Well, it’s a week into December, which means that Christmas is finally looming large on the horizon. So, we’re now well into the winter ghost and horror season, and that means we literally have no option but to continue in that chilling (pun intended) vein.
This week, for the benefit of recent readers, I’m going
to resurrect memories of and post free, direct links to the plethora of
Christmas spook stories I’ve written in recent years and attached to this blog.
I’ll also be seeking to push a few Yuletide terror addicts towards my Christmas
ghost story collection, IN A DEEP, DARK DECEMBER, which was first published as
an e-book in 2014 (though it also appeared the following year in Germany, as a
paperback).
And if that’s not enough for you fans of this most
atmospheric part of the scary story calendar, I’ll be reviewing and discussing
in some considerable detail Ramsey Campbell’s masterly, winter-set horror novel, THE GRIN
OF THE DARK.
If you’re mainly here for the Campbell review, that’s perfectly
fine. You’ll find it, as always, at the lower end of today’s blogpost. However,
if you’ve got a bit more time on your hands, let me talk a little bit first about some
of my own festive horror output.
Spirits of the season
Each year for the last – tell the truth, I’m not sure how
many – I’ve celebrated December by posting a new Christmas ghost story on this
blog, entirely free to read. It’s my intention to do the same this year, so in
the next few weeks keep checking in, and at some point you’ll find my latest
contribution to this season’s fearsome frolics.
However, just in case you’re impatient for some immediate
festive ghost/horror action – and especially if you’re relatively new to this
blog, here are some links to past stories, with a brief snippet in each case to whet your appetite. Feel free to check ’em out at your leisure – just be
advised that the first one, Brightly Shone the Moon That Night is a thriller
rather than a supernatural horror, but I’m reliably informed that most horror
fans have enjoyed it thus far).
Heck is the only cop on duty one very cold Christmas Eve
when a trio of deranged carol singers goes house to house, leaving a trail of
bloody carnage …
Jen turned the lock and opened up the narrowest of narrow
gaps.
It was an
enormous surprise to see how close the singer was actually standing. He was
virtually on the step, his face no more than ten inches from her own.
‘Ahhh … good
evening, my dear,’ he said, breaking off from his song.
The immediate
odour was of halitosis, followed promptly by stale sweat and nicotine. His
garb, though reminiscent of a hundred adaptations of Scrooge – a double-caped
greatcoat and muffler, a cravat and a high collar, a tilted topper and Faginesque
fingerless gloves – was worn and moth-eaten, a pantomime costume purloined from
some forgotten cellar. His face was pudgy and discoloured, with overgrown
side-whiskers, brownish teeth, and a left eye milky and rolling independently
in its narrowed, unblinking socket.
Even then, she
thought, in some vague way, a wholesomeness might lurk there – that lovely
baritone voice! – or might have lurked there once even if now long departed.
‘And a merry
Christmas to you,’ he said, in a voice rich and resonant.
It bespoke
education and breeding rather than the hardscrabble streets of the East End,
which seemed to fit with the impression she had of a gentleman gone to seed.
She observed
the twosome with him.
They stood to
his rear, one partly behind the other. The furthest away loitered in the gap
between the gateposts. Despite the deluge of snowflakes, which continued to
obscure much, this was clearly a woman. Not especially tall, about
five-foot-six – a little shorter than Jen – but also done up in shabby
Victorian garb, and clutching a bundle of rags as though it was a baby. She
wore a coal-scuttle bonnet and a drab, floor-length dress, much patched, and
was huddled into a ragged shawl. The bonnet completely concealed her face
because, all the time Jen watched her, the woman stood with head drooped,
motionless even as the flakes gathered on her wool-clad shoulders.
The second of
the visitors, the one immediately behind the soloist, was much more alarming.
From his size
and shape, he was clearly male, and he wore a parti-coloured red and green
suit, like a harlequin costume, but this too was baggy and threadbare. On his
head, there was a red coxcomb hat, which rose to several peaks, all dangling with
bells; underneath that, his face was concealed behind a protruding papier-mâché
mask, a basic, crudely-made thing whose exaggeratedly moulded and painted
features – the axe-blade nose in particular, and the jutting, knifelike chin –
denoted the malign visage of Mr Punch. Though perhaps the most disturbing
feature of this particular character was the eyes. They were nothing but empty
holes, and though real eyes undoubtedly lay behind them, at present they were
pits of inscrutable blackness …
A ghost-hunting sceptic and devout Christmas-hater opts
to spend Christmas Eve alone in a notoriously haunted theatre, midway through
the production of A Christmas Carol …
“I have to say, I’ve never really thought the Ambridge haunted myself, and I’ve been a member over forty years. There are no specific stories; it’s just an eerie old building I guess. If there’s any spirit here at present …” Lampwick glanced at the lobby’s festive brocade, “… I’d say it was the spirit of the season. Not that this is always a good thing.”
“It isn’t?” Hetherington asked, puzzled by that.
“Well, they say Christmas is what you make it … that you
get the Christmas you deserve, and all that.”
“Good job I don’t do Christmas.”
Lampwick headed to the fire-door, muttering something in
response that sounded like “Let’s hope it doesn’t do you.”
“I’m sorry?” Hetherington asked. “Missed that.”
Lampwick opened the door, and a waft of icy air blew in.
“I said good luck to you.”
“Okay … thanks.”
“One last thing,” Lampwick said. “When are you planning
on leaving tomorrow?”
“First light … half past eight, nine-ish.”
“If you throw the breakers back on first, and whichever
door you leave through, make sure you close it after you. I’ll be popping in
mid-morning on my way to my daughter’s for Christmas lunch, to check
everything’s okay. And I’ll put the alarms back on.” Lampwick halted in the
doorway. “You’re absolutely sure you want to do this?”
Here we go again.
“I’m sure. And thanks for your concern, but I’ve done it
many times before.”
“Not here.”
“No, not here,” Hetherington agreed. “But then you don’t
believe this place is haunted either.”
“No, but then I’ve never stayed here overnight, not on my
own.”
In the dark, when there’s nobody else here … eh, Mr
Lampwick?
Lampwick smiled, again as if he’d just read
Hetherington’s inner thoughts. Then he departed into the blackness and the
snow, shutting the fire-exit door behind him …
In the deprived years after the close of World War Two, a
German child living in Britain is terrorised by nightmarish Nazi version of
Father Christmas …
The street we had just walked along was lined down either
side with terraced houses; a perfectly normal street in our part of the world,
yet now an increasingly stiff breeze was whipping the snow in eddies – on some
occasions I could see as far along it as the coal wagon parked at its distant
end, on others no more than thirty yards. I remained there for several minutes,
convinced there’d be something to fix on if only I could gaze into the murk
hard enough. Intermittently down that street, curtains were only half-drawn,
thus allowing rays of soft, warm lamplight to penetrate outward. Without
warning, someone passed one of these. I blinked – and they’d gone again, hidden
by renewed swirls of flakes. But it was someone headed in my direction. Someone
wearing red.
It could have
been any ordinary person walking home; there was absolutely no need to assume
the worst. But briefly I was rooted in place. Only slowly, with great
difficulty, was I able to retreat to the edge of the pavement, where again I
waited. I don’t know why; it makes no sense now – it was as if I had some inner
urgent need to know I was in danger rather than simply fear it. But then
something happened that leant genuine panic to my heels. I spied the figure
again, much closer this time – maybe forty yards away – crossing the street to
the side on which I was waiting. It was only a silhouette, half-glimpsed as it
passed through another shaft of flake-speckled lamplight, but it was bent
forward in ungainly fashion, its back humped, its heavy robes trailing behind
it.
There was no
further debate in my mind. I spun around and raced blindly along the next
street, and along the one after that, regardless of the treacherous footing. I
must have covered half the distance home before I stopped to get my breath. I
had seen no-one else that whole way, but likewise no-one was in sight behind me
either, and now, the flakes having relented a little, I was able to see a good
distance in every direction – and spied nothing but snow-covered road
junctions, the red-brick gable walls of houses, the weak palls of light cast by
streetlamps. Nothing advanced through them, so I felt a little better, though I
had yet to cross Dalewood Brow. That place no longer exists today – a
supermarket and offices have been built there instead, but in my childhood, it
consisted of several hundred yards of derelict colliery land, hummocky and
deeply overgrown; a wonderful place for children to play in summer, but in
wintry darkness a test of anyone’s nerve …
A disillusioned college lecturer spends Christmas Eve
marooned in a mysterious and semi-deserted town, where the celebrations are the
eeriest he’s ever known …
The bigger problem at present was the cold. Never having expected to be outdoors, he was only wearing a lightweight jacket over his shirt. His trainers were already caked with ice crystals, which were fast melting through the rubber and canvas, soaking his socks and feet. It was pure good fortune that he had gloves, but they weren’t much protection in truth. He’d wandered for quite some time by now, and probably wouldn’t even be able to find his way back to the coach station. He glanced around, feeling more than a little concerned, but no fellow pedestrians were abroad to ask. The steadily falling snow muffled all sound, so even if there’d been someone on a nearby street, he wouldn’t necessarily hear them. The occasional car swished by, but they were few and far between.
Capstick walked on, entering a small square,
on the other side of which stood a row of spike-topped railings with an open
gate in the middle, giving through to what looked like a yard enclosed by high
buildings, though down at the far end of it a light was moving. It was only a
glimmer; from this distance it looked like someone carrying a lantern. As
Capstick watched, the clotted blackness down there split vertically as more
light spilled through an opened door, widened further to admit the outline of a
figure, then narrowed again and winked out. A faint thump was heard.
He approached
the railings and peered across the yard. The building at the far end looked
vaguely churchlike. It was too dark to see any real detail, but its roof was
vaulted and there was a spire of some sort. Before he knew what he was doing,
he was walking down towards it. Capstick hadn’t been into a church for as long
as he could remember and had no religious beliefs. In fact, there was a time
when he’d badmouthed Christianity at every opportunity, calling it “abusive
superstition” and preferring to ignore the good things it did, such as the
provision of charity and shelter. Not that he was going to ask for either of
those things now – good God, he wasn’t that far gone! – but he could use some
directions, and it wouldn’t hurt to go indoors and get warm for a few minutes.
A high
stained-glass window on the right implied he was correct about the
ecclesiastical purpose of this place, though there was no light behind it,
making it look grimy, while several of its panes appeared to be missing. On the
left, he passed what looked like a small memorial garden recessed between
cliff-faces of brickwork. A central statue grinned at him from beneath a veil
of icicles. One stone hand clutched an upright spear; the other extended
forward, also covered in snow, but pointing downward.
When he
reached the main entrance door, he saw a slogan painted in black on the
whitewashed bricks above its lintel:
GOD IS JUST
A neglectful son lets his aged father die one desolate
Christmas Eve and thinks he’s unloaded a burden. But as Christmas comes around
again his nervousness grows …
Mike went back to bed, still feeling weak. Chrissie
wouldn’t be back from work until five – not that this was anything to look
forward to. She found it trying, having an invalid in the house, and did
nothing to hide it.
That was when
he heard the sleigh bells.
He sat up from
the pillow and looked slowly round at the window. It was open, and beyond it he
saw the azure sky of late summer, the rich green leaves on the trees opposite.
He heard children playing – still on holiday from school; the sound of someone
mowing their lawn. He smelled chopped grass and barbecue coals being stoked up
for another glorious evening.
Yet
sleigh-bells were approaching gaily, along with crisp, clip-clopping hooves.
They came to a
halt right under his bedroom window. Mike felt his hair prickling but was
unable to move to look. The children were still playing, the lawnmower still
revving over the turf. At any second, he expected a hearty knock at the door.
But the next thing he heard was a foot on the stair. Then another. Stealthy,
padding footfalls – as though someone was coming up uncertainly, or painfully.
A silvery bell tingled. Mike imagined that shabby, stumbling Father Christmas –
holding out a little Yuletide bell, ringing it before him to bring in custom,
just like one of those old men paid to stand outside department stores in
December. The footsteps were now on the landing, the tingling bell right
outside Mike’s bedroom door. It was not closed properly, and someone slowly
pushed it open ...
Then Mrs.
Barnard from next door walked in.
When she saw
that he was awake she looked relieved. She hadn’t wanted to disturb him, she
said. But she felt she had to return the house-keys Chrissie had given her
while they’d been away on holiday last July. She held them up in a bunch, and
they tingled together – just like bells.
Mike swore
hysterically at her for nearly a full minute before she turned and fled in
rivers of tears. When Chrissie returned from work that evening, she was
ambushed by the distraught woman before she could even get into the house, and
finally came upstairs in a vexed mood. Mike was still lying in bed, and his
wife gave him a good four minutes of her time before she even began to get
changed.
It was no use
him taking things out on her and the neighbours! Just because he wasn’t feeling
so good! They had cause to get annoyed with him if they felt like it!
But by the
time she’d finished, Mike was no longer listening. He was too busy staring out
through the bedroom door at the scattered white globules on the landing carpet.
They steadily dissipated as he watched them. It was the sort of thing you saw
in deepest winter, when somebody had come in with snowy boots on.
Office-worker, Wilton, is increasingly disturbed as the
Roman temple in the nearby church crypt is excavated. It’s almost Christmas,
and the feast of Saturnalia is looming …
It was early afternoon and he was working in his office,
when he heard a step on the landing beyond the door. He glanced up sharply.
Dowerby and his partner were both away on business, and their secretaries were
on Christmas leave, so Wilton should have been the only person in the building.
Before he knew
what he was doing, he was reaching for the telephone. What happened next,
however, practically paralysed him. The handle on the door to his office began
to turn. But only slowly. Furtively. Wilton felt sweat break on his brow as he
watched. His blood went cold.
There was a
grunt on the other side of the door, as though whoever was there could not
manage to open it. The handle stopped turning and there was a brief silence.
Then, the wooden panelling of the door began to creak from some weight being
applied to it. Wilton’s spine was literally crawling. He found his fingers
fumbling with the dial on the telephone. For ludicrous seconds, he couldn’t
remember the emergency code. Then the intruder seemed to move away.
Wilton listened
to soft but heavy feet, as they padded up the next flight of stairs.
He stood up,
his heart pounding. The whole demeanour of whoever this person was gave him away
as a burglar. The outer doors to the Society Chambers were not locked during
the day, but a visit like this was not bona fide. Wilton didn’t know what
valuables Dowerby and his partner kept in their offices upstairs, but the
intruder was clearly on his way to find out. Without hesitation, Wilton called
the police. They said they would send someone immediately, but minutes seem to
pass and eventually Wilton began to fear that the burglar would leave the
premises before they arrived, or even worse try to get into his office again.
It was now very quiet upstairs. Wilton strained his ear as he listened against
his door. It occurred to him that he was behaving in a rather cowardly fashion.
This might be the thing for a young female secretary to do – call for help and
then hide. But would he, as a male, not at least be expected to make some approach
to the intruder? What would his employers think if he just let the villain walk
away again before the police even arrived?
After a minute
of agonised indecision, he stuck his head out through the door.
The landing
was deserted. That was to be expected, whoever it was having gone upstairs.
Wilton followed stealthily, praying for the sound of an approaching siren. At
the top of the next flight, there was still no sign of anybody, but the door to
Dowerby’s office stood ajar. It could have been left that way, but it seemed
unlikely.
Swallowing
hard, Wilton advanced towards it. When he pushed it, it swung open. He entered.
There was nobody in there. Wilton was now baffled. He had heard somebody coming
up here, hadn’t he? He turned to leave – and found his way barred by a hulking
man with mad, staring eyes and a gross beard filled with crawling lice.
An evil-looking snowman and a book of spells are all that
young Jimmy needs to punish his thoughtless dad, but once the means of
vengeance is loose, will anyone be safe? …
Charlotte wasn’t coming home this Christmas. She spent
most of her time at a place called the LSE, but now apparently, was somewhere
called Kathmandu and had recently written to her parents, saying that she
considered the yuletide feast a corrupt, western opiate and no longer had any
time for it.
Mum had cried,
and Dad had gone mad, storming around the house shouting something about “the
weed” finally getting to “her great, stupid, empty head!” Jimmy hadn’t got
cross with Dad on that occasion because both he and Mum, for once, had seemed
to be in agreement on it. But it didn’t make any difference: Charlotte was
still away for Christmas and would see them some time in the New Year. Once
Jimmy had got used to the idea, it hadn’t bothered him too much because it
meant that he could spend the first few days of his school holidays digging
around among the various odds and ends in her room.
That was when
he’d found the Tome of Lore.
The treasure
trove of odd-smelling bric-a-brac in Charlotte’s room, stuffed under her bed,
littering her desk and dressing table, had proved a novel distraction at first,
but not as much as this particular book, which as well as being full of mucky
drawings, also had gross but neat pictures of goats’ heads on tables,
half-men-half-monster things, people on crosses upside-down, and animals with
unreadable names scrawled underneath them. Jimmy was a bright lad and it hadn’t
taken him long to work out what it was all about. He vaguely remembered Dad
once having a row with Charlotte over the “voodoo crap” he’d found on the
toilet shelf when he’d been looking for his football yearbook.
The thing was,
Jimmy hadn’t believed that any of it was for real – not until soon after lunch,
when he’d gone out into the back garden again and found the snowman missing …
IN A DEEP, DARK DECEMBER, is still available for purchase. As I mentioned earlier, German readers can acquire it in paperback if they so wish. Just follow DAS GESPENST VON KILLINGLY HALL.
In case you need any more persuading, here is a quick thumbnail outline for each of the five stories contained inside.
THE CHRISTMAS TOYS: Two burglars target an ordinary suburban house one
Christmas Eve, only to awaken the dark side of the festive spirit …
MIDNIGHT SERVICE: A stranded traveller in a desolate town one snowy
Christmas Eve. Where can he find shelter? The former workhouse, of course …
THE FAERIE: Timid husband Arthur snatches his young daughter and
flees his angry wife across the wintry moors, finally seeking sanctuary in a
mysterious snowbound house …
THE MUMMERS: Two men plot an elaborate Christmas Eve revenge by
summoning a pantomime from Hell …
THE KILLING GROUND: During an atmospheric English Christmas, man and wife
security experts are hired to protect a film star’s family from the cannibal
woman said to haunt their new country estate … (
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime,
thriller, horror and sci-fi) – both old and new – that I have recently read and
enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly
be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the
definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in
more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly
enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these
pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts
will not be your thing.
Outline
London-based northerner, Simon Lester, feels that he’s on
the verge of making a breakthrough in his chosen career of film journalism.
He almost managed it once before when he found himself working for the controversial movie magazine, Cineassed – though all of that went belly-up when Simon and his reckless editor, Colin Vernon, got the mag sued for libel. Since then, Simon’s been employed at a petrol station, with nothing to offer his pragmatic fiancée, Natalie Halloran, other than vague guarantees that all will be well eventually.
He almost managed it once before when he found himself working for the controversial movie magazine, Cineassed – though all of that went belly-up when Simon and his reckless editor, Colin Vernon, got the mag sued for libel. Since then, Simon’s been employed at a petrol station, with nothing to offer his pragmatic fiancée, Natalie Halloran, other than vague guarantees that all will be well eventually.
But yes … now, at last, it seems to have happened.
High-flying academic, and former tutor of Simon’s, Rufus
Wall, offers him a commission to write a film studies textbook for London
University’s new line, with a £10,000 advance. Simon finally thinks that he’s
arrived, but not everyone shares this viewpoint. Natalie will only believe that
her beloved’s career is back on track when she sees it, while her parents –
Warren and Bebe, who also happen to be Simon’s landlords – remain steadfastly
unimpressed, thinking that Simon should get a proper job, and wishing that
their daughter was back with her ex, the smooth and moneyed Nicholas (who also
happens to be father to her lively young son, Mark).
Of course, Simon, agog with excitement that someone will
finally pay him to do what he loves, brushes all this aside in his quest to
find a suitable topic for the new book, settling on the career of one Tubby
Thackeray, a British music hall clown turned Hollywood silent era comedian, who
eventually was blacklisted because his brand of slapstick was so demented that
public order situations arose whenever he appeared (some viewers were even said
to have lost their minds).
It isn’t perhaps the wisest choice, because Tubby
Thackeray really has been expunged from movie history. Encouraged by young
Mark, who catches a snippet of Tubby in action and falls in love with the
silent era legend – to an inordinate degree, it seems to us, though Simon,
typically, doesn’t notice this – he commences his research, but finds it more
of a challenge than he expected. Those who allegedly know about Tubby seem
reluctant to talk, and the few bits of written information he can find are
located at obscure, antiquarian-type events, where he has to leaf through piles
of dead newspapers and deal with increasingly strange personalities.
And that’s another thing about this affair … the
strangeness.
From the moment, Simon starts looking into Tubby
Thackeray, curious events occur. Any useful intel he finds on the internet
seems to change from one viewing to the next. He constantly hears deranged
cackling from behind apartment doors or on the other sides of bookstacks. In
the corners of his vision, he glimpses creepy, grinning, clown-like men, who
seem to find his every move – and especially his mistakes – hilarious. When he
finally locates some real footage of Tubby, he thinks it radical and inventive
for the time, but also dark and disturbing. Was Thackeray really doing comedy,
or something much more sinister?
Meanwhile, there are other distractions. Bebe and Warren
Halloran are a constant source of discouragement, while the insufferable
Nicholas seems to be showing up ever more regularly, which threatens Simon’s
relationship with Mark, though even more so his relationship with Natalie, who
is turning progressively cooler with him. It’s also an unpleasant development
when Rufus Wall foists a new editor on him – Colin Vernon, of Cineassed
notoriety – while Simon also makes the mistake of engaging in a chat-room
debate with an anonymous but self-proclaimed expert on the silent comedy
greats, who goes by the nickname Smilemime. It’s a futile exercise, but Simon
finds himself getting drawn in, wasting more and more time arguing with someone
he doesn’t even know, and yet who increasingly appears to know him.
At the same time, the people he meets in real life are no
less easy to deal with.
Bolshy Manchester man, Charlie Tracy, appears well
informed about Tubby Thackeray, but is an awkward and suspicious individual,
who no one would want to rely on unless they had to. And when Simon heads to California, to interview Wilhelmina, the granddaughter of Orville Hart, who
directed some of Tubby’s movies, he finds her a coked-out porn queen, whose
ranch-like home is populated by nubile females of a distinctly weird and
predatory nature (and who – and this is Simon’s real concern, given that
Natalie is waiting at home – enjoy putting all their conquests on the
internet!).
All this time, meanwhile, Christmas is coming, and Simon
feels that a visit home may be necessary, especially when he learns that his
native Preston, in Lancashire, once played host to a famous music hall
incident, when Tubby Thackery roused the crowd to much more than laughter. But
Simon’s home has a cloying atmosphere all of its own, his mother in the early
stages of senility and his father unable to cope, while the derelict theatre
where they eventually take him is a horror story in its own right.
And all the while, that background strangeness
intensifies, the hapless Simon shifting through altered states as he
determinedly tries to ignore the phantoms dogging him during his quest to fully
expose Tubby Thackeray, a comic genius and an apparent prince of chaos …
Review
A warning from the outset: if you like your horror
stories cruel, garish and filled with blood and violence, then don’t bother
with The Grin of the Dark. However, if you’re a cerebral scare fan, and you
don’t mind a slow-burn atmosphere, you can’t really afford to miss this one.
Not that Campbell is overly subtle. Make no mistake,
there is a real horror at the heart of this tale, and it leaks out through the
pores as you work your way along. Much of it is intensely psychological, even
though there is no question that we are dealing with supernatural forces, and
malevolent ones at that. Simon Lester’s mental disintegration is unrelenting,
taking us into a surrealist netherworld of obsession and paranoia, where his
seemingly harmless quest to research a long-forgotten comedian doesn’t just see
him encounter hostility at every turn, much of it disturbingly irrational, but
literally awakens demons.
In many ways, The Grin of the Dark is vintage Ramsey
Campbell. We’re in a bleak urban environment where, even though we flit back
and forth between London and Northwest England, everything is faded and
decayed, which is populated by jobsworths and functionaries so unhelpful as to
be almost obstructive, and yet, only thinly disguised by this aura of the
depressingly mundane, we sense constant, simmering evil, a near-Lovecraftian
presence of the bizarre, which we regularly glimpse – or think we glimpse,
because, in classic Campbell style, we can never be absolutely sure.
Simon Lester himself is a typical Campbell hero: an
essentially well-meaning guy, a workaday everyman, a little introverted and
intellectually absorbed, whose pursuits are innocent if niche, but at the same
time someone who doesn’t connect easily with others and is therefore mistrusted
(and who, on occasion, needs to man up in his confrontations). But he has a
good relationship with Mark, his stepson-to-be, while the strong and personable
Natalie has seen something in him that she wants to marry, so we are firmly in
‘good guy’ territory. On top of that, you can’t help but root for the bloke
when he encounters so much opposition. His soon-to-be in-laws, Warren and Bebe,
for example, are frankly hateful, so hostile to their daughter’s choice of
boyfriend, so belittling of almost everything he does that it’s no wonder he
appears to lack confidence.
We’re also in traditional Campbell country in terms of
several classy horror set-pieces.
It’s an absolute staple of this author’s fiction that
low-key creepiness will abound, and The Grin of the Dark is completely true to
that. But in addition to these lesser but ongoing tortures, we are also plunged
into some epic scare situations, including a head-trip sequence in a run-down
circus in the heart of wintry London, and most terrifyingly of all – and this
scene is Ramsey Campbell at his very best! – an exploration of the derelict
Preston theatre, where a sense of fear is palpable from the moment the
investigators force entry, but soon becomes utterly overwhelming.
Ramsey Campbell is not regarded as ‘Britain’s Greatest
Living Horror Writer’ for nothing, of course. And even in other scenes, where
the terror isn’t as full-on, the air of menace stems from an increasing
dislocation of reality. For example, a straightforward presentation that Simon
makes to a Tubby Thackeray fan-club becomes a nightmarish ordeal. Likewise, his
journey to California to interview the hedonistic Wilhemina Hart, which seems
to crash head-on into a follow-up trip to Amsterdam, is a triumph of drug and
porn-induced disorientation.
Campbell also makes excellent use of a very new kind of
monster, the internet troll.
Simon Lester’s ongoing duel with the creepy madman,
Smilemime, which he gets into initially for the right reasons because he’s
trying to learn everything he can about the elusive Tubby, soon becomes a
hellish narrative in its own right. Not every reviewer has favoured this aspect
of the novel, calling it unnecessary and protracted, but for me it works
perfectly. The smugly arrogant Smilemime is only one facet of the malignancy Simon seems to have disturbed, and it’s a very potent one. This part of the book
also serves as a sobering lesson to the rest of us about the futility of
engaging online with shallow, nameless narcissists who may demonstrate
countless shortcomings – spelling, grammar, etc – and yet who will always win
because they are content to spend all day/week/month (as long as it takes)
doing nothing other than trying to get the better of their perceived opponents.
All through the book, of course, and this is perhaps the
real success of The Grin of the Dark, the evil Tubby lurks close by, constantly
on the verge of breaking loose – even though he only physically appears in
snippets of crackly film or sepia-toned newspapers. Needless to say, on those
few occasions when we do see him, he is a demon lord, seeming to combine every
strange and menacing aspect of those heavily made-up, wildly gesticulating
comics of the gaslight age, performing antics so outlandish that
you can easily imagine it having a damaging effect on audiences not used to
such onscreen anarchy.
I should add that not all reviews of The Grin of the Dark
have been hugely positive. Ramsey Campbell has a unique style. He conceals
clues which, if you miss them the first time around, may mean that you have to
roll back a few chapters to check again. Certain readers haven’t appreciated
this, though I think it’s an acceptable and clever device. Likewise, others
have expressed impatience with the clown factor, calling it a cliché, and
indeed there are clowns aplenty in this book, not just Tubby himself, though –
and I stress this – these are no axe-wielding maniac clowns of the modern-day
slasher variety. All their manifestations are connected to that golden age of
comedy, and, once again, to those extreme and harrowing lengths so many silent
era practitioners went to in order to immortalise themselves.
At the end of the day, in an age when horror suffers
almost permanently from bad press – so many writing it off as gory, derivative
nastiness, Ramsey Campbell is still one of the genre’s great breaths of fresh
air. A skilled and intelligent writer, he has the ability to lay out deep,
macabre mysteries and to invoke genuine chills from the most everyday
situations, plucking at nerves we scarcely knew we had, all the while shedding
barely a drop of blood.
The Grin of the Dark is a great example of this,
recounting a complex but genuinely frightening tale and setting it in a world
that closely resembles ours and yet is increasingly and distressingly
off-kilter. If you’re a horror fan and you haven’t yet read this one, you really
need to.
It’s one of the great puzzles to me that Ramsey
Campbell’s work – and it constitutes a vast body – has never (to my knowledge)
received any kind of film or TV treatment. I’ve constantly told myself that
some kind of adaptation must only be around the corner. His short stories in
particular scream to occupy a ‘Christmas chiller’ slot, but in the absence of
that, for the moment at least, we can only fantasise – which is what I’m going
to do now. Here, as usual at the end of one of my reviews, is a personal take
on who should make up the cast-list should The Grin of the Dark ever hit the
screen.
Simon Lester – Jack O’Connell
Natalie Halloran – Ellen Page
Warren Halloran – Gabriel Byrne
Bebe Halloran – Veronica Cartwright
Charlie Tracy – Stephen Graham
Rufus Wall – Dexter Fletcher
Colin Vernon – Chris O’Dowd
Wilhelmina Hart – Jennifer Love Hewitt
Tubby Thackeray – Bill Skarsgård
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