AN ESSAY BY PETER COADY ON 'Command Performance' FROM THE PBOH #5
Command Performance
The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1964)
Command Performance, by C. A. Cooper, was published in The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories in 1964. Another of Cooper’s stories (Bonfire) appears in the same volume. Command Performance is the best one and it made a big impression on me when I first read it as a boy.
Command Performance is presented as the transcript of a tape recording made during a séance. The speaker is a middle-aged Roman Catholic priest named Charles Manning. He begins by recounting the nervous troubles that have plagued him all his life, and which have begun to affect his religious duties.
He is particularly sensitive to the Catholic dogma of original sin, which states that every human being enters the world marked by Adam and Eve’s fall from Paradise. Normally, original sin is removed by baptism, but Manning feels himself afflicted by a particularly resilient version. He has become convinced that this spiritual burden will lead to an inescapable doom.
Matters worsen when he falls in love with Marie, a pretty young girl who has come to work for him. In her company he finds relief from his fears, but he knows that his passion can never be realised. In order to escape temptation, he travels to a remote part of Cornwall where he used to holiday as a boy. There he rents an isolated, old building called The Towers.
Manning’s first evening in The Towers begins comfortably, as he eats his supper in front of a roaring fire. Later, however, the sinister atmosphere makes him nervous. Unable to relax, he takes an oil lamp and begins compulsively searching. Drawn to the building’s lower reaches, he pulls up a stone slab and descends a granite staircase into an abandoned cellar. Manning has just reached the earthen floor when the slab crashes back into place and he finds himself entombed.
Fully aware that not a soul knows of his plight, Manning desperately probes the cellar’s slime-covered walls. He does so in complete blackness, for he has dropped and broken his lamp. Then he hears faint voices which cannot be those of living people. He realises that he has been drawn back to The Towers for a special reason. He is about to experience the culmination of the fears that have plagued him all his life.
The slab above is lifted once more, and two people enter the cellar. One is a gross, black-bearded man, holding a lamp; the other is a beautiful young girl whom Manning recognises as Marie, his forbidden love. The bearded man wastes no time in assaulting the girl with devilish cruelty. As he beats and abuses her, he reveals himself to be a murderer and a madman.
At first Manning simply crouches, terrified, in the darkness. Eventually, he can stand no more and rushes forward to confront the bearded man. Manning shouts his defiance and the brute turns to face him. Only then does the purpose of Manning’s adventure become clear.
Command Performance is a powerful shocker but perhaps uniquely in the Pan Horror series the story contains a hint of redemption. For once, cruelty is defeated and good triumphs over evil.
