Give Daddy the Knife, Darling (The John Lymington SciFi/Horror Library #14)

By John Lymington

When John came to the inn, Fear was host. Fear that no one could describe or explain. Fear of a man upstairs, a guest locked in, who would not speak or eat or sleep or move; yet from outside whose locked door the silence moved with weird sensations of life growing within. Life that seemed to have come with the landing of UFOs in the river mist.
“You’re a lemming, John,” his father had told him. “You’re rushing to your own destruction.” But he bought the inn and the secret above him anyway; a secret he could not touch or see or hear. He bought the inn knowing it would destroy him, but as he came near to madness he began to realise that the thing upstairs was growing into a knife pointed at the belly of civilisation. He did nothing as he felt the knife pushing through him, skewering him as the first victim of a new invasion. He did nothing. But how can you get away from the edge when you know you must? Or does something push you on, closer, closer?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215943670

John Lymington

John Richard Newton Chance was born in Streatham Hill, London, in 1911, the son of Dick Chance, a managing editor at the Amalgamated Press. He studied to become a civil engineer, and then took up quantity surveying, but gave it up at 21 to become a full-time writer. He wrote for his father's titles, including "Dane, the Dog Detective" for Illustrated Chips, and a number of stories for the Sexton Blake Library and The Thriller Library.He went on to write over 150 science fiction, mystery and children's books and numerous short stories under various names, including John Lymington, John Drummond, David C. Newton, Jonathan Chance and Desmond Reid. Including 20+ SF potboilers, adding that he "made a steady income by delivering thrillers to Robert Hale (the UK publisher) at a chapter a week".His novel Night of the Big Heat was adapted to television in 1960 and to film, starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, in 1967.

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The Home of Great

Science Fiction!

When John came to the inn, Fear was host. Fear that no one could describe or explain. Fear of a man upstairs, a guest locked in, who would not speak or eat or sleep or move; yet from outside whose locked door the silence moved with weird sensations of life growing within. Life that seemed to have come with the landing of UFOs in the river mist.

You’re a lemming, John, his father had told him. You’re rushing to your own destruction. But he bought the inn and the secret above him anyway; a secret he could not touch or see or hear. He bought the inn knowing it would destroy him, but as he came near to madness he began to realise that the thing upstairs was growing into a knife pointed at the belly of civilisation. He did nothing as he felt the knife pushing through him, skewering him as the first victim of a new invasion. He did nothing. But how can you get away from the edge when you know you must? Or does something push you on, closer, closer?

GIVE DADDY THE KNIFE, DARLING

By John Lymington

First published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1969

©1969, 2023 by John Newton Chance

First elecgtronic edition: November 2023

Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate

Series Editor: David Whitehead

Text © Piccadilly Publishing

Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books.

Chapter One

THE FIRST CLASSIFIED thunderbolt fell on Lowering about midnight on November 21st. It hit one of the four pinnacles on the church tower and shattered it. The storm, compact, seven miles by five seems to have gathered over the Welsh mountains and come down in a south-southeast sweep. It lasted in the village about twenty-three minutes. The tracking station on Crown Hill, three miles out of Westfield tracked the storm but not the meteorite. The following day the vicar of Lowering, the Reverend Charles Wainwright, inspected the damage and looked for remains of the meteorite. The broken stone was scorched and there was some scorching on the grass around the old gravestones.

Myself and three other members of the Westfield UFO Watchers Society, came to Lowering on the evening of the 22nd November and saw the vicar. We had a friend working in the tracking station who smuggled out information from his work.

After seeing the vicar and one or two local people, we called at the inn, The Bankers’ Arms, and drank beer. It was the first time I had seen the pub. It was a pleasant, small place with two bars of black oak, white plaster, brass, hunting prints, yards of ale, settles, pews, log fires. In a window right of the bars was a notice, Accommodation.

The pub was busy as country pubs go in November, and the landlord and his wife, George and Emma Stubbs, were fat and cheerful. It was cosy, comfortable, the beer good, and there was no atmosphere as there came to be later.

The second thunderbolt fell during a night storm on January 15th. It burnt a hole in the ten acre field running alongside the river on the north side of the village. This meteorite was not found. The storm had been tracked coming in from the Welsh mountains, west of the previous course, and again an isolated concentration during a spell of very cold weather.

Garston, from the tracking station, told us this meteorite had been tracked coming in from three hundred miles out but had been lost at two miles (about 10,500 feet) as it did not follow the natural curve of the fall. This was thought due to turbulence. We, at UFOW, didn’t agree and thought it must have been piloted by remote control, arguing an Unidentified Flying Object.

The same four went to Lowering again on January 17th, made inquiries and ended, as before, in the Bankers’ Arms.

This time there was a definite atmosphere in the pub. Both the Stubbses looked worried, taut, somehow, and the trade had comparably fallen off. There were enough locals for us to gather items of gossip.

There was an outcrop of severe headaches in the village, following the storm of the 15th. I spoke with a Dr Wade, off duty that night, and he confirmed an outbreak of tension complaints following the storm. The general opinion was that it was one of the stomach upsets come with bad water and starting, usually, at the school over to Langton. Lowering’s tiny school had been closed years before; the village was very small.

I noticed on this occasion that the notice, Accommodation had gone from the window labelled Dining Room on a sand-blasted lower window pane.

At UFOW we formed, by this time, an opinion that some sort of spacial landings were being made by small pellets, as compared to rockets, perhaps as a test for larger vehicles.

Garston, at the station, said he put the idea tentatively to the powers there and was told it was a lot of cock. It was not abnormal for storms to gather in the mountains and come down south-easterly. Meteoric activity had also been working up over the winter months in a way to fit previous patterns.

We were regarded as a flock of cross-eyed SF-eating morons who would misinterpret anything for the sake of a cheap thrill.

During the period from the striking of the church tower (Westfield Gazette: quarter column headed, Church struck by lightning in Freak Storm) we tried to interest the papers in what we thought of UFOs. The Gazette made a humorous cartoon of it with two funnel nosed little men with ray guns holding up a parking meter; caption, Take us to your leader. That’s as far as we got.

One of our party, who wrote science articles on occasion, contacted the national papers, and one reply did for all. It said: "During the last twelve months we have had reports of flying objects, lights in the sky and other traumatic objects to the number of 832. In the US the number recorded was 32,384. On the Continent 1,124. If you remember, you sent us an article relating such evidence to alcoholism in the various countries, and we didn’t take this seriously, but it is a point.

"If you come across one of these UFOs which actually does something, then let us know. Sincerely …"

That was how it had become by that winter.

Angry over this I made several visits to the village, and each time found the atmosphere changed for the worse. I can’t explain this, for one man cannot see all three hundred people at the same time, but there was a subdued tone, as if people were keeping quiet about something.

That sounds funny to say of a whole community, but it was what I felt then.

During the spring my attention was diverted from my hobby at UFOW by the return of my sister-in-law and past lover, Jane Howard.

I had thought of her in the past, but when she turned up again it felt for a while like present.

My wife, noticing things amiss with me, found out what had been, and there was something like a seven-mile storm on the mountains, except that this one was recurring. It came on every night, and in the end I wanted to get out of Westfield, as if that might help. I always think there might be escape on the run, though such a method has never worked for me. Also love affairs, which are part of you, go with you, no matter where.

I remember my father, a large, dark, strong-minded man, assessing my performance up to the age of twenty-four, saying: You’re a bloody lemming, John. You can’t stop heading for the cliff edge.

True. But while I am running I see the beautiful green grass on the upward slope leading to the sky. And that’s all. I know the cliff and the drop is there somewhere, but I just don’t believe it will come yet.

The pub was another cliff edge. The Bankers’ Arms seemed a place of escape. I had grown to like it through its connection with the unknown, the exciting.

On April 10th a weird story came out of Lowering and I went back that night. It was the cliff edge and I didn’t even know it.

On April 10th Moley Burton, a mole-catcher, saw a helicopter landing in the ten acre field by the river to the north. There was thick fog at the time, and I checked with the airfield control tower at Western that no such aircraft had been in the vicinity at any time in the blanket twenty-four hours to the eight a.m. on the eleventh.

I went over and saw Moley and got his story which was: He had been returning from poaching at one a.m. through the fog when he heard a whistling above him. He thought it a jet engine, and yet not, but it was certainly coming down, he thought, on top of him. Then he saw two yellow lights like eyes coming down very slowly. He thought it was a helicopter and that it was lost. In the hope of catching beer money he went forward, but the nearer he got so the lights seemed to sink into the ground. This gave him the sensation of floating upwards through the fog and he went on his knees and held on to the long grass.

The lights went out. He called, and there was no answer. He says there was no sound in the field, but he could hear the whisper on the river over to the east.

At this point he heard someone pass him a yard or two away. The fog was too thick for him to see anyone, but he felt the movement of air and he smelt a human being. He is a man of animals, and like animals, can identify some species by smell. He called out again, but nobody answered. Then the whistling started again and he saw lights come on and whizz up very fast, curving over his head so that he fell over backwards thinking he might be hit. The lights then arced up into the sky (the fog thinning overhead) and went out. He saw and heard nothing more.

Next morning he went to the ten acre and found a circle of scorched grass, a yard across, which he showed to me.

At the inn I was told he was an inveterate boozer and could have been drunk. He was also a liar, credited with shoving moles into people’s lawns and then offering to clear them. Therefore when he told the police on the morning of April 11th he was told to go and sleep it off.

The pub was barer, flatter than I had seen it, still cosy, still polished, but somehow—well, frightened. This sounds daft, but it is what I felt. The Stubbses in particular gave the impression of being half scared to talk out loud.

At this time my interest in the helicopter story was nudged continually by my domestic worry and eagerness to get away from it.

It was that morning George Stubbs told me he had decided to sell up.

Emma and me have had enough, he said. Both nearing sixty and twenty-five years in one house is enough. It’s time to retire. And he laughed then.

When you want to escape, any change seems like freedom.

I said, How much do you want?

He said, Twelve. It’s not much local trade, but the passing trade’s good, especially in summer. It’s a good life, but you want to be young. It’s a lot of work as you get older.

Father’s money had come along after a wobbly journey due to his having made no will. I had been thinking of buying a business, or an interest in one—any business outside of Westfield.

This was idiot stuff, for Jane worked on a paper in London and could come to Lowering as well as to anywhere else. But it just seemed desirable, even urgent, to get out of Westfield and start a new life.

When I told Rowena she said: You must be bonkers. Why do we want a pub?

Somehow—I don’t really remember how—I got her to agree, and I think now that perhaps she, as well, wanted anything to get out of the house where we had been so miserable since the rows broke out.

I was deliberately connecting things in my mind; the landings at Lowering, which authority continued to say were all cock, being used as a means to attract a lot of custom to the Bankers’ Arms. I really got enthusiastic over the venture, and finally we went down to look over the place.

By that time the Stubbses had advertised it.

Then the Big Snag showed up.

The previous winter they had let the whole of the top floor—the actual living quarters, cut off by a door at the top of the stairs—to a Professor Clees.

He pays a hundred pound a month for it, George said, and that includes nothing at all. He don’t want nothing. No food, no cleaning, nothing at all, so long as we don’t disturb him at his work.

What is his work? said Rowena, who always wants to know about people.

I don’t rightly know. I think he’s a scientist.

That was a bad line. Rowena thinks of a scientist and then thinks of thalidomide and grafting spare heads on hospital patients which they get off road crashes and trying out bombs on captive monkeys, so it’s a line you leave out in talking to her.

Of course, I said, to get in fast, he goes when you do?

Of course! said George, and laughed.

Yes, but we can’t buy a place if we don’t see over it, Ro said. I mean, it’s a pig in a poke layout, isn’t it?

There’s the plans, dear, this one’s upstairs, said Emma shoving a roll across the counter. Six nice rooms and all decorated only last May, before the visitors came. We used to take bed and breakfast, you know, but it got too much work. Now this man, he’s no trouble whatever. We never even hear him, do we, George?

Never even seen him! said George.

What? said Ro.

He booked by letter, didn’t he, Emma? And sent the cash and he moved in when we was busy one day and there you are. Never asked for anything since. Find the rent in an envelope on the stairs outside his door, and that’s it. It’s a lot of money, you know. Really, for nothing.

But where do you sleep? said Rowena.

There’s the dining room, you see, across the hall, dear, said Emma pointing to the door of the lounge bar. We got one of them folding bed settee things. Very comfortable it is. Especially when you’re being paid all that money to do it!

The Stubbses laughed, but Rowena was forming up against not being able to see the flat. We had a good look round all the rest of the building, the outbuildings, garage, stables, woodstores; everything was in good repair.

Look, I said getting her aside, this is all perfect so the upstairs is bound to be.

We were in a good mood, and excited with the idea by then, and when we’d had a few drinks with the Stubbses the man upstairs didn’t matter much.

Suppose it’s Frankenstein? Ro said.

Then we’ll make a bomb from the visitors, I said, and she laughed better than I’d seen her for some weeks. I began to feel good, though in the back of my mind I still had that funny cloud about feeling that something was wrong with the place.

But then, I am a coward about anything new. I am a double-headed lemming, scared of what’s ahead as well as of what’s behind.

So, slowly, it seemed, everything got fixed up and the Man Upstairs came to a grisly joke between Ro and myself, and we could afford to treat him like that, when we knew he would go with the Stubbses.

Only he didn’t go.

ON THE MORNING of May 12th we went into The Bankers’ Arms with our cheque book. It looked somehow nude, for the Stubbses had moved out their furniture and most of the spirit stock to drink themselves; their wholesale benefits being ended with that. We bought the bar furniture complete but for one or two things Emma felt sentimental over.

Soon after we got there came the brewers’ drays, the electricity people, the telephone man, solicitors, valuers, hopeful salesmen; a confused crunch of people who didn’t want to buy anything. Amid the bang and clatter of crates and barrels and kegs, the rumble of hand trolleys, the takeover was complete and I wrote a cheque for £11,753. I felt broke then with only three thou left; as if I had in ten minutes made a dead, irrecoverable loss on