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The Himrich Library, Week of 9/15/24

My spooky reading continues.

Dana Himrich

— 2 min read

Hello again!

Not very much to report this week. We are halfway through the month of September, and thus a quarter of the way through what I consider to be "spooky season." My Gutenberg article on Bluebeard is now live, and I do hope everyone is having fun reading that. I certainly had fun writing it!

Speaking of writing and ghastly crimes, here's a macabre little vignette I created while doing some warmup exercises a while back. I call it "Whalebone Stays Murder."

Miss Fandridge often declared that her tightlaced whalebone stays would be the death of her, and in a sense, she was correct. When the police found her body lying on her bedroom floor, a pair of stays lay in pieces beside her and a single whalebone stuck up from between her second and third left ribs.

I like to think Edward Gorey would have given it a sensible chuckle.

What I'm Reading

In the world of horror literature, I think few passages are as emotionally impacting as the final section in Chapter 5 of The Haunting of Hill House. To set the scene for you, this is the famous scene where the heroine Eleanor lies awake in the dead of night, terrified of a ghostly voice emanating from the adjoining bedroom. Her one source of comfort is the fact that she's clutching the hand of her friend Theodora—or is she? Shirley Jackson's prose here is just masterful. I love the way she describes the phantom as "a little liquid gloating sound" and "the steady low sound of a voice babbling, too low for words to be understood, too steady for disbelief." Erratic, run-on sentences convey Eleanor's fracturing mental state as the ghost becomes more aggressive, conjuring up the sound of a crying child to prey on her own traumas and fears and insecurities.

I can't stand it, Eleanor thought concretely. This is monstrous, this is cruel, they have been hurting a child and I won't let anyone hurt a child, and the babbling went on, low and steady, on and on and on, the voice rising a little and falling a little, going on and on.
Now, Eleanor thought...holding with both hands to Theodora's hand, holding so tight she could feel the fine bones of Theodora's fingers, now, I will not endure this. They think to scare me. Well, they have. I am scared, but more than that, I am a person, I am human, I am a walking reasoning humorous human being and I will take a lot from this lunatic filthy house but I will not go along with hurting a child, no, I will not; I will by God get my mouth to open right now and I will yell I will I will yell "STOP IT," she shouted...

That's when the ghost departs, and Eleanor realizes that Theodora hasn't been awake or aware of her at all while this was happening. And that's when we get the kicker:

"God God," Eleanor said, flinging herself out of bed and across the room to stand shuddering in a corner, "God God—whose hand was I holding?"

Devastating, chef's kiss, 10 out of 10, no notes.

What I'm Writing

I don't hope to be as good at this as Shirley Jackson was, but my own forays into horror writing continue as usual. I'm planning to participate in a writing challenge next month—you'll hear more about that from me later—and so I'm typing up a loose outline for the Gothic novella I mentioned a couple weeks ago. I'm balancing that with drafting a short story I've been trying to make work for a very long time. It's a fairy tale retelling inspired by German Expressionist cinema, and I'm hoping to finally finish it before the end of the year.

Take care, and I'll see you back here next week. Happy reading!

—Dana

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