England's Screaming by Sean Hogan

Author:Sean Hogan [Hogan, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror
ISBN: 9781786365729
Google: 8eWUzQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 53098791
Publisher: PS Publishing
Published: 2020-03-31T22:00:00+00:00

JIM & EMILY UNDERWOOD

Donald & Angela Pleasence in From Beyond the Grave, 1974

written by Robin Clarke & Raymond Christodoulou

based on stories by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, directed by Kevin Connor

Angela Pleasence in The Godsend, 1980

written by Olaf Pooley, based on the novel by Bernard Taylor

directed by Gabrielle Beaumont

EMILY UNDERWOOD HAD ALWAYS BEEN WHAT HER FATHER JIM called a Deep One. Born during the war, while Jim was away fighting in the North African Campaign, she owed her life to Julian Karswell; Jim and his wife Miriam had counted themselves amongst the notorious occultist’s most devoted followers.

Not long before Emily was due to be born, Miriam had begun experiencing severe pains. She’d been rushed to hospital, only to be informed that her unborn daughter no longer had a heartbeat. The doctors told her that there was unfortunately nothing to be done, but Miriam knew better. She understood the limits of science and medicine, and the boundless power of that which lay beyond them.

She immediately contacted Karswell and begged him for his aid. The occultist possessed an odd fondness for children and agreed to visit her in hospital. Upon arrival, he’d gravely told Miriam that he could indeed revive her baby…but only at the cost of her own life. Nothing for nothing.

Miriam readily agreed, on the condition that Karswell saw to it that her daughter’s welfare would be taken care of; until such time as Jim returned from the war, or until she came of age if he should not. To the doctors’ amazement, the child subsequently revived in Miriam’s womb, and was induced shortly afterwards, in case of further complications.

The resulting birth was a traumatic one, although Emily herself emerged into the world silently, offering no cries or tears for the ailing mother she was soon to lose. Miriam lived just long enough to see her daughter’s face for the first time, before receding into whatever oblivion Karswell had arranged for her.

Karswell was as good as his word and took Emily in. She came to live with him and his mother at Lufford Hall, and the occultist dutifully raised her as his own until Jim Underwood returned home in 1945. Emily soon grew into a bright, eerily precocious child. She learned to read at a remarkably young age, and quickly rejected the children’s books that were gifted to her, preferring instead to sit on Karswell’s lap and look through her guardian’s collection of valuable grimoires. They would sit there for hours, Emily marvelling at the eldritch horrors illustrated within, her small lips silently mouthing the dreadful incantations Karswell would teach to her. By the time Jim arrived to claim Emily, her vocabulary quite outstripped his; from that day on, he would often marvel at his daughter’s facility with ‘jawcracking words’.

Taking Emily back to the modest Windsor flat he and Miriam had called home—much of their mutual income had been donated to Karswell’s cause—Jim felt suddenly ashamed. His daughter had known only the luxury of Lufford Hall for the first few years of her life, and was now to be reduced to this humble hand-to-mouth existence.

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