In the late 1970s, my cousins lived in the shadow of Erskine Bridge, and there wasn’t much around. And when we visited, it was never for a day or two: the journey from Gloucestershire required something more. Together, the comparative isolation and the protracted stay meant we ended up driving to Glasgow at least a couple of times while we were up, ostensibly to get supplies, but also, I think, because my parents found it necessary.
I think my brother and I began to resent these trips. And, as I say, there wasn’t much to do around the house. So, when we came across a cheap bookshop, my parents encouraged us to have a look around. I couldn’t see anything of interest, so I went to find my brother. He was reading, and ready to make a commitment.
As this was 1979, and I am writing from the UK for the IGA, his choice of book may not surprise. Yes, indeed: Usborne Guide to the Supernatural World.
It was small and thick. Hardback, with a shiny black cover. This was kind of puffy, as if it contained itself something within (the floor of The Star Inn in St Just always reminds me of it). On the cover, of course, a skull. Although it had vampire teeth, and a map of the world engraved upon it, these were not the first things I noticed. It was the eyes that had you. Rimmed by flame, or bad intent, and half hidden by a low-slung supraorbital margin, gazing out, green, human, and impossible.
Something about the style of the art must have struck me as inappropriate, even then. I can see now that it lacks any violence of gesture. There is no great flair to it, either. The impression instead is that someone has laboured harder than necessary in its creation. The images inside are smooth, and some feature a peculiar, sweaty shine. They all look like they have been ‘coloured in’ with great care. Everything satiated. But what kind of hand could not be moved by that terrible gaze, or Africa, South America and Europe etched into the bone? The map of the world repeating the skull: a distillation, a distortion, an end…

On the drive back, and then sitting on his own at the kitchen table, my brother had first dibs. Then I took my turn, laying on a camp bed in a high-ceilinged white room on the ground floor. It was a grand house, but crumbling and bare. I was no longer noticing. How could I, in the face of the horrible drip of Moreau’s creatures? the daemonic inevitable of death foretold? the eyes of Jean Grenier and his Forest Lord, fixed – unthinkably – on something greater than themselves? the Chinese vampire, smiling, green-furred, its gaze more terrible than any skull?
That night, figures walked through walls. I mean this truly. I lay on the camp bed at first, pushing my sleeping bag off my feet, as I was hot, and did not feel well. Then I was up myself, and around the room. I never experienced anything like it again, outside of fever. The house all nerve; the walls yellow, then nothing; the walkers intent.
No connection to the Usborne, I can see, other than that, somewhere along the line, some rounded, fathomless, and hideous enjoyment had come into play…