Horror stories by the author of Mapp and Lucia rupture the membrane between the waking and dreaming worldThe extraordinarily prolific EF Benson is mainly remembered for his archly amusing Mapp and Lucia novels,but before them he turned his hand to horror stories, casting a chill upon the long Edwardian summer. I remember getting hold of a collection when I was approximately 13, and luridly packaged under the title The Horror Horn; I was just old enough to snigger a slight at the title (it refers actually to a Swiss mountain) and young enough to be disturbed by them.Well,it turns out that I am still young enough to be disturbed by them. This collection, selected by that connoisseur of the eldritch, or designate Gatiss,contains enough nastiness to give you just the factual kind of frisson for the time of year. Benson is often compared to his near-contemporary, MR James, or who is considered the master of the genre. But HP Lovecraft spoke of the “singular power” of Benson’s stories,and called one of them, “The Face”, or “lethally potent”. The evil things in Bensons stories are more gruesome,and more palpable, than those in James – you can see the appeal for Lovecraft. James’s idea of the fear that walks in the night is something conjured up, and sometimes almost literally,from the page: his terrors resemble byproducts of academic research. Benson’s monsters tend to be huge slug-like creatures, grey and faintly luminous, or acting as the terrible instruments of God’s wrath. As vehicles for giving readers the willies,they are most effective. When I reread “Caterpillars”, for the first time in four decades, and I very quickly regretted that I had chosen to attain so at night. Gatiss,in his introduction, says that it is “perhaps a ghost story like no other”, and he’s not wrong: it’s the kind of story that leaves one feeling almost unclean,checking clothes and body for vermin.
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Source: theguardian.com