Post by demonik on Apr 9, 2006 14:47:39 GMT -5
Charles Birkin - Devil's Spawn (Philip Allan, 1936)
"The Happy Dancers",The Cockroach,The Terror On Tobit, Old Mrs. Strathers, Shelter, The Last Night, An Eye for an Eye, Henri Larne, Havelock's Farm, The Harlem Horror, A Poem and a Bunch of Roses, Obsession, The Actor's Story, Special Diet, Premiere, Angela.
All of his contributions to the Creeps series plus two new stories, Havelock's Farm and Premiere (unseen):
Havelock's Farm: Due to a mix-up over accomodation, young Faith Harrison, the new schoolmistress, has to look for a room in the village, and the only place she can find one is at the farm of the shunned, inbred Havelock family. They're actually a far more decent clan than their neighbours give them credit for ... except, that is, for the insane son they hide away from the outside world on account of his predeliction for rape. One night, the thatched roof catches fire ....
"The Happy Dancers": Russia on the eve of the revolution. Serge, son of the Grand Duke, marries Louba, a peasant girl whose father is Boris Kerensky, a political agitator. The Duke has recently had him whipped and has threatened him with Siberia if he continues to stir up dissent.
Come 1917 and Serge is a soldier, while Louba has blossomed. As 'Nikakova' she is a celebrated cabaret performer at "The Happy Dancers". She is also pregnant with the couples' first child and is awaiting Serges return from duty to break the good news to him. The only blot on the landscape is that her father has discovered her whereabouts and his mob are fighting with the infantry on the outskirts of town. Their arrival at "The Happy Dancers" coincides with Serge's ...
The Last Night: "It's to be our secret, my dear. You understand that, don't you? If you tell anyone that I shall come, I'll kill you." Meryham Mental Home. Nora, who is to be freed tomorrow after three years incarceration, pleads with the staff not to let Dr. Morris come anywhere near her. She can't get Dr. Patterson to listen to her, and nurse tells her to stop being a naughty girl or they'll keep her in indefinitely. In the early hours, Dr. Morris pays her a visit. After hypnotizing her he sets out to prove that "pain exists only in the imagination." Out comes the scalpel ...
The Harlem Horror: The Harwoods, Michael, Mary and little Clare, move from London to New York. There have been a spate of child disappearances in the Big Apple, and one day Clare goes missing. Some months later, the grieving, broken parents attend a funfair on Coney Island. During a sudden downpour they take shelter in a tent which turns out to be the entrance to a freak show. The star exhibit is the 'What-is-it?', a one-eyed, hideously deformed creature which the barker assures is female and aged no more than ten. On the boat home to England, Michael buys a newspaper. The lead story tells of a police raid on a laboratory in Harlem where the brilliant - albeit criminally insane - plastic surgeon, Sir John Trowbridge, has been performing abominable vivisections on children and animals which he then sells on to the freak shows ...
An Eye For An Eye: Dr. Peters' daughter, Angela, is raped and murdered on Wimbledon Common, the finer details of the crime being too ghastly to be divulged to the press. The finger of suspicion points at Peters' chauffeur, George Yarrow, but he walks from the court a free man as there is no concrete evidence against him. Peters gives him his old job back and bides his time until such evidence is forthcoming. When Yarrow's embittered lover, Nelly Torr, comes out of a coma, she gives him enough detail to hang the wretch, but Dr. Peters isn't about to let him off that lighty.
A Poem And A Bunch Of Roses: Sally Russell wonders why Madame de Civennes invites her to stay at the Chateau Montnegre after the death of Andre, M. de Civennes's husband with whom Sally was having an affair. Surely the widow should despise her?
As it turns out, M. de Civennes hates her with a passion and, on the last night of Sally's stay, unleashes Pierre, her servant Marie's imbecile son, with instructions to take the girl down to the dungeon and enjoy himself. Sally is a long time dying.
Special Diet: The doctor tries to persuade Mrs. Willoughby to put her aged mother into care as her behavior is completely unhinged, but the loyal daughter opts to hire a second nurse and keep her at home. When Nurse Charteris informs her that the old girl has just decapitated a mouse and drunk its blood, Mrs. Willoughby decides that, yes, it is time for her mum to be confined at the Parkside Home for mental cases after all. Before she can sort it, she's called away. This is not a good time for her little grand-daughter, Mary, to show up ...
The Terror On Tobit: The Scilly Isles, 1920's. Despite all warnings to the contrary, Daphne and Aline bully a young man to row them out to a shunned island, where a creature reputedly appears after dark, hungry for human flesh. One girl spends the rest of her days in an asylum. The other isn't so lucky.
Obsession: Hartledean. Doris Carson and Henry Russell are to wed. Joe, the village idiot, has a massive crush on Doris as she's the only person who has ever been kind to him. After she gently declines his offer of marriage, Joe takes to stalking both she and her burly fiance. Henry beats him up.
Events reach their grim conclusion at the old quarry when, with a superhuman effort, Joe dislodges a huge boulder, intending for it to crush the life out of his rival. It takes a nasty deflection on the way down ..
The Cockroach: Paris. Peter arranges to meet a fellow thrill-seeker at The Blue Lizard, a notorious rough house in the shadow of the Bastille. Unfortunately, his friend cries off and Peter is not seen again. His fiance, Jane, is concerned that the police aren't taking his disappearance seriously and, together with one of the missing man's friends, pays a visit to the cafe. It isn't a particularly busy night: the place is half empty, with only themselves, "a dozen burly men of the navvy class, and maybe half as many women of the type politely known as 'unfortunates'", and the cabaret ("an old bawd ... dressed as a ballet dancer in a soiled tulle, singing filth to her apathetic audience"). When she orders some stew, there is a cockroach floating in the bowl and, furious, Jane storms into the kitchen to complain. Her search for the proprietor leads her to a filthy, bug-infested larder ...
Shelter: Brazil. Paul Christie spends the night at the home of Lopez, his wife and their daughter when they kindly give him refuge from a terrible storm. In the dark, he is visited in his room by one of the ladies of the house who shares his best. As he rides away next morning, he learns of the existence of a second daughter. He was lucky to catch her, actually, as she's being consigned to a leper coloney later on today.
Old Mrs. Strathers: Paralysed by a stroke, old Mrs. Strathers is powerless to intervene on her doting son's behalf when his faithless wife, Molly, sets about poisoning him. As Ronnie lies dying, with a supreme effort she raises herself from her chair, and ... pitches headfirst into the fireplace ....
"The Happy Dancers",The Cockroach,The Terror On Tobit, Old Mrs. Strathers, Shelter, The Last Night, An Eye for an Eye, Henri Larne, Havelock's Farm, The Harlem Horror, A Poem and a Bunch of Roses, Obsession, The Actor's Story, Special Diet, Premiere, Angela.
All of his contributions to the Creeps series plus two new stories, Havelock's Farm and Premiere (unseen):
Havelock's Farm: Due to a mix-up over accomodation, young Faith Harrison, the new schoolmistress, has to look for a room in the village, and the only place she can find one is at the farm of the shunned, inbred Havelock family. They're actually a far more decent clan than their neighbours give them credit for ... except, that is, for the insane son they hide away from the outside world on account of his predeliction for rape. One night, the thatched roof catches fire ....
"The Happy Dancers": Russia on the eve of the revolution. Serge, son of the Grand Duke, marries Louba, a peasant girl whose father is Boris Kerensky, a political agitator. The Duke has recently had him whipped and has threatened him with Siberia if he continues to stir up dissent.
Come 1917 and Serge is a soldier, while Louba has blossomed. As 'Nikakova' she is a celebrated cabaret performer at "The Happy Dancers". She is also pregnant with the couples' first child and is awaiting Serges return from duty to break the good news to him. The only blot on the landscape is that her father has discovered her whereabouts and his mob are fighting with the infantry on the outskirts of town. Their arrival at "The Happy Dancers" coincides with Serge's ...
The Last Night: "It's to be our secret, my dear. You understand that, don't you? If you tell anyone that I shall come, I'll kill you." Meryham Mental Home. Nora, who is to be freed tomorrow after three years incarceration, pleads with the staff not to let Dr. Morris come anywhere near her. She can't get Dr. Patterson to listen to her, and nurse tells her to stop being a naughty girl or they'll keep her in indefinitely. In the early hours, Dr. Morris pays her a visit. After hypnotizing her he sets out to prove that "pain exists only in the imagination." Out comes the scalpel ...
The Harlem Horror: The Harwoods, Michael, Mary and little Clare, move from London to New York. There have been a spate of child disappearances in the Big Apple, and one day Clare goes missing. Some months later, the grieving, broken parents attend a funfair on Coney Island. During a sudden downpour they take shelter in a tent which turns out to be the entrance to a freak show. The star exhibit is the 'What-is-it?', a one-eyed, hideously deformed creature which the barker assures is female and aged no more than ten. On the boat home to England, Michael buys a newspaper. The lead story tells of a police raid on a laboratory in Harlem where the brilliant - albeit criminally insane - plastic surgeon, Sir John Trowbridge, has been performing abominable vivisections on children and animals which he then sells on to the freak shows ...
An Eye For An Eye: Dr. Peters' daughter, Angela, is raped and murdered on Wimbledon Common, the finer details of the crime being too ghastly to be divulged to the press. The finger of suspicion points at Peters' chauffeur, George Yarrow, but he walks from the court a free man as there is no concrete evidence against him. Peters gives him his old job back and bides his time until such evidence is forthcoming. When Yarrow's embittered lover, Nelly Torr, comes out of a coma, she gives him enough detail to hang the wretch, but Dr. Peters isn't about to let him off that lighty.
A Poem And A Bunch Of Roses: Sally Russell wonders why Madame de Civennes invites her to stay at the Chateau Montnegre after the death of Andre, M. de Civennes's husband with whom Sally was having an affair. Surely the widow should despise her?
As it turns out, M. de Civennes hates her with a passion and, on the last night of Sally's stay, unleashes Pierre, her servant Marie's imbecile son, with instructions to take the girl down to the dungeon and enjoy himself. Sally is a long time dying.
Special Diet: The doctor tries to persuade Mrs. Willoughby to put her aged mother into care as her behavior is completely unhinged, but the loyal daughter opts to hire a second nurse and keep her at home. When Nurse Charteris informs her that the old girl has just decapitated a mouse and drunk its blood, Mrs. Willoughby decides that, yes, it is time for her mum to be confined at the Parkside Home for mental cases after all. Before she can sort it, she's called away. This is not a good time for her little grand-daughter, Mary, to show up ...
The Terror On Tobit: The Scilly Isles, 1920's. Despite all warnings to the contrary, Daphne and Aline bully a young man to row them out to a shunned island, where a creature reputedly appears after dark, hungry for human flesh. One girl spends the rest of her days in an asylum. The other isn't so lucky.
Obsession: Hartledean. Doris Carson and Henry Russell are to wed. Joe, the village idiot, has a massive crush on Doris as she's the only person who has ever been kind to him. After she gently declines his offer of marriage, Joe takes to stalking both she and her burly fiance. Henry beats him up.
Events reach their grim conclusion at the old quarry when, with a superhuman effort, Joe dislodges a huge boulder, intending for it to crush the life out of his rival. It takes a nasty deflection on the way down ..
The Cockroach: Paris. Peter arranges to meet a fellow thrill-seeker at The Blue Lizard, a notorious rough house in the shadow of the Bastille. Unfortunately, his friend cries off and Peter is not seen again. His fiance, Jane, is concerned that the police aren't taking his disappearance seriously and, together with one of the missing man's friends, pays a visit to the cafe. It isn't a particularly busy night: the place is half empty, with only themselves, "a dozen burly men of the navvy class, and maybe half as many women of the type politely known as 'unfortunates'", and the cabaret ("an old bawd ... dressed as a ballet dancer in a soiled tulle, singing filth to her apathetic audience"). When she orders some stew, there is a cockroach floating in the bowl and, furious, Jane storms into the kitchen to complain. Her search for the proprietor leads her to a filthy, bug-infested larder ...
Shelter: Brazil. Paul Christie spends the night at the home of Lopez, his wife and their daughter when they kindly give him refuge from a terrible storm. In the dark, he is visited in his room by one of the ladies of the house who shares his best. As he rides away next morning, he learns of the existence of a second daughter. He was lucky to catch her, actually, as she's being consigned to a leper coloney later on today.
Old Mrs. Strathers: Paralysed by a stroke, old Mrs. Strathers is powerless to intervene on her doting son's behalf when his faithless wife, Molly, sets about poisoning him. As Ronnie lies dying, with a supreme effort she raises herself from her chair, and ... pitches headfirst into the fireplace ....
