Today, three story extracts from three different authors – J A Ironside, J S Deel, and Frank Coffman – taken from a recent anthology I edited, to give you a taste of what you’ll find in there. Earlier this year, I completed perhaps my single most enjoyable editorial task so far – the anthology Hell’s Empire: Tales of the Incursion. The authors involved, mostly recruited through open calls, were delightful to work with, marvellously inventive, and eager to embrace the concept as a whole, whilst our anchor writers Matt Willis and Charles R Rutledge couldn’t have been more enthusiastic.

And in the process, we created something unusual – a concept anthology with wildly varying approaches and viewpoints, yet linked up to the point where the anthology can almost be read as a novel. I added intervening text to continue that fusion, and we had what we wanted. A degree of sadness followed, for this was something I had had pitched to my dear friend Sam Gafford of Ulthar Press, only for him to die unexpectedly in July 2019, not long after Hell’s Empire came out. Sam was a gem of a guy, and in the spirit of his enthusiasm for this book, I’m going to keep the flag flying.

I’ve chosen three very different pieces, because that’s what you’ll find within. The Ginger Nuts of Horror review site said:

“Hell’s Empire” combines elements of horror, history, social commentary, weird fiction, occultism and folk mythology… a wonderful excursion into the realm of fictional possibilities and is one of the best anthologies I’ve read in quite some time. “Excellent” doesn’t quite do it justice!

If you enjoy these, why not buy the book? 300 pages of period weirdness, horror, mayhem and courage.

Yahn Tan Tethera

by J A Ironside

Cadi Owens didn’t give the war a thought as she leant into the sharp autumn wind. The fighting had been confined to the coasts and cities, and even though her brother had joined the South Wales Borderers eight months ago, the war seemed distant. Information had been sparse, and what did arrive in the Border, had stretched local credulity. Inhuman invaders? Supernatural creatures? Demons? Border folk were stoic and unexcitable in general. They spoke English when required to go to the sheep market in Hereford, or Welsh at the one in Abergavenny y Fenni. At home they spoke the inscrutable Border dialect – a mixture of the two and some much older language. For the most part Border folk kept themselves to themselves, and were Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s loyal subjects only insofar as they paid their levies and caused no trouble if they were not interfered with. They would wait and see as far as the truth of war reports went.

Cadi was glad Pa wasn’t with her today. The cold and damp always made his leg pain him, and then her normally even-tempered father gained all the contrary moodiness of a wounded bullock. She skipped back and forth between countries as if she were still a child, rather than a grown woman of nineteen. Shadow frisked around her feet, leaping side to side with her, tongue lolling in a doggy grin that said this was fine sport. Blue, a much older dog, trotted just ahead, every so often pausing and casting a glance of disdain back over her haunches.

“Come on, Blue, you’re not so old as all that.” Cadi made another neat leap as Shadow crashed heedless through a puddle and drenched her skirts. For answer, Blue curled her lip a little and lifted her leg at a tree stump, apparently considering Cadi to be wasting time when they ought to be moving the sheep. Cadi chuckled, adopting a more appropriate gait as they reached the village.

Wych Hill had only one street, cottages staggered at intervals either side of a narrow, unpaved road that was fast turning to silty mud in the drizzle. She heard children’s voices raised in a singsong chant before she saw them.

“You’re in Cymru, I’m in Lloegyr,

I know you for a saucy rogue!

Yahn. Tayn. Tethera.

Methera. Mumph.

Hithier. Lithier!

Your house is straw, mine is gold,

In the winter, you’ll be cold!

Anver. Danver. Dic!”

Two teams spread out along either side of the street. Every time the caller – currently a skinny girl called Beca Carrag, whose pinafore skirts were mud splashed to the knee – gave a count, all the children jumped to the opposite side of the street. If you fell in the mud, you were out. If the caller forgot the count, then she was out and another took over. The winning team was the one who made it to the end with the most players still ‘in’. Cadi counted the children silently, almost without being aware of it, and frowned. Over half were missing.

“Where’s your Billy?” she called to Beca.

The girl jumped, just missing the mud. “He’s sickly. So’s th’others.”

The light didn’t change, Cadi was sure of that, but it felt like a shadow passed over the scene and a cold foreboding gripped her. And something – something she only half remembered? – dangled for a moment on the edge of her awareness like sheep’s wool caught on hawthorn. She shook the feeling off. “Give him my best.” Children sickened and grew well again. Why should it bother her? Behind her the chant began again…

(copyright j a ironside/ hell’s empire 2019)

Reinforcements

by Frank Coffman

A Tale from the Great War with Hell (being Excerpts from the Diary of Corporal [Brevet Lieutenant] Gareth Williams, Royal Welsh Fusiliers)

16 June-

This has been the worst season yet in our struggles against the demon hoard and the various other spawn of Hell. Our regiment has been more than decimated—just over the past two weeks. And we were at half our original strength before that.

Word has it that the Scots lost half their numbers in the fighting near Glasgow and most of the Highland Regiments have retreated back whence they hail from to attempt to guard kith and kin. The cities of the North are mostly laid waste as we understand it. But news travels slowly—and poorly—a these days. But here near the Cornish coast—not far from Tintagel—we’ve regrouped ourselves.

Some local men have joined our ranks—civilians, some actually with farm implements for weapons! “Swords from plowshares” I guess, so to speak. But we’ve had some trouble finding actual weapons for them—not that even true swords would do much good.

All for now. I’m tired as Hell SCRATCH that bloody word! Tired as a man alive and awake can be.

St John’s Eve – 23 June-

There’s news reported today that a new force (don’t know about strength of numbers: brigade?, regiment?, company?) has actually attained a victory or two! At least holding actions are reported.

One report—most likely myth or wishful thinking—says that one sizable “Helliment” (as we call them) of demons was actually defeated up near Glastonbury. Wonderful news—if true, of course. I’m more than weary of the other sort of news. Mum, when and if you see this journal, I hope you and young Dylan are all right. I’ve heard nothing more about Da’s company.

St John’s Day – 24 June (Midsummer’s Day to the pagans)

It was a glorious day today. At least as “glorious” as days in these impossible times will permit. Reinforcements have arrived! A sizeable regiment of men, well organized and marching into our encampment in well-formed, well-disciplined ranks. I’m guessing made up of mostly Cornish chaps, based upon their accents.

Their general is a most imposing fellow. He rode in at the head of the columns on a handsome white stallion—reminded me of our trusty old Gwyn back on the farm. God! It seems like ages, yet it’s only been a few months! I’ve heard nothing of Da’s unit. I haven’t seen him since we lost Anglesey, and that’s been three months ago.

Anyway this group seems to indeed be the regiment that has achieved some defences and even victories in recent weeks. But there are some really strange things about them—but what ISN’T strange these days for that matter? For one thing, though obviously well-trained and hardened troops, they are totally irregular in dress, looking more like a collection of farmers or folk from small villages just finished with chores and saying, “Ho-hum. Might as well go off and join in that war against the Devil thing.”

No uniforms. But they’re carrying banners. Another queer thing, the banners are not regular guidons or flags, but, rather things that hang in front of the suspending carry-poles, square in shape and held by a horizontal rod. In the old illustrations of Roman legions in books I’ve read they’re called “vexilla.” Nothing on them by way of a design—only the capital letters “RQRF”—and that ain’t the “SPQR” that I learned in Latin class. Really odd bunch.

But that general is certainly a striking fellow. About average height, dark hair—but greying, looks like in his 50s, but a wiry, solidly built man. His big tent is pitched just across from our tents, with those of his men behind and around. In fact, his tent is just opposite mine.

I’m going to try to find out more about this bunch. Dog-tired now. We were on alert all day, and the sounds of battle echoed through the hills around our camp. But it was a bright, clear day, without much wind, and sounds will carry. All for now…

(copyright frank coffman/ hell’s empire 2019)

Profaned by Feelings Dark

by Jack Deel

October 7th, 1891

Ganey had travelled up from Waterford with Patrick Higgins, and they had met a third man in Limerick – a fellow named Hanlon, a friend of Higgins from some socialist society. He was a man in his early thirties, tall and thin, with a pinched, hawk-like face that Ganey didn’t like the look of.

Ganey tried to avoid conversation by reading the newspaper. In the centre of the front page was an illustration of a shadowy monster, shaped like a man with bat’s wings, which had been sighted in Liverpool. Had a similar picture appeared in the same paper just two years before, the monster would have had Parnell’s head, with ‘Land’ written on one wing and ‘League’ on the other, and it would have been swooping on a fainting woman representing Ireland. What a shame that the Incursion had robbed the caricaturists of their favourite clichés.

Hanlon waved to catch Ganey’s attention. Ganey ignored him for as long as was feasible, and then reluctantly looked him in the eye.

“I don’t know if you’ve been told, a chara,” he said, “but our friends want you to know that they value your hard work, and they appreciate your willingness to share your findings.”

Ganey looked back to the paper, pretending to read. He spoke through gritted teeth. “They’re no friends of mine. Ten years is a long time to be left out in the cold.”

“For Christ’s sake, man,” Higgins said, “you’ve been vindicated. All those years in America with the spiritualists and table-tappers and medicine-men – your efforts are about to be rewarded.”

“We’ll see.”

Ganey folded the newspaper and turned to look out the window. Everything in this country seemed wet and chilled and miserable.

Why on Earth did I come back? I could have just vanished, taken a new name and forgotten it all; I could have escaped.

If I had, though, it would have all been for nothing. And with that, the daydream of flat, empty prairies faded. He was, once again, sixty years old, shivering on the Limerick-to-Killaloe train, and very, very tired.

Higgins was in his late twenties, and slightly too old to still be so optimistic and cheerful about everything. Ganey was not the only one to remark that Higgins had the wrong temperament for a revolutionary – he was a romantic with utopian dreams, but he detested violence. He made for a passable research assistant, though, and he had made himself useful during the Dublin survey.

“What’s the story with our transportation once we get to Killaloe?” Ganey asked him.

“Nobody wants to go all the way to Clais Cama,” Higgins said. “There’s some bad business going on up there. Scores of paupers being turned out of their homes.”

“Really? How come there was no mention of it in any of the papers?”

“The Incursion,” Hanlon said. “That’s the only thing the papers want to print these days. Anyway, this James Carmody fellow behind it all is a gombeen man with enough pull to keep the eviction story quiet.”

There was no figure in rural Ireland quite so hated as the fear gaimbín – the gombeen man, the scavenger who profited from the misfortune of his neighbours. Such men were like crosses between usurers and class traitors, and loathed as much as both combined.

“Aren’t they all,” Ganey grunted. “So, how will we get there?”

“There are four stables in Killaloe,” said Higgins.

“Is it wise to ride around in the open when people are shooting at each other?”

“Shooting?” Higgins shook his head. “Nobody’s shooting up there – the poor bastards can barely afford to feed themselves, let alone buy guns.”

(copyright j s deel/ hell’s empire 2019)

Hell’s Empire: Tales of the Incursion is available to purchase here:

amazon uk

amazon us

Tomorrow, a short Halloween tale, of course…

Today, dear listener, we go down south, with a ramble around the Besant family, particularly the late Victorian writer Walter Besant, who wanders (just) into our Edwardian Arcane zone. Of his many books, we have a particular interest in his collection of supernatural stories with James Rice, The Case of Mr. Lucraft and other tales, and in his peculiar dystopias The Inner House and The Revolt of Man. However, we first have the pleasure of a much wider introduction to Walter Besant provided by author Matt Wingett, who has also republished Besant’s novel By Celia’s Arbour.

One of the other reasons we asked Matt for a proper opening piece is that he is a long-time scholar of all things Portsmouth-y, including its connections with many literary names (see further below). Our own knowledge of this fair city is limited to one visit, where we saw a warship the size of a small town (a US visitor?), and constant exposure during our youth to The Navy Lark, a BBC radio programme which ran from 1959 to 1977. We can still remember listening to it on a transistor radio in granny’s back garden.

A now dubious comedy with a lot of dodgy innuendo, many episodes of The Navy Lark were set in and around Her Majesty’s Naval Base, Portsmouth (aka Pompey), with slivers of local life included, especially the pubs and the dockyard police. Of its long-term cast, international listeners will probably be most familiar with Jon Pertwee (as CPO Pertwee), who played the third Doctor Who during the same period as the comedy was broadcast (Dr Who 1970 – 1974). This allowed for a number of sly in-jokes about the Doctor and the Master, often taking the piss out of Pertwee.

TRIVIA ALERT: The first series of The Navy Lark included actor Dennis Price, who late in his career performed in the horror films Twins of Evil (1971), Horror Hospital (1973) and Theatre of Blood (1973). There was also an unsuccessful film of the radio comedy, and Pertwee later suggested, in his autobiography, that Price was not included because he was known to be bisexual or homosexual. Pertwee, to his credit, was not happy about this situation, and was also replaced in the film. As Price had played, magnificently, the suave serial murderer Louis Mazzini in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), we doubt that a weak comedy film was any great loss to his overall career.

In addition, The Navy Lark introduced us to humgrummits and floggle-toggles, neither of which existed. The humble humgrummit could be anything from a farmed vegetable to a key electronic component, and was thus a nonsense word you could use anywhere, very useful at school. “Sir, sir, my humgrummit’s stuck in my satchel again!”

But enough of that. Have some proper larnin’…

Walter Besant, How To Unforget Him

by Matt Wingett

Sometimes, when you have obsessions, the easiest thing to do about it is harness them and try to earn your crust. Just so with the curiously matched pair of ponies dragging the brougham of my life along. They are: 1) writing, and 2) Portsmouth. They don’t go at high speed but they do have an impressive pedigree. And sometimes they take you to unexpected places.

I’m by no means the first literary type to live in Portsmouth. Although it’s generally considered the “home of the Royal Navy”, the town was also the home of four of the greatest writers of the Victorian era. Portsmouth was the birthplace of Charles Dickens; H G Wells worked here as a shop-boy in Hide’s Drapery Emporium; Rudyard Kipling discovered aching loneliness while growing up in the resort suburb of Southsea; and in 1886 Arthur Conan Doyle wrote A Study In Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes novel, just a few hundred metres from Hide’s, and it was published the following year.

These are the well-trodden thoroughfares of Portsmouth literature. My twin obsessions also take me down its literary side roads, too. George Meredith grew up on the High Street (a celebrated novelist, he gave Thomas Hardy advice on saleable writing after rejecting his first novel while working as a publisher’s reader). Captain Marryat drank in bars here dreaming up Peter Simple, Midshipman Easy and Masterman Ready. And another impressive Victorian, now largely forgotten, born by a fly-ridden mill pond that fed the town’s moats was none other than Sir Walter Besant.

To those last three words, I expect to hear a massive “who?”

And you are right to “who” like that, because Besant is largely forgotten. So, as a Portsmouth man keen to celebrate his literary roots, let me help you unforget him.

Walter Besant wrote over forty novels (I love that bibliographers aren’t sure exactly how many and vaguely write “over forty” or “nearly fifty”, as if there is a Schrodinger’s Novel or two in a box somewhere). In the 1890s he was considered one of the UK’s top literary names, one critic writing: “only Meredith and Hardy of the living novelists were ranked clearly above him.”

He also founded the Society of Authors, the organisation which still protects writers’ rights in the UK. Knighted for his literary and humanitarian contribution to Victorian society, he is today best known for his nine-volume History of London.

Long before all this, Besant was a Pompey lad growing up in the walled military town. He captures that childhood beautifully in his novel By Celia’s Arbour. Co-written with James Rice (an unsuccessful barrister who ran a literary magazine, Once A Week), the pair met when Rice published an unedited and uncredited draft of one of Besant’s articles. The two made up, and Rice suggested they write fiction together. Numerous short stories and nine novels ensured before Rice succumbed to an alleged early case of peanut allergy. Besant carried on, now “a novelist with a free hand” and was one of the first major writers to hire a literary agent.

None of this I knew when I first read By Celia’s Arbour (1884). Drawn by its subtitle, A Tale of Portsmouth Town, I downloaded it in a badly OCRed US library version, and despite many a “V V” instead of “W”, or “K” instead of “R” and other garbled words, the writing shone through.

The insights into life in the walled fortress of Victorian Portsmouth and the towns clustered around it are extraordinary. Besant has a lyrical style which draws a picture with an artist’s eye. The Arbour of the title is in fact a bastion overlooking the harbour “where the grass was longest and greenest, the wild convolvulus most abundant, and where the noblest of the great elms which stood upon the ramparts—’to catch the enemy’s shells,’ said Leonard—threw out a gracious arm laden with leafy foliage to give a shade.” Always, this pastoral idyll is accompanied by intimations of war:

It was after eight; suddenly the sun, which a moment before was a great disc of burnished gold, sank below the thin line of land between sky and sea.

Then the evening gun from the Duke of York’s bastion proclaimed the death of another day with a loud report, which made the branches in the trees above us to shake and tremble. And from the barracks in the town; from the Harbour Admiral’s flagship; from the Port Admiral’s flagship; from the flagship of the Admiral in command of the Mediterranean Fleet, then in harbour; from the tower of the old church, there came such a firing of muskets, such a beating of drums, playing of fifes, ringing of bells, and sounding of trumpets, that you would have thought the sun was setting once for all, and receiving his farewell salute from a world he was leaving for ever to roll about in darkness.

These themes of beauty and violence are echoed throughout the book. The narrator, Laddie, actually Ladislas, is a hunchbacked Polish refugee from Tsarist Russia. In reality, the sizeable Polish community arrived in a refugee ship headed for America that was blown into port by a violent storm. Seeing their plight, the Government gave them leave to settle and a stipend to live on. In the novel, the plotting and machinations of displaced, bitter old men is central to the story, as is Laddie’s secret birthright.

In fact, the book weaves together so much. At one level, it is a story of unrequited love – for both Laddie and his best friend Leonard love Celia – but it incorporates much more. Some of the story revolves around Herr Räumer, an older Prussian ex-army officer of utterly ruthless turn of mind who masks his deeply cruel dispassion behind a mask of culture. At some points, Räumer and Laddie share philosophical exchanges which reveal that Nietzsche wasn’t the only writer in the 19th Century thinking about the Will To Power. A wonderful reply from Räumer after Laddy decries the corruption of politicians ironically comments that without their wickedness there would be “very little in life worth having. No indignation, no sermons, no speakers at meetings, no societies. What a loss to Great Britain!”

Räumer goes on:

“A great deal more would go if political and other wickedness are to go. There would be no armies, no officers, no lawyers, no doctors, no clergymen. The newspapers would have nothing to say, because the course of the world could be safely predicted by any one. All your learned professions would be gone at a blow.”

I laughed.

“Music and painting would remain.”

“But what would the painters do for subjects? You can’t create any interest in the picture of a fat and happy family. There would be no materials for pathos. No one would die under a hundred; and, as he would be a good man, there would be no doubt about his after fate. No one would be ill. All alike would be virtuous, contented, happy—and dull.”

The book is in many ways extraordinarily wide ranging, with the writers skilfully shifting from the philosophical to the comic to the nostalgic. At times the vibrancy of the town is caught, at others the lonely beach where a body is washed up is described with a mixture of awe and comedy. A trip up the harbour to the place where the true-life arsonist Jack The Painter’s tarred body was hanged in chains supplies an eerie interlude, where “the ghost continued to roam about the spot where the body had hung so long” – as well as a moral test for Laddie and Celia.

All the while, Besant writes lovingly of the Portsmouth Town of his memories. Sometimes overly nostalgic, the book is a long, slow-moving, precisely described Victorian Bourgeois novel. Do not expect a white knuckle ride! But a steady unfolding of the story, and the insights into the lives of the protagonists is fascinating, and in the end, satisfying.

Sir Walter Besant is a multi-faceted author, and there is more I could write about his life and his beautifully written novel, By Celia’s Arbour. But I am aware of the word count here, so will draw this to a close by saying that, yes, as a local micro-publisher, I reprinted the book. It has an introduction by Portsmouth University’s Dr Alison Habens that really captures the passion we both feel for the town and for Besant’s writing.

Now, any self-respecting publisher couldn’t leave off without mentioning that if you’d like a copy, you can order it post-free in the UK from my website. My publishing company is called Life Is Amazing, because life is amazing, actually. All that’s left to say, then, is – get your copy here:

https://www.lifeisamazing.co.uk/product/by-celias-arbour-a-tale-of-portsmouth-town-walter-besant-james-rice

Thanks all!

We must point out that amongst other things, Matt is the author of The Snow Witch, a most excellent and evocative urban fantasy which we covered here: http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-snow-witch/

In a week or so, after various other articles which are over-due (as usual) we shall say more about Walter Besant’s speculative and supernatural works…

It’s no secret that I have a fondness for following particular characters in my fiction, for exploring their worlds through strange or worrying tales. I often call myself a character writer because these folk come to me in odd hours as fully-formed people, and they inspire stories in their own right. Their names, their tastes, their reactions to events – these are known quantities, and each of them has a history of their own, whether I jot it down or not.

When I do write of them, I pick those who hold something which interests me personally – I often have no idea if readers will care or not. Hence Edwin Dry, the Deptford Assassin of Edwardian times; Mamma Lucy, the 1920s black hoodoo woman; the stuttering, cynical military intelligence man Captain Redvers Blake, and so forth. Plus Mr Bubbles, the slightly psychotic pony, of course.

Certain traits seem native to the characters from the very beginning, and can’t be changed without wrecking the character (I’ve tried a couple of times, and it was a disaster). I’m always absolutely sure of their religious and sexual identities, for example. Redvers Blake is a bitter atheist, and an unlucky heterosexual, whilst his fellow officer in Section Seventeen, Bob Usher, is gay but keeps quiet about it except to Blake – this is the 1900s military, after all. Mr Dry is an agnostic and might be described as asexual (he would never even think about it).

Mamma Lucy, on the other hand, believes strongly in her own concept of the Christian God – one which doesn’t suit some of her co-religionists – and has clearly had her earthy moments with a number of men in the past. Catherine Weatherhead, from my novel The Assassin’s Coin, is another agnostic, and sexually she’s whatever it suits her to be at the time, with a fondness for women.

But today I’ve been thinking of another character I like, one quite different from the above, who inhabits seventies Britain. Justin Margrave may, I suppose, be composed partly of aspects of myself and partly of traits drawn from people I knew back then, but to be honest, he just turned up in my brain one night (‘Margrave’ is also an ancient title, ‘a defender of borders’, related to terms like Marcher Lord).

Margrave is an art critic in the mid-1970s, based in London, and unlike my own shambling and ill-defined presence, he is erudite and cultured, a man in his early fifties who pursues art more energetically than he bothers to pursue relationships. He’s a friend of noted people like sculptor Barbara Hepworth.

He is also distinctly and openly homosexual, rather than just ‘colourful’, and every one knows this – at a time when it could still often be best not to say so. The 1967 Act in the UK was really only partial decriminalisation, and homosexuals were still  expected to be discreet and keep holding hands and kissing  ‘off the streets’.

“…Any form of ostentatious behaviour now or in the future or any form of public flaunting would be utterly distasteful.”

Lord Arran

Margrave has a tendency to get involved in rather strange incidents, and is always a stalwart defender of people’s rights to have their own lives and make their own choices – until they hurt others. Not an occult investigator per se, but a man of curiosities, with an unusually open mind…

There are a few Margrave weird/horror stories in progress or wandering around, with one novelette, ‘Elk Boys’, coming out in an anthology next year, all being well. Here’s a snippet of another Margrave weird fiction story under construction right now, which may give you a taste of the character himself:

I have always considered green eyes to be quite fascinating when genuine. In this humdrum world, most people who claim to have them possess, in reality, eyes of an over-ambitious shade of hazel or blue. Striking enough, I suppose, but always slightly disappointing.

The young man in my study was slender, with thin fingers which danced upon the table between us; his skin was alabaster and whey – I wondered if the full sun had ever touched that face – and his eyes were almost pure green.

They reminded me of a rent-boy I had rescued from a Soho brothel a few years ago, in the early seventies. Poor Alex; I’d pointed out I had no interest in ‘trade’, but set him up in a cheap flat, and told him to get out of the game. He was back on the streets within a month. Quaaludes, cheap sherry and abuse did for him in the end. Only his wooden-faced older sister and I were at the funeral…

This was not an Alex though, but a certain Michael Iles, a stranger in the gloomily panelled office where I entertained new clients, dealers and fellow critics – people with whom I might not wish to share a glass of port. Strangers, enemies and those in between.

“Mr Margrave.” He hesitated, “You have a reputation…”

I smiled. “I have many reputations, – Michael, isn’t it? I assume that today you are interested in my modest talents as an occasional art dealer.”

“I… of course. I mean I know that you’re–”

“An ageing queen who has the silver key that opens many society doors?”

His cheeks reddened. “A very open-minded chap, I intended to say.”

I relented. Alex, poor soul, had never blushed at anything, probably part of his undoing.

“It’s fine, my boy. I shouldn’t tease. I am more a critic than a dealer, though. What can I do for you?”

“It’s… difficult. I’m looking for a painting.”

I placed my hands flat on the table, noting the wrinkles which formed on their backs. Was that a liver spot on its way? Surely not?

“You may have called in at the wrong port, then, I’m afraid. I lean more towards sculpture and the occasional objet d’art.”

“Oh, I know. But a friend suggested that you might help. There had been a terrible business on the coast, he said, and you knew a bit about, er, unusual occurrences–”

I coughed, a signal that he shouldn’t pursue the matter. Too raw, and too many necessary lies.

“So the cackle is that if Margrave’s in a good mood, he’ll have a varder at any odd situation without asking for the old dinari up front.”

He looked confused, and I laughed.

“The cant of a wicked city, dear boy. They say that I will sometimes ‘help out’ for free. Who was this London friend of yours?”

“Archie Crane.”

I stiffened. “You know Archie?” Crane was a young dealer in water-colours, and a garrulous nuisance. Not wicked, but pestiferous.

A spot of red again on each pale cheek. “He tried to pick me up at a gallery. I was only waiting for a friend, and there was a bit of scene…. Archie was very apologetic afterwards.”

His eyes captivated me. I was fortunate that my libido was unreliable, and also that I was probably more than twenty years older than he was (young men can be such a trial). To be avuncular with no hidden or sordid purpose is a pleasant thing. And he made me feel avuncular enough to help him…

We’re still in the October Frights Blog Hop period (10^th – 15^th October each year), so here’s the Link List. Remember to hop on over to check out these other participants’ offerings as well.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

The Word Whisperer

Hawk’s Happenings

Carmilla Voiez Blog

M’habla’s!

CURIOSITIES

Frighten Me

Winnie Jean Howard

Always Another Chapter

Balancing Act

James P. McDonald

greydogtales

And there are details of some neat books by these authors over at Story Origin – a wide range of dark fiction, horror, odd stuff and more. Why not click and see if there’s anything you fancy?

https://storyoriginapp.com/to/b6ccoqi

Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one’s Eyes;
Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her…

Hilaire Belloc, ‘Matilda, Who told Lies, and was Burned to Death’

It is Autumn, dear listener, and we are mindful of mellow days, of copper and iron-red foliage, and lingering warmth in the evenings. We welcome the light bluster of October storms, the sly ripening of the last Summer fruits and the coming of the medlars – medlar jelly is a great favourite here; we stare in awe at the changing seasons in the garden, and we wonder why we have twenty three thousand green tomatoes, none of them big enough to be worth frying.

We also note that Americans call this period Fall, which is what we do constantly when we are out with the dogs and dragged in haste across slippery leaves.

And then we remembered that we were supposed to do something for the annual October Frights Blog Hop, in which an unruly gang of horror and supernatural writers join together to promote each other’s web-sites and works. As we did so, we recalled an odd piece of verse drawn on in Robert Westall’s novel The Scarecrows (1981):

He rides his loud October sky:

He does not die. He does not die.

The Scarecrows is a fine and disturbing book, ostensibly a young adult novel, but surely evocative for all ages. A teenager broods on his mother’s new relationship, and his dead father, whilst dark spirits feed on his emotions and the scarecrows gather around his home. If you haven’t read it, you should, either as a Jamesian tale of subtle scares, or as a psychological exploration of need.

SIDENOTE: As we don’t have a copy of The Scarecrows to hand, it’s also possible that this specific quote is from another young adult supernatural book we read in the seventies or eighties altogether, so no point in sueing us. How’s that for honesty? We think it was in this one by Westall.

From what we remember, the verse can be read as referring to the young man’s father, who was killed in Aden – and ‘He shall not die’ is the boy’s earnest grip on the memory of his father.  But where do these lines come from?

They are, in fact, the words of Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), who is well known as the author of the collection Cautionary Tales (1907). More people will probably have read ‘Matilda, Who told Lies, and was Burned to Death,’ than any of Belloc’s other works. Although various artists produced later illustrations for Cautionary Tales, the original was illustrated by Belloc’s friend B.T.B. – Basil Templeton Blackwood. The collection is in the public domain in the States, but under copyright in the UK (and possibly a few other places).

However, keeping to our October theme, the lines quoted by Westall come from an interesting book entitled The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), issued seventy years before the publication of The Scarecrows.

The Four Men is a hymn to the county of Sussex and its old ways – Belloc lived in a house called King’s Land at Shipley, West Sussex from 1906 until shortly before he died. The entire book takes place over a five day journey, one rather appropriate to our October whims and the Halloween which is coming, as the journey through Sussex lasts from 29 October to 2 November (All Souls’ Day).

It contains musings on the countryside, pieces of lore, and philosophical reflections, including verse and the odd tale, such as the fate of men who are drawn into Fairy Mounds (curiously, in Sussex dialect, the fairies are known as ‘pharisees’).

“They bring him a sack, and he stuffs it full of the gold pieces, full to the neck, and he shoulders it and makes to thank them, when, quite suddenly, he finds he is no longer in that hall, but on the open heath at early morning with no one about, and in an air quite miserably cold. Then that man, shivering and wondering whether ever he saw the Little People or no, says to himself, ‘At least I have my gold.’

“But when he goes to take the sack up again he finds it very light, and pouring out from it upon the ground he gets, instead of the gold they gave him, nothing but dead leaves; the round dead leaves and brown of the beech, and of the hornbeam, for it is of this sort that they mint the fairy gold.”

The novel is, in effect, a conversation between Belloc (‘Myself’) and three other characters with whom he travels – the Grizzlebeard, the Sailor and the Poet, each contributing their own viewpoint. These may be part of his own psyche – though Belloc also said that the three parts may also be seen as supernatural beings.

“(They), looking sadly at me, stood silent also for about the time in which a man can say good-bye with reverence. Then they all three turned about and went rapidly and with a purpose up the village street. I watched them, straining my sad eyes, but in a moment the mist received them and they had disappeared.”

And as ‘Myself’ muses about his life, and Sussex, at the end of the book, he delivers lines on what endures if a person is truly rooted in the land and landscape:

He rides his loud October sky:

He does not die. He does not die.

There are various editions of The Four Men, including an online facsimile (but again, remember copyright, as Belloc only died in 1953).  If you do hunt around for a physical copy, be sure that you find a decent reproduction of the original. As with many other period books, not all reprints are faithful.

We shall leave you there, and go back to being hauled through the sodden – if attractively coloured – leaves by over-eager lurchers…

October Frights Blog Hop Link List

Remember to hop on over to check out the other participants offerings as well.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

The Word Whisperer

Hawk’s Happenings

Carmilla Voiez Blog

M’habla’s!

CURIOSITIES

Frighten Me

Winnie Jean Howard

Always Another Chapter

Balancing Act

James P. McDonald

greydogtales

And there are details of some neat books by these authors over at Story Origin – a wide range of dark fiction, horror, odd stuff and more. Why not click below and see if there’s anything you fancy…

october frights books at story origin