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.  

The Villa and the Vortex: Supernatural Stories, 1916-1924 by Elinor Mordaunt (ed.) Melissa Edmundson

 

9781912766420

Handheld Press, 2021

306 pp

paperback

Melissa Edmundson is the editor of two volumes of weird stories of yesteryear written by women, Women's Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940 and Women's Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937.  I have both of those books (and I'll be reading at least the first volume this month),  so when I first heard about this one, I made a quick hit on the preorder button.  I was not at all disappointed; in fact, reading The Villa and The Vortex gave me hours of pleasure.  

From the editor's introduction:

"Elinor Mordaunt is responsible for an eclectic and wide-ranging output of supernatural fiction that rivals the best writing by her contemporaries.  Yet in the decades following her death in 1942, Mordaunt was neglected and largely forgotten as an author, her work omitted from the subsequent anthologies that helped to ensure the reputations of fellow writers."  She continues, saying that "This major voice within the supernatural genre has been neglected for far too long, and it is time that her work returned to a wider audience."  As the editor also notes, "Mordaunt's short stories showcase a variety of otherworldly, supernatural entities as she drew inspiration from folklore, myth, legend, and history."   Most definitely my kind of book and my kind of writer. 

While  I won't be going through every story here, I will shine a light on my favorites, beginning with  "The Weakening Point"  from 1916, which opens this collection.    While birthdays are normally occasions for celebrations, it seems that for Bond Challice, they are met with a most particularly horrific and recurring nightmare. The situation has been ongoing since his first birthday, and every year since then, the approach of the day causes him abject fear, which in turn leads to outright paralysis.  It's more than crippling: his terror  prevents him from living life to its fullest and leads to changes to his personality.  His parents are in complete despair, having watched him suffer; as his father says at one point, "A Challice -- the last of all the Challices -- to go to hell for a dream!"  Tension builds slowly in this one, and by the time Bond decides it's time to face his fear, well, I don't mind saying that I was on the edge of my chair.  Jeez, I wish I could say more about this one, but all I will reveal is that the ending tipped this story into the weird zone for sure.    My vote for most frightening story in this volume is "Luz," from 1922, which is set in London and begins with a young woman with a strange dislike and fear of a particular blind man who passes by her flat at a regular time each night.  Normally, she says, she has always felt "acute sympathy" for "all who are maimed and defrauded; above all for the blind," but there's something in the "tap-tap of his stick" that sets her on edge and makes her run for home to ensure that she's inside before he walks by her flat each evening.   She's never seen the man, but she is curious about where he goes each time, for some reason convinced that he  

" reached the scene of his day's labours -- pleasure, solicitation, whatever it might be -- by some altogether uncanny means; that his every action, his whole life, indeed, was nefarious."

 One February night she finds herself coming home from a tea party, "enveloped by a thick yellow fog," and becomes turned around, completely lost, when a stranger she can't see offers help; it's then that she hears the familiar "tap-tap" next to her.   Let me just say that I thought I knew what was going to happen here, but as it turns out, I was not only wrong but I would never have guessed it in a million years.  The bizarre, disorienting travels through foggy London streets add even more of a chill to this story, which would be a superb addition to any collection of weird tales.   

from photosample, by Kalin Kalpachev (if you go there, buy him a coffee)

Two haunted house stories made my favorites list as well:  "Four Wallpapers," from 1924, is set in Tenerife, where a couple who had bought a house sight unseen are discouraged by the lack of progress the local workers have made by the time they arrive,  even though they'd been sending regular payments for the work.  Mrs. Erskine decides that she'll have to buckle down and get things done herself; for Mr. Erskine it's all too much so he spends most of his time in the local hotel.  He particularly hates the wallpaper, but his wife promises him it will all be gone shortly.  But even as she's starting to strip it away, she becomes utterly fascinated as the house begins to spill its secrets, layer by layer.    "The Fountain" (1922) features a house that becomes haunted over the course of the story, but what elevates this one is the author's incorporation of ancient nature beliefs into the story.  "The Villa," the final story,  is also not your typical haunted house -- here, as Edmundson notes in her introduction, Mordaunt describes this villa in Croatia as a "sentient being: hating, revenging, waiting."  The original owner of a beautiful house in Croatia falls victim to a death wish, so that another owner might take possession of it.  The house, however, isn't happy about the change in ownership and takes its revenge over the next few generations. 

Although I've only offered a very brief sketch, all of the stories in this volume run psychologically deep and often hit at the very souls of her characters.    The ones I didn't mention in this volume are also quite good, and I'm not at all surprised that Mordaunt's stories, as the editor notes, were "favourably compared" to those written by Algernon Blackwood and HG Wells.  What is surprising is that Mordaunt is so underappreciated with her work rarely appearing in anthologies, because her stories lend themselves so  nicely to any number of different facets of the supernatural and the weird.  Save the excellent introduction for last but do not pass it by -- I'm always amazed at the depth and breadth of Edmundson's research and knowledge.  From haunted houses to haunted people, Mordaunt's work is very well done, highly intelligent, and I'll go so far as to say a definitely must-read for readers of older supernatural tales, especially those written by women whose work has long been "very much underacknowledged."  Highly recommended.