Malpertuis, by Jean Ray

 

9781939063702

Wakefield Press, 2021

originally published 1943

translated by Iain White

246 pp

paperback

Sometimes you just find that book that you know is not only unlike anything you've ever read but also makes you wonder just how in the hell you're going to find aything that ever tops it.   This past summer I had the great fortune to have read all four volumes of Belgian author Jean Ray's short-story collections published by Wakefield:  Whisky Tales, Cruise of Shadows: Haunted Stories of Land and Sea, Circles of Dread and The Great Nocturnal, and fell in love almost immediately into the first of these, but it is Malpertuis that's really won my soul as far as Ray's work goes.  

This post will not be a long one since the secret of what lies at the very core of the mystery of the house named Malpertuis should remain exactly that until discovered by the reader.    Divided into two main parts, the story begins with a short introduction written by a thief who had discovered pages of "yellowing, scribbled papers" in a pewter tube while pilfering a monastery.  As he sets out to "sift, to classify, to eliminate" the "work of colossal size,"  he also happened upon a "little notebook, in a neat scholarly hand,  bringing "the number of collaborators to four"  people responsible for the account as a whole. In putting it all together,  now, as he says, this thief-slash editor is "obliged" to add his name 

 "to the role of those Scribes who, without their knowledge (or almost without it),  have given Malpertuis a place in the history of human terror." 

After a brief introductory chapter detailing a shipwreck, the story begins in earnest with the narrative that "constitutes the kernel of the story, around which "the appalling destiny of Jean-Jacques Grandsire that the whole horror of Malpertuis revolves."   And now we're off and into Malpertuis itself, where Jean-Jacques' Uncle Cassave is quite literally on his deathbed with his family all around.  He is obviously a man of great wealth, but his family will not inherit any of it unless they all come to live in the house until their own deaths, and to sweeten the deal they will receive annual allowances.  They may not make any changes to Malpertuis, and there are a few other conditions as well, including that the last surviving inhabitant in the house will acquire Cassave's entire fortune.  

Notably, while this is Jean-Jacques' account, when the name of that house first arises, he becomes anxious:

"Malpertuis! For the first time the name has flowed in a turbid ink from my terrified pen! That house, placed by the most terrible of wills like a full stop at the end of so many human destinies -- I still thrust aside its image! I recoil, I procrastinate rather than bring it to the forefront of my memory!"

He continues:

"What is more, pressed no doubt by the brevity of their earthly term, human beings are less patient than the house; things remain after them, things -- like the stones of which accursed dwellings are made. Human beings are animated by the feverish haste of sleep tumbling through abbatoir gates -- they will not rest until they have taken their place under the great candlesnuffer that is Malpertuis."

There is obviously something terribly wrong about this house, but I had absolutely no clue as to just how wrong things were going to become.  After being plagued by bizarre visions, strange sounds and other occurrences, Jean-Jacques at one point comes to believe he's caught up in a "dream, a nightmare," begging "For the love of God, let me wake up!"  But this is no dream.    While it may sound as if this is prime haunted-house story material, perfect for relaxing curled up in your easy chair while reading,  for me that was definitely not the case -- it is so much more, well beyond your standard fare, with one character describing Malpertuis  as a "kind of 'fold in space...' " and an "abominable point of contact."  

As is the case with his short stories, Jean Ray writes here constructing layers upon interconnecting  layers as he gets closer to the heart of the tale of Malpertuis.   The result is an atmosphere of lingering dread, bleakness and full-on uncanny created by a blending of elements of the mystical, the mythical and the Gothic, leaving the reader with the feeling that perhaps you ought to mentally hold on to a ball of string or lay breadcrumbs as you navigate the labyrinth that is both this house and this story.   I realize that it may not be for everyone -- it does take a lot of patience and time spent thinking through this puzzle of a book and although I thought I'd sussed it a couple of times, what happens here went well beyond anything I could have possibly imagined.  The Wakefield edition has an excellent editor's afterword by Scott Nicolay that by all means should be left until after completing the novel unless, of course, you want to wreck things.  Malpertuis is a wild ride of a novel that I can most heartily recommend to readers of the strange.   I was completely entranced, off in another world altogether as I read it.   

Haunters at the Hearth: Eerie Tales for Christmas Nights (ed.) Tanya Kirk

 

9780712354271

British Library, 2022

305 pp

paperback

It's been a while since I've been here -- vacation and then a subsequent case of covid have sucked up my time pretty much since Thanksgiving and I'm just now feeling up to posting again.  I couldn't let the year go by without reading at least one volume of Christmas ghost stories, which, ever since Valancourt launched its first book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories  has become a tradition I've followed as the holiday approaches.   Sadly, they haven't published  one in a while, but luckily for me, the British Library Tales of the Weird came up with Haunters at the Hearth: Eerie Tales for Christmas Nights, edited by Tanya Kirk.  These stories are not limited to the Victorian era; in this volume there are actually only two in that particuar category, with the entries spanning a whopping 110- year range from 1864 to 1974.   In my very humble reader's opinion, this is one of the best Christmas anthologies the British Library has to offer.

There are a few stories in this book I'd encountered before -- "The Phantom Coach," by Amelia B. Edwards (1864), "Bone to His Bone," by E.G. Swain (1912)  "The Cheery Soul," by Elizabeth Bowen (1942) and Celia Fremlin's "Don't Tell Cissie" from 1974.   As for the highlights here, the most unexpected story and hands-down winner of my own award for most disturbing comes from American writer Mildred Clingerman (1918-1997), an author whose name I'd not heard before.  "The Wild Wood" (1957),  which I had to read twice because I couldn't believe wtf I'd just read, is worth the entire price of this book and inspired me to buy a collection of this author's work called The Clingerman Files, so be prepared for a post about that one in the near future.   Tanya Kirk notes in the brief introduction to this story that "The domestic horror of a seemingly wholesome 1950s scene can be likened to the work of Clingerman's contemporary, Shirley Jackson," but if you ask me, "The Wild Wood" is creepier than anything Jackson ever wrote in her short stories.   Pardon the overused cliché here, but it is like reading Shirley Jackson on steroids ... jeez! It all begins when Margaret Abbott, a mom of two small children, decided that her young family needed to establish its own Christmas traditions, starting with buying a tree.  By the time the kids had become teens, the tradition of buying the tree at Cravolini's which had started when her daughter was just four had "achieved sancrosanctity" over the years, but it is a family custom that Margaret does not look forward to at all.  While "Wild Wood" begins on the mundane side, once the family walks into Cravolini's the first time, things start to take a strange turn as Margaret gets a serious case of déjà vu, knowing "this has happened before." To say any more would be absolutely criminal, but let me just say that it's been a while since a story has punched me in the gut like this one did.  

from Cincinatti Enquirer

Another story that stands out comes from D.H. Lawrence.  "The Last Laugh," first appearing  in 1925 could be an entry in my entirely mythical complete book of Pan-related stories, even though his appearance is  not specifically stated here.  A bowler-hatted man with a faun-like face and a young, "nymphlike" deaf woman leave a house just as the midnight bell is striking, making their way through the snowy streets of Hampstead.  The man hears someone laughing, "the most extraordinary laughter" he'd ever heard; not long after she sees someone she describes only as "him" in the same holly bushes where the laughter had originated.  Strange, inexplicable occurrences follow. Obviously there's more happening here under the weird bits in this tale, but all signs definitely point to the return of the goat-footed god.   And speaking of weird, Eleanor Smith's story "Whittington's Cat" certainly fits that bill.  A young man named Martin is writing a book called Pantomime Through the Ages, although he knows absolutely nothing about the subject.  His interest was sparked after a visit to a curiosity shop where he'd picked up "a series of spangled prints representing characters from popular pantomimes."  Since then he'd developed  "pantomime mania," spending each and every night watching Dick Whittington (which is evidently still going strong) at the Burford Hippodrome.  Martin's life takes a strange detour after one particular performance when it's his turn to be the victim of Dick Whittington's Cat as it did its regular  thing, climbing up to a stage box where "it was wont to engage one or other of the spectators in badinage, much to the delight of the entire audience."    "Whittington's Cat" appears in Smith's collection of stories Satan's Circus, which I will now be pulling from its shelf after reading this tale, which beyond its weirdness is also laced with more than a bit of humor.   Perhaps the most Christmas-y of all of these stories is "Christmas Honeymoon" by Howard Spring (1939), which follows the strange adventure of a couple who have chosen to hike in Cornwall for their honeymoon.  I really can't say too much about this one without giving away too much, but clearly the term "Christmas miracle" applies.    The rest of these tales are also very good, perfect for Yuletide.  You can find the entire table of contents here. 

from The Newark Advertiser

There is not a bad story in this anthology, ranging from ghosts, possessions, hauntings and dark humor to  other strangeness, so really, there is something for everyone to be found here.  The book joins my highly-revered, personal collection of British Library Tales of the Weird volumes, to which I've just

today added two more books (well, pre-ordered them anyway).   I can't speak highly enough of Haunters at the Hearth, and once again Tanya Kirk has done a great job selecting terrific stories for the holiday season.  Very highly recommended. 

Polar Horrors: Strange Tales from the World's Ends (ed.) John Miller

9780712354424

British Library, 2022

340 pp

paperback

It's time for another book in the British Library Tales of the Weird series.   This time we're off to the remoteness of the Arctic and the Antarctic with Polar Horrors: Strange Tales From the World's Ends.  My geek self has a particular fascination with the history of polar exploration, which after a while led to a particular fascination with fiction set in these locations as well, so this book is tailor made.   With the exception of one story from 2019 that editor John Miller has chosen to include here, the remainder of the stories range from the 1830s through the 1940s, with the earliest in the section entitled  "North," reflecting, as Miller notes in his introduction, the "earlier arrival of the Arctic than the Antarctic into European and American writing."  

 Surprisingly, there were only two stories that I'd read before, leaving nine here that are new to me.  The first of these is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's well-known "Captain of the Pole Star," followed by Harriet Prescott Spofford's "The Moonstone Mass," in which a young man decides to attempt the Northwest Passage.  About that one, all I will say is that anyone should think twice before setting sail on a ship named Albatross, especially when heading into unknown territory.  My favorite stories (in order of appearance) begin with  "Skule Skerry" by John Buchan (1928), from his The Runagates Club, which I own but haven't yet read.   An island at  "61° latitude in the west of the Orkneys" is where this story is situated.  The narrator of this story is an ornithologist, Anthony Hurrell,  one of a group of men at a gentlemen's club in London who regale each other with their stories.   He had gone to the Norland Islands one year for the spring migration of certain birds, but unlike other people who "do the same," he had in mind something quite different.  Taking his cue from prior research he'd done and using the Icelandic Saga of Earl Skuli as a guide, he'd  found  a reference to a certain "Isle of the Birds," which was located "near Halsmarness ... on the west side of the Island of Una."  Further research nets a mention of "Insula Avivum... quae est ultima insula et proximao, Abysso," by a "chronicler of the place."  Intrigued, he made his way to Una, and finds exactly the place that had "been selected for attention by the saga-man," Skule Skerry.  He is told that it has an "ill name" --  that "Naebody gangs there," and that "the place wasna canny." While highly atmospheric, it's really all about the journey in this one.  Next on the list and deserving of top honors is the incredibly unsettling "The Third Interne" by Idwal Jones (1938), which appeared in Weird Tales in January of that year, listed as "A brief tale of a surgical horror in the Asiatic wastes of northern Russia."   As Miller notes about this tale, the setting "outside the established limits of civilisation" is perfect for the secretly- unfolding of "darker enterprises." In this story, a group of three science "internes" who had studied under Pavlov set their sights on working with "a far greater scientific man than he,"  a certain Dr. Melchior Pashev, "a brilliant worker in neurology."  Dr. Pashev, as "the third interne" relates, had once cut off a dog's head and managed to keep it alive for three years. It had "functioned beautifully," barking, drinking water, blinking its eyes "in affection," just like a normal dog despite the lack of a body. The three worked hard and saved the money they made in their jobs and finally borrowed enough to get them to Yarmolinsk, where Pashev was busy with his work.  Welcomed warmly, after a while their devotion grows to the point where it knows no bounds.  And that's about all I will say about this one, except that the ending turns things back on the reader, where he or she must judge between two alternatives.   This is one of the strangest and most eerie mad scientist stories I've ever encountered, and not only gave me the shivers but made me feel queasy.   Also deserving of high marks is  John Martin Leahy's "In Amundsen's Tent" from 1928, a story of an horrific series of events left behind in an account "set down" by Robert Drumgold, a member of the Sutherland expedition aiming to be the first to the south pole at the same time that Scott and Amundsen were vying for the same honor.  It begins with a question that asks

"What was it, that thing (if thing it was) which came to him, the sole survivor of the party which had reached the Southerrn Pole, thrust itself into the tent, and issuing, left but the severed head of Drumgold there?" 

Having discovered and read the journal left behind by Drumgold, the narrator of this story and his comrades had decided to suppress the parts that dealt with "the horror in Amundsen's tent," so as not to "cast doubt upon the real achievements of the Sutherland expedition."   But he's decided that it is now time to release it to the world, and thus his story of horror begins.  Don't be surprised if you find something familiar in this one.  

from Patrick Cullis Photography

Three more stories of note,  presented here in no particular order,  deserve a mention.    Although modern (2019),  Aviaq Johnson's  " Iwsinaqtutalik Pictuc: The Haunted Blizzard" is a reminder that there is more than a measure of truth in indigenous legends, which in this case, have seemed to have been forgotten by all except children and elders, with disastrous consequences. I am always  happy to see indigenous literature in any volume, so cheers to the editor.   "A Secret of the South Pole" by Hamilton Drummond (1901) begins with a visit to a former sea captain during a downpour.  The captain loved to tell stories, and on this day, what he's about to say has to do with a strange artifact he calls "the gem of my whole kit."  If any one could tell him what it is, he has offered to give that person "the whole shanty." All he knows about it is that it's "a bit o' the South Pole" and launches into a story about how it came to be in his possession. Once upon a time he  and two fellow sailors were stuck out in the ocean  in an open boat, when they encountered a derelict ship and decided to go on board.  As he tells his attentive audience, "what came after was queer, mighty queer, that I'll admit."  No Flying Dutchman lore here, just weirdness.   Mordred Weir's "Bride of the Antarctic" (1939) centers on an "ill-fated expedition" headed by "Mad Bill Howell," who had forced his wife against her will to go with him to the coast of Victoria Land.  Legend has it that Howell was a cruel man, and during his expedition all perished during the long Antarctic night except Howell and the cook, who were both saved when the ship came to pick them up.  Now another expedition has come to the same place, where strange happenings begin just as the winter darkness falls.  

from ScienceNewsExplores

And now the difficult part, where I'm left with three stories that I just did not care for, but your mileage may, of course, vary.   To be fair, they all certainly fit the bill of "Strange Tales," they are set at one of the "World's Ends," and the main characters of these stories did technically experience some sort of polar horror, each in his or her own way.  Therefore, the editor did his job.  But  as a reader of the weird and the strange, these three just left me cold and unfazed.   In my way of thinking, the opening story of an anthology should set the tone for what's to come, making  me excited about getting to the rest.  Unfortunately, that didn't happen here.  "The Surpassing Adventures of Allan Gordon" by James Hogg started out well, but its novella length and a polar bear with the name of Nancy saving the main character's skin time after time just didn't do it for me.  Quite honestly, this isn't the story I would have led with.    "Creatures of the Night" by Sophie Wenzel Ellis and Malcolm M. Ferguson's "The Polar Vortex" are, like "The Third Interne," tales which concern themselves with rather outré science for the time, but while Jones' story had the power to seriously disturb, these two were lacking in that department.   

from my own designated British reading room

That's the thing about anthologies, though -- they truly are a mixed bag so you don't know what you're going to get.  The eight stories I did enjoy were still well worth the price of the book, so I can't complain too much.   And then there's this:  I've read and loved two other anthologies in this series edited by John Miller (Tales of the Tatttoed: An Anthology of Ink and Weird Woods: Tales From the Haunted Forests of Britain)  so if I wasn't exactly enamored with three stories  in this book, he's still provided me with hours and hours of solid reading entertainment, as has the series as a whole.  

Recommended. 

 

Strange Relics: Stories of Archaeology and the Supernatural, 1895-1954 (eds.) Amara Thornton and Katy Soar

 

"We do not know what queer intricate effects the human soul may have on inanimate things. A physical environment may be charged with psychical stuff as a battery is charged with electricity, and, when the right conductor appears there may be the deuce to pay."

    

      -- John Buchan from "Ho! The Merry Masons"

9781912766581

Handheld Press, 2022

227 pp

paperback

Strange Relics is another fine anthology of strange tales from Handheld Press,  this time linking archaeology to the supernatural.    As the editors reveal in the introduction to this volume, "all but one of the authors ...  called Britain home,"  where remains of the past were "being researched, mapped and excavated,"  spawning not only  historical and archaeological societies but also awakening different writers to the link between the uncanny and the remnants of the past.  Margaret Murray acknowledged that connection in her autobiography noting that "due to the nature of their work, archaeologists were essentially assumed to have supernatural encounters."  And then, of course, there's the fact that many of these stories were written during a time of great interest in "psychical research, spiritualism and the occult," involving intellectuals across a range of different disciplines. The  stories in Strange Relics, as the editors explain, move well beyond the "discovery-led trope in which a naive (white male) scholar/excavator brings to light that-which-should-be-left-buried," instead focusing on capturing  " 'fantastic' ; one might say magical, encounters with the material remains of the past..."  and it is through these encounters that "the barrier between the present and the past becomes thin, and strange happenings result." 

Strange happenings indeed!   I'm sure the people in these stories would never have been the same after experiencing the weird phenomena that crops up throughout the book via "horrible" relics

 "from a Neolithic rite to ancient Egyptian religion to Roman battle remains to medieval masonry to some uncanny ceramic tiles in a perfectly ordinary American sun lounge..."

 and much, much more.  

Readers who are well into weird fiction will recognize pretty much all of the authors whose work appears here; I only found one whose work I'd not read before,  Alan JB Wace,  and it's likely because he was an archaeologist, not a writer of weird tales, whose wife had put together a book called Greece Untrodden after his death containing stories that he and his field colleagues would tell each other after their evening meals.    I've previously enjoyed seven of the twelve stories found here, but rereading them in Strange Relics was  a pleasure:  "The Shining Pyramid" by Arthur Machen, "Through The Veil" by Arthur Conan Doyle,  "View From a Hill" by MR James, "Curse of the Stillborn," by Margery Lawrence (which I must say is a great tale in which someone truly gets what they deserve) as part of her Number Seven Queer Street,  "The Cure" by Eleanor Scott (from her Randall's Round) and  "Cracks of Time" by Dorothy Quick, which I first encountered in The Horned God: Weird Tales of the Great God Pan,  edited by Michael Wheatley and published by the British Library just this year and finally, "The Ape," by EF Benson.   

from Tea and Rosemanry

Speaking of Pan, he is well represented here.    HD Everett's "The Next Heir"  concerns a young man, Richard Quinton, who answers an advertisement proclaiming that he may hear something to his advantage if he meets with a solicitor representing another Mr. Quinton, a relative in England.   It seems that the elder Mr. Quinton is looking for an heir to whom he might pass on his estate, but as young Richard will come to learn, there are certain conditions that must be met for this to happen.  In this story, the author approaches the great god Pan differently than in any other story I've read about him; I won't say how but it is certainly unique as well as thought provoking. "Roman Remains" by Algernon Blackwood also contains a Pan figure, and we are clued in to this right away as we're told that "Queer things seem to go on in a little glen called Goat Valley" and that the "superstitious" locals avoid it in the daytime.    Enough said about this one except that it is truly a gem among Blackwood's tales.  

Not a Pan-related story, in "The Golden Ring" by Alan J.B. Wace a man is gifted a golden ring on a string of yarn by three women and given orders not to lose, sell or cut it.   He finds the whole thing "rather silly" but trust me, there is nothing at allsilly about what happens next.  This story delves not only into mythology, but academic debate as well.  

The Stone Tape from Freedonia

 I positively loved John Buchan's "Ho! The Merry Masons." Edward Leithen (now with the Thursday Club, the successor to the Runagates Club) relates a bizarre incident that happened to him on a visit to his friend Barnes Lacey ("with an antiquarian conscience") at his house named Scaip.  While on a walk to see a nearby church with "several Lacey tombs" at Fanways,  Leithen finds the village with its "string of ancient homesteads, each sending up its drift of smoke from its stone chimneys"  to be "snug and comfortable," but this description does not extend to the church.  His host finds it "A noble house of God," but swears that "the Devil had a good deal to do with the building of it."  Turns out that the medieval masons may have been "under the special protection of the Church," so as to secure a heavenly afterlife, but it wasn't exactly Christianity that served as their inspiration as much as "Pagan miscreants."  What does one do, exactly, when the associated rites of these masons find themselves embedded into the "very framework" of one's medieval-era home, "built out of the heart of darkness," the mortar "wet with tears and blood, and death had plied the mallets."     Think Stone Tape  -- I first encountered this term earlier this month while reading Will Maclean's novel The Apparition Phase then watched the film/teleplay written by Nigel Kneale and was seriously blown away.  That was 1972; evidently Buchan had figured it out in 1933, and the concept goes back even further -- apparently in 1911 (according to the introduction), as one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research had recognized that "those now living" who may be "endowed with some psychic sensitiveness" might pick up on echoes or phantoms in places where "some kind of imprint on material structures" has been left.  

 

from CapriTiberio Palace

My vote for most disturbing story in this anthology goes to Rose Macaulay's "Whitewash."  While vacationing in the Mediterranean on the Isle of Capri, a woman reading The Story of San Michele expresses to her aunt  that "it's nice to know what an excellent man Tiberius actually was, after all one was brought up to think of him."  Evidently, Suetonius was all wrong about him -- as she notes, "Tiberius has been cleared" and he was in truth a "saintly" emperor.  But after what was supposed to have been a refreshing swim in one of the caves ...   Super shivers from this one, and even better, the aunt's take on whitewashing is more than relevant to our present.

 

Editors Amara Thornton and Katy Soar have selected some great stories for inclusion in this volume; I can only imagine the huge amount of time and effort they've put into making their choices.  I have to say that  Handheld Press is fast becoming one of my favorite small indie presses, and each of their  "Handheld Weirds" that I've had the pleasure to have read have turned out to be absolutely awesome.  I have discovered many new-to-me authors from the past and  many stories I'd not previously encountered, which is of course something I always look forward to in my reading.   Strange Relics is a must read for anyone who enjoys weird tales or strange fiction; in this book the added angle of archaeology takes these stories to another level indeed.  

definitely recommended.  

From the Abyss: Weird Fiction, 1907-1945 by D.K. Broster (ed.) Melissa Edmundson

 

"C'est le Grand Abîme, voyez-vous -- fini!"

9781912766567

Handheld Press, 2022

296 pp

paperback

Handheld Press is back with yet another collection of eerie tales  by a woman writer from yesteryear.  From the Abyss focuses on the work of author D.K. Broster (1877-1950),  whose stories in her 1932 collection A Fire of Driftwood caught the eye of critic HC Harwood who said (as quoted in Melissa Edmundson's introduction) that 

"In Miss Broster's short stories there is ... a lot of kick. I refer more particularly to 'Clairvoyance' and 'The Promised Land;' either of which should have established the author as a really first-rate horrifier; a petticoated Poe."

Both of those stories are found in this book, and yes indeedy, there most certainly is a "lot of kick,"  so let's just start there.  As in the best weird stories, these two tales (and for that matter all of the tales included here) tend to start out in the realm of the ordinary and the mundane, but Broster inches the reader ever so slowly to  that point where ordinary takes a strange detour.  

  In "Clairvoyance"  an Australian man and his wife have moved to England, where they are in the process of house hunting.  Mr. Pickering can't believe that the house they're looking at as the story begins has remained unoccupied for five years -- it is completely furnished and chock full of beautiful antiques, complete with a lake view.  The estate agent tells the couple that there's been plenty of interest, but there was "always a something" that turned prospective buyers or tenants away.  Mr. Pickering is all for taking the place, but Mrs. Pickering senses that not all is right there, and reminds her husband of the frightened look they got from a girl when they'd asked for directions to the place, asking him if it's "supposed to be haunted."  Pickering laughs it off, at least at first, until Mrs. P notices a strange stain underneath a rug and asks about it.  Her reaction is so strong that she begs Mr. P to get her out of there, and to have nothing "to do with the house" as "something dreadful has happened in this room."   Mr. P, noting that "she was not by nature an hysterical or fanciful woman," then becomes frightened himself, and away they go.  Evidently the Pickerings had never heard of the "Strode Manor Tragedy," which all started with that "business ... what the devil is called? -- clairvoyance."   By now I've read countless haunted house stories, but this one, well, expected the completely unexpected.  "Kick"? For sure.    "The Promised Land" starts out innocuously enough with a small group of people ("specimens of the truly cultivated traveller")  admiring the famous "Swoon of Saint Catherine" in the Church of San Domenico in Siena, interrupted by the arrival of two "middle-aged ladies," one of whom chases the group away by quoting out loud from her Baedeker.  Talking about it shortly afterwards, one of the three notices that the second woman "didn't look as though she were enjoying Siena much."  Quite observant on her part, actually, because Ellen (the woman about whom she was talking), was not having a good time at all, a surprise since going to Italy, for her "The Promised Land,"  had always been her dream.  For years she'd waited, and her opportunity had finally arrived.  Unfortunately for Ellen, her dream had become a nightmare in the company of her domineering, smothering and browbeating cousin  Caroline Murchinson, who had taken  it upon herself to accompany Ellen on her travels.   For Ellen the trip to Italy 

"should have been the one shining oasis in the sand of a dull life, and instead it been but a bitter mirage"

because "Everything that Caroline touched lost its charm, its beauty, its freshness." From Siena the plan is to travel to Florence, which is "to Ellen's expectation the crown of all their seeing," but she knows instinctively that Caroline will ruin the experience.  That night, sleeping under a mosquito net, she realizes that she must have some breathing space  and listens to the mosquito that begins to talk to her all through night.  While this one has nothing of the supernatural about it, it's still one of the most powerful stories in the book, since sometimes the earthly horrors we face are far, far worse than their unearthly counterparts.   

 

the author, Dorothy Kathleen Broster

While there isn't a single story in this collection that I did not like, my favorite is the titular "From the Abyss," largely because it's so visible in my head from the first page onward and also because it is so out there, a definite plus.   Four friends come together for dinner and conversation at the flat of one Stephen Ellison, where the topic on the table is "dissociated personality."  The talk is obviously making Ellison uncomfortable, and when two of the friends leave without the third, he goes on to explain why.  It seems that some three years earlier, his fianceé Daphne Lawrence, had decided to go on vacation at the French Riviera with her friend Mary.  They had stopped in Nice, not as a destination per se but because it was central to any number of expeditions they might choose to undertake.  Daphne had told Ellison not to expect much in the way of writing from her end, as she and Mary planned to stay busy doing all manner of things, helped out by a young American guy with his own car, "which he more or less put at their disposal."   The next week he was shocked to see her face on a newspaper under headlines that told of an "English girl in fatal Riviera motor smash" in which the driver and the car had gone down into a "bottomless ravine."  Mary, it seems, had been thrown clear after the driver had collided with a motorcoach, and according to her father, was now on her way home after the accident.  Daphne gets home fine, but Stephen notices that she's changed, and not for the better.  Some time goes by with Stephen still trying to figure out what's up with Daphne (who now doesn't even want to marry him), when Daphne's father comes to visit with some strange news from a friend near Nice.  It seems that a young woman with a British accent  swears that she had gone down with the driver into the ravine, and yet had managed to climb up a nearly sheer precipice deemed "quite unscaleable." She can't remember much else due to memory loss.     About the time that Stephen decides he'll travel to France to investigate, Daphne tells him of her strange dreams in which she sees "a girl like me -- only she is not me --"  For me, this one just screams weird, and I seriously had to think about that ending for a while. 

Admittedly, those stories are on my top tier of favorites, but there are still eight more to enjoy; out of these the only one I'd read previously is "Couching at the Door"  but its inclusion here didn't dampen my enthusiasm for another read.  Three weeks after Decadent poet Augustine Marchand returns from Prague, he finds himself being stalked by what looks like at first a "piece of brown fluff" that eventually grows into something like a fur boa.  Now that might sound a bit silly, but there's nothing at all silly about what happens when Lawrence Storey, an illustrator, goes off to discover "les choses cachées" that Marchand reveals will "liberate" his "immense artistic gifts from the shackles which still bind them."  Seriously awesome story with an even more awesome ending.   And then there's "The Taste of Pomegranates" which wins my vote for most disturbing, in which two sisters vacationing in the Dordogne make a date with a French archaeologist to visit his current project, a cave by the name of the grotte de la Palombière. On the appointed day, the two women show up, along with a writer doing research in the area for his book on the Hundred Years War, but there's no sign of the archaeologist.  After a while the writer goes off to look for him, leaving the sisters behind. Rain forces them to take cover, and while they wait, one of the sisters decides she wants to explore the cave.  Absolutely not a good idea, as it happens, but of this one I will say no more.  

I seem to have joyfully landed  in my reading element here with this book, with its blending of the supernatural, the weird, obsession, history, art and social commentary but more to the point, with the discovery of an author from long ago whose work is new to me.  My many thanks to Handheld Press for my e-copy; while their website offers August 9th as the release date, I found a hard copy at Amazon which now sits with the other books I've bought from this publisher.  Some day I would love to just sit and chat with Melissa Edmundson, who somehow manages to find the best authors from bygone days, bringing them to the attention of modern readers.   From the Abyss is truly a gem of a collection that should absolutely not be missed by readers of the weird and the strange; it is also a book I can certainly and highly recommend.  

Wisteria Cottage, by Robert M. Coates

9781948405607
Valancourt Books, 2020
originally published 1948
189 pp

paperback

"I knew there was some way that they could be saved." 

It was the second day of Richard Baurie's three-day walking trip in the Long Island Sound area when he first came upon Wisteria Cottage, set among the dunes overlooking the beach below.  It was that moment when,  according to the small bit of the Psychiatrist's Report which opens this novel, "even though faintly," a  "criminal intention" first entered his brain.  There is no clue as to what his "criminal intention" may have been, nor as to why Richard even merits a psychiatrist's report, but it should be apparent at once that we're not dealing with someone psychologically sound here. I have to say up front that Wisteria Cottage is disturbing with a capital D, because from the very beginning the author places his readers into the mind of this young man whose sense of reality is seriously distorted, and keeps us there as Richard's  mind begins to slowly but steadily unravel and deteriorate over the course of the summer spent at Wisteria Cottage.

Richard, who writes poetry and has a part-time job at a bookstore in New York City, has inveigled his way into the lives of  Florence Hackett and her adult daughters Louisa and Elinor.  He'd met Florence at a grocery store, and it didn't take long until he'd "come to have the run of the apartment."   It was on the night before his three-day trip that Florence had happened to mention to Richard that while he was away he might look for  a "nice place" for them to rent for a month or so, offering Richard the opportunity to spend summer weekends with them.   Having discovered Wisteria Cottage, Richard feels that now

"all he wanted in the world, at this moment, was to have them rent the place for the summer, and for him to spend the summer there with them.  It was the right thing, the perfect thing; more than that it was the just thing for them to do."

Being with the Hacketts at the cottage, he believes, would "straighten them out, quell the evil forces that were working among them."

What he views as these "evil forces working among them" I won't divulge and nor will I say anything more about the plot.  I will only add that in his self-appointed quest to "save" these women,  the "summer of pleasant companionship and fun" the Hacketts are expecting will turn out to be anything but as "their relaxing summer holiday will soon turn into a terrifying nightmare."

from Buckingham Books

In her informative introduction which should not be missed but read after finishing this book, Professor Mathilde Roza states that the most "memorable aspect" of Wisteria Cottage is the "approach" taken by the author:  "never hysterical but always low-key," and quotes Commonweal's remark that in this book

"No tiled asylums, no mental bedlams are employed to wring the reader's emotions"

 and once I'd read the intro,  I realized that yes, this sentence describes to a tee why I found this book so disturbing.   I've read plenty of fiction that hones in on the disintegration of an individual's psyche, but Richard Baurie's case so unnerved me to the point that I had to make this a daytime-only read.    Professor Roza  also explains how the novel reflects concerns extant in post-World War II America, including "popular culture's deepening interest in psychiatry and psychoanalysis," which is very much apparent throughout the story.

  Very highly recommended, but beware -- it took everything I had and several days after reading Wisteria Cottage to get it out from under my skin.  As I said -- disturbing with a capital D.

******

from Film Noir of the Week

I also watched the film based on this novel, Edge of Fury (1958), and whoever chose Michael Higgens to play the role of Richard totally nailed it.    It's available on youtube.  

time to gather 'round the yuletide fire ... Spirits of the Season: Christmas Hauntings (ed.) Tanya Kirk

9780712352529
British Library, 2019
318 pp

paperback

Not to steal thunder from either this book or the British Library, but ever since Valancourt came out with their first Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, I've sort of made it my yearly mission to read this type of thing around Christmas time, in a very small way carrying on a tradition which, as the editor of this volume notes, began orally, changing to print in the early 1820s.   (Speaking of Valancourt, Dr. Tara Moore, who edited the above-mentioned book,  also offers her thoughts on the matter in a 2018 podcast, which you can find here.)

As you will notice from the cover photo, this is yet another volume included in the British Library Tales of the Weird series, of which I have become a huge fangirl.  Believe it or not,  I've actually had this book in my possession since August, but through sheer willpower I somehow managed to put off reading it until now, not an easy task.  The good news is that it was completely worth the wait.  Many hours of pure reading pleasure are to be found here, and I'm not exaggerating.  The stories in Spirits of the Season are all somehow connected to events that occur around Christmas time,  and of the fourteen stories in this book, I had previously read only five: "The Four-Fifteen Express," by Amelia B. Edwards (1867), "Number Ninety," by B.M. Croker (1895), E. Nesbit's "The Shadow" from 1905,  "The Kit-Bag," by Algernon Blackwood (1908), and "Smee," by A.M. Burrage (1929), leaving nine new-to-me tales to discover, which is always a good thing.

One thing I suppose I ought to mention is that not all of these tales are ghost stories per se; as the title suggests, they are "Christmas hauntings," with more than just the shadow of the supernatural hanging over them.    Another thing I should say is that it seems as if not all of these stories were written with a mind to scaring the pants off the reader, as evidenced by "The Curse of the Catafalques," by F. Anstey (1882), Frank Stockton's "The Christmas Shadrach" (1891), and most especially "The Demon King," by J.B. Priestly (1931), in which one particular scene had me absolutely giggling out loud.  I think it's perfectly fine when good, supernaturally-tinged stories don't always end up on the scarier side;  I also think that it's a pity that people often dismiss them simply because they didn't get the fright they expected, often missing the underlying points of the story.  But enough of that.

from The Telegraph

My candidate for best story in this volume is M.R. James' "The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance" from 1913.  From what I gather while researching this one, it isn't among the most popular of James' stories -- more's the pity since it's quite the shocker.  As the story begins,  W.R., the narrator of this tale, writes to his brother Robert that he is unable to join him for the Christmas holidays because it seems that their uncle the Rector has disappeared, and that he has been called to join in the search for the missing curate.  After a few days with no results and the police having left town,  W.R. begins to accept the inevitable.  In writing to his brother on Christmas day,  he tells of a "bagman" he encountered who shares his thoughts on a "capital Punch and Judy Show" that W.R. must not miss "if it comes" ... which, in a way, it does all too soon, just not in the way one would expect.  No antiquaries here.   Read this one slowly, savor it,  read it again, resavor.

The full table of contents is as follows, with starred titles new to me:

"The Four-Fifteen Express," by Amelia B. Edwards -- anthologized many times, but well worth the time once again

* "The Curse of the Catafalques," by F. Anstey -- snerk

* "Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk," by Frank Cowper, in which a man gets lost while duck hunting and lives through a horrific night

* "The Christmas Shadrach," by Frank R. Stockton.  Light, a bit silly, but edging on the strange side with purpose. Beware of what you might find in a curio shop...

"Number Ninety" by B.M. Croker, one of my favorite ghost story writers; here the action takes place in a house no one will rent no matter how low the cost

"The Shadow," by E. Nesbit, another sad tale by this author

"The Kit-Bag," by Algernon Blackwood -- after a long court case involving a killer with a "dreadful face," the private secretary of the legal firm involved decides it's time for a vacation.  Whether or not he'll get his kit-bag packed beforehand is another story. 

* "The Story of a Disappearance and An Appearance," by M.R. James

* "Boxing Night" by EF Benson, in which dreams play the major role -- another example of the underlying story here being worth much more than the potential scare

* "The Prescription," by Marjorie Bowen -- although a wee bit predictable, still very much worth the read

* "The Snow," by Hugh Walpole, in which a wife learns the hard way that she should have listened to someone else's advice.    

"Smee," by A.M. Burrage, a favorite of the Christmas ghost story circuit, with very good reason. 

* "The Demon King," by J.B. Priestley -- the "stolid Bruddersford crowd" definitely gets its money's worth  and more during a pantomime and the Happy Yorkshire Lasses make their debut dance appearance 

* "Lucky's Grove," by H.R. Wakefield.   This story came in second in my personal favorites lineup.  The Braxtons'  land agent finds and cuts down the perfect tree for their family Christmas celebration; unfortunately, no one bothered to tell him that he shouldn't have taken it from Lucky's Grove.  A fine story this one, so much so that I'm actually considering buying a copy of the old Arkham House edition of The Clock Strikes Twelve to read more of Wakefield's work. 

from the Library of Congress

 Spirits of the Season makes for great Yuletide reading, but if you missed it this holiday season, not to worry.  It can be enjoyed just as much any time of the year, and for true fans of these old stories -- the famous and the "unjustly obscure" -- it is a definite no-miss.  Editor Tanya Kirk has certainly made some excellent choices for inclusion here, and they are very much appreciated by this reader.


Just one more thing: for those who may not know, Ms.  Kirk also has another volume of stories called The Haunted Library, which picks up many stories that have never been anthologized.  Buy button clicked.  Expect more on that book to come later.

This is a good one: Number Seven Queer Street, by Margery Lawrence

Mycroft and Moran, 1969
236 pp
hardcover
originally published 1945, Robert Hale


"People do generally come to me as a last hope!"


There's nothing like getting to the end of a book only to discover that it's an abridged edition, which is exactly what happened to me with this one.  First panic set in, and then I got busy trying to find the remaining two stories that had come with the 1945 original.  After a little sleuthing, I found a modern edition so I could finish the book as it was intended to be read.

from the IFSDB

It's a bit confusing, actually, since in the 1945 original shown on the right (Robert Hale), there are seven stories; in the 1969 edition I have there are five, and in the Ash-Tree Press kindle version,  Ash-Tree Press Occult Detectives Volume Two: The First Casebook of Miles Pennoyer, there are six.   Luckily between the Mycroft and Moran edition and the Ash-Tree Press edition, I managed to read them all.  There is yet another edition of four later stories featuring Miles Pennoyer, Master of Shadows (1959) that to my knowledge has not been reprinted since it was published, and according to Biblio.com, there was a twelfth Pennoyer story published after the author's death.   I'm really hoping that Ash-Tree decides to publish (as promised at the end of the Kindle version of Volume 1),  The Second Casebook of Miles Pennoyer, which the blurb says "will be available soon."    Not soon enough for me -- even though these stories can definitely become a bit long winded at times, as the author starts to hone in on the actual problems solved by the "psychic doctor" and their cures, it's eyes on the page without budging an inch.

Ash-Tree Press, 2013
Kindle edition, B00H599QN6
234 pp

In the foreword which is given by Jerome Latimer, the fictional pupil, assistant, and chronicler of  the exploits of  Miles Pennoyer, we are given a clue as to the author's influences in writing this book:

"There are not many people who are fortunate enough to know these selfless and splendid people, the psychic doctors -- and there are still fewer books that record the wonders they can do and are still doing.  Algernon Blackwood's book John Silence was one of the first, and Dion Fortune's book The Secrets of Dr. Taverner is another..."

 The title of the book comes from Pennoyer's address, No. 7 Queer Street, where Pennoyer lives with his housekeeper Friedl and his dog Hans; it is a "top-floor eyrie" perfectly suited to his need to be alone, without "too close contact with the crowd."   According to Latimer, Pennoyer is  a "psychic doctor -- one who deals  in ills that beset the soul rather than the body of man;" Brian Stableford says in his entry on Margery Lawrence in St. James Guide to Horror Ghost and Gothic Writers that   Pennoyer's "ostensible purpose" is to "put an end to the supernatural disturbances by healing the experiential wounds they symbolize." (350)   Over the course of these seven stories, he arrives on the scene to try to understand what is causing someone to act the way they do, but before he can do that and effect a cure, he must get to the root of his or her psychic disturbance. Sometimes he is able to do this alone; at other times he must call on "Them," aka "the Masters" for guidance and help.

In "The Case of the Bronze Door," Pennoyer reveals to Latimer how he came to be the owner of  a certain Chinese screen, a gift from "a patient" who marriage started going very wrong once the piece was put in his study.   "The Case of the Haunted Cathedral" finds him investigating a new cathedral which is haunted by not just one, but two spirits, keeping the practitioners from wanting to worship there.  An invitation in the mail prompts Pennoyer to tell Latimer about "The Case of Ella McLeod," whose strange attachment to a stray dog and her strange knowledge of Ancient Greek gives Pennoyer his first clues as to what's going on.  And then we come to "The Case of the White Snake," which to be really honest, absolutely disturbed me at first because of the device used in this story, which honestly made me question her judgment here.  I won't go there so as not to spoil things, but even Brian Stableford notes that the symbolism was "sanitized."  Yikes.

Next is my favorite of the collection, "The Case of the Moonchild."  To bring Stableford into the discussion again, he remarks that this one was "obviously borrowed from Alistair Crowley," and it shows.  Talk about creepy! In this story, Latimer gets a call from Pennoyer to come to Exeter, where the doctor is visiting an old friend.  He asks Latimer to bring the "bogey-bag," a nickname for a bag

"filled with all sorts of oils and unguents, queer-looking metal contraptions, robes and headgear, various documents, and a book or two, packets of herbs, odd-looking amulets, all manner of things that might be needed by my colleague in his frequent battles with the Forces of the Outer Dark..."

Obviously something weird is happening where Pennoyer is, and Latimer will get his chance to discover what it is when he gets involved in the case on his arrival.

At this point, I bought the Kindle edition for the remaining two stories, "The Case of the Young Man with the Scar" and "The Case of the Leannabh Shidhe."  In the first one, Pennoyer takes on the strange case of a young fellow whose prospective father-in-law wants the boy's "trouble" to be "cleared up" before the relationship can go any further.  It seems that the young man has a strange scar that "comes and goes," one that takes on the shape of a "dull red snake curling round the arm." Possibly the most pulpish story of the seven (and to be honest, for me, the most fun because of the all of the elements involved in this tale), Pennoyer will have to depend on the word of a strange source to get to the root of the scar's random appearance.   The last story finds Pennoyer in the guise of a tutor to a child who

"had got the entire village, besides his mother and the staff of the Manor House, entirely under his thumb. They dreaded and feared without in the least knowing what they feared..."

 It seems that "if Master Patrick's crossed, and especially if he's struck, something nasty'll happen to whoever touches him," reminding me so much of the boy played by Billy Mumy in that episode of  The Twilight Zone called "It's a Good Life."   The doctor and the family have to travel to Ireland to unravel this one, as it turns out, on Halloween.

On the strength of these stories I bought Margery Lawrence's Nights of the Round Table, The Terraces of Night, and The Floating Cafe. While it may not be great literature, Number Seven Queer Street is by an author whose works have been left to drift into obscurity, and that's just a shame.  I agree with  Brian Stableford, who says that "an eclectic collection of her best supernatural short stories...is long overdue."  I'd be first in line to buy it, for sure.

Recommended highly for readers of lost or forgotten authors of dark/supernatural fiction, who also don't mind the pulpy side of horror.

The Other Passenger, by John Keir Cross

9781943910977
Valancourt Books, 2017
originally published 1944
261 pp

hardcover

"We go, you see; and with us goes always Another Passenger. He is beside us in every deepest action and speaks through us in every fateful announcement. There is no escaping him or his influence. His voice whispers suddenly in the night, his presence intangibly lingers at our shoulder when we feel ourselves most alone...  We go; and he -- the Other Passenger -- is always at our side."


In the introduction to The Other Passenger, writer and blogger J.F. Norris from Pretty Sinister Books (which has been responsible many times over for titles added to my out-of-control tbr pile) says that

"John Keir Cross is a master at capturing and evoking the indescribable, of exposing the forbidden desires and the criminal impulses, of showing us the people who fall in love with the macabre.  The Other Passenger will take you on whirlwind tour from dizzying heights of delirium and whimsy to the chasms where lie tortured souls forever lost."

 I couldn't agree more.  It is one of those rare books which from the very beginning pushed me to an edge where I don't normally find myself while reading and then kept me there until it was all over.  I knew this book and I were meant for each other after reading the first story, "The Glass Eye," which for a while there gave me an eerie sense of déjà vu before I remembered I'd seen it played out on TV somewhere -- a quick bit of research and I discovered that it was an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I pulled out my  DVD of Season 3 and  watched it again, and yes, there's Jessica Tandy as Julia, at the theater to catch Max Collodi's show.  Back to the book for another read and from

from Shatner's Toupee

that point on, I knew I was in good hands so I just surrendered and let John Keir Cross take me where ever he was going to go.

Since J.F. Norris has completely captured the essence of this book in the paragraph I quoted above, there's really not much left to say here, except that each and every story has some sort of gut punch, sometimes quiet, sometimes full force.  While every story in this book is beyond excellent, my favorite is "Miss Thing and the Surrealist."  Like many of the other tales in this collection, the true horror in that one sneaks up on you only at the end as you brace yourself from the start, knowing that something's going to happen, but you just don't know what that something's going to be.  You might think you know, but then everything changes in an instant.  The stories here all feature some sort of  tragic figure, adding a touch of poignancy to their situations,  but then things begin to turn toward the horrific as you come to realize the sense of doom that engulfs them.  It's like Cross has looked into a variety of human souls and has brought forth the darkest or most tragic among them. The eerieness of this book is so finely crafted that, as I said earlier, it will keep you on the edge and on edge until that final page has been turned.

Once again, my thanks to Valancourt for bringing this book back into print.

The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares -- a genius novel if ever there was one.

9781590170571
NYRB Classics, 2003
originally published 1940, as La invención de Morel
translated by Suzanne Jill Levine
103 pp

paperback (read earlier this month)

"The habits of our lives make us presume that things will happen in a certain foreseeable way, that there will be a vague coherence in the world."  -- 65


At 103 pages, one would think this book would be a very easy read, but that just isn't the case. It demands a second read (which I did) and probably a third (which I didn't do); its brevity belies the great  depth that the author has brought to this story.

There's not much I can say here without giving away the twist in this book, so this post will be a short one.  Casares has combined a number of different elements here that together don't really allow for The Invention of Morel to be pigeonholed into a single genre -- there are elements of suspense, sci-fi,  metaphysics, philosophy and even romance, so to try to give it a label is foolhardy at best. It is also dark, weird and great all rolled together.

A fugitive escaping from Venezuela with "a life so unbearable" has made his way to an island somewhere in the Pacific. It is a place where Chinese pirates will not go, nor will it ever be visited by "the white ship of the Rockefeller Institute" because it is "known to be the focal point of a mysterious disease."  A group of people had landed there in 1924 and then left it, after having built a museum, a chapel, and a swimming pool. The narrator is completely alone, isolated from the rest of humanity.  But then, everything changes, as he discovers that there are other people on this island.  He takes to watching them as they interact, taking a "certain fascination" in doing so since it had been a very long time since he'd seen anyone at all; he is also worried that they might discover him and deliver him to the authorities.  After a time, the fugitive begins to take the most notice of one of their number, a woman, Faustine, who "watches the sunset every afternoon."  Watching her changes his attitude from one of "nothing to hope for" to its opposite; he decides to make contact with her, risking his freedom in doing so.  It is, as he says, a move that could easily send him back to his past, but he's willing to do it because, as he says, "anything would be preferable to the utter purgatory" he lives in now.  Everything takes off from the point at which he actually works up the courage to speak to her but finds himself ignored, as if he doesn't exist.

original illustration, from the novel -- Faustine

To go any further plotwise would involve key spoilers, and if I say any more there wouldn't be a point in anyone reading this book so we'll stop here. Casares poses a multitude of metaphysical questions in this very short work, which, with apologies I also won't disclose for fear of ruining things;  he also makes some interesting social and political observations vis a vis the narrator's interest in Malthusian theory.  Let's just say that it is one of the best and certainly one of the most surreal stories I've ever read, and to say that it was unputdownable would be an understatement.  ARRGGHHH!  It's SO frustrating not to be able to talk about this book because it's THAT good and I want to spill my guts because it is THAT good.  But my hands are tied and my lips are sealed.

oh well. Just read it and you'll see exactly what I mean.