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Sir Charles Lloyd Birkin, 5th Baronet (September 24, 1907 - 1986), was an English author of horror short stories and the editor of the Creeps Library of anthologies. Typically working under the pseudonym Charles Lloyd, Birkin's tales tended towards the contes cruels rather than supernatural fiction.
[edit] Quotes regarding
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The stories of Charles Birkin, however, are not for the squeamish. Be warned, if you are at all sensitive, leave him well alone. He deals unflinchingly with such subjects as murder, rape, concentration camps, patricide, mutilation and torture. |
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—Hugh Lamb, introduction to "Marjorie's On Starlight" from A Wave Of Fear (W. H. Allen, 1973)
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[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Short story collections
- Devil's Spawn (Philip Allan, 1936)
- The Kiss Of Death & Other Horror Stories (Tandem, 1964; rpt. Award, 1967)
- The Smell of Evil (Tandem, 1965; rpt. Award, 1969 & second printing 1975)
- Where Terror Stalked & Other Horror Stories (Tandem, 1966)
- My Name Is Death & Other New Tales of Horror (Panther, 1966; rpt. Award, 1970)
- Dark Menace (Tandem, 1968)
- So Pale, So Cold, So Fair (Tandem, 1970)
- Spawn of Satan (Award, 1970)
- A Haunting Beauty (Midnight House, 2000; post-humous "Best of..." collection, limited 450 copies)
- The Harlem Horror (Midnight House, 2002; post-humous "Best of..." collection, limited 450 copies)
[edit] Anthologies edited
- Creeps (Philip Allan, 1932)
- Shudders (Philip Allan, 1932)
- Shivers (Philip Allan, 1933)
- Horrors(Philip Allan, 1933)
- Terrors (Philip Allan, 1933)
- Quakes (Philip Allan, 1933)
- Nightmares (Philip Allan, 1933)
- Monsters (Philip Allan, 1934)
- Panics (Philip Allan, 1934)
- Powers Of Darkness (Philip Allan, 1934)
- Thrills (Philip Allan, 1935)
- Tales Of Fear (Philip Allan, 1935)
- The Creeps Omnibus (Philip Allan, 1935)
- Tales Of Death (Philip Allan, 1936)
- Tales Of Dread (Philip Allan, 1936)
- The Tandem Book of Ghost Stories (Tandem, 1965) rpt. as The Haunted Dancers (Paperback Library, 1967)
- The Tandem Book of Horror Stories (Tandem, 1965) rpt. as The Witch-Baiter (Paperback Library, 1967)
[edit] Plot summaries
The following summaries were written by[citation needed] and posted to the[citation needed].
- Au Clair de Lune
- Grisly poem in which Thelma tries to blackmail Rodney over their affair and is eaten by rats for her sins. Eventually she's reduced to a fungus-ridden compost heap which the hero henceforth utilizes whenever he wishes to be rid of a troublesome woman.
- Ballet Negre
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We are hungry. Oh, so hungry. |
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- Notting Hill, West London. Simon Cust, a tenacious journalist with the Daily Echo, is intent on an interview with the male and female leads in the touring 'Ballet Negre du Port-au-Prince'. Their manager, Emanuel Louis regretfully informs him that his request is impossible to comply with, so Simon tracks them back to their hotel. Too late, he wishes he hadn't.
- The Beautiful People
- Norfolk, Virginia. Poor little rich boy Ray Dawson, furious that his mother Lynette won't raise his already obscene allowance, storms off for a few days to punish her. When he picks up worldly hitchhiker Pearl he pours out all his troubles ... plus too much information about his mother's vast wealth and his own impending inheritance. Pearl knows some people who can help him get his hands on a down-payment. Unfortunately, these turn out to be her ruthlessly ambitious brother, Trad, and his vaguely psychotic sidekick Pete. They decide to stage a 'kidnapping' ...
- Child's Play
- Kent. Little Charmain Weiden finds a brightly coloured seed in the garden. And eats it. She falls ill and complains of "caterpillars" crawling up her throat, suffocating her. Is this the beginning of an alien invasion? Weird.
- 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 ...
- The Cornered Beast
- London. Leonard, the Dog-faced Boy escapes from the freak show at the decrepit Funland. Vera, a prostitute, bids her client for the evening good-night. Fate sees to it that their paths entwine, with disastrous consequences for both.
- The Cross
- The mercy killing of La-Li, a puny little creature and one of few who survived the conquest of their revolting little planet. One of Birkin's relatively rare excursions into Science Fiction. cheerfully misanthropic.
- 'Dance Little Lady'
- Juvenile delinquents Buzz, Lofty and Rosie are trying to evade the police after a run-in with west Indian youths in The Golden Plover. They break into a building and contrive to get themselves locked in for the night. Turns out it's a mortuary. Still, they've plenty of booze, a transistor radio, a good-looking stiff to dance with, and Rosie's apparently a soft touch ...
- Dinner In A Private Room
- Something of a departure for Birkin in what seems to have been his final story(?). The modern-day incarnations of some of the most notorious characters in history are invited to dine with Mr. Nasat. Nero, Judas Iscariot, Cesare Borgia and de Rais are commended on their past achievements, but are reminded they could all have done better. Natas has decided to move into the movie industry:
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We'll be showing the Nazarene as he really was, and that is as a failure and a two-bit agitator. He was a muddled and hysterical homosexual and those twelve disciples of his - well, we'll slant them as a kind of Touring Company for Gay lib. The Magdalene's a Pansy's Moll. Get the idea? |
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- 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.
- Fine Needlework
- Northern France. The ultra-wealthy Jacques is kept isolated from society because he's a dangerous psychopath. A nanny, cook and a male nurse are his only company until Clarissa and Mary, guests of the absent Countess, arrive and, oh dear, the male nurse is drunk out of his brains ...
- The Finger of Fear
- When six year old Peter has a toothache, miserly Cornelia Jamieson decides - after a bottle of gin - that it would be cheaper to have the boy driven around to the dentist rather than vive versa. So she decapitates him with an axe and has the unsuspecting chauffeur Tomlin take his head over to the surgery in a hat box.
- The Godmothers
- Midhampton. Little orphan Elsie is staying with her aunt's family while Grandad Albert Piers is in hospital. Back home, she tells the grown-ups, she has three godmothers - Madge, Dorothy and Selina - who "live on the other side of the walls of our sitting room. Grandfather has even promised to introduce her to them one day!
- What a marvellous imagination the child has! And, of course, we shouldn't read too much into the fact that old man Piers was a plasterer by trade, or that three local prostitutes mysteriously vanished in the mid-1890's ...
- Green Fingers
- Major Schultz conducts an affair with the widow Hilde in the shadow of Belsen. Hilde is locally famous for walking away with all the prizes at the local horticultural festival. After the war she learns how Schultz (and several 'pretty maids all in a row") had a hand in shaping her success when the liberated inmate, Zelini, informs the Allies why the major always had him digging away in her garden ...
- "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 ...
- Hard To Get
- A rakish officer takes a beautiful woman to dinner at an exclusive London hotel and sets about seducing her. Nothing particularly odd about that except in appearance they resemble loathsome gigantic spiders and their physical attributes include antennae and "a dual row of saucer shaped suckers ... sunk under the hair of their arms." These are the conquerors of earth and they prefer to eat their meat raw and alive. Bad news for the few humans who survived the conflict.
- 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 ...
- A Haunting Beauty
- Paris. After ending his passionate affair with celebrated dancer Jaqueline Jerot, fabulously wealthy Eugene de Coulieure announces his engagement to a young American beauty, Shirley Stewart. M. Jerot decides the wedding cannot go ahead and, having befriended the girl, deliberately drives their car off the road, throwing herself free at the last moment. As luck would have it, Shirley is thrown onto the path of a train with her head lying just so across the track ...
- Eugene, deeply suspicious of Jaqueline's culpability in the death of the only woman he's ever loved, still refuses to reunite with her. So our heroine goes for all out nasty to hurt him as much as he has her.
- Havelock's Farm
- Due to a mix-up over accommodation, 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 Hitch
- Another of Birkin's unbearable stories concerning Nazi atrocities during World War II. Some years after the hostilities, the Wends innocently purchase a lampshade while on holiday in Bavaria. It has a peculiar design in black and blue, a benevolent Neptune overlooking some frolicking sea-horses. By some bizarre coincidence, Gretel, their loyal Jewish home-help, was married to a young man with such a design tattooed across his chest ...
- Hosanna!
- Birkin, via hapless longhair Noel Carter, explores the dangers of hitch-hiking and concludes that it's not advisable to accept a lift from an artist who specialises in depicting scenes from the Bible.
- The Interloper
- Saint Dominique, a small island on the Caribbean, is owned outright by Lavinia 'Larry' Mason. Larry lives there with a small coloney of women. A lesbian, she is also a man hater, having been brutally gang-raped by the SS in her youth. Her closest companion is Hermoine Woodstock, a widow whose teenage daughter Gillian has lived on the island since she was 18 months old and hasn't seen a man in all these years - until a half-drowned, badly injured sailor is washed up on the shore ...
- Is There Anybody There?
- East Anglia. Rose Cottage has a bad name amongst the locals due to a murder that was committed there in the twenties for which a young ploughman, Adam Croft, was hung. Two retired school-mistresses, Millie Ackland and Ida Rankin have just moved in when Millie, a psychic, watches the ghosts of the main protagonists - Croft, his wife and his mistress - re-enact the drama. Millie is then confronted by Croft's ghost who warns of reprisals if she tells anybody what she's seen ...
- King of the Castle
- Christmas time at Blackwood. One of the Regulars at The Green Archer, farmer Jack Tetbury, despises his son, Harry, due to his slow-wittedness and the birthmark on his cheek. When, in a particularly violent drunken rage, he beats the boy for spilling some of his tobacco, his belt buckle catches the boy in the face and makes a gash across the livid stain. It proves to be the final straw. Shortly afterward Harry goes missing. Meanwhile, his mother enthuses over her favored son's striking snowman. Until it begins to melt ...
- The Kiss of Death
- An obscure island in the Philippines. In her younger days, social-climber Lady Sylvia Nicholson was engaged to Colin Howard, but "jilted him at the altar when a bigger fish swam along." Several years later she lies in bed awaiting a midnight visit from her latest lover, Philip Dewhurst. She makes love to the man who enters in the dark .... only to discover that it isn't Dewhurst she's sharing her bed but her old flame, Colin. Who is now a leper ...
- Kitty Fisher
- Hubert, babysitting while his parents are a party, is coerced into giving his girlfriend a lift home, leaving baby Lucy in the hands of her sister Kitty. But Kitty is trying to put on a performance of "Cinderella" with her dolls, and the kid won't stop bawling ...
- The Last Night
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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. |
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- 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 ...
- 'Les Belle Dames Sans Merci'
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Take off your clothes my dear. It will not be too painful. While you are conscious the water will not be unduly cold ... or would you sooner that Reed should strip you? He might well find it entertaining ... |
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- Homosexual Conrad and his manservant, Reed, still have their uses for women, as his third wife is about to discover ... Best described as "chilling".
- The Lesson
- Oscar Landmore gets drunk at Rupert and Gina's party. Their son, little Milo, is fond of his uncle Oscar because he always plays games with him, and tonight is no exception. Milo ties 'the Martian leader' to a chair and goes off to bed. Rupert finds him but decides to leave him there as a lesson while he and his wife go out to pick up a takeaway. It's only on the way back that Rupert remembers that Oscar has a plastic bag tied over his head. Frantic, he puts his foot down, and ...
- Little Boy Blue
- Cleeness, Lincolnshire. Moira Lattern takes son Oliver to a holiday home to recuperate after an illness. Oliver is soon playmates with Sammy, another youngster who Moira at first takes to be her little boy's imaginary friend. A photograph in an old album of a lad in a sailor suit soon disillusions her of this and, after a leisurely build-up, the story picks up a gear as it moves toward its inevitable horrifying climax on the quicksands.
- A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts
- SS men Dorsch and Fochtmann arrange an amusing diversion for Oberst Albrecht. Five half-dead Jewish prisoners are selected to take part in a competition. A "coconut shy" has been arranged, a row of grotesque dummies decorated to depict enemies of the Reich. Cohn, Blumenthal, Wolf, Mendel and Ullman are told that the four who score the most direct hits to the head of their particular target will be given 'lighter' duties and a better chance to salvage scraps of food for their wives and children. The loser will be returned to the labour camp. Barely able to lift the heavy steel balls, the men take their turns ...
- Depending on your viewpoint - and A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts certainly divides opinion - either Birkin's most unforgivable work, or his bravest. It is certainly not a story you're likely to forget.
- Malleus Maleficarum
- London, The Savoy. Jeremy Vraders' occult dabbling lead to his being assailed by tiny demonic figures which attach themselves to his person and accompany him everywhere. Anthea finds it all very fascinating and attractive, but unfortunately, mentions the wrong name in their company and they desert their host. Jokier than usual, and as such, not really my thing.
- 'Marjorie's on Starlight'
- Ten year old Cynthia torments and humiliates her adopted sister with sadistic glee. When they're out riding, she callously reminds Marjory that her mother is dead, and causes her horse to bolt. There's a vehicle slowly approaching on the other side of the road, but it should be alright, unless either rider is thrown ...
- My Name is Death
- see "The Terror on Tobit".
- New Faces
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You mean it's the bloke what was in the news tonight ... the fellah what could 'elp the police in connection with doin' in all those perverts? |
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- Thomas Brown's murder spree has accounted for the death of eight homosexuals, but the net is closing in and he's aware of being watched wherever he goes. To get away from one plain-clothes policeman, he slips into the waxworks and hides himself away in the Chamber of Horrors for the night.
- 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 ..
- 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 ....
- Paris Pilgrimage
- A revamped, extended version of The Cockroach from 'Monsters.' Thirty years on from the awful events, we catch up with Jane on her return to the scene of the crime.
- Parlez Moi D'Amour
- Macabre ghost story with a Parisian setting. Edouard De Louvier went to the guillotine after hacking Nicolle's body to pieces then taking plaster casts of the ears, hands and feet as moulds for his bizarre statuettes. Now the narrator, a young English artist, is staying in the room where the slaying took place as the anniversary approaches.
- 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.
- A Right to Know
- Mark is fascinated by the grand old Cheverly House and asks the current owner, his bride-to-be Amanda, if it is haunted. She obliges him by relating the story of the family curse dating from the sixteenth century when young Phoebe Trebla was gang-raped, gave birth to a deformed son and was finally burnt as a witch on the whim of Sir Tarquin Chane, the third baronet, "as handsome as Byron ... as black-hearted as the Marquis de Sade."
- The Serum of Dr. White
- Nobody knows much about Dr. White's life before his methods achieved celebrity when they were instrumental in saving the life of an American boy, although it is rumoured that he was once a concentration camp inmate. The Deckers decide that he is the only hope for their daughter, Rachel, but the serum he has used on her tumor, although initially successful, has reduced her to a deformed, imbecilic wreck. When no other Doctors can be imposed upon to treat her, the Deckers reason that only White can reverse his own treatment. After completing a world lecture tour, he turns up at their home with his dog, a lurcher, in tow. Events collude to bring about a terrible and bloody end.
- 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.
- The Smell of Evil
- Trezarth, Cornwall. Baron Lebruns and his family keep themselves aloof from the villagers. The regulars at The Golden Ball decide that their boarder, Mr. Ives, a novelist is the best man to break the ice as Lebrun is a noted authority on Atlantis - surely Ive's could mention that he was researching the legend for the follow up to his first book Nuns On The Doorstep? The Baron receives his guest cordially enough, but his beautiful niece, Sari, a mute invalid, slips him a crumpled piece of paper imploring his help.
- It transpires that she is an heiress whose stubborn refusal to sign over her money has ensured her a lingering and painful death ...
- 'Some New Pleasures Prove'
- Devon. Laura Campbell's car breaks down shortly after being stopped at a police roadblock where she was warned that sadistic killer Arthur 'The Midnight Murderer' Smith is on the loose having escaped from the Waymore asylum. When she chances upon Jasmine Cottage, Laura thinks her troubles are over - until, watching the ten o'clock news, she realises that her genial host fits the description of the man the police are looking for.
- Spawn of Satan
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Not that I'd want a coloured man in the family! I mean, dear, who would? They're different from us. Have different standards, hygiene- and the things they eat - I'd not put up with one as a son-in-law! But some of those Teddy Boys, or whatever they call themselves these days, are a sight worse than Nazis. |
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- Venetia Palmer takes up a teaching position in Auldburn and books in at the plush Arbour Hotel, advising the landlady Mrs. Snagge that her husband, a journalist on the local newspaper will be joining her shortly. His name is Lindo, charming, intelligent and - oh dear - black. There has been much racial tension in the area, much of it stirred up by 'Jacko' Persicot and his thugs, and the Palmers soon find themselves subjected to a hate campaign. Not a good time, then, for Venetia to suffer a stroke while driving home one night and mowing down little Neelia on the corner of The Swan and The Gaitered Ploughman ...
- Those Teddy Boys, or whatever they call themselves these days, prove that Mrs. Snagge was not being entirely over-dramatic in her assessment of their behaviour, and the ending is a choker. An instant Birkin classic.
- 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
- (also known as "My Name is Death")
- 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.
- Text for Today
- Rev. Herbert Wessel and wife May are on missionary work in Namavava. The living is idyllic until a rapist is murdered by members of his victim's outraged family. The killers are caged awaiting trial when one of the Reverend's boys has a Bible-inspired bright idea and resolves to help the Holy pair overcome their language difficulties ...
- Waiting for Trains
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Would the horror of this war, even in its aftermath, never end? |
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- Dresselberg. At the close of WWII, George Barrow, a reluctant railway transport officer in the occupying army, is powerless to prevent a train crossing the border into Soviet territory due, in part, to the indifference of his superiors who can't be bothered to check one of the prisoner's credentials for fear of causing a diplomatic incident. The cattle trucks are crammed with young Russian immigrants who'd been conscripted into the German army and are therefore "traitors". When the train reaches Glenheisen they will be killed and buried in a mass grave, as have so many before them. Depressingly, this one is even bereft of the "relax - it's only a story" get-out clause.
- Who's Your Lady Friend?
- London theatre life in the early 'twenties. The secret of Albert 'Victor de Vere' Rodinberry's ventriloquist doll. Albert's wife, Madge, deserted him three years ago, leaving him holding the baby, Norman, whose condition is giving cause for concern. Within three days the little boy dies of pneumonia, but he has remained vital to his father's act ever since. Madge, now a prostitute and drifting into alcoholism is too befuddled to realise the truth.
- Zara and Zita
- Identical twins Zara and Zita are stranded in the rain when their car breaks down outside Dorking. They're heading for a party back in Chelsea where Zara intuitively knows Peter will propose to her - and she will accept. A handsome young man, Giles Wheatley, pulls up and offers them a lift ...
- Birkin turns all expectation on its head with this one, the gentlest of his stories I've encountered to date. A sad, albeit slight, traditional ghost story.
Spoilers end here.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
[edit] See also
