The Cradle Demon (1978)

[Gloomy Sundae]

R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Cradle Demon & Other Stories Of Fantasy & Terror (William Kimber, 1978)

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"I still think it's the best" - RCH, 1990

Introduction: R. Chetwynd-Hayes

The Pimpkins
A Walk In The Country
The Brats
Why?
The Chair
My Very Best Friend
The Cradle Demon
Reflections
My Mother Married A Vampire
Mildred And Edwina
Tomorrow At Nine
The Creator
The Sloathes

My Mother Married A Vampire: Domestic bliss in the suburban household of the Count and Countess De Suc-Little and son Marvin is threatened by the unwelcome attentions of the blood squad, 'the Bleeney', led by an over-zealous Priest. Reverend Pickering nails his man, but the vampire Count has the last laugh. This one formed the basis for a 'comedy' episode in Milton Subotsky's The Monster Club.

The Cradle Demon: The Jones' toddler Adam attempts to rape Mavis, the pretty seventeen year old babysitter. Less jokey than usual, although he cheats a little with the introduction of a crippled niece who, conveniently, suffers from mental blocks and can't run. The baby is deliciously evil though.

Why?: a hyper-inquisitive little girl grills a gravedigger about the family who reside in the vault over yonder which, she tells him, happens to be her home. He relates a diluted history of the hundred years dead Henry and Elizabeth Hargraves, locally reputed to be ghouls. When her constant probing and gruesome descriptions of her mother's leprous condition gets too much, he threatens to smack her. She tells her mummy.

The Creator: "That goat was a good friend to me ..."

Unemployed Charlie puts the skills he's learned as an apprentice butcher and petrol pump attendant to good use when he decides to create a modern Frankenstein monster. He turfs his grandad out of his coffin on the eve of his funeral, decapitates a goat, pinches the wheels off a go-cart and, after much burning of the midnight oil, unleashes 'Oscar' on an unsuspecting Uncle George and Aunt Matilda ("It's all this television. Sets the young a bad example. What with Z Cars and that awful bald-headed man who will ruin his teeth with lollipops, it's a wonder we aren't all murdered in our beds.") .... whereupon RCH seems to have run out of ideas what to do with the story.

A Walk in The Country: Somewhere within a thirty mile radius of Faversham, long distance walker John Evert chances on a tiny village whose inhabitants - the usual motley crew of interbreds - dedicate their lives to gruesome botanical experiments. John is trapped in the sacred greenhouse amidst the misshapen but terribly familiar potted plants. One of them turns its crumpled face toward him: "Kill me. K...i ....l....l....l .... m...e ...e.... e ..."

My Very Best Friend: An orphan's progress. Following the death of his parents in a car accident, the narrator is shunted from puritanical relative to puritanical relative, his constant companion a beautiful woman that others sometimes sense and fear but only he can see. She acts as his Guardian Angel, a malevolent one at that, prone to playing cruel pranks but invaluable for settling scores and maiming school bullies. On the minus side she's fanatically possessive and won't have him lusting after pretty Josie Bakewell when his hormones start kicking in. At the close of his teens he wants rid of his dark benefactor and approaches Clapham's finest, Madam Orloff, Psychic Extraordinary (The Elemental, The Holstein Horror and Co.) to exorcise her. Now free to wed his childhood sweetheart, he gets Josie as far as the altar before the parson gets it into his head to give the ceremony a "forgive thy enemy" theme. Caught up in the moment, our man absolves his Fallen Angel who immediately marches down the aisle and karate chops his bride with the result that "I must be the only husband who was made a widower before the register was signed."

RCH confides that some of the non-supernatural content is autobiographical and, depending on which bits he's alluding too, his childhood probably wasn't a bed of roses.

The Chair: The narrator, one of RCH's least sympathetic, buys the antique from the proprietor of a second hand furniture shop who lets on that it "came from a house with an unfortunate history." Sure enough, hardly has he got the chair home than a beautiful woman materialises on the seat, beckoning to him from across the room. Our man, a misogynist, throws an ornament at her and she vanishes, but immediately he regrets his actions and wishes her back. Her reappearances are fleeting and drive him to distraction until he returns to the furniture salesman demanding to know who his ghost was. At the Twilight Home for Distressed Ladies, he learns the tragic history of Miss Emily and Mr. Ascot of Bedford Park, but a further horrible revelation awaits.

RCH ends this one on such an enjoyably melodramatic note it made me wonder if he'd imagined it as a shoe-in for another Subotsky anthology movie.

Mildred And Edwina: In many ways, Donald reflects, his wife Mildred is perfect - reasonable cook, grants him sexual favours once a week, quite content to while away her time nosing out the window or watching General Hospital. There's just one problem: she bores him stupid. Until, that is, she's hit by a bus and the blow to the skull unleashes her evil, sex-crazed alter-ego, Edwina Hyde!

The Pimpkins: Yet another confirmed bachelor comes to grief - this one virtually interchangeable with the 'hero' of The Chair with whom he shares certain traditionalist views, especially where women are concerned. Contrary to popular belief, clumsy people aren't accident prone, they're actually being persecuted by millions of minuscule "bouncing lumps of evil" whose existence is dedicated to rearranging household objects and bringing chaos and disorder to a previously smooth-running household. Mortimer Carstairs, a rich, 51-year old accountant bedridden following a near fatal struggle with pneumonia, realises this, but he has a hard time of it trying to convince his nurse, maid or anybody else. For reasons not explained, he christens this strange species the Pimpkins.

The Sloathes: Philip and Marjorie are delighted with their new home, Woodbine Cottage, but she will insist on him removing that ugly stone cross which disfigure the garden so. Philip resignedly breaks it up to use as a rockery, discovering too late that he's released the Sloathes - lethal, balloon-headed ghouls of immense strength - conjured forth by that old reprobate Baron Von Holstein (of The Holstein Horror disrepute). Philip destroys all but one of them ....

Really nasty ending sees Philip lose his sanity and turn on his wife, effectively sending her to her doom, and for once the absurdity of the monsters adds rather than detracts from the horror. The impression this left on me was of something M. R. James might sic up if he was suffering a severe attack of delirium tremens.

[burlveneer]

As a child, my favorite television show was Ultraman. In every episode, a monster would menace Japan, the Science Patrol would attempt to stop it, their efforts would be on the brink of failure, Hayata would sneak off, activate his Beta Capsule, and transform into the giant (i.e. monster-sized) Ultraman, Ultraman would grapple with the monster until the light on his chest started blinking, whereupon he would finish off the monster with a ray-blast from his crossed hands. It was formulaic in the extreme, but I had to watch every episode for the all-important scene that would answer the question, “What does the monster look like this time?” Nothing else mattered other than how cool the monster looked, and the weirder the better. Even now in my adult years a childish thrill still wells up inside me whenever I encounter a suitably grotesque monster, whether on screen or in print. It is this youthful core of disgusted glee (or gleeful disgust) to which Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes at his best appeals to me, and he is at his best when creating repulsive, malign creatures and revenants. Unfortunately that is but one facet of his work, but it is enough to keep me reading.

In The Cradle Demon, this facet is represented by two stories. In “A Walk in the Country,” a leisure-walker happens upon a backwater village whose inhabitants use the corpses of outsiders as the basis of their creepy crops. RCH’s descriptions of the greenhouse contents are quite enjoyable and put this tale onto my personal “Best of RCH” list. In “The Sloathes,” RCH retreads the time-honored “dangerous grave” story, in which a mysterious grave comes with a strange, ancient warning that is unwisely ignored, with deadly results. Nothing wrong with retreading that one, it’s one of my favorite types—it’s a great lead-in for horrible monsters (see Brian Keene’s latest novel, Ghoul), and RCH really delivers in this one. Another favorite.

“The Creator” centers around a monstrosity as well, but the tone of the story is too silly for it to have any real impact. I think the author was aiming for “absurdly comic,” but only half succeeded.

Also of interest is “Tomorrow At Nine,” whose protagonist falls asleep in the present only to awaken in another body in the past, and then vice versa, the problem being the imminent execution of the “past” character. The interesting part is that the story’s “author” becomes a character in the story (“a man who was neither young or old, handsome or ugly, thin or fat”), and the whole thing moves into the realm of metafiction. Frankly, I did not expect this level of literary experimentation from RCH and he actually pulls it off rather well. On the other hand, he also seems to be experimenting with storytelling in “Why?,” perhaps to cover up the lack of a story. The best thing about “Why?” is that it’s quite short.

“My Very Best Friend” is the longest story in the book, and follows its narrator from childhood to adulthood. His particular problem is a supernatural guardian whose protectiveness eventually turns into possessiveness. It is better plotted than most of RCH’s stories, and its twist ending is entirely appropriate. This tale also features a fringe Christian church of the “fundamentalist” type; such churches figure in other of RCH’s works, which leads me to wonder if he had any real-life experiences with such institutions.

(To be continued, perhaps.)

[Gloomy Sundae]

burlveneer said:

“My Very Best Friend” is the longest story in the book, and follows its narrator from childhood to adulthood. His particular problem is a supernatural guardian whose protectiveness eventually turns into possessiveness. It is better plotted than most of RCH’s stories, and its twist ending is entirely appropriate. This tale also features a fringe Christian church of the “fundamentalist” type; such churches figure in other of RCH’s works, which leads me to wonder if he had any real-life experiences with such institutions.

It would appear he had, if his introduction to the story in The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories #20 (1984) is anything to go by.

"Based loosely on incidents that took place in my own childhood, which did not however include the supernatural parts. They are the result of an active imagination and wishful thinking. Wouldn't we all like a beautiful, ghostly guardian who smoothed the path through life for us? The Tabernacle of the Lord's Wrestlers did exist, although not under that name, and not a few of its members did behave in the manner I have described."

Thanks so much for the review, Bill. We're obviously coming at this from opposite angles, as its his monsters that tend to give me some of the biggest head-aches with his work. As a rule - there are exceptions - I prefer him when he's relatively grounded (as in My Very Best Friend which, IMO, sees him in fine form ) although I also have a fondness for the traditional horror stories that I can envision as delightful episodes in an Amicus movie (The Chair from this collection, Under The Skin from Terror By Night, etc.). And I also enjoyed Why?!

Read A Walk In The Country last night and added a particularly generic synopsis of the story to my original post. Again, I thought it was a decent story, probably an improvement on the 'planting people' tale in The Monster Club which didn't work for me somehow. I'm still not sure that I'd agree with RCH that this is his "best" collection, though ...

[burlveneer]

Since you've mentioned it, I do indeed like "My Very Best Friend" (I knew I'd read that somewhere before--the 20th Fontana, thanks!) and "The Chair." So I suppose his "grounded" facet is my second-favorite.

"Mildred and Edwina" has the same central conceit as John Waters' film A Dirty Shame, though as befits a horror writer RCH's take on it is nastier, while Waters' is funnier.

"The Pimpkins" seem to be the same beings immortalized by Danielle Dax as the "Inky Bloaters." (Her disappearance from the music world is one of the great musical tragedies of the 90s, in my opinion.) RCH's story is on the amusing side, but fairly inconsequential.

In visiting this and related boards it has become evident that my British horror film experience is lacking, so I have taken a first step in remedying that situation by ordering The Monster Club on DVD.

[Gloomy Sundae]

Well, I'll certainly be interested to know what you make of the film! I won't comment further as it really does have to be seen to be disbelieved.

Back to The Cradle Demon and I didn't think The Pimpkins was the ideal choice for the opening story. Like much of what follows, its middling-good and possibly will not inspire the reader's confidence in the rest of the collection. I still have three to go, but my overall impression is that this is one of the better Kimbers, and that for The Chair (another from the Fontana Ghost's - I've come to appreciate his contributions to the series as a strong body of work), The Sloathes, My Very Good Friend, A Walk In The Country and (its a Kev thing) Why?.

Later

The Brats. Not being over-keen on SF, I deliberately left reading this to near the end and - what do you know? - it's very enjoyable in a morbid kind of way, Chetwynd-Hayes's I Am Legend in miniature (although he soon expanded it into a novel of the same name), minus the vampires but plus stunted, spiteful ghouls.

Twenty-odd years after the nuclear holocaust, and the few survivors are picked off by wild dogs, mutant rats and those pseudo-humans born after the big bang, the brats: "The inhuman old-men faces, the long eye-teeth, watery eyes in which were reflected a light of pure evil .... [he] spent the remainder of the night listening for the sinister giggles that were always the prelude to a kicked-in door, the howl of triumph, the tearing long-nailed fingers."

We follow Peter as he goes about his lonely, hazardous existence until the day he descends into the sewer system under his bolt-hole and rescues a girl, Lydia Maxwell, from a gang of the sadistic little treasures, just as they're about to eat her alive. United, their lives become one long grim, valiant struggle to postpone the inevitable until tomorrow. It's the hope that kills you.

This bleak prognosis for mankind would appear to be very much in keeping with RCH's pessimistic viewpoint as expressed in that Skeleton Crew interview I really must shut up about! And I adore the brats' war-cry: "K ... i ...i .... l ....l .....D .....a .... a ...a ...a ... d.'

Reflections: Beaufort Grange, mid-nineteenth century, and young John Kimberley-Beaufort is tormented by the twin glaring 'eyes' that appear to only him. With the help of his pragmatic, occult-fixated uncle Lomax, he overcomes his terror and goes rushing to meet the apparition as it hurtles along the path - only to be mangled when it runs over him. The spectre wasn't from the past after all.

It's another of those stories which bear out his claim that he wrote everything blind. More-so than the disappointing The Creator, the build-up is compelling with splendid characterisation - the alternately flirty and ferocious Lady Marcia's sparring with Lomax, the man she would seduce, is very well drawn - but the see-it-coming-a-mile-off climax lacks power.

Tomorrow At Nine: Whenever Roger falls asleep, he reawakens back in 1906 in the body of the Clapham murderer Daniel Dyson mere hours before his execution. The only man who can prevent Roger imminent hanging is a mysterious character who we're already strangely familiar with. He offers Roger some double-edged advice how to avoid his fate but gloatingly informs him of his penchant for a twist ending ...