As Oliver engages in Jamesian tactile-horror++, all we need now is the transcript from an old trial and a piece of linen...

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Summary: Enjoying Reggie Oliver's collection, Flowers of the Sea. One line was highly reminiscent of a M.R. James scene.

BLOT: (10 Nov 2013 - 12:15:17 PM)

As Oliver engages in Jamesian tactile-horror++, all we need now is the transcript from an old trial and a piece of linen...

If you had to classify horror authors by their favorite senses to frighten with, M.R. James is prone to the sense of touch. There are a lot of linen things and brushing things and furry things. As a general horror tool, dislocated senses—sounds too faint or indistinct to understand, strange shapes too quick to identify, smells incongruent with their surroundings—is a common writing trope, and effective. In his story, "Hand to Mouth", located in the new collection Flowers of the Sea, taps into that Jamesian tactile horror with this little bit:

Some time later—how long I don't know—I was awake, or half-awake, or at least somehow aware of myself and my surroundings. I found that my cheek was rested against something rounded and firm and soft. It was not like my pillow: it yielded, but yielded less and it was very cold. Then the thing that touched me began to move restlessly as if alive. I pulled myself violently away from it and sat up in bed, letting out a stupid, involuntary, childish yelp.
I tried to find an explanation for my experience, but none came to me. I did not know what it was, but I knew exactly what it had felt like: a baby's belly, a baby's bottom perhaps, but a dead baby.

Well, damn. To show a similar usage from James' own pen, we have this bit from the excellent "Casting the Runes":

Either an economical suburban company had decided that their light would not be required in the small hours, and had stopped working, or else something was wrong with the meter; the effect was in any case that the electric light was off. The obvious course was to find a match, and also to consult his watch: he might as well know how many hours of discomfort awaited him. So he put his hand into the well-known nook under the pillow: only, it did not get so far.
What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and, he declares, not the mouth of a human being.

Both use tactile horror, the undefinable touch, in conjunction with having the protagonist stranded from light, by having no indication of sound or smell, and by thrusting the horror into the pillow so that part of discovery is finding out that even the place of rest is tainted. Whether inhuman mouths, with beards, is better or worse than dead baby bellies, however, I'll leave up to you.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: November 2013


Written by Doug Bolden

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