While even by itself this would usually have been the best moment of my day – Squirm is a true masterpiece of comic terror – this edition has been filled with copious notes by the mysterious “Toby”, all made for the benefit of his equally mysterious friend “Ted”. I can only surmise that these two figures are Toby Vok and Ted Vaaaak. Any other explanation is inconceivable.

I’ve added some of the highlights below, or you can download the entire annotated book here: The Complete Squirm.

Colchester has long been a town associated with fear and horror. Many of these were introduced by the Romans, like the pigbeasts that live in the historic sewage system underneath the town, where they devour whatever rotting filth that seeps down to their lair. And it was here, with the tyranny of Boudicca, that that most universal of fears – woman – achieved its apotheosis.

One of the most recent horrors in the town is the university. Built in the 1960s, it is an endless series of concrete squares and brick towers thrust into the side of a desolate hill. Utilising what were at the time state-of-the-art techniques of psychological depredation, this holocaust of architecture has been breaking the spirit of revolution and free-thought in potentional student insurrectionists for generations. It is here that the greatest terror of the present-day lurks.

Amidst the brutalist facade and the modern student class, their mobile phones and foreign voices ringing out across the void as I walk amongst them, are the rabbits. An infestation that neither guns nor myxomatosis have ever managed to tame, the rabbits leak across the campus from the surrounding fields. Like with the crabs of Christmas Island, absurd sights abound. Football matches are played around them, rabbits crowding the six yard box. People sit and eat their lunch, feeding not pigeons with their crumbs but the Leporidaean hordes. And their corpses line the carpark, the spaces outlined in blood instead of paint.

“Everything about them is just wearying,” says one anonymous student. “Whenever my mother comes down to see me she points at each and every one and says ‘Look, David, a rabbit!” But once you’ve seen a million rabbits every day for three years you’ve probably seen them all.” There is something about his body language which suggests complete defeat.

There is the theory of the Mobius, too. It has been suggested that each pair of rabbits give birth to their own grandparents, creating an infinitely repeating closed loop of continuity, safe from the tarnishing aspects of evolution and the theorised decay of entropy. Professor Theobald Vaaak shows me the workings of his theory, but they are far too technical for me to understand. He helps explain it using the analogy of the surface of a balloon, trickles of paint flowing down from the top like blood, forming clotted stalactites that hang delicately from its underside. This explanation proved too oblique for me to follow, and the professor’s shouted denunciations followed me back to my car.

As I drove across the county to my next destination I tried to reflect upon my experiences of the day, but meaning proved elusive.

Jeff Randall is Essex Terror’s Senior Correspondent. All complaints shall be referred directly to the IPCC.

(With Rabbi Shruti Salzhauer)

Shalom oh fragrant ones,

With the gentile’s high holiday approaching, a cloud of disapproval has settled over Keter that threatens to rain stale D’mooth upon us all.  Never one to miss an opportunity, Yesod’s withered hand offers us umbrellas of Tsurah at a fair price, but Netzach warns that the handles feature a cheaply rubberised grip which can result in chafing.

Your lucky woodwind is the oboe, and haircut is the side-parting.

Yasher koach!

“During a recent job interview I was briefly left unattended in the Chepstow Records Office Document Room. Unable to resist the charms of the filing cabinet marked “Forbidden” I opened it up and quickly flicked through the folders within. Most of the folders had incomprehensible names like “T.V. Relocate Requisition Order” and “Necro/Micro/Animate Res. – URGENT”, but one of the folders was called “Ladybird/Lovecraft – t/anom”.

“Inside was a single book and a handwritten note. The book was a pristine copy of a ladybird book from the 1950s. It was book number 15H in the Ladybird Key Words Reading Scheme Series, entitled Trouble At The Market. The author was credited as H.P. Lovecraft N.F.U and the artist as Terry Oakes. (I remember this as I have a photographic memory). The story inside, however, was so nauseating and disorientating I have involuntarily stricken it from my mind (except for the excerpt below, which is my sole proof that this chain of events ever happened). The full-colour illustrations were so vivid and inexplicable I was afriad I might begin to scream. Fortunately the photocopier in the corner of the room could only replicate them in blakc and white.

“I only had time to photocopy this single page before I could hear my interviewer scrabbling his way along the corridor. I hastily put the book back in the folder, and the folder back in the filing cabinet, and myself back on my seat. I don’t think the single bead of sweat on my cheek gave me away. In fact, I suspect he mistook it for a tear.

“Anyway, I know Wales is not in Essex, and although that is a shame I cannot expect you to excuse lightly, I thought you should be informed of this find as quickly as possible.

“Regards, Daniel.”

You will need a copy of WINUAE to run this disk image.

Click here to download the coverdisk image.

Screenshots

Adventure Mini Game

Swizpig also informs us that there had been plans to create an Essex Terror/Dylan Dog adventure game tie-in, and has kindly provided these screenshots of the project:

Unfortunately the game did not get much beyond the planning stages, but certainly looked promising.  If anyone has more information on this, we at Essex Terror! would be delighted to know.

Exclusive! Five original Essex Terror issue covers have been found! Many thanks to Martha Bunes for sending these in to us. Martha writes,

Dear Essex Terror!,

My grandson recently found these in our loft in our house in Halstead and was able to computerise them for me.  I am sorry about the poor quality, but I read on your web site that copies of this old magazine are now quite rare.  I wonder if they could be worth anything!  The inside pages are all mysteriously missing but I will see if we can locate them. Though it may take me a while as I am currently tending my sick cat Peter, and my grandson is away at ‘uni’ until Christmas. He is studying Geography.

We at Essex Terror! extend our deepest thanks to Martha, and wish her cat a swift recovery.

(This poem was originally submitted for publication in Issue #1 of Essex Terror! and is reproduced here with permission.)