Mister Kreasey's Demon

Raymond Nickford

Nov 2017 · Haunted Books

About this ebook

Broken by his street-hardened London students, reduced to paranoia, can Amy's teacher stop himself losing she, alone, he might trust, might have loved ?

Mister Kreasey's Demon

Visiting his apartment to bring her teacher an overdue essay, Kreasey noticed :

"Amy stood on her very highest heels, the ones that gave her an extra three-and-a-half inches over a world that had always seemed to look down on her beyond the narrow backs streets from which she'd been born. On her first visit, she had seemed almost undernourished, shivering in a short skirt with a slit up the side. He'd wanted to tell her that she'd made him happy - just by appearing on his doorstep with her essay and those eyes... eyes which spoke of deprivation and yet held, for him, openness and simplicity more beautiful than he'd seen in any student before.

Amy, alone among his students, had tried to help him. She was searching his eyes, confused. He recalled those moments when, beside him in bed, her face had shared that open comic side of her lovemaking with him. He couldn't forget how much she'd tried to be his passport to those roughnecks from classroom 12D... those who always seemed to be gathering with a hunting knife, getting closer...

'Well, are we going to see you in them?' she smiled, still holding his shorts out like a trophy. But as he watched her lips, they seemed to shape like those in a poorly dubbed film where the voice is out-of-sync with the words... reminding him to 'eat up' all his tablets and then he'd never be 'cut up' . "

Editorial Reviews :

" An atmospheric, vibrant, almost spooky page-turner and a psychological suspense, both moving and tender. "

Reay Tannahill - historian, novelist and author of The Seventh Son.

" As a former London teacher, Raymond Nickford has nailed the teacher's fear of the 'Lord of the Flies' pack mentality perfectly. And what a cliffhanger ! "

Marsha Moore - author of The Hating Game.

The author, Raymond Nickford, has a degree in Psychology and Philosophy from University College of North Wales. Troubled souls, the lonely, his inspiration.

raymondnickford-psychologicalsuspense.weebly.com

Other Titles

Family Tree : Stories of Love Beyond the Grave

The body of Eddy's mother was found entangled in fungus-laden roots of the rotting ancient yew on the cemetery side of the family's garden fence. At nights, Eddy stutters, imploring his father to believe that the tree - or is it his mother - seems to call him. Dad just keeps saying "Grief works in strange ways, boy. You'll heal !" But that tree... Mum... calls. Should he sneak out... to the cemetery side? Or had Mum gone to that cold place which Dad kept saying was "Just death by misadventure, Eddy, as the autopsy stated" ?

Loss of family and loved ones revealing how, for those left behind, hurt and longing can find resolution - where unexpected.

Twists in the Tale

Schizophrenic Sam Baldock says he 'hears' Beethoven calling him. For therapy, his doctor and daughter Joanne accompany Sam to the Beethoven Museum in Vienna, once the composer's apartment. Will lonely Joanne, at last, get closer - to her strange Dad ?

Aristo's Family

Aristo, private museum curator in Paphos, Cyprus, living alone with his sole surviving son Pavlos, is obsessed with his belief that he still has surviving family, even though told they were all burned during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

In his preoccupation he has come to to neglect Pavlos. Yet both Aristo's and his son's deepening need to belong, so long mutually exclusive, are at the core of this novel. Father and son... or strangers forever ?

Ratings and reviews

Bit of an emotional roller-coaster. The demon turns out to be entirely hornless and more the product of teacher Mr Kreasey's own tortured mind. His street-hardened students, not liking him for his efforts to teach them poetry of the metaphysical poets, have broken him down and reduced him to a paranoid while Kreasey has overheard whisperings about the knife that could be coming his way. His student Amy and her growing affection for Mr Kreasey gave a welcome injection of romance but its a romance between an older man and a young lady, strained because Kreasey's paranoia makes it difficult for him to even trust the one person he wants to trust, the girl who might deliver him from the knife.

Mister Kreasey's Demon first suggested to me a supernatural but the 'demon' is more an invention of the teacher's own troubled mind after taking the mental cruelty dished out to him by the street wise inner city students who are more interested in chewing him up than learning poetry from him. The theme is universal but Raymond Nickford's treatment was for me what the book description couldn't say about it. The description only hints of Kreasey's being reduced to roaming through the dimly lit corridors of the college buildings where he has to teach. It can't describe the sheer eeriness and desolation of the man as he uses his master key to steal into the closed college buildings at night and roam the corridors, solo, until reaching the infamous room 239 where, by day, his students make mincemeat of the man too sensitive to teach them. The subtlety in the way the author explores Kreasey's struggle to regain his confidence and then his awkward reaching out to Amy, his young student, also from the back streets, is for me the most satisfying thing about the book.

Dialogue creaky in some places but the characters lived and breathed. Kreasey, broken by the mocking of his street toughened inner city students who find their poetry teacher too sensitive, has become paranoid with the suspicion that there is a gathering among them to waylay and knife him. The tension mounts until almost tangible but his student Amy's growing sympathy for him starts to bridge the gap between a demonised middle aged man and a youth who wants to be his passport to a better relationship with his other students. The mystery is whether her love can blossom amongst all the hate or whether cold steel will prevail.

About the author

AUTHOR WEBSITE:

http://raymondnickford-psychologicalsuspense.weebly.com

Raymond Nickford has said "To me, people are stranger than fiction and in many ways more fascinating." 

Perhaps this is what first led him to his degree in Philosophy and Psychology from the University College of North Wales and which has subsequently driven him to produce searching character studies in his collected stories "Twists in The Tale", novels and contributions to anthologies in the USA.

Of his novel based in Cyprus, "Aristo's Family," Barbara Erskine, best selling author of "Lady of Hay" has commented on the "beautifully observed characters," the "intriguing and atmospheric scenes," and above all the suspense which made her "want to read on".

Though people may be stranger than fiction, still, souls - particularly troubled ones, the outsider, the lonely and any driven to extremity –have been indispensable for Raymond's paperback novels, "Aristo's Family," "Mister Kreasey's Demon" and "Twists in the Tale", "Cupboard of Skeletons" and "A Child from the Wishing Well".

The latter won the Harper Collins gold star award for  May 2010.

MEET THE AUTHOR: 

susansbooks37.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/meet-the-author-raymond-nickford/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/raymond.nickford25

REVIEWS

Candace Bowen - author of A Knight of Silence, has written:

“Growing up in a suburb of Chicago, the first scary movie I remember seeing was the 1965 Bette Davis movie, The Nanny. To this day, that movie has always stuck with me as one of the great psychological thrillers of all time.
For me, A Child from the Wishing Well, by Raymond Nickford, is reminiscent of that movie. Ruth, the eerie music tutor, and Gerard strap you in, and take you on a psychological thrill-ride to the very end.”

Stephen Valentine - author of Nobody Rides for Free, comments:

"The author gives great voice to his characters, describing well their idiosyncrasies. A good story must either go deep or wide, and with his background in psychology he goes deep within the human condition. For some adults, the ability to relate to a child does not come naturally, and requires enormous if not awkward effort. This is an often overlooked subject worth exploring."

Raven Clark - author of The Shadowsword Saga says:

"Raymond Nickford has a writing voice that has to be one of the most unique and intriguing I have come across.
The story is both enjoyable and oddly chilling, all the more so for its apparent warmth. The pleasantness of Ruth and her liveliness should seem gentle, grandmotherly and appealing, a sweet old lady one could adore, but reading the trailer, what seems kindly suddenly turns sinister, her upbeat excitability oddly macabre.
Each time she says lines like "Our Rosie," and speaks so excitedly, rather than hearing a pleasant old lady, I think of a bird screeching. Fingers down a blackboard.
Will Gerard realize what he feels is not a symptom of his disease?
And if not, will Heather uncover the truth and save Rosie before the hurricane that is Ruth sweeps her into oblivion?" 

Raymond confesses to a passion for plump, docile tabbies and is moved by the music and life of the composer Edward Elgar; his interest leading him each year to a cottage in the Malvern Hills and to the Three Choirs Festival. He is a member of the Elgar Society.

He is currently working on another psychological suspense," Prey to Her Madonna". Here, the author says, "the intrigue moves between Madeira, an eerie French shrine, an English village and London".