Out of ideas

All Hallows Eve. The surrounding streets were full of tiny vampires as I walked home, being shepherded to each-other’s houses. There were even pumpkins and tiny red fairy-lights decorating the occasional front garden. It was possibly the least unnerving walk of my life. To redress the general cheesy cuteness infesting suburban London, I think I had, finally, do-or-die style, better post my long-delayed Ten Favourite Short Horror Stories post. [She has been writing an essay. Even I have let her off the charge of wilful procrastination this time - Ed].

[Good God, what's wrong with me?]

Now, this is not in any way in any order of preference, and not in any way a literary exploration of the matter. I am being highly personal and subjective and, dare I say it, facile. (I only run to facile these days. Busy. Tired. Sorry). Also, I am only listing stories I have known and loved for a long time. I was tempted, because I am a perfectionist snob like that, but in the end I accidentally decided (by running out of time) against genning up on all the best in Horror, cutting edge or classical.

One major feature of my list, it would seem, is an almost total lack of gore, guts, maggots and dismemberment. Certainly, these things are implied in one or two places, and the first Lovecraft entry is decidedly ooky, but by and large I have always found innards less than enthralling. If I am feeling sick, I am rather too preoccupied to feel thrilled. But I seem to remember having posted about this before, many moons ago.

Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, by M.R. James, who is the Daddy, the Daddy, I tell you, of cozy Edwardian creepiness. Not only is this a fantastically unpleasant story, but the film of it made by Jonathan Miller is even scarier. And it is very rare that I would ever admit such a thing to be possible.

Berenice, by Edgar Allan Poe. I read this first in Italian, when I was twelve. Teeth freak me the hell out. I could not say if this phobia pre-dates reading ‘Berenice’ or is a result of it, but, in the end, I say Marathon Man can kiss Poe’s drawers.

The Colour Out of Space, by H.P. Lovecraft. Wonderful painfully slow build-up, and the matter-of-fact tone, somewhat unexpected in the author of ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, is very effective. When Nahum’s face caved in, I was upset. Oh, yes.

Negotium Perambulans and And No Bird Sings, by E.F. Benson. These go together because they both concern the same mysterious evil ‘elemental’. Again, like ‘Berenice’, I find these peculiarly horrible because the main demonic evil is the embodiment of one of my worst phobias. Slugs. I don’t think I’m coming across as particularly sane here, but really. Ugh. Though the the desecration of the church in ‘Negotium’, and the silent woods in ‘And No Bird Sings’ are both good bits of creepy mystification even if you don’t have a problem with giant vampire invertebrates.

The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. Now, one of my favourite ‘motifs’ in horror and/or ghost stories is in fact when you cannot be sure whether the Thing is real or a product of the characters’ imaginations. The delicate, allusive, elusive Henry James has of course built an entire literary giant-hood on atmospheric circumspection and circumlocution. In this story, worrying that the Governess is out of her tree is just as satisfying as worrying that the ghosts are going to ‘get’ the children. Worrying about both together is delicious.

Snow, Glass, Apples, by Neil Gaiman. This bleak, black, twisted version of Snow White has a truly horrible ending. Also, vampires. I’m quite keen on vampires. (Collected in Smoke and Mirrors, which I would recommend whole-heartedly).

Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu. My absolute favourite vampire story of all time, and damn me but isn’t it sexy? The fact I find it sexy does worry me a little, because it is the very quality of langourous Sapphic eroticism which makes it so chilling.

By the River, Fontainebleau, by Stephen Gallagher. I actually heard this quite recently, dramatised on BBC7 as part of their repeat of the ‘Fear on Four’ series. I hadn’t read it for years and years – I think it was part of an anthology of horror stories which I now can’t be arsed to look up. It scared me bloody witless all over again – not a story of the supernatural, but of the utter depths to which a mind can stoop. The twist at the end is particularly subtle and impressive, and makes you look at all the preceeding events in a decidly more unpleasant light. Which is quite a shock, considering how exceedingly unpleasant preceeding events have been.

Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook, by M.R. James – James again. I told you he was The Daddy. This one actually made me jump right up out of my chair and drop the book at a certain point. Rather a victory of cozy Edwardiana over gore-fest, don’t you think?

The Shadow Over Innsmouth, by H.P. Lovecraft. This is rather a seminal piece of Lovecraftiana, and when ‘they’ start battering at the narrator’s bedroom door in the middle of the night… well. Good stuff. But I am sorry to say I also love this story because it inspired Neil Gaiman to write ‘Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar’ (also collected in Smoke and Mirrors), a story that made me laugh so hard I got a double seat all to myself on a very crowded bus.

I read this as part of LK’s Horror Short Story Short Challenge – it being a short challenge, I of course took simply bloody ages to do it. Sorry. I can cheerfully blame it on all that studying I’m supposed to be doing, and no one will gainsay me [Ahem - Ed].

I ought to warn the Gentle Reader that I am but most totally going to fill this with spoilers. Should you wish to go away and read The Horla, please do… full text provided. If you can’t be bothered, well, please don’t be bothered. I’m sure Guy de Maupassant can survive my little attacks on his narrative suspense.

I have always been more frightened by (and therefore, I suppose, more pleased by) horror stories in which the ghosts and demons are like as not figments of the imagination. Insanity is up there in my top three completely horrible things (along with slugs and cramped little dank underground places) [Oh, don't ask. She might stop and tell you]. The Horla is in this respect highly satisfactory. Let me explain:

At the very beginning of the story, a white Brazilian ship sails past the narrator’s house. The narrator says: ‘I saluted it, I hardly know why, except that the sight of the vessel gave me great pleasure.’ Months later, he reads an article about strange happenings in Rio de Janeiro:

‘Ah! Ah! I remember now that fine Brazilian three-master which passed in front of my windows as it was going up the Seine, on the 8th of last May! I thought it looked so pretty, so white and bright! That Being was on board of her, coming from there, where its race sprang from. And it saw me! It saw my house which was also white, and he sprang from the ship onto the land. Oh! Good heavens!’.

What a wonderful back-formation of portents. I am very glad the author refused to allow him a standard shiver of cold fear at the sight. A mysterious thrill of pleasure is so ever so much more interesting.

Alas, a strange presence (no more than a presence, invisible, inaudible) is now haunting him. There are no other corroborrative witnesses – helpfully, the story is in diary form, so even if the narrator were to claim he had a witness, we could cheerfully carry on doubting him. Something is disturbing his sleep, and he finds something has drunk the water out of his bottle in the night. He tries to lay traps to see if he himself is doing this in his sleep, but it would seem not. Something really (really?) is living under his roof.

The narrator flees these unsettling events for Paris. He meets his cousin there – and sees her being hypnotised at a dinner party, inventing all sorts of excuses for her odd behaviour, and on being unhypnotised, denying she ever did anything of the kind. The narrator is exceedingly upset by this incident. His cousin was completely unaware that she was being controlled by someone else, and yet the narrator is morbidly aware, now, when he reaches home again, that the mysterious water-drinker is controlling his actions. See? It could all so easily, so very easily, be in his own mind. It is in his own mind, of course, but what, exactly, is in his mind? Mad as a basket of drunken frogs. Or, afflicted with a Brazilian vampire. Or – whyever the hell not? – both.

And of course, it all goes horribly badly, like all good horror-stories should.