Visiting the faint edge of twilight with M.R. James

BLOT: (06 Apr 2011 - 02:38:55 AM)

Visiting the faint edge of twilight with M.R. James

Saying that M.R. James wrote with restraint is vaguely like saying that Harold Bloom writes literary criticism. I tell you, if the man had taken up still-life, the intimation of flowers in his painting would have been a reddish hue reflected in the finger bowl on the table: a hint of roses somewhere out-of-frame. Was he a master of homeopathic horror? The carefully meted inoculation against antiquarian fears? Or, as many of his surest fans have said, is less simply much more than more?

I sound peeved but I am not. I am enjoying them. It just requires a different mode of reading than most horror stories today. The payoff is there, but you have to take in like a fine wine and sip on it.

Take "Rats", for instance. A guest finds his way into a room that was locked and witnesses this: "Under the counterpane someone lay, and not only lay, but stirred. That it was some one and not some thing was certain, because the shape of a head was unmistakable on the bolster; and yet it was all covered, and no one lies with covered head but a dead person; and this was not dead, not truly dead, for it heaved and shivered." He rushes back, shuts the door, and locks it, and then "it rattled, and on the instant a stumbling padding tread was heard coming towards the door." He runs back to his own room, in the same hallway, and nothing much more happens. He later, upon getting ready to leave, reopens the door and sees what he first thinks is a scarecrow, but instead he finds himself asking, "Have scarecrows bare bony feet? Do their heads loll on to their shoulders? Have they iron collars and links of chain about their necks? Can they get up and move, if never so stiffly, across a floor, with wagging head and arms close at their sides? and shiver?" He runs, passes out, and is later told about the body on the bed in chains. Turns out it was once a highwayman, who was hung in chains, and now is kept in the house. This, it seems, would have been years ago, but this bit is the clencher, as told by the man whom with the guest is staying: "And no more [trouble] there 'as been; not once he haven't come out into the 'ouse, though what he may do now there ain't no sayin'."

Some long dead convict, who is left alone and leaves others alone, just a scarecrow of a man in chains, heaving under a blue blanket [counterpane]. It is not visceral, but it is somewhat haunting.

Then you have "A Neighbor's Landmark". After a man is hired to sort through the combined library of two houses, he finds a reference about someone no more knowing something than "That which walks in Betton Wood / Knows why it walks or why it cries." He is curious about this bit of verse, and seeks out some answers, only to find that Betton Wood has been cut down, some time ago. Out walking one afternoon, he stops to admire a view, and hears a sharp noise. "All at once I turned as if I had been stung. There thrilled into my right ear and pierced my head a note of incredible sharpness, like the shriek of a bat, only ten times intensified..." After which, suddenly, he thinks no more of "kind mellow evening hours of rest, and scents of flowers and woods on evening air; and of how someone on a farm a mile or two off would be saying 'How clear Betton bell sounds tonight after the rain!'," but rather of "dusty beams and creeping spiders and savage owls up in the tower, and forgotten graves and their ugly contents below, and of flying Time and all it had taken out of my life." Another shriek sounds in his ear and he is off. The sum of the investigation, as best it is settled, comes down to a landowner who once moved a landmark from her neighbors—"took in a fair piece of the best pasture in Betton parish what belonged by rights to two children as hadn't no one to speak for them"—and eventually escaped the law but "no one can't avoid the curse that’s laid on them that removes the landmark..." What's more, "she can't leave Betton before someone take and put it right again." They investigate, to find out how to fix the situation, but find no real solution and the facts, what they were, are gone with the centuries.

Finally, just one more, we'll glance at "Number 13". A man travels to Viborg to research the Church's history in Denmark. He stays in the Golden Lion, an old red brick building that surived a fire in 1726 that wiped out most of the rest of the town. He takes room 12, and notes a lack of room 13. However, in the middle of the night, he comes to the wrong door and goes to open it when he hears shuffling inside and realizes he is looking at room 13 and must have been mistaken, and the room must be occupied. He does notice that his room seems shorter than it had been, though the exact dimensions are not discussed. There are a few details here or there, of shadows cast out into the street and unto a building opposite, include a strange shadow from the man next to him (in room 13): "He seemed to be a tall thin man...it was someone who covered his or her head with some kind of drapery before going to bed, and, he thought, must be possessed of a red lamp-shade – and the lamp must be flickering very much. There was a distinct playing up and down of a dull red light on the opposite wall." The next detail we get that approaches the horror side of things—besides witnessing the shadow from 13 dancing madly in the middle of the night—is a wail the man and the landlord hear the a night or two later: "It was a high, thin voice that they heard, and it seemed dry, as if from long disuse. Of words or tune there was no question. It went sailing up to a surprising height, and was carried down with a despairing moan as of a winter wind in a hollow chimney, or an organ whose wind fails suddenly." Fast forward the investigation, and the find that room 14 is also strangely shorter at night. They also find a box, underneath the floorboards, that contains a paper with a strange script. They are unable to read it, and so pass it along. And that is pretty much that.

In all three of the stories I have mentioned, you have common threads: elements of archeology and anthropology, strange events in strange places, but largely guessed at rather than directly seen. They are little explorations, sounds and implications. Fairly fascinating stuff on recollection, a ghost story writer better upon the reread. I'll go ahead and link to the stories I mentioned above, as well as throw in two more than are often quoted. All links go to the Ebooks @ Adelaide site.

• "Casting the Runes"
• "Count Magnus"
• "A Neighbour's Landmark"
• "Number 13"
• "Rats"

Enjoy.

M.R. James

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: April 2011