Spawn
SPAWN
As he turned to open the door a particularly violent eruption of flame exploded before him. Harold shrieked and felt one side of his face sizzling. The skin rose swiftly into blisters which immediately burst, the welts hardening as the fire stripped his flesh away as surely as if someone had thrust a blow torch at him. Harold clapped a hand to his face and felt the oblivion of unconsciousness creeping over him but the pain kept him awake and he managed to yank open the bedroom door. The hair on his anus was singed and his veins seemed to bulge as his skin contracted. He turned to see his mother, on her hands and knees, crawling towards him, the flesh of her body apparently bubbling, lumps of it falling from calcified bones. She raised an accusing finger at him and screamed:
“You’re to blame!”
Also by Shaun Hutson
:
ASSASSIN
BODY COUNT
BREEDING GROUND
CAPTIVES
COMPULSION
DEADHEAD
DEATH DAY
DYING WORDS
EPITAPH
EREBUS
EXIT WOUNDS
HEATHEN
HELL TO PAY
HYBRID
KNIFE EDGE
LAST RITES
LUCY'S CHILD
NECESSARY EVIL
NEMESIS
PURITY
RELICS
RENEGADES
SHADOWS
SLUGS
STOLEN ANGELS
THE SKULL
TWISTED SOULS
UNMARKED GRAVES
VICTIMS
WARHOL'S PROPHECY
WHITE GHOST
Hammer Novelizations
TWINS OF EVIL
X THE UNKNOWN
THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN
CAFFEINE NIGHTS PUBLISHING
SHAUN HUTSON
Spawn
Fiction to die for...
Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing 2013
Copyright © Shaun Hutson 1983, 2013
Shaun Hutson has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Great Britain in 1983
by Star Books, a Division of W.H. Allen & Co Plc
CONDITIONS OF SALE
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher
This book has been sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental
Published in Great Britain by Caffeine Nights Publishing
www.caffeine-nights.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-907565-47-2
Cover design by
Mark (Wills) Williams
Everything else by
Default, Luck and Accident
Spawn
I
ntroduction
by Shaun Hutson
SPAWN was originally written in 1983 and was my second novel (it was actually the seventh as I'd done five war novels, The Skull for Hamlyn paperbacks and of course Slugs before that) or at least the second one that anyone took any notice of. My publisher and agent at the time insisted that it have a one word title to keep the momentum of Slugs going. The original title was THE CHILDREN OF HELL, this was then cut down to BLOODSPAWN and finally to SPAWN.
SPAWN was a kind of Frankenstein for the 80's, a story of creatures brought back to life by lightning. I never intended the comparison I just had this vision in my mind of a foetus when the eyes are huge and the head is bulbous and I kept wondering what it would be like if one of these could actually come back to life. That was how the initial premise came about. My novels always started from one central idea or image in my mind and that was the image that started SPAWN.
I also wanted to write a kind of “whodunit” so other elements quickly came into the plot which you'll discover as you read.
I never intended to make any comments one way or the other about the rights and wrongs of abortion as some critics have tried to suggest. Anyone who's read my stuff will know that I don't write to send messages or preach, I write to scare the shit out of readers and nothing else. Research was difficult though and I ended up asking a nurse at my local doctors surgery if she could help which she did and I was very grateful for that.
I was delighted that a number of people wrote to me after SPAWN was first published to tell me they'd had nightmares about it. That's like a mark of quality as far as I'm concerned! After all, if a comedy novel causes laughter that's great and if a sad book makes people cry then that's a success so for a horror novel to scare people has got to be good!
A couple of scenes were cut because they were thought to be too revolting but I think enough survived to keep me and my readers happy!
From beginning to end SPAWN was completed in about three months (I wrote fast in those days) and went through very little editing. The biggest problem at the time was the cover artwork. The publishers wouldn't settle until they had a good image containing the creatures of the title. A large publicity campaign was then launched which included bus front advertising in London (I remember nearly being run over by a bus trying to take a picture of the posters as one sped down Oxford Street) and the first of many countrywide tours that I would undertake. In fact, one of the first interviews I ever did was about SPAWN and the interviewer hated it. Fortunately I was fairly immune to criticism even at that age. Just as a point of interest for me more than anything, the first TV interview I
ever
did was to promote SPAWN. The interview was crap, the interviewers were appalling and I looked like a zombie. So, not much has changed over the years really.
Not long after it had been published I was in my local W.H. Smith and saw a guy looking through it. Being full of enthusiasm I approached him and said “I'll sign that if you buy it.” He took one look at me, told me to fuck off, put the book back on the shelf and walked out. I learned from that experience that not all types of self promotion are good!
I've read a couple of scenes from SPAWN since it was written (I never read my books once the manuscript is approved) and one in there is among the best things I think I've ever written (probably a bit worrying as I was only 23 when I did it...). I hope you agree.
If you're reading it again after a long break then I hope you enjoy it even more this time around and if you're coming to it for the first time then perhaps I should wish you luck....It never was for the faint hearted and hopefully it still packs a punch.
And if it gives you bad dreams then I'd like to apologise but of course I wouldn't mean it.
Shaun Hutson 2013.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Nurse Anne Bozia for her help with the research on this book. If she hadn't answered my questions then I don't think it would ever have been finished. Most of the other people concerned with it have been scattered to the four winds unfortunately and some are no longer with us I'm sad to say including the man who was responsible for its inception, Mr Bob Tanner who sadly died recently and is greatly missed.
So I will content myself with thanking some people who are still alive.
My agent, Brie Burkeman, my publishers, Graeme Sayer who somehow still manages to run my website so brilliantly without ever resorting to abusing me in the way I sometimes deserve.
My mum (who read it first time around and was suitably horrified and disgusted) and of course, my daughter, Kelly who has yet to discover the dubious delights of her Dad's books at the time of writing. She always was a sensible girl!
I will thank
you
my readers though, all of you who bought it the first time around and on all its subsequent incarnations and to those of you discovering it (and me) for the first time, welcome. I hope this is the first of many for all of us.
Shaun Hutson 2013
This book is dedicated to my Mum. With more love and thanks than I can ever adequately express.
“. . . some of us are born posthumously. . .”
– Nietzsche
“
. . . the foetus is conscious or aware. It can sense and react not only to emotions such as love and hate, but to more complex and ambiguous feelings.”