A Work in Progress

Halloween Goodness, or a Ghost Story

What's Halloween without a good ghost story concerning a governess?  Of course the classic is Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, which I read several years back.  Edith Wharton wrote a fair few ghost stories, too, and her The Lady's Maid's Bell reminded me of the James story.  Did you know that Elizabeth Taylor also wrote a ghost story (and maybe even more than one--I'm not familiar with all her stories unfortunately), and one that has a governess at its center.  It has been anthologized in a few places, but I read it in The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Ghost Stories edited by the late Michael Cox (a book I've dipped into before and should really own).

I should know that in Taylor's very capable hands to expect something good, but I was impressed by how she took a common-enough story and made it into something fresh and her own.  She turns the tables a bit and offers the unexpected, which took me a little by surprise.  It begins very ordinarily (as governess-ghost-stories go) but then the story turns on its head just a little bit.

"Poor Girl" is Miss Chasty the governess, whose first pupil is a flirtatious seven-year-old.  He must be something of a shock to her as she comes from a respectable family.  She's the daughter of a vicar and it's hoped and expected that her brothers will follow suit.  Hilary, her charge, is a precocious young boy whose lively eyes were often "fixed cruelly" upon his governess, "smiling faintly . . . but measuring her timidity."  Miss Chasty is just one of a string of governesses.  He's not too keen on going away to school, but seems sure that he can avoid leaving home.

"He would answer her questions correctly, but significantly, as if he knew that by his aptitude he rescued her from dismissal."

He knows too much for his age and is wont to lean in towards her, breathing in her scent.  His behavior worries her.  More worrisome, however, is what Hilary's parents, Mrs. and Mr. Wilson, think of her.  Whatever Mr. Wilson lacks in authority (especially in moments of amatory weakness), his wife more than makes up for.  And Mr. Wilson has had moments of weakness with previous governesses, though Mrs. Wilson seems favorably impressed by Florence.  At least initially.  Her first impression of the governess is that she is a plain, pious young woman befitting that of a clergyman's daughter and governess.  

Mrs. Wilson often spends time in the nursery watching her son, her "darling boy", in his studies and taking note of Florence.  Her visits become more regular when she sees a crimson smear on the lip of the teacup and smells a heavy perfume hanging in the room.  Perhaps her first impression was wrong.  In this pious young woman, as she looks deeper, she detects an excitability, even feverishness reflecting a crack in her proper exterior.  She catches Florence turning the teacup just so to hide the red smear.

Each woman sees, feels, senses something in the nursery.  Something hangs heavy about the room affecting each woman in turn.

"The schoolroom this evening seemed to have been wreathed about with a strange miasma; the innocent nature of the place polluted in a way which [Florence] could not understand or have explained.  Something new it seemed, had entered the room which had not belonged to her or became a part of her--the scent had clung about her clothes; the stained cup was her cup and her handkerchief with which she had rubbed it clean was still reddened; and, finally, as she had stared in the mirror, trying to reestablish her personality, the affected little laugh which startled her had come from herself.  It had driven her from the room."

Mrs. Wilson sees the room as a product of Florence's true nature.  For Florence the room has something artificial about it.  She feels strange and different when there.  Mr. Wilson is only too happy to sit in on Hilary's lessons with Florence.  At his wife's behest he watches Florence to discover whether she is an immoral young woman.  Yes, he's only too happy to do so. 

Well, you can imagine what might happen to a young governess who catches the eye of her master.  Both will be disgraced.  One sent packing.  There's something about the nursery.  A ghostly presence.  A hint of something happening and Florence plays it out in a sort of shadow action.  There are other things you are meant to imagine in this story.  The last line is a bit cryptic, like other good ghost stories, Taylor leaves a little up to the reader to sort out, but the twist she offers on the tale is satisfying indeed.

Another enjoyable season of RIP reading has now come to an end.  Happy Halloween all. 

Short Story Sunday: Jacobs, Collins & James

I don't think I've missed many Sundays of short story reading (and writing about what I've read) this year.  Thinking back over 2013 I think I've spent the bulk of it with just a couple of collections, and I've greatly enjoyed both of them.  Even if the scare factor is low, I almost always enjoy my ghost story reading in the fall months.  For me it's more about the atmosphere and being entertained than anything else.  Just as well, as if I think about it too much I can scare fairly easily.  I think I've mentioned how I measure the 'scare factor' in a story--by whether or not I'll go do laundry in my basement or not.  Sometimes it's not the actual reading that will send chills down my spine (though sometimes it does), but what it does to my imagination after the fact.  It's when a story messes with your mind and you get spooked that you know an author did a good job.

I've read (in two cases reread) the last three stories from The Haunted Looking Glass this past weekend and now sadly close the book for the last time.  The stories were chosen by Edward Gorey who also did the illustrations (one drawing for each story in his inimitable style).  I only wish he would have written an introduction as I would love to know why he chose each story.  There is only a mention that these were his favorites and I can see why--each is a classic in its own right.  Some I liked more than others.  I think my own favorites from this selection are "The Signalman" by Charles Dickens and "The Shadow of  a Shade" by Tom Hood.  In case you are looking for a good collection of ghost stories to dip into, I can heartily recommend this one and have added it to my own wishlist (now reluctantly must return this copy to the library).

The last of the stories includes one that I suspect many of you have read at some point.  It's a wonderful example of irony and a warning of 'beware what you wish for'.  W.W. Jacobs's "The Monkey's Paw" is a very short story (about twelve pages) that manages to pack a punch and at the same time be very streamlined and wastes not a word.  It's a cold wet night.  The blinds are drawn, there is a fire burning brightly and a family sits about their drawing room all cozy within and shielded from the dreariness without.  A visitor, Sergeant Major Morris, who comes from far abroad arrives and will change the life of the family irrevocably--however unintentionally.

The sergeant major lived in India for more then twenty years, and when asked about his experiences he tells them about a monkey's paw that he got while living there.  It's a magical paw, mummified, but one that promises to grant three wishes to the owner. 

"It had a spell put on it by an old fakir, a very old holy man.  He wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives, and that those who interfered with it did so do their sorrow."

It's human nature, however, to look at the paw as something that can only give, a granter of wishes.  And the family does wish on the paw.  I won't give away the twist, but only say that the paw can also take away while still granting a wish. 

******

I've already had the chance to revisit Wilkie Collins.  "The Dream Woman" is another wonderfully chilling story, well-told and tightly plotted.  This is a story about a premonition.  What happens when your dreams come true?  Not a happy dream either but more of a nightmare.  Like The Haunted Hotel, the story is narrated by a doctor, but the reader soon forgets who is telling the story.  Reality quickly falls away and you become so involved in the tale that its almost like resurfacing from under water at the end when the narrator pops back in when all is said and done.

The story the doctor tells is about a man who nightly dreams awful dreams and calls out, "Wake up, there!  Murder!".  An ostler by trade, he married much later in life.  For many years he was alone and lived only with his mother--not a whiff of romance had he the pleasure of.  One night he dreamt of a "fair, fine woman, with yellowish flaxen hair, and light gray eyes, with a droop in the left eyelid." Noiselessly she comes to his bedside, and at the last moment he sees her raise her arm and plunge it down onto his pillow--just where his head had rested--in her delicate hand a knife.  Dream or reality?  He meets and marries a woman with just the same features as the woman in his nightmare . . .

******

Like the Jacobs story, "Casting the Runes" by M.R. James is one I have read before.  Although it is considered by some to be his best, my own favorite James story (and there are many James stories--I have only read a smattering thus far) is "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad", which I read last year.  "Casting the Runes" is a story about evil and the supernatural.  About men who do wicked things.  Typical of a James story this one concerns academics and rare books.  In this case a scholar has written a paper hoping it will be included in a scientific meeting.  It has, however, been deemed 'hopeless' and has been rejected by the committee inviting the wrath of the author.

The reviewer of the paper is so far anonymous, but he is one of the few people in England to have an expertise in the topic--Alchemy.  It's hoped that he can remain anonymous to avoid any run-ins or aggravated words with the rejected author who has been known to scare small children and there are whispers of wicked things he did to others who have criticized his work in the past.  Now he has set his sights on getting revenge once again.  There is a wonderful twist at the end of this story, a pulling of the rug from out from under the evil-doer.  M.R. James is a very dependable teller of ghost stories and he is one to look for if you want something traditional and spooky.

My RIP-reading has come to an end for the year.  I even managed to read what I set out to read--four books from my original list.  I hope to still fit in one more ghost story for Halloween before moving on to  my next project.  I am contemplating my choices for Caroline and Lizzy's German Literature Month in November.  I have a pile of books which seems to be growing and will be 'trying a few out' before the First rolls around on Friday.  But more about that soon!

The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins

While not my favorite work by Wilkie Collins, or by any stretch his best, time spent with one of his stories is never time wasted.  In this case the story in question is his 1878 novella The Haunted Hotel.  It was serialized in Belgravia magazine in six monthly parts.  According to the introduction he was paid a mere fifty pounds per installment, which must have been a pittance compared to what his other stories must have fetched.  It appears the publishing world thought him past his prime and so compensated him accordingly.  I wouldn't call this story past his prime at all, but it was the last big work before ill health and an opium addiction robbed him of any further masterpieces.

The Haunted Hotel is loosely based on a true crime case from France (as was The Woman in White so says the introduction), so it has a basis in reality but with a good dose of the supernatural as well.  It's set mostly in Venice, a city that Collins loved and knew and was very familiar with, and he was one of the first writers to "explore the strange, hypnotic power of this mysterious city resting on the seething waters of the Adriatic Sea."  The story is, as is usual to a good Wilkie Collins story, peopled with a colorful cast of characters (think Count Fosco in The Woman in White, or Lydia Gwilt in Armadale), the worst of them wicked nd devious indeed.  The Haunted Hotel is as much a mystery as anything, and a murder mystery specifically.  But this is a story that is not straightforward with an ending neatly tied up.  Collins leaves the reader swimming in ambuguities (which I actually like on occasion), so the reader can decide if it is truly a case of murder or death by natural causes.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Haunted Hotel is narrated by an observer.  It's 1860 and a famed London physician receives in his office a stranger.  He must soon make his hospital rounds, so he'd rather take flight than deal with this unknown woman, but she snags him.  She has a foreign accent and a startling appearance.  Her face is deathly pale, almost corpse-like.  Her large black eyes hold him almost spell-bound.  And she asks him a most unusual question.

"I want to know, if you please, whether I am in danger of going mad?"

Her pallor, she tells him, was caused by a poison from which she very narrowly managed to escape death when she was younger.  She tells him she is a widow and is soon to be married again.  She's being blackmailed into this marriage, however.  If she refuses to marry, unfavorable reports of her character will appear true when she assures him they are not, and her reputation will be ruined.  So she goes through with the nuptials.  Her betrothed formerly had passed time with another young woman who is still in love with him.  Yet she still goes through with the wedding.

Countess Narona is a most interesting character and it's on her, her desires, her reputation, her actions that the outcome of the story hinges.  What follows, a story narrated by the physician (but the reader becomes so immersed in it that all that you forget everything except what's being told to you), is really quite bizarre.  It's one of the strangest stories I've read yet by Wilkie Collins.

Countess Narona, who becomes Lady Montbarry upon her marriage, travels with her husband to Venice.  Along with the couple goes the purported brother of the Countess.  Is he really her brother or something more?  In Venice they stay at an ancient palazzo where Lord Montbarry promptly dies and his courier disappears.  Back in England we meet Agnes Lockwood who is still somewhat infatuated with Lord Montbarry.  Infatuated and disappointed by the turn of events.  And Lord Montbarry's younger brother Henry is in love with her to make things just a little more complicated.  As it was Agnes who helped the courier get the position, his widow comes to her to try and discover what really happened in Venice.  Thus does the story become a detective story as well. 

The palazzo is sold to one of Lord Montberry's family members and is turned into a hotel where strange things happen in the now-dead Lord Montbarry's bedroom.  Very strange things.  Ghostly appearances and disembodied heads show up.  All is seemingly revealed through the Countess's writings, but by story's end she has become so deluded and distracted, the question is--is she telling the truth?  Does she really reveal the details of Lord Montbarry's death, which might or might not mean murder rather than a natural death?  It's hard to know who or what to believe.  Things will come to a head when Agnes Lockwood is driven by Fate (as the Countess believes) to stay at the hotel.  Will she, too, experience the ghostly occurrences in the haunted room? 

The Haunted Hotel is a creepy story with corpses that change identities, heads without bodies and the hint of ghosts.  It's Wilkie Collins at his usual entertaining-self.  If you are looking for a good ghost story, The Haunted Hotel is a worthy choice.  Most years I try and read at least one book by Wilkie Collins.  This novella hit the spot and I still have a short story to read by him this weekend.  If, by the way you are curious about which is my favorite Wilkie Collins novel?  I'd have a hard time choosing between The Woman in White and Armadale.  I've loved everything I've read by him, however.  My RIP reading is nearly finished for the season!

Joyland by Stephen King

I really enjoyed Stephen King's Joyland.  It's not really what I expect from someone who mostly writes horror stories.  But then I've not read any of his books for ages, and the smattering I have read are a few of his more famous novels like The Shining, Carrie and the Dark Half, which tend toward darker themes.  And then there have been all the movie adaptations, too, from other books which have in a few cases scared me silly. 

But Joyland is in an entirely different category.  It reminds me of something Ray Bradbury might have written.  It's a sort of coming of age story and crime novel all rolled into one with a nice touch of nostalgia thrown in for good measure (think Stand By Me as adapted to film).  You know you are in the hands of someone with talent when they can write what is essentially a crime novel (albeit one with ghostly overtones) and still have you near to tears (and not from fear or boredom) out of empathy for the characters.  And we're even talking (in a few instances) peripheral characters here, too.

Joyland is narrated from time and distance by the main character.  He's looking back on one heartbreaking, life-changing summer which begins in anguish over a failed relationship.  Yet it is also the summer he comes into his own, gains his independence and becomes an adult.  What happens to Dev this summer not only charts a new course for his life, but as well alters that of a few people around him.  This is a summer of life and of death, of love lost and love found.  It's a summer lifelong friendships are forged.  And it's the summer a long-forgotten mystery is solved and a mother learns how to let go of her son.  Ambitious, yes, but Stephen King pulls it off.

It's 1973 and Devin Jones is beyond smitten by Wendy Keegan.  The two have been dating, but unhappily for Dev the relationship hasn't advanced physically beyond the groping stage.  When she announces she's going to spend the summer in Boston with a friend working, his disappointment is palpable.  As a matter of fact it's thanks in part to Wendy that Dev sets off for Joyland in North Carolina.  It's a job he happens upon by chance when he spots an ad in a local paper.

"And what glum twenty-one-year-old, beset with the growing fear that he might be losing his girlfriend, would not be attracted by the idea of working in a place called Joyland?"

Joyland is a place happiness is made, even if it is only temporary.  It's a smaller park than the big boys like Disney, but for the locals it offers a snatch at fun and entertainment, a little respite from life's drudgeries--even for just a day.  Of course behind the happy facade and the bright lights lurks something infinitely  more sinister and dark.  Years before a murder took place in the Funhouse of Fear.  The woman's body was not found until the next day.  Her screams went unnoticed in a ride where screaming is the norm.  Her killer was never found and the tragic event simply faded into carnival-park folklore. 

Wendy urges Dev to try for the job, which entails doing a little bit of everything.  For Dev it means spending lots of time in the Howie the Hound suit, which on hot days is mercilessly stifling.  But Dev has a knack for it.  Though he spends many angst-ridden hours thinking about Wendy and wondering why she dumped him, it's not necessarily a bad existence he leads that summer.  He even manages to hold his own with the other carny-folk, and when his friends prepare to return to college as summer turns to fall, Dev decides to stay on.  It's what happens after the park closes for the season that makes the story really heat up and move along at a brisk pace.

The story, however circuitously it travels, is ultimately about a murder.  King builds and shapes and molds all the disparate characters and storytelling threads until it moves towards that final exciting trajectory that holds in it a small surprise or two.  I thought it quite masterfully done--the sort of storytelling I like where the reader is grabbed from the start and wafted along with each new piece of information, or new character or event in the story pieced together until the larger picture emerges.  I had forgotten just how good a writer Stephen King is. 

Joyland is a perfect RIP/autumn/Halloween read.  Did I see somewhere that movie rights have been sold?  Not suprising.  Joyland is yet another nicely atmospheric read, but one that doesn't just rely on atmosphere.  He creates such a weird, wild (though not too much of either) world of amusement parks, already so unique, but adding a flavor all its own to the story.  There is just a hint of the paranormal--the murder mystery being unraveled, a ghostly sighting or two buut nothing too far out of reality.

This is my second (of four) RIP reads (loved Susan Hill's The Man in the Picture).  Wilkie Collins is on my writing agenda for later this week and I've got a few more short stories to read.  Just in time for Halloween. 

Thanks to Titan Books for sending this one my way.  They have a whole series of books called Hard Case Crime that are worth checking out.

Short Story Sunday: Nesbit, Stoker & Hood

I think I might actually meet one of my reading goals after all.  Even with October being a strange (and somewhat disappointing) reading month, I think by Halloween I will have read four books (one of them being a collection of short stories--bonus) and hopefully have written about them all, too (two more posts are in the works even as I type).  I've had to speed things up with The Haunted Looking Glass edited by Edward Gorey.  Three stories this week and then a remaining three for next weekend.   This collection is proving to be a nicely entertaining and atmospheric read and perfect for brisk autumn days.  The stories haven't been scary per se, but then it's really hard to do scary in this day and age, but definitely they are mood-setting.

Although I believe she's quite famous, I've never had the opportunity to read any of Edith Nesbit's work.  I think she's better known for her children's books, but she apparently also wrote a number of ghost stories, and Gorey has included her "Man-Size in Marble" (1893) in this collection.

"Although every word of this story is as true as despair, I do not expect people to believe it.  Nowadays a 'rational explanation' is required before belief is possible."

The rational explanation is that the young couple in this story suffered 'under a delusion', but it's left up to the reader to decide just what really happened.  A young married couple decides to look for a cottage in the country, not being able to afford living in town.  The husband narrates the story.  He's a painter and his wife, Laura, a writer.  They find a charming cottage, and it is absurdly cheap, but then perhaps what came to pass is the reason why.

There is a legend in the village that on the thirty-first of October the two marble effigies that lay in the church come alive and walk in the night. 

"Their names were lost, but the peasants told of them that they had been fierce and wicked men, marauders by land and sea, who had been the scourge of their time, and had been guilty of deeds so foul that the house they had lived in--the big house, by the way, that had stood on the site of our cottage--had been struck by lightning and the vengeance of Heaven."

The peasant woman who 'does' for the couple is adamant that the stories she tells, of smugglers and highwaymen and 'the sights' which one meets out on the glens are all true.  So much so does she believe the stories that as the date approaches she says she must leave to take care of sick relatives.  Before she leaves she tells the pair to keep to their house and lock all their doors and windows on All Saints' Eve.  Of course any good ghost story worth its salt is going to have characters who won't heed the warnings, right?  I think this story would be quite chilling adapted to the big screen. 

******

Bram Stoker's "The Judge's House" (1891) has a seaside setting and a main character who goes mad, or is he driven mad?, by a ghostly presence.  Scary things--mirrors, children in ghost stories, rocking chairs that creak, doors that slam at night, wind whistling through trees, shadows, and portrait paintings where the person's eyes seem to follow you wherever you walk.  Malcolm Malcolmsen is a student who decides to travel somewhere where he can read and prepare for his exams in peace.  He chooses a destination randomly, but unfortunately he should have alighted one stop further.  The train takes him to small village where he finds a desolate house to rent, brick and massively built in the Jacobean style.  It was once inhabited by the town's judge.

The charwoman leaves Malcolm provisions from her own kitchen, but upon preparing to leave him to his work but warns him of the 'bogies' for which she is afraid.  Malcolm, however, is too intent on his studies and finds the house too comfortable to heed her warnings.  He eats his meal and indulges in his tea and finds it all quite luxurious.  Lamp in hand he takes a tour of the house and is struck by a painting on the wall.  It's dark from the smoke of the fire and difficult to make out.  Strange things begin to happen--high above the painting there seems to be a crack in the wall where rats appear.  So curious does he become about the presence of the painting and the pests who show no fear he has the painting cleaned so he can better see the portrait.

"It was of a judge dressed in his robes of scarlet and ermine.  His face was strong and merciless, evil, crafty, and vindictive, with a sensual mouth, hooked nose of ruddy color, and shaped like the beak of a bird of prey.  The rest of the face was of a cadaverous color.  The eyes were of a peculiar brilliance and with a terribly malignant expression.  As he looked at them, Malcolmsen grew cold, for he saw there the very counterpart of the eyes of the great rat."

It is enough to make him start back so suddenly that he almost drops the lamp, turns his face white and makes him shake in his boots.  For good reason. This is one painting you don't want following you about.  In his hands the judge holds a hangman's noose!

******

Before Michelle Paver's Dark Matter there was Tom Hood's "The Shadow of Shade" (1869), which I think is one of my favorite stories in this collection.  This is another instance of a story which uses a painting to help convey the supernatural elements in the story, but rather than being the source of evil as in Stoker's story, Hood uses a painting to help deliver justice.

"My sister Lettie has lived with me ever since I had a home of my own.  She was my housekeeper before I married.  Now she is my wife's constant companion, and the 'darling Auntie' of my children, who go to her for comfort, advice, and aid in all their little troubles and perplexities."

But Lettie's face is grave and melancholy, the result of a lost love.  She has had her share of admirers, but once given, her heart is not open to others.  Many years before her betrothed, an Arctic sailor, set off for the North Pole, but he was never to return.  Before he leaves he makes the mistake of introducing her to one of his acquaintances who takes a shining to Lettie and can't seem to forget her.  It's he who brings the news of the accident which took place aboard ship. 

Grieve, a fitting name for Lettie's unwanted admirer, finds himself shadowed by someone or something--literally shadowed.  Something follows him about.  Even the portrait of Lettie's lover, painted by her brother, seems to weigh on him.  A guilty conscious perhaps.  A ghostly and despairing tale of love lost as well as unrequited love.

Next week three more stories by W.W. Jacobs, Wilkie Collins and M.R. James (the first and last rereads).  And maybe I'll have a treat (in the form of a short story) for Halloween and finally read something by Elizabeth Taylor or maybe Muriel Spark. 

Short Story Sunday: The Body-Snatcher

I'm not surprised a story such as "The Body-Snatcher", this week's installment from The Haunted Looking Glass, would have come from the pen of author Robert Louis Stevenson famous for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  It's not really a ghost story per se, but one dealing with revenge and then (more) revenge of an almost ghostly nature.  And yes, as the title implies it revolves around the ghastly (and very prevalent business in the early 1800s) of body snatching!  It was first published in December of 1884 and is based on a series of murders committed in Edinburgh in 1828 by two Irish immigrants living in Scotland.  The pair murdered sixteen people and then sold the bodies to physician Robert Knox to use in instruction on dissection.  It would have been famous and quite well known to readers of the period.

Like so many ghost stories, especially those told at Christmastime it seems, this one begins with a group of friends who meet nightly for a bit of chat in a local pub.  There is an unnamed narrator, an undertaker, the landlord and a man named Fettes about whom the story revolves.  It's a dark winter night and a traveller is struck down by apoplexy so his London doctor is called in.  The man, Dr. Wolfe McFarlane, was at one time a colleague of Fettes.  The two seem to have an uneasy relationship.  Fettes in particular wants little to do with McFarlane.  The awkward exchange between the two results in the question, "Have you seen it again?".

An innocuous enough phrase in passing, but by story's end a chilling one.  Just what is "it".  Well, if you read the story you'll find out.  The words are uttered by Fettes and in a whisper.  The two men part ways once again under unhappy circumstances leaving the remaining three men astonished by their behavior.  The narrator, however, has a knack for "worming" out of his friend the story behind the scene and once he does he goes on to narrate the "following foul and unnatural events".

The two had been students of medicine together in edinburgh in their youth.  And both were employed by the famous anatomist known as Mr. K--.  Fettes was in charge of the theater and lecture room at the school and would be called at night to open the door to what we will call "deliveries".

"He would open the door to these men, since infamous throughout the land.  He would pay them their sordid price, and remain alone, when they were gone, with the unfriendly relics of humanity.  From such a scene he would return to snatch another hour or two of slumber, to repair the abuses of the night, and refresh himself for the labours of the next." 

One night he is delivered the body of a young woman with whom he had an acquaintance.  Just the previous day he had seen her so lively and full of energy.  And now she appears before him laid out on a slab with the marks of violence upon her.  When McFarlane arrives later Fettes shows him the body and tells him of his concerns, but McFarlane urges him to say nothing.  "The less said, the soonest mended" is his reply.  So she goes the way of the rest of the dissection corpses. 

One night fellow students, one particularly boisterous and obnoxious chap especially, create a stir.  They invite Fettes and McFarlane to dine a sumptuous meal, then belittle them and leave the bill in their care.  Not a wise thing to do in the environment which the students work and live where graves are robbed almost nightly.  The following day McFarlane raps upon the door.  Fettes once again answers, pays the bill and then uncovers the body only to find McFarlane has brought to him the cause of their grief from the night before.  The two argue and McFarlane reminds him that the famous Mr. K--employs them for a reason.  "Don't be such a boy".  "What harm can come to you if you hold your tongue?"

Maybe it's karma.  What comes around goes around, or no deed goes unpunished.  But a treat of sorts is in store for the two.  I won't let on what, but this is a story of revenge.  And sometimes it can even come from beyond the grave if you have an open mind.

Wouldn't this have been something to read at a time when grave robbing was so regular an occurrence that families would hold vigils at the graves of their loved ones in fear that they would be snatched in the night!

In two weeks time (of if I can manage it, later this week): "Man-Size in Marble" by E. Nesbit.  There are six stories left in this collection, which I hope to finish by the end of October.  Hopefully I can manage two a week.  As it has turned quite brisk and rainy here, the weather is certainly giving me just the right setting for a few scary stories.

Short Story Sunday: The Thirteenth Tree

This week's story by R.H. (Richard Henry) Malden, "The Thirteenth Tree" follows a very traditional format.  It's heavy on atmosphere and story and light on actual chills and thrills.  I was not surprised to read the biographical description about him which notes that he is the author of a collection of ghost stories called Thirteen Ghosts, and are written in the same vein as M.R. James.  As a matter of fact the two were friends.  Malden was a curate as well as lecturer and surely his story is a nod in James's direction.

It involves a 17th century country house where bad things once happened and malevolent spirits have sought their revenge over the many years.  The narrator is an outsider who witnesses strange dream-like (rather closer to nightmarish) occurrences in the twilight.  So he and his host set out to try and discover the mystery of the house.  All in all it is quite tame as ghost stories go, but it makes for an entertaining way to pass a bit of time on a crisp fall afternoon.

Situated in the western counties, the house in question isn't entailed and has passed down to the narrator's friend by haphazard chance.  The property had never passed in the direct male line since the early 1600s when Sir Robert Newton, whose portrait hangs in the house's great hall, built it.  Newton was a Chief Justice whose son drowned in the garden's pool.  It was very curious since the pool was shallow and the boy was not a small child.  Ever after no son managed to inherit, all of them seeming to meet with tragic ends.

Perhaps mercifully the current owner has only daughters and no sons.  An old friend of the narrator the two had met in London after many years and an invitation to visit was issued and gratefully accepted.  Happy to renew their friendship, the narrator finds his journey to the countryside pleasurable though it's too dark to know much of the house at first glance as the light was quickly falling.  Very soon, though, the house makes its sinister intentions known to him.

" . . . while I was undressing I meditated on the queer fatality which seemed to have pursued the family for three hundred years.  Was it more than a series of odd and unfortunate coincidences?  Are there, or have their been, people who had some malign  power which they could direct against their enemies?  If it were so, how was this power operative after their lifetime?  Did it exhaust itself after a period of time or not?"

In the twilight the grounds surrounding the house seem to shift.  There are a dozen trees along the perimeter, no longer a pool, a wall very white in the moonlight with an ivy creeping up it and spreading sideways that suggests the "head and arms of a person in the act of climbing the wall".  But strange things happen in the dark.  A pool appears, the grounds take on a newness as if the house was just constructed.  And more terrifying for the narrator, as this shift happens when he is sleeping, it's as if he is not dreaming but a spectator in something awful.

When he wakes he feels as if he has just narrowly missed disaster.  An accident about to happen but then he awakes.  So he and his friend decide to try and uncover what evil lurks in the seemingly noble house.  I won't give away the ending, but will just give a tease.  It involves the accusation of witchcraft, murder and revenge.  And as the title implies . . . just where is and what happened to the thirteenth tree?  Spooky!

Next week's story sounds promising: "The Body Snatcher" by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Ghost Story Sunday: A Visitor from Down Under

Hmm.  Is it me, L.P. Hartley, or you?  Now given our past history together, that being that your novel The Go-Between is one of my all-time favorites, I'd say it's probably me.  I read your ghost story "A Visitor from Down Under" over the course of the weekend and I admit my mind was elsewhere for parts of it.  I did go back and skim to make sure I had the general jist of things. But, well, I find it slightly perplexing still.  I think I missed something along the way.  Of course maybe my problem is that I am trying to read more into it than there is there?  

So, maybe with a little help from kind readers here, we can work out just what is going on?  Let me give you the outline of the story--the various creepy elements that seem as though they must add up to something more than meets the eye (I have this feeling that there is some symbolic meaning to things, but maybe I'm just in an especially thoughtful mood right now).  And I won't spoil the ending, just in case you become so curious you must read it for yourself.

The story begins with this quote, which is in italics and set off by itself at the beginning.

"And who will you need to fetch him away!"

It's a wet March evening and a very loquacious bus conductor is chatting with the passengers getting on and off his double decker bus.  It's the last bus traveling through the heart of London for the evening and there is but one passenger left up top. He's an odd duck--very quiet and makes no reply to the conductor's chatty overtures.  He must ask him more than once "where he's for" when the man finally replies in a taciturn voice that his stop is Carrick Street.  The man holds the penny fare between two fingers and the conductor must replace the ticket back, which makes for an unwieldy transaction.  The conductor assumes it's all due to an infirmity.  Carrick Street comes and goes, yet no one seems to disembark, but by now the conductor has put it from his mind.

Five hours earlier in the day a Mr. Rumbold has arrived at a hotel in Carrick Street, a return visitor from Australia.  He's friendly with the staff and recollects some from prior stays at the hotel.  He decides to relax with a drink in the lounge and listens in on what he assumes is a children's party in another room.  He hears them talking about the treats they have to eat and the games they play.  Listening in, however, Mr. Rumbold hears some disturbing things--namely a tiny click, but then they switch to playing games so he thinks no more about it.  The rhymes that the children chant during their play are a little macabre.

"Here is a candle to light you to bed, And here comes a choppers to chop off your head!  Chop-chop-chop."

Mr. Rumbold finds it upsetting and it's probably thanks to what he overhears that gives him nightmares later in the evening when he sleeps. Or maybe it's due to the conversation he has with one of the staff about fishing, and the occurrence of poaching back in Australia.  The conversation takes on a different spin when the staff asks him about what happens to a murderer in Australia.  When you go against the law the waiter says (and by you, he tells Mr. Rumbold, he means only as an illustration to his point during the conversation) you're punished. But maybe the murderer gets off, under some special circumstance, then what?  The waiter goes on and says then it's up to the lot of any other man to take care of the murderer.  And if there is no one, no family, then it might just be up to the dead man himself to bring the murderer to justice.

And oh, here we go.  An epiphany.  The light just blinked on for me.

It's a filthy night as I mentioned.  It's raining and not fit for anyone outside.  It would be a pity for someone to go without a bed on a night like this, and as the hotel is all full up, there is no more room to spare for any other latecomers.  Mr. Rumbold, however, remarks that there is an extra bed in his room and if needs be, his room could be shared.

I won't, as I said, give the ending away, but having thought it out like this, it is making much more sense.  Let  me just say that a visitor arrives at the hotel looking for a room for the night.  The stranger is the strange man from the bus.  And now the blood stains on the pillow, the melting icicle on the windowsill and the empty bed make much more sense!

I'm not sure you, kind reader, are going to get much out today's post, but I must say it has helped me immensely!  Sort of gives new meaning to a 'chilling' story.

Next week: R.H. Malden's "The Thirteenth Tree" and I hope to get my hands on Elizabeth Taylor's "Poor Girl" that Anbolyn recommended.

Favorite Spooky Stories to Chill and Thrill (A Thursday Thirteen)

A While back someone asked me what some of my favorite ghost stories were, so I thought it would be fun to come up with a list of favorites and share them here.  Although it is hard to write a truly scary story, they are often chilling in their own way and if a reader is willing to suspend belief a bit or just give over to the storytelling the atmosphere will often do the trick and at least make the reader wonder, "just what if this was real . . . ".  These are mostly short stories with a few novellas and a novel or two thrown in for variety. 

In no particular order, here are a few of my favorites (links are to my own posts where I have written about them).  A number of these I have revisited, too, and have found them just as satisfying a second or third time around as the first.

Short Stories:

1. Don't Look Now, The Blue Lenses, The Birds, and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier -- Daphne du Maurier is always good for a thrilling, suspenseful story.  "Don't Look Now" is one of my all-time favorite scary stories and one I like to revisit from time to time.  It has a wonderful Venetian setting that is quite dark and broody.  "The Blue Lenses" could have been a Twilight Zone episode.  When a woman is recuperating from an operation to restore her eyesight, the lenses in place temporarily make her "see" with a frightening clarity!  "The Birds" is nothing like the Hitchcock film.  The short story is much darker and bleaker, and in my opinion much more frightening.  And Rebecca is another of my favorite novels--Du Maurier herself described the novel to her publisher as "a sinister tale about a woman who marries a a widower...psychological rather than macabre."
2. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James -- This is a story I found quite perplexing when I first read it.  It's one that is open to interpretation and you can go round and round thinking about it.  Of course that makes it even better, I think.  Just what did the governess see?  Another story I really need to reread.
3. Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad by M.R. James -- I think it's my favorite by him of the small handful I have read.  The thing with James's stories--they are much more about atmosphere than actual chills, since by contemporary standards they are very tame stories.  Still, they're perfect fall, and especially October/Halloween reading.
4. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates -- Boy, does Oates do creepy well.  It's an unsettling story to read.  Most of the story concerns a young woman alone in the house, her family not expected back for hours and the run in she has with a young man.  The story plays out in Connie's head, and it is all very claustrophobic.
5. There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury -- I love Ray Bradbury and really need to read more of his work.  This story takes place in a post-apocalyptic America in 2057.  The thing that makes Bradbury's stories work so well, is their plausibility.  He really was ahead of his time I think.
6. Miriam by Truman Capote -- Another one for the really creepy category.  Stories involving young children, especially when they take on malevolent roles are always slightly disturbing to me.  In this case it is a matter of imagination vs. reality.  Uncertainty tends to throw me for a loop and makes me question whether a story might be real or not--and just in questioning these things makes me wonder what if it could be true...
7. The Tower by Marghanita Laski --This is one I have read and reread and have recommended to others.  It's a frightening story, disorienting, and I could see it as another Twilight Zone episode. 
8. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill -- This is a classic ghost story and another of my favorites.  I have read it several times.  I know a story has spooked me if I think about it later when I'm home alone and all of a sudden an image will come to mind and give me goosebumps or make the hairs on the back of my neck rise.  Of course there's the mind at work again.  That is The Woman in Black all over for me.
9. Ghost Story by Peter Straub -- This was last year's RIP read.  It was an unnerving read, very much a slow burn sort of story that took me a while to get through but well worth the effort in the end. 
10. Dark Matter by Michelle Paver -- I don't often get scared reading ghost stories, but in the right frame of mind, in the right setting--with the lights dimmed and the shades drawn on a dark and stormy (and maybe even cold!) night--this one might make me look over my shoulder once or twice.  It's full of wonderfully scary atmosphere.
11. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson -- Shirley Jackson's story is quite subtle.  There are all sorts of repressed emotions swimming below the surface in this story and evil lurks behind closed doors just waiting for the right visitor to come along and stir things up.
12. The Victorian Chaise Longue by Marghanita Laski -- This novella is quite similar really in intentions to her short story "The Tower".  Both deal with locked doors/spaces--both literally and figuratively.  
13. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters -- Once again Sarah Waters has written a ripping good tale that kept me glued to its pages late into the night until I could no longer keep my eyes open, and got me up early the following morning to finish.  It's clever and complex and relies as much on the reader's perceptions and beliefs as on the storyteller's ability to convincingly describe events that take place in this chilling tale.

I'm hoping to come across more good ghost stories (too add to my "collection") this RIP season. 

Do you have an favorites when it comes to ghost stories/stories of suspense or the macabre?  Strangely I have a soft spot for the genre.

Short Story Sunday: The Signalman

This weekend's short story, "The Signalman" by Charles Dickens first appeared in the Christmas edition of the literary magazine All the Year Round in 1866.  The inspiration for it likely came from an actual incident that occurred several years earlier when two trains crashed in the Clayton Tunnel (picture below taken from the Wikipedia).  The tragedy would have been fresh in readers's minds.  In this case several accidents are presaged by the appearance of a ghostly specter always resulting in death.

"Helloa!  Below there!"

An unnamed narrator calls out to the signalman who is taking care of the entrance/exit of a railway tunnel located in what's known as a "railway cutting" (the bit that's cut away into a mountain so the train can pass through).  Strangely the man does not look up or turn around but looks intently into the tunnel.  He calls out again and asks for permission to descend and only after a pause does the signalman motion for him to come down.  It's a deep and narrow cutting made into clammy stone and the hike down is unusually precipitate.

The signalman is a dark, sallow man with a dark beard and heavy eyebrows and he watches with great expectation as the narrator climbs down.  One hand rests on his chin and the elbow of his other arm rests in his right hand in such an attitude that the narrator wonders at him.  It's a lonely and solitary place, dismal with the walls of the sides dripping wet almost like a dungeon with only a narrow bit of sky over head. 

"So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot that it had an earthy, deadly smell, and so much cold wind rushed through it that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world."

And the signalman is curious in his demeanor.  The two talk about the signalman's work which is tedious at best but he seems to hope for little else having wasted his educational opportunities.  And he is greatly troubled by something.  He agrees to try and explain if the man ever returns, which he tells the signalman he will.  The following night he will come back when the signalman is on duty, but the signalman makes him promise not to call out or gesture to him when he returns.

The next night the signalman tells his tale of a ghostly apparition who's appearance presages a death in the near future.  On two occasions he has seen this ghost and like the narrator has "helloa-ed" to the signalman, and then covered his face in a way that portends an awful tragedy, hence his reluctance and strange behavior when he first met the narrator.  First two trains collided and then a young woman died on a train while passing through the cutting. 

Of course the narrator is dubious of the claims the signalman makes.  It's a dismal place, dark at night and surely it is easy for man's imagination to run away from him in a lonely place like this.  When the signalman tells him that just this week the ghost has returned and is surely foretelling yet another tragedy the narrator is skeptical, but the signalman is convinced.

"'What is the danger?  Where is the danger?  There is danger overhanging somewhere on the Line.  Some dreadful calamity will happen.  It is not to be doubted this third time, after what has gone before.  But surely this is a cruel haunting of me.  What can I do?'"

He fears that if he tries to warn those down the line no one will believe him. 

I won't spoil the ending, but there is an ironic twist.  Is it simply coincidence that things finish as they do? 

The story has been adapted to both film and radio and would be a great one to listen to on a cold winter's night, I think.  I am somewhat ambivalent about Dickens, but the story was pitch perfect as a good haunting goes.  Nicely atmospheric and well told.  The illustration above by Edward Gorey captures the mood perfectly, too.

Next up in The Haunted Looking Glass is a story by L.P. Hartley.  I'm already looking forward to it!