of journalists on The Edgebottom Observer to suffer the consequences of prying into the secrets of "Lancashire's shame." Eric is determined to find out what became of the several dozen miners in blackface and iron-soled shoes who would annually parade through Grudge End until the town was left to rot at close of the 'eighties. Violent Lancs Folk horror (see also Paul Finch's Hell Wain).

Hanuman: (Trevor Kennedy [ed.], Phantasmagoria #16, 2020). "Kali will eat your heart, you damned traitor!" Author S.D. Harper pays the ultimate price for his cruel treatment of a monkey in India. Nightly he dreams of a previous incarnation as a thuggee during the mutiny. Wounded in battle, he surrendered to the British and betrayed his colleagues in an attempt to save his own neck. It didn't work. The monkey bears an uncanny facial resemblance to the native who murdered him when his treachery was exposed.