Cupboard of Skeletons

Raymond Nickford

Dec 2014 · Haunted Books

About this ebook

A book of short stories, each a psychological thriller about dysfunctional relationships. In the first story, "The Hypnotist", a young nurse named Miranda goes to see a psychologist, Dr. Harditch, for hypnosis to ease her phobia of spiders. I guess you could say he cured her, but I wouldn’t want to be one of his patients. This is not a story for the squeamish. It’s intense, descriptive, fast-paced, and reminds of stories from Tales From the Crypt.

The second story, "Haunted by Amy", is ten chapters long and is about a former school teacher, Matthew, and the teenage student, Amy, with whom he had an affair. He suspects her of murdering his friend Philip. But he also admits that he might be clinically paranoid.

"The Parchment Recipes" is a paranormal mystery about a widow with a not-so-nice mother. The widow finds a parchment in her kitchen late one night, and mysterious things begin to happen.

Atmospheric scenes and poignant themes centering around odd, troubled characters whose lives are driven to extremity, drawn on, still, by the tantalizing hope - sometimes delivered by fate or fortune - of happiness.

Moving, dysfunctional lives and relationships; hypnotist and patient, a strained romance, paranoid father and daughter, eccentrics, making normal relationships difficult. Some ghostly presences but the 'Cupboard of Skeletons' is more a euphemism for people with embarrassing secrets coming to haunt and test their lives and how, despite despair, they try to find something of their dreams.

REVIEWS:

"Beautifully observed characters, atmospheric, intriguing."

Barbara Erskine - best selling author of Lady of Hay.

"Vibrant, spooky, a real page-turner."

Reay Tannahill - historian and author of The Seventh Son.

"Skellies in the Closet? Everybody has them. Dark secrets. Troubled pasts. Or the repeated inability to hit the mark. When our spirits are low, we crave dark music. Just as medicinal, however, are well-crafted stories of things macabre, chronicles of lives that take us either in or outside of ourselves. Or both.
The stories are about living and choices and missteps; they will undoubtedly haunt your thoughts for some time.
Nickford's prose is mesmerizing, yet his delightful dry humour arises just often enough to charm us along the way."

John Campbell - author of Walk to the Paradise Garden

"All the characters are built up so stealthily we can fail to notice that odd behaviour could develop into obsession and dark foreboding secrets."

Daniel Manning - author of No Compatibility.

"The meticulous, obsessive nature of paranoia is beautifully depicted."

Jann King - author of Making Connections.

"Eccentrics abound and yet what chills is that for the most part the people in this collection seem so normal - on the surface. They are like friends whose past or darker secrets you'd never have thought of questioning... until right up there next to you when you're completely alone with them and the real chill dawns."

- Ralph Porter

"A brilliant piece of work tapping into the psychological attributes of its characters."

T.L. Tyson - author of Seeking Eleanor.

"The sense of atmosphere and place developed is exquisitely detailed."

Jack Hughes - author of Dawn of Shadows.

EPIGRAPH

“Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night… shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves.”

– from Bernard in "The Waves" by Virginia Woolf.

Ratings and reviews

As in the first story, The Hypnotist, the spookiness in the stories was balanced by realistic observation of troubled characters. Bit like the atmosphere you find in Hitchcock but the focus in Cupboard of Skeletons was more to do with how social misfits might find some degree of normality in life and the way that was done went deep. Altogether, a good book.

The longer novellas amongst these stories each with a romance at the heart had a more gradual build in character and plot but the characters came the more to life for me as a result. The tense moments often came from the troubled characters themselves, each seeking to escape their own kind of demons to find a happier life and so I suppose it was their quirks which kept me engaged in the other stories. They seemed almost like friends whose haunted past you might generally be too polite or too tactful to question - until they're there, right up beside you, alone together, and it's only then that it dawns in all its reality that it's too late to find shelter. Creepy yet poignant.

Generally - but not always - I found these stories skeleton and cadaver free, the skeletons in the cupboard being code for embarrassing secrets about the characters' lives which they feel they need to hide. For me the bonus was that the spookiness was compelling because it came from realistic character build and scenes rather than the sometimes fairground ghost-train-type spookies with cobwebs and spiders dangling from the tunnel roof that take me back to childhood. This made the characters like people you might recognise in some measure, at least on the outside, but in these stories are each a portrait of troubled lives, haunted lives which need to find resolution. So, memorable inhabitants. Only crit, could have had a little more pace to start.

About the author

 

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".

Part Greek Cypriot, the author was raised amongst Greeks in England and has travelled extensively through Cyprus.

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 novels, "Aristo's Family," "Mister Kreasey's Demon", "Twists in the Tale", "Cupboard of Skeletons" and "A Child from the Wishing Well". 

The last won the Harper Collins Gold Star award for May 2010.

It features an eerie music tutor, her young pupil Rosie and Rosie's paranoid and inept father, Gerard, who fights through his mental illness to mean more to his daughter.


AUTHOR WEBSITE:  

http://raymondnickford-psychological suspense.weebly.com

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".