We have to note with sorrow the loss of weird fiction writer Joseph S Pulver Sr, after a long struggle with debilitating illness – and yet sorrow will not be his legacy. We’ve already seen wonderful images of The bEast, with well-deserved recognition of his value to the field, and his encouragement of others, over the last few hours. There is much yet to be said, and Joe will remain a Presence in weird fiction for a long time to come.

Any contribution we might make is negligible compared to the views of those who knew him and his work far more intimately. We dislike sudden gushing pretences of close association – we’ve spilled beer over many noted authors, but didn’t exactly form a life-long bond because of it. So we might have stopped there, but as we reflected on Joe’s passing, we also recalled that this very month four years ago, April 2016, many of us were celebrating his particular gift,  his memorable personality, or his great love for The King In Yellow, that abiding creation of Robert W Chambers.

As a result, a rather neat resource was created at the time – for those who are not that familiar with Joe or his writing, and for those who just want to enjoy remembering. His friend and fellow author Mike Griffin* collated links to a wonderful range of pieces about Joe, and listed them on the GriffinWords website. We recommend browsing though these, written by many leading weird fiction folk.

https://griffinwords.com/2016/04/16/the-new-math/

That’s it, really. You can now go read some Pulver.

Should you want to carry on below, for our lesser part that same April, we decided to pursue a slightly different route. Intrigued by Joe’s fascination with tKiY – and having long had our own obsession with Chambers’ stories – we explored the literary origins of lost Carcosa itself, and interviewed renowned artist Michael Hutter, who produced his own cycle of stunning Carcosa paintings.

*Almost  a year later, we did interview Mike Griffin as well, concerning his own inspirations and his first novel, Hieroglyphs of Blood and Bone.

The Devouring Hieroglyphs of Michael Griffin

We present this long piece on Carcosa again, slightly edited, in memory of His Yellow Highness, Joe Pulver…

MUSINGS ON CARCOSA

It’s our great pleasure today to welcome German surreal artist Michael Hutter to the site, especially as his  range of stunning illustrations includes the Carcosa cycle, a theme which crosses into so many works of strange fiction.

Before we interview him, we should say a little about Carcosa itself, Pre-eminent among the classic authors who have written of this haunted city are the Father of Carcosa, Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913?), the Master of the Yellow Sign Robert W Chambers (1865- 1933), and of course H P Lovecraft.

(The question-mark by Bierce’s date of death is due to his disappearance, with a last supposed letter dated December 1913. There is still no satisfactory explanation of when – or indeed where – Bierce died.)

If there is a beginning to our trail today, then it lies in An Inhabitant of Carcosa. This story by Bierce was first published in the San Francisco Newsletter in 1886, and then included as part of his collection Can Such Things Be in1887. It’s a short piece, and appears at first to be about a man who awakens from sickness to find himself in an unfamiliar landscape. You’ll have to read the story to grasp what else might be implied. It can be found online.

Alternatively you can listen to an audio version:

The narrator in the above version is Otis Jiry.

Robert W Chambers built on An Inhabitant in his stories of the Yellow Sign, collectively known as The King in Yellow. He used and re-interpreted some of Bierce’s names, and his stories refer to a play, similarly called The King in Yellow, which says more about Carcosa itself.

Reading this forbidden play brings new insights into the universe, as well as despair or utter madness. People have said the latter about greydogtales, mind you.

Where Bierce placed the city of Carcosa in the apparent past, in Chambers it is to be found on the shores of Lake Hali in the Hyades, either far from our own planet or in a dimension/universe apart from ours.

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.

—“Cassilda’s Song” in The King in Yellow Act 1, Scene 2

Some think that Bierce was drawing on an imaginative view of the French medieval city of Carcassonne, which was called in Latin Carcaso. Sadly, although we’ve been to Narbonne, and slept in a public park in Perpignan (the gendarmerie were not amused), we’ve never been to the great walled city itself.

There have even been suggestions that Bierce knew of a song/poem by Gustav Nadaud (1820 – 1893), Carcassonne. This seems questionable, as the nearest date we’ve found so far for Nadaud’s piece is 1887, the year after An Inhabitant was published. However, it is quite possible that the work was in circulation before that. Carcassonne the poem is about a man who will never see that ‘fabled’ city, and is quite interesting in itself in that it evokes a sense of how strange and wonderful the city is.

‘They tell me every day is there
Not more or less than Sunday gay:
In shining robes and garments fair
The people walk upon their way.
One gazes there on castle walls
As grand as those of Babylon,
A bishop and two generals!
I do not know fair Carcassonne,
I do not know fair Carcassonne!’

Check out the full poem by Nadaud if you like to pursue these threads – that’s also easily found online.

A number of gifted contemporary writers have continued exploring Carcosa and related concepts – too many, in fact, to mention here. Joseph S Pulver Sr (1955-2020) alone contributed numerous stories and poems to this ‘area’, as well as encouraging so many other writers to visit the Hyades – and there have been some excellent anthologies in recent years. Amongst other projects, Joe edited the highly-regarded Chambers tribute anthology  A Season in Carcosa in 2012, for Miskatonic River Press.

THE CITY AND THE ARTIST

Relating to the above, our guest is artist Michael Hutter. Despite informing us that he doesn’t talk well about himself or his art (and the fact that our German is very rusty), he was still kind enough to participate in a full interview for greydogtales – and to send us loads of artwork to accompany the interview. We feel somewhat honoured that he was willing to take the time, and have tried to illustrate the post with as many of his works as we could.

Michael Hutter is a German painter, illustrator and author who studied at the University of Applied Sciences in Koln under Professor Marx, a painter himself who produced a number of challenging expressionist works. Michael has had many solo exhibitions in the last thirty years, in addition to providing illustrations for fantasy books, heavy metal albums and other media, and once said of his paintings:

“In my opinion truth is somehow an illusion anyway. I mix that with my obsession, passions, desires and fears and choke what happens in the abyss of my personality back on the surface.”

Let’s get down to our interview.

greydog: Michael, thank you so much for joining us. We, and many of our visitors, are enormous fans of your art. Do you have a central vision for your work, a set of principles, or is it a more unconscious process?

michael: I try to follow the logic of dreams, it’s an unconscious process.

greydog: Much of your art is presented as a number of themes – Inkubi, Carcosa, Games in Purgatory und so weiter. Do you work intensively on a particular theme or concept for some time, or do you collect together pieces with common aspects later on?

michael: One idea or “story” usually has several aspects. I try to find them all and tell it to an end. This is how the work-groups develop. Sometimes I realise during working on it, that it is a series, on other occasions I know it from the beginning. Sometimes I start with the idea of a story and develop the pictures from there, sometimes it is the other way round: I start with one (or a few) picture ideas and realise during painting or drawing that there is a connection, sometimes a story, sometimes just a feeling. You see, it’s a bit complicated…

greydog: We’re not experts, but we see obvious echoes of Hieronymus Bosch, the Surrealists, Tarot art and even non-European elements. Are there particular artists from the past who you feel influence you?

michael: I think influence is overrated. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. And those giants have been influenced themselves by others who have been before them and so on. Of course Bosch is important to me, but so are many others. If I want to do justice to all, the list would grow much too long (and quite boring as well). The interesting thing about an artist is not where he is coming from, but what he or she might add to the evolution of art.

greydog: Yes, a fair point. Your work is described variously as surreal, magical and visionary. Do you feel part of the Visionary Art movement, as promoted by Laurence Caruana?

michael: I feel part of the evolution of art, but not to any smaller group or sect.

greydog: A number of artists (and aspiring artists) read greydogtales. Could you tell us something about the main techniques you use?

michael: I prefer traditional techniques like oil, tempera or watercolour. I do my ink drawings with a dipping pen and my graphic works are mostly etchings.

Most of my oil paintings are done in a very precise three layer technique, the “Carcosa” cycle is an exception: the pictures are painted in one layer – fast and quite “impressionistic”.

greydog: We’re not very familiar with contemporary German art. Is there much interest in your work in your home country, or do you look more to the international scene?

michael: I’m not very familiar with contemporary German art either. It seems that the official art scene is quite hostile against fantastic art in my country. I’m much more interested in the international scene, and thanks to the web I have good opportunities to show my works in all parts of the world that have free access to the internet.

greydog: This is the first time we’ve seen your photographic work. The Ancestors Gallery and Inkubi and Sukkubi present disturbing and distorted views of humanity. Is this a period from your past, or do you still produce these kind of pieces?

michael: Hmm, it’s rather a period from the past. I really like these photoshop works, they were very inspiring to me and had a big influence on my painting and drawing, but in the end I really prefer the unique character of traditional works. And I prefer the haptic surface, the brushstrokes or the feeling of fine lines that you can feel with your fingertips to what comes out of an inkjet printer.

greydog: We are also great admirers of Santiago Caruso from Argentina, whose pictures share certain aspects of surrealism with some of your own. Are you familiar with him?

michael: I saw some of his works on the internet and liked them a lot.

greydog: Your Carcosa illustrations are absolutely superb. We know many enthusiasts of writers like Robert W Chambers and Ambrose Bierce – do you read much early and weird fiction yourself?

michael: No doubt, weird fiction has a big influence on my work, I have always read a lot. I think I was about sixteen when I discovered Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith and it hit me like an epiphany. Literature (specially if it deals with the strange and uncommon) still has a very big influence on me.

Again my “list of influences” would be too long and boring for this short interview. But to mention a few – of course the classic writers like Poe, Lovecraft, Chambers, Smith and so on. Very important is the Bible (maybe the cruellest book I have ever read), the fairy tales of the Grimms, Mervyn Peake’s “Gormenghast”, also I’m a great admirer of Thomas Ligotti… and now I’m so unjust to stop this list.

greydog: And finally, do you have a major direction or project for the year to come?

michael: Doing the paintings, especially the altarpiece for a huge cathedral, sculpting a city of eerie doll-houses, transforming the Book of Genesis into a Lovecraftian graphic novel… there are lots of ideas but the trouble is, that life is not long enough to do everything that I’d like to do…

Currently I’m finishing a project that occupied me for over two years: “The Kranzedan” a cycle of (very) short stories, drawings and oil paintings. I’m trying to put this material together as a book, still not knowing how and where to publish it.

greydog: Many thanks for joining us – we look forward to your new works, and we hope that The Kranzedan will emerge soon.

Another of Michael’s earlier projects was Melchior Grun, five ballads told and drawn by him, tales of a wandering medieval minstrel, Melchior Viridis. With baroque illustrations to accompany the text, Melchior travels areas, “which had never before seen a Christian”, and is confronted with the sins of the flesh and malicious contemporaries. This was a limited edition which is no longer available as far as we know.

You can obtain copies of the following, but only as a German language e-book. Die Dämonenbraut (The Demon Bride) is written as a fragment of the memoirs of Richard Upton Pickman. H P Lovecraft fans will recognise the name from Lovecraft’s 1926 story Pickman’s Model about an artist who creates horrifying images and is banned from his Boston circles.

Die Damonenbraut at Amazon UK

And Michael Hutter’s website is here:

http://www.octopusartis.com/

“The history of art is littered with Great Men and the Muses they use as stepping stones to brilliance. In this shockingly lyrical, endlessly rich and luxurious nightmare of a novel, the Muse turns.” AuthorJayaprakash Satyamurthy, on Anonyma.

And… we’re back in the saddle. Which isn’t quite true, because we fell out of the saddle when we were about fourteen, due to a grumpy horse and a faulty girth strap, and never rode a horse again. But never mind. Our real meaning is that, after being a bit busy elsewhere, we have some terrific articles, reviews and interviews lined up once more. And probably a ‘Lurchers for Beginners’ piece on our twenty years with a lurcher pack, further down the line.

But weird fiction, spiced with peculiar detectives and classic supernatural tales, is one of our staple food groups, so today we have a brand new review of Farah Rose Smith’s Anonyma (2019).

We can also report that the campaign for Sherlock Holmes & the Occult Detectives was a massive success. This chunky two volume anthology, edited by old greydog, will be out early Summer from Belanger Books (details another time). Occult Detective Magazine #7 is almost completed, and should be ready at the start of May, and more of John Linwood Grant’s own strange tales are due out as the year stumbles on. Resistance is futile (but if you do resist, please do it quietly and try not to leave stains).

Another anthology in Belanger’s new Great Detectives series is going through the campaign stage right now, including JLG’s slightly tongue-in-cheek novelette ‘The Curate’s Curious Egg’. Should you be interested, this features the meeting between Holmes and Professor Augustus S F X Van Dusen, ‘The Thinking Machine’. Created by Jacques Futrelle at the start of last century, this irascible logician manages both to amuse Holmes and infuriate poor Dr Watson.

Other authors have highlighted classic detectives such as Carnacki and Father Brown, so this should be well worth a look. The project is fully funded, but you can check out the details and rewards here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/belangerbooks/sherlock-holmes-and-the-great-detectives/description

It’s worth adding that during these troubled pandemic times, it’s hard for authors and publishers to get their work noticed – book launches have been cancelled, as is only sensible, and physical bookshops are struggling – even online book delivery is at the back of the priority list.  Jim Mcleod and the folk at the Ginger Nuts of Horror site are doing their best to alert readers to new weird and horror stuff through their Pandemic Book Launches, and you’ll find a lot of news there in safe Interwebby form.

https://gingernutsofhorror.com/index.html

Totally unconnected with any of the above, the mice are also back, running around our decrepit kennel, feasting in the fruit bowl and gnawing behind the bookcases. Our dogs can face rats, but mice are too small and quick, the little imps. Whilst we do act if things get out of hand, we rather like seeing a little dark-eyed wood mouse cleaning its whiskers by the back door. Some say infestation and mouse urine; we say life does its thing.

Although devoid of small cute rodents, today’s main piece is by author Dave Jeffery, who has kindly joined us as a reviewer to help plough through our backlog of review material, and to highlight some brand new works as they appear – which may even make us seem more current than we usually do. On with the show…

ANONYMA by FARAH ROSE SMITH

Reviewed by Dave Jeffery

“Compelling, disquieting, and beautifully constructed.”

A young woman finds herself at the heart of a surrealist cult, its enigmatic leader – Nicholas Bezalel – following the doctrines of an isolated and esoteric occultist architect in order to build a new artistic, transgressive movement. The titular ANONYMA becomes both muse and sacrifice. As she is offered up in a ritual to connect this world to the next, she begins her journey into the twisted, depraved landscape of the after world.

The basic premise of Smith’s 2019 novel is deceptively simple and does not give a hint of the quality and complexity of writing that awaits the reader within the pages that follow. Smith employs an engaging narrative that flows like a bitter stream through themes of abuse, dysfunctional love, and the dark nature of humanity.

The imagery is lyrical and profane, a contradictory literary landscape where beauty and decadence are entwined to evoke deep rooted emotional reactions as the story ebbs and flows. Just as the eponymous ANONYMA charts her quest through the underworld, so too does the reader share this experience, as though taken by the hand – a companion – so that the protagonist does not have to suffer alone.

The strength of the book can also be its weakness. Its surrealist, transgressive nature is bound to lose readers who prefer a linear narrative; thus, it is not likely to ever go mainstream. But that is not what is important here. Smith has, just like Bezalel, set out to create pure art through the sequential, negative experiences of its protagonist.

Many view this book as an unsubtle metaphor for feminism’s battle against gender status quo, and – in some part – I can understand this perspective if ANONYMA is taken in and analysed on a superficial level. But the book is way too complex to relegate its content to a quick scan, it must be placed beneath the microscope, its sum part studied and understood.

ANONYMA is about personal growth in adversity, it is about retaining the essence of personality and being, despite what challenges are brought to bear on a life. Despite its disturbing content, the book has uplifting themes as it draws to its conclusions, giving hint to the constructs of rebirth into better times, the trials of a heinous experience giving a fragile sense of hope.

Overall, ANONYMA is compelling, disquieting, and beautifully constructed by an incredibly talented writer.

Highly recommended for those who enjoy surrealist, transgressive horror and bizarro fiction, or those who would like to read something a little different from conventional genre literature.

Anonyma is available now:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07N497CPL/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_GqxNEb120VW15

Dave Jeffery is an accomplished author who writes Adult/Young Adult horror and contemporary fiction, and screenplays for award-winning films. You can find him at his website, below:

https://davejeffery.webs.com/

Do be careful, stay safe, and we look forward to seeing you again in a few days. You may not be here – maybe the cat needs ironing, or that leaking roof needs fixing – but we just like looking forward. It’s a hobby…

“In all weathers you might have seen that hulking old woman, with her vague, staring, reddish face, trudging through the streets…”

A monstrous appetite, a man from the waves, a child’s fractured visions and more. It’s no secret that we like peculiar stories. They don’t have to be from any particular genre, but they have to be darned odd. And whilst there are many fine and well-known classics in the short story form, we also like finding forgotten gems – and wondering why on earth they were forgotten.

So today we highlight six more examples of these, reminding you of our general rules in such articles – the stories should be:

• memorable for their themes, key elements or imagery;
• different from the usual fare in some way, either in style, approach or resolution;
• free of the standard vampires, werewolves, witches, zombies and cthulhoids for a change;
• lodged in one’s memory long after the book is closed.

This time we bent our previous ‘overtly supernatural’ rule occasionally, as we are on the edge of talking early weird fiction rather than standard ghosts and hauntings fare…

NOTE: All of these can be hunted down somewhere on-line, though ‘Nightmare Jack’ can be hard to find, and is probably most easily located by buying the Ash-Tree e-book of Metcalfe’s stories:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007KM9P2K/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_lx-EEbW31Z9PS

The Vernon Lee first came out in Vanitas, which can be found on Project Gutenberg; ‘The Case of Mr Lucraft’ is on Project Gutenberg Australia. Jerome’s ‘Silhouettes’ can be read here:

https://americanliterature.com/author/jerome-k-jerome/short-story/silhouettes

1) ‘NIGHTMARE JACK’ (1925)

John Metcalfe

A long tale of theft and wickedness in Burma, and of final fates in London Town. Dark and fascinating, as it draws you in to the doom of men.

‘ “I shall give you the story as at last he told it to us those ten years back in the upper room of the little, black inn at Shale, whilst the sweat broke and glistened on his face and the horror gathered in his eyes.” ‘

Occasionally difficult in places because of the rendition of Nightmare Jack’s style of speech, but intense and full of eerie references:

‘ “Whilst the wind without raced up against the yellow tide and his face within went grey upon the pillow, that little, whispering man spoke to us—by his frantic hands and eyes as much as by his dying mouth—of the mythos of the Web and Loaf, and the faded terror of the Triple Scum…” ‘

2) ‘THE BIRD IN THE GARDEN’ (1912)

Richard Middleton

Published posthumously, this tale, like the Jerome below, is difficult to settle in any genre. You might pass it off as a weird  observational piece, or as a  domestic horror story, or as some form of early magical realism. Do give it a try.  Middleton, who died young, is unjustly neglected, and the whole posthumous collection The Ghost Ship and Other Stories is a very sound acquisition.

‘It was in the morning after they had just been watered that the plants looked and smelt best, and when the sun shone through the grating and the diamonds were shining and falling through the forest, Toby would tell the baby about the great bird who would one day come flying through the trees—a bird of all colours, ugly and beautiful, with a harsh sweet voice. “And that will be the end of everything,” said Toby, though of course he was only repeating a story his Uncle John had told him.’

3) ‘SILHOUETTES’ (1894)

Jerome K Jerome

How you would classify this very serious piece by Jerome, we couldn’t say,  even though we keep re-reading it. It has horror in its nature, but is not supernatural (we don’t think). Suffice to say that it’s odd, disquieting, with scary aspects of a child’s point of view.

‘After what seemed an endless time, we heard the heavy gate unbarred, and quickly clanged to, and footsteps returning on the gravel. Then the door opened again, and my father entered, and behind him a crouching figure that felt its way with its hands as it crept along, as a blind man might. The figure stood up when it reached the middle of the hall, and mopped its eyes with a dirty rag that it carried in its hand; after which it held the rag over the umbrella-stand and wrung it out, as washerwomen wring out clothes, and the dark drippings fell into the tray with a dull, heavy splut.’

4) ‘THE CASE OF MR. LUCRAFT’ (1888)

Walter Besant & James Rice

A most curious story and one of our favourites for its unusual study of human appetite. A warning, though – it is marred in places by its period portrayal, and the dialogue, of a black servant (though he may also not be what he at first seems). Worth knowing about, but certainly with that proviso.

‘I sat down in the nearest chair, and looked round the room. The first thing I remarked was that I could not see the door by which we had been admitted. The room was octagonal, and on every side stood some heavy piece of furniture; a table with glass, a case of bookshelves, a sofa, but no door. My head began to go round as I continued my observations. There was no window either, nor was there any fireplace. Then I felt a sudden giddiness, and I suppose I fell backwards on my chair. It was partly the faintness of hunger, but partly it was the strange room, and that old man glaring at me with his great wolfish eyes.’

An introduction to Walter Besant, by author Matt Wingett, can be found in our archives here:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/portsmouth-humgrummits-and-walter-besant/

5) ‘THE LEGEND OF MADAME KRASINSKA’ (1892)

Vernon Lee

Lee (or Violet Paget, as she was outside her writing) is well enough known, but many of her complex tales are overlooked these days. Whilst her style can be painstaking and dense,  she also provides memorable imagery in her works. Sora Lena lurks long after you close the book…

‘ “Do you want to know the story of poor old Sora Lena?” asked Cecchino, taking the sketch from Madame Krasinska’s hand, and looking over it at the charming, eager young face.

‘The sketch might have passed for a caricature; but anyone who had spent so little as a week in Florence those six or seven years ago would have recognised at once that it was merely a faithful portrait. For Sora Lena—more correctly Signora Maddalena—had been for years and years one of the most conspicuous sights of the town. In all weathers you might have seen that hulking old woman, with her vague, staring, reddish face, trudging through the streets or standing before shops, in her extraordinary costume of thirty years ago, her enormous crinoline, on which the silk skirt and ragged petticoat hung limply, her gigantic coal-scuttle bonnet, shawl, prunella boots, and great muff or parasol; one of several outfits, all alike, of that distant period, all alike inexpressibly dirty and tattered. In all weathers you might have seen her stolidly going her way, indifferent to stares and jibes, of which, indeed, there were by this time comparatively few, so familiar had she grown to staring, jibing Florence. In all weathers, but most noticeably in the worst, as if the squalor of mud and rain had an affinity with that sad, draggled, soiled, battered piece of human squalor, that lamentable rag of half-witted misery.’

6) ‘HAUNTED’ (1918)

Gwendolyn Ranger Wormser

From her only known collection, The Scarecrow and Other Stories – a collection which contains a selection of striking tales, and should certainly be more widely circulated. Few these days seem to have even heard of her.  Again, a number of her tales come closer to what we might call weird fiction than straight horror.

What the protagonist in ‘Haunted’ is or was, and quite what is his final fate, remains to be seen…

‘He could never remember where he had come from, or what had happened. All that he ever knew was that far out by the nets in the early morning they had come upon him and had brought him in to shore. Naturally, the fishermen had questioned him; but his vagueness, his absolute lack of belief that he had ever been anything before they had snatched him from the waters, had frightened them so that since that day they had left him severely alone. Fishing folk have strange, superstitious ideas about certain things. He had borne the full weight of their credulous awe. Perhaps because he, himself, thought as they thought. That he was something come from the sea, and of the sea, and always belonging to the sea.’

You can find our original Tales that Linger here, with a range of twelve supernatural suggestions, here:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/twelve-tales-which-linger/

We should also mention the members of the Boiled Bones Facebook Group, who suggested other striking ‘lingerers’ which were somewhat unusual, amongst them:

Ralph Adams Cram ‘THE DEAD VALLEY’ (1895)

D K Broster ‘CLAIRVOYANCE’ (1932)

David Grinnell ‘THE RAG THING’ (1951)

A E D Smith ‘THE COAT’ (1952)

If you don’t know these already, all four should be of great interest to enthusiasts of strange stories.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/213679486368857/

Why not join us, dear listener, as we try to cheer you up* with a short compendium of equine frolics and horror. Ghouls, werewolves and vampires; terrifying dragons, witches and even the Deep Ones of Innsfoot – today, your favourite slightly psychotic pony, Mr Bubbles, encounters a striking range of monsters, and does… well, he does what Mr Bubbles does.

It’s not pretty.

* Consumer advice: ‘Cheering up’ is a relative concept; consult your financial adviser if in doubt.

NOTE: For any listener who can make no sense of the following, well done! But for others, be it known that in the heart of the Yorkshire Wolds, a plucky teenage girl, Sandra, roams hill, moor, lane and dale protecting the hapless inhabitants from the darkness that threatens to interfere with normal postal hours.

By her side stands her best chum Mr Bubbles – hell on four hooves, inclined to kick first and not bother to ask questions afterwards. Exactly what Mr Bubbles is, apart from appearing as a huge black pony with a temper and a dismissive attitude to most people except Sandra, we leave for history to decipher.

J Linseed Grant, professional misanthrope and curmudgeonly writer of St Botolph-in-the-Wolds, chronicles their adventures, of which these are but a sample…

THE EFFIGY OF DOOM

A thrilling Mr Bubbles adventure, by J Linseed Grant

The old woman’s smile was saw-toothed and sly as she stepped out into the lane, blocking their path. Her lank grey hair hung wild around her domed head, almost hiding the carrion-crow gleam of her sunken eyes.

“For many a silvered moon have I worked,” she said, her voice a charnel whisper on the dry air. “And through strange devices have I made tight the nine-witch knot, and brought vapours sulphurous, befouled, from the poisoned earth. I have wrought your doom.”

Sandra dropped her egg sandwich in surprise; Mr Bubbles only stared, his tail flicking from side to side.

The woman reached under soiled petticoats, and brought out the fruition of her work. In her hands she held the crude clay figurine of a horse, a figurine which had dark thorns thrust into the eyes, the ears, the rump and blunted limbs.

“See,” she said. “And your beast’s own hair is tied close to this effigy, that each thrust of my curse upon him will cut the deeper!”

“My backside doesn’t look like that,” said Mr Bubbles, stepping closer.

The woman scowled. “It is but a mirror of the flesh for the purposes of–”

“And you got the ears wrong.”

“Foolish animal, by my warped craft it does symbolise your –”

“The front legs are far too short.” Mr Bubbles’s nostrils flared. “Looks more like a donkey. Or a cow. You not done horses before?”

Shuddering, the crone lowered her malign gaze. “I missed that class,” she muttered.

“Obviously.” The slightly psychotic pony shook his great head, and trotted over to the fallen egg sandwich.

Sandra and the old woman stared at each other.

“It was a jolly good try,” said Sandra, trying to sound encouraging. “I liked the nose.”

The woman sighed. “Is he going to trample my fragile skull with his monstrous iron hooves, and send me to the Nether Pits of Hell with scarce a thought?”

They watched Mr Bubbles as he ate, fragments of yolk gold against his huge ivory-coloured teeth.

“Probably,” said Sandra. “Unless you can leg it before he finishes that sandwich…”

MR BUBBLES AND THE GHOUL

A tale of unspeakable horror, by J Linseed Grant

The dark maned, dark eyed equine stood four-legs firm in the moonlight, his nostrils flaring. The mist of his hot breath curdled in the fog around him, forming shapes which it was better not to name. In the open grave by those great hooves crouched a gnarled figure, shreds of dried flesh between its broken yellow teeth. Less than half of the plot’s legal occupant remained.

The creature snarled, picking up a rotting piece of coffin with which to defend itself.

“What do you think you’re doing?” asked Mr Bubbles, scraping one iron-shod hoof against another as he peered down into the grave.

The ghoul eyed its opponent, and realised that it would need most of a large oak tree to make a dent in this one. With a sigh, it put the useless piece of wood down, and squatted with a certain awkwardness over the rest of its intended dinner.

“Er… recycling?” it offered, in a voice like grit and sand.

***

Afterwards, Mr Bubbles had the feeling that, maybe just once, the monsters had the right idea…

MR BUBBLES AND THE VAMPIRE OF THE WASTES

A shocking story of contemporary chills, by J Linseed Grant

Far beyond Buttersmite Fell lie the Yorkshire Wastes, a vast stretch of dead bracken, rotting mire-grass, and discarded China Mieville novels. It is an unforgiving land, holding the bleached bones of many a rambler – and also a selection of ramblers’ wristwatches, some of which still work. Only drunken sheep farmers and the occasional clock-poacher go that way…

Sandra was beginning to worry that she had made a slight mistake.

Under a giblet moon, she reloaded her Remington shotgun, and considered her options. Her vile, vampiric foe was out there in the dark, gliding from hummock to hummock and whistling the opening music to ‘Twilight’ – a wicked ploy which was making her grow weaker and more nauseous by the minute.

“I will get you, you know,” she called out bravely.

“ ‘Ooh, Edward, I want your babies’,” hissed the vampire from mere yards away.

“No!” Sandra staggered under the impact of such inanity. Losing her footing, she sank to her knees in the wet grass, her gun lost in the darkness. The creature loomed over her, his lips drawn back to reveal excellent dental hygiene.

“So, Little Huntress. Alone out on this bleak moorland, and fit to be a feast of spurting corpuscles. How lovely.”

Sandra’s sudden smile was grim. “Oh, not alone, exactly.”

A shaft of moonlight broke through herring-coloured clouds, revealing a four-legged equine of such solidity than several quite solid things nearby admitted defeat and evaporated.

“Mr Bubbles! We have him!” shouted the girl.

The undead monster snarled, and turned to face the newcomer. Mr Bubbles was an imposing sight, festooned as he was with several dozen sharpened fence posts (still linked by barbed-wire), a sack of silver crucifixes and half a granite font looted from a nearby church, along with fifteen jars of out-of-date garlic paste.

“Bloody heavy, this lot,” he muttered, “Took me ages to nick it all.”

And the slightly psychotic pony, his eyes gleaming red, walked slowly towards the vampire…

***

When the ill-smelling mists had dissipated, the pony looked down at Sandra.

“Gibbous.”

“What do you mean, boy?”

“Gibbous, not giblet moon.” Mr Bubbles bit down on a discarded fence post, but spat most of it out again. “Hungry. Go home now?”

MR BUBBLES AND THE WEREWOLF OF WETWANG

A terrifying adventure from J Linseed Grant

“I’m a bit disappointed,” said Sandra. “I was all set for us to go over to Wetwang and see if we could sort out the rumours that a vicious shape-shifter was terrorising the village, a sort of man-wolf thing. But it’s disappeared, apparently. I bought a new Thermos flask, as well.”

Mr Bubbles munched on a sheet that was hanging over the washing line.

“There’ll be others,” he said, surprisingly placid as he sampled the new fabric conditioner.

“I suppose so.” She ambled back to the farmhouse, where her mother was nailing an Easter Egg to the front door for Christmas. It seemed that Sandra hadn’t hidden the gin as well as she had thought.

“Hello, Mother. Everything all right?”

Her mother stared at the foil and chocolate wreckage for a moment, and then turned round, smiling.

“Absolutely!” she beamed. “And I love the new rug you sent over with Mr Bubbles.”

“Er… new rug?”

“Mmn. Sort of grey and shaggy, very stylish. I did wonder, though, why it has fingers…”

MR BUBBLES AND THE GREAT DRAKE OF DALBY

A thrilling tale of ancient horror and dark combat, by J Linseed Grant

The shadow of the monstrous scaled drake fell across Butterwick and Foxholes, Octon and Thwing, and the people were sore afraid; its wings beat the hot evening like thunderclaps, promising a rain of sulphurous fire to come. In the beast’s wake, the village of Langtoft was already aflame – though to be fair, that had mostly been the result of a barbecue dispute over how much petrol would cook fifteen pounds of sausages quickly enough to satisfy someone’s domineering father-in-law – ‘I told you, Kevin!’

Grindale was scorched; Kilham was slightly seared, and the simple folk of Rudston were wearing sunglasses. All that stood in the vile drake’s path was a single massive black equine who waited by the stream at Foxholes, staring at several geese…

The drake hovered below the clouds, soaring down occasionally to take a closer look at the only being which wasn’t running away.

“I shall be master of this realm!” bellowed the drake, its voice a spike of pure malice. “I shall gorge myself on the bones of men and cattle!”

“Uh-huh.” The pony was trying to decide if the goose on the left had a longer neck, or it was just the way she was standing.

“I shall drive the women and children to the high crags, and they shall be my winter-feast!”

“Right. I get the idea.” No, it was just the way the goose was standing, he thought.

The drake circled, waxing wroth. “And all this land, all these fields, will be scorched down to the living rock, left a barren waste as a monument to my power!”

Mr Bubbles looked up, one nostril flaring. “Which fields?”

“All of them!” screamed the drake in triumph and fury.

“Even the ones with parsnips in? And turnips?” The pony planted his huge hooves more carefully in the soft earth.

A draconian brow gained furrows the size of drainage ditches. “Parsnips? What care I for the paltry crops of men? I am the invulnerable, unconquerable Great Drake of Dalby, you pitiful beast!”

Deep in the black pools of the pony’s eyes there blossomed a crimson flame far hotter than any dragon’s breath.

“Well, you might have been,” said Mr Bubbles. “Until you mentioned that bit about my fields…”

***

As the Great Drake of Dalby limped away north on three legs, dragging one lacerated wing behind it and trying to see out of its remaining eye, it ruminated sadly on the ways of the world. Apparently you could destroy entire counties and turn realms to ashes, but it wasn’t a wise move to threaten someone’s root vegetables.

Also, it would have to look up invulnerable in the dictionary…

MR BUBBLES GOES TO THE SEASIDE

A heartwarming story of holiday fun, by J Linseed Grant

Mary and his cousin Sandra sat on a heap of bricks, and considered the remains of Innsfoot. It had to be said that this once sleepy coastal town was not at its best. Acrid smoke drifted across the ruined harbour; boarding houses, stores and churches burned all around them, and the streets were littered with slumped or twitching bodies. One or two of the latter managed the occasional pained croak from beneath dark, suspicious cowls, but as neither of the cousins had any sticking plasters, it seemed best to ignore them.

“I had hoped for a paddle by the sands, you know? Like when we were at Scarborough,” said Sandra, rummaging in her back-pack. “And an icecream.”

She watched her faithful pony, Mr Bubbles, as he stomped along the sea-wall, dismembering a selection of wide-mouthed corpses. Every so often he would bend his head, sniff at a pair of unclaimed gills or a lonely limb, and then, picking them up with his teeth, chuck them into the wreckage-strewn sea. He seemed quite pleased with himself.

“Me too.” Mary nodded. “Where did Mr Bubbles get depth-charges, anyway?”

“I’ve honestly no idea,” she said, pulling out a foil-wrapped package. “And so many of them! Sandwich?”

Mary ducked as a large hand flew past his head. When the appendage splatted onto the pavement a few feet away, it was clearly rather webbed. Its owner must have been a jolly good swimmer. Once.

“What exactly are they?” he asked.

“The people of Innsfoot?”

“No, the sandwiches.”

“Fish paste.”

And suddenly neither of them was hungry any more…

A new run of book reviews, lurcher stuff, interviews and other nonsense will follow over the next week or so…

SHERLOCK HOLMES & THE OCCULT DETECTIVES

This successful campaign is running until the start of next week, with almost 700 pages of brand new Holmes stories on offer, all with a supernatural (or is it?) twist. Do have a look…

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/belangerbooks/sherlock-holmes-and-the-occult-detectives