Tapp – Turner

Terry Tapp – Into The Mad, Mad World: Rachel Bowden sits before her nemesis Dr. Regan and his two colleagues, the panel who will decide if she’s fit to be released from the asylum. She was admitted several years ago after her husband only just managed to prevent her from smothering their little boy with a pillow. How did it come to this? In the days leading up to the incident she’d been tormented by the face of an old man formed in a cloud of smoke who boasted that he would possess three year old Mark. When she saw his fiery eyes glaring from her son’s face she knew he’d been as bad as his word. (Ghost 13)

Terry Tapp – Never, Never Leave Me (Ghost 14)

Terry Tapp – Mariners: New Teignton, Devon. To commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada, a retired naval Officer built his home as “a precise facsimile of a Galleon”. Now, four-hundred years later, it’s prospective new owner the retired American surgeon Dr. Gareth Vanglor learns that there’s such a thing as doing a job too perfectly. As Mariners comes under siege from a ghostly English fleet, he’s taken below decks to witness a succession of crude and gruesome amputations. (Ghost 16)

Terry Tapp – The Bed: His wife Claire is dead, and now Paul lies in hospital unable to move a muscle beyond blinking in answer to Dr. Stewart’s questions. How did he get into this terrible state? It all began when he reassembled the antique four-poster bed … and released a Succubus.
Maybe my favourite story by an unjustly neglected author. (Ghost 17)

Terry Tapp – The Invaders: Several million strong, the starving army of mutant red ants cross the prairie and descend on the cabin of Seth, Stella and little Alice Kenyon. The family’s only hope is if they can flood the cornfield before the terrible termites reach them. A nasty late-‘seventies rewrite of Carl Stephenson’s classic Leiningen Versus The Ants (Horror 12)

Terry Tapp – Polish The Lid: Ernest Perryman bullies son Ian into taking a job at Monmouth’s Undertakers, primarily so that he can grill him about all the secrets of the trade. We get the lowdown on some of the proprietor’s cost-cutting ploys, corpse abuse and a blow by blow account of a particularly harrowing cremation. (Horror 14)

Terry Tapp – See How They Run: More fun on the farm. Cassie tells husband David to pop in on Mr. Moyce and pick up some traps as she’s found another mouse carcass in the kitchen. Of course, he forgets – not that it would’ve made much difference. while he’s out in the fields, the rodents converge on the house in their millions. The obvious comparison is James Herbert, but this is closer in spirit to Michael Annesley’s Not At Night classic, Rats. (Horror 16)

Bernard Taylor – Cera: Bizarre vampire tale. Carl is jilted by the tall, striking Cera who surprises everyone by marrying the less than dynamic short-arse Greg Merchant. Carl swears revenge, but he needn’t trouble himself. Within months his rival is a wreck of a man, shrinking, losing his teeth, hair, etc. Conversely, Cera has grown huge. Carl wonders why he can’t get the memory of the Angler fish models at the museum out of his mind … (Frighteners)

Bernard Taylor – My Very Good Friend: Pierre lives in seclusion save for the visits of nearest neighbour Royston Stevens, but that’s the way he prefers it. Shockingly hideous to the eye, he conducts his rapid growth experiments on a preying mantis he names Emil (later Emilie when he’s ascertained its sex). There’s such a thing as getting too close to your enormous pets … (Frighteners)

Bernard Taylor – Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake: A precocious baby gets even with his negligent mother after another evening dumped in the corner of the pub while she gets on with organisingtonight’s leg-over and playing darts. (Frighteners 2)

Bernard Taylor – The Godsend: Very strange variation on the vampire theme, not to be confused with his novel of the same name. Nine year old Caro narrates the story of what happened to she and little brother Rick when her author mum took on a Nanny. The little ones love Janie, a plump, jolly Northern lass fresh back from a stint in Africa who dotes on them and, with the pressure lifted off their mother, life was sweet. But Rick falls ill: there are tiny bite marks all over his body and all he can give the doctor to go on is that he’s being attacked by two inch high grass-hoppers. Then he dies. The medical profession put it down to anaemia. Caro has begun to notice stuff: how come Janie never eats and yet she’s so fat? And what was that about the two kids she looked after in Africa dying? (Horror 8 )

Steve Rasnic Tem – Housewarming: Judith’s tyrant of a father haunts her new house … or is she just imagining it? Maybe all those noises in the night are the price you pay for moving into an area with a high crime rate? (Ghost 18 )

Steve Rasnic Tem – Shadows On The Grass (Ghost 19)

Steve Rasnic Tem – The Farmer: Grandfather explains to the boy that, to get a magnificent crop, you must make sacrifices, really give something of yourself to the land. Which accounts for the several disappearances in the area and the fact that each member of the family is missing the odd limb or a chunk of face. (Horror 16)

Alan Temperley – Where No Wind Blows: Two men are killed in a car crash. Factory farmer Andrew Newman descends into a personalised Hell, the other victim, an old-school natural toiler, ascends to Heaven. (Horror 17)

Dylan Thomas – The Old Woman Upstairs: She’s been dying ever since Martha can remember but still hangs on grimly. Martha knows the semi-mummified old relic keeps a fortune stashed beneath her mattress. Time to give nature a helping hand. (Horror 7)

Charles Thornton – The Lonely Apparition: Wandsworth. the spectre of an old woman trudges aimlessly across South West London until the day she notices a small group making their way into a basement flat where a fraudulent medium does his business. The sound of screeching brakes and a bus skids off the road and through the window, killing the owner and the driver who goes through the windshield. Even so, a happy ending. (Ghost 13)

Charles Thornton – For The Sake Of Alf: Alf and Ada Clark run a successful cafe. Business is thriving until Ada loses the uses of her legs and the surly Mrs. Marlow is drafted in as replacement cook. Now they are fast going broke and the butcher will no longer give them credit. Desperate measures are called for. (Horror 12)

Rosemary Timperley – The Maid, The Madman And The Knife: An evil dwarf kidnaps little Victoria knowing full well that Sanders, the maidservant, will be sent to find her. The dwarf fancies Sanders and, once he’s lured her to his bolt-hole, he ties her to a chair and threatens to slit the child’s throat unless she promises to be his sweetheart and obedient slave. The plucky maid saves the day, but at a terrible personal price. The dwarf was ghastly enough alive, but dead …. (Gaslight Terror)

Rosemary Timperley – To Keep Him Company (Ghost 10)

Rosemary Timperley – From Another World: Miss Oswald lands a job as secretary to Mr. Barnet which is quite a step up – she’s recently been released from an asylum after trying to kill her drunken father with a poker. Mr. Barnet is an OK boss, but he doesn’t like anybody tidying his desktop. One day a woman strolls past the new girl and pushes Mr. Barnet out of the window. Miss Oswald is blamed, and its back to the asylum for her. She doesn’t mind too much, as she has plenty of friendly company – the dead boss, his dead murderer, a dead colleague killed in a car smash – with her little family growing by the day. (Ghost 12)

Rosemary Timperley – The Man With The Flute (Ghost 13)

Rosemary Timperley – Masks and Voices (Ghost 14)

Rosemary Timperley – No Living Man So Tall … : When the firm went bust, Alan lost his direction and now, unemployed and isolated, he’s drowning himself in drink. The last thing he needs is this stranger, “Blackbeard” to sidle up to him in the pub and launch into a tirade about social security “scroungers”. Walking along the riverside – for all Alan’s being a drain on decent tax-paying folk Blackbeard insists on tagging along with him – the rage and frustration builds up inside our man and he commits his first act of violence: he pushes the arrogant bigot into the water and walks on. Its only later that he wonders if Blackbeard got out safely … ‘(Ghost 15)

Rosemary Timperley – The Bandaged Man: Louella Grant, 32, devotes herself to looking after invalid husband Robert, hideously mutilated and bandaged from head to foot after a plane crash. After five years of this selfless drudgery she meets and falls in love with John Maitland. Not wishing to hurt Robert, she conducts the affair in secrecy. But now she’s begun to wish him dead for all their sakes. On New Years Night she finally decides to give nature a hand by drugging her husband and dousing the room in petrol before meeting John at The White Rose. A bandaged man invades the dancefloor. (Horror 9)

Rosemary Timperley – The Eye Of The Mandala: A beautiful, narcissistic young woman loses an eye in a car accident. Her psychiatrist persuades her to paint a mandala as a means of therapy and she plunges herself into the task with maniacal fervour. Her creations are monstrous – actually, I’d love to see an artist attempt them as RT describes them. Basically, you have to be good at painting eyes. (Horror 11)

Rosemary Timperley – House Of Mirrors: A daughter’s oath to her insane, domineering mother sees her trapped in a house where her bloated reflection stares back at her from every wall, floor and ceiling. (Horror 15)

Rosemary Timperley – Harry: “There were newspaper stories of kidnapping, baby-snatching, child-murders….” Regarded by many to be Timperley’s finest ghost story. Mrs. James is anxious about her adopted daughter Christine’s growing attachment to an “imaginary” brother, Harry. When she refuses to begin infant school because Harry can’t accompany her – he’s fourteen – her Mum loses patience. A visit to the doctor doesn’t help so Mrs. James decides it’s time to find out what she can about Christine’s history before she and Jim adopted her. Whatever happened to her real parents? (London Terror)

Rosemary Timperley – Dorabella, or In Love With Death: Two young men, Walter Von Lamont and our narrator Philip Hambledon are travelling across Europe by coach. Walter is enamoured by a fellow passenger, the beautiful young women whose constant companion is a raven in a golden cage. A jealous young poet attacks Walter with a knife, but he manages to deflect the blade all to easily whereupon his assailant inflicts multiple stab wounds on himself “with a crazed, joyous shout.”
Next day, the young man’s corpse is loaded onto a cart: “his face and throat were chalk white, as if all the blood had been drained from his veins.” Walter and Philip now join the young lady, and observe that her luggage consists of a long trunk. Dorabella is, of course, an ancient vampire and the raven her father, and between them they’ve fingered Walter as their next victim. Philip learns their deadly secret, but can he save his friend from the Undead? (Supernatural)

Rosemary Timperley – Gall, or Ghost Of Venice: Adrian Gall, an illustrious actor is lured back to Venice where he is convinced that something was stolen from him some years ago on what proved to be his final performance. We soon learn that he has suffered a breakdown: he attempted to kill his wife, Charlotte, onstage after his mistress Leonora drowned herself on his account. Now, adrift in the seedy world of the pimps and prostitutes he encounters the ghost of his once-lover who leads him into madness, death and damnation.

The story is related in suitably sepulchral tones by Gall’s ghost who ends by delivering a chilling rebuke to the assembled company. (Supernatural)

Leo Tolstoy – The Porcelain Doll: Sonya has become a porcelain doll. It’s all a bit nervy as she’s very fragile and the dog nearly broke her in two. She’s also been knocked off the table. (Horror 8 )

Basil Tozer – The Pioneers Of Pike’s Peak: Told in a Colorado saloon. “Mad Harry” relates how the first expedition to the summit of Pikes Peak ended in disaster when one of the party squashed a spider. Billions of its mates turned up and surrounded the mountaineers, eating their eyes and crawling down their throats and things. Even now Harry throws a mental whenever he talks about it and has to be restrained from harming himself. (Horror 6)

Marie Trevelyan – Water Horse’s And Spirits Of the Mist (Welsh Terror)

Ivan Turgenev – Bezhin Tea (Ghost 8 )

Harry E. Turner – Now Showing At The Roxy: Stan Rabble and Lou Rouser are rival cinema owners and their war is bitter indeed. Before one of them inflicts an unmerciful double-bill on the public to top all that has gone before, between them the pair have have tortured their clientele with The Son Of The Thing From The Slime, The Return Of The Curse Of the Hunchback Werewolf, The Nymphomaniac Mummy From 20,000 Fathoms Beneath The Earth’s Crust Meets The Boneless Snakeman, I Was A Sex Mad Teenage Vampire Dolly Bird From Outer Space, Bluebeard’s Journey Into The Intestines Of A Whale, I Was Dracula’s Transvestite Masseur and The Heart Transplant, Voodoo Drug Addict, Thigh Booted Nun Meets Abbot & Costello On Ice. (Horror 10)

Harry E. Turner – The Wager: Obscenely wealthy bull-breeder Alvarez bets holidaying businessman Ken Grange a million that he can’t beat him in unarmed combat. As an extra incentive, Ken doesn’t have to pay up if he loses. And Alvarez is a dwarf. Never trust an embittered man with matador fantasies. Or his gorgeous secretary. (Horror 15)

James Turner – The St Christopher Medallion (Ghost 14)

James Turner – The Way Shadows Fall (Ghost 19)

John Hastings Turner – The House In The Wood (Ghost 10)

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