This next week is traditionally the scariest in our calendar. It’s Halloween, when all kinds of evil, supernatural forces are unleashed on the Earth.
So, that’s going to be today’s theme.
We’re talking spoooooky. At least, that’s the plan.
First, I’ll be delving into my own material, of course – what else, this is my blog? I thought it might be fun to
see if my cop writing has ever leaned towards the ghostlier end of the chiller
spectrum. You wouldn’t expect it to, but you might be surprised. I’ll also be
reviewing and discussing what I consider to be the best supernatural thriller
that I’ve read for quite a long time, Sarah Waters’ stunning THE LITTLE
STRANGER.
If you’re only here for the Sarah Waters
review, you’ll find it towards the lower end of today’s post, as always. Scoot
on down there right now, if you wish. However, if you’ve got a few spare
moments, you might want to stick around while I navel-gaze for a bit on my own
horror output, and join me while I wonder if I continued working through those darker-than-dark
themes after I shifted into the world of hardboiled cop thrillers.
Cops n Horrors
People who know me are aware that I
commenced my professional career penning scripts for ITV’s long-running police
drama, The Bill. So, it wouldn’t really be true to say that I started out as a horror
writer.
However, even if I say so myself, in the years that followed The Bill,
I had quite a bit of success writing horror stories and novellas. This was during the
1990s, the 2000s and well into the 2010s. My inaugural collection of short
stories, After Shocks, won the British Fantasy Award in 2002 for Best Collection. I won it again,
for Best Novella (with Kid) in 2007, and later that same year, I won the
International Horror Guild Award for Best Medium-Length Story with my Green
Man-inspired folk-tale, The Old North Road.
However, even if I say so myself, in the years that followed The Bill,
I had quite a bit of success writing horror stories and novellas. This was during the
1990s, the 2000s and well into the 2010s. My inaugural collection of short
stories, After Shocks, won the British Fantasy Award in 2002 for Best Collection. I won it again,
for Best Novella (with Kid) in 2007, and later that same year, I won the
International Horror Guild Award for Best Medium-Length Story with my Green
Man-inspired folk-tale, The Old North Road.
I still love horror stories, both as a
reader and a writer, and I scribble them out whenever I can. Regular followers of
this blog will know that I try to post a brand-new festive ghost story on here
each Christmas. But inevitably, since I’ve begun writing crime and thriller
novels, there hasn’t been as much time for this. Note that it’s not because my
interest has changed. In truth, I regard it all as dark fiction, seeing the two
sub-genres - thriller and horror - as twisted horns on the same
jet-black goat.
But inevitably, as thriller novels have become my bread and butter, that is the area in which I am now primarily
focussed. It doesn’t mean, though, that even in this capacity, I haven’t
strayed a little bit into the realms of supernatural horror – or something close
to that.
No, I’m not going to pretend that my
Mark Heckenburg and Lucy Clayburn books are horror novels masquerading as cop
thrillers. They are cop thrillers through and through. But on occasion,
mysterious and eerie things have happened in them.
Someone asked me the other day: ‘Have you
ever put ghosts into your cop novels?’
The answer is a firm NO. Both Heck and
Lucy live in the real world. The laws of physics
apply, and that’s all there is to it. But I did realise after I’d been pressed
on the matter, that I have, on occasion, gone all out to create weird and
disturbing scenarios in which I lay on the ghost movie atmosphere as thickly as
I can get away with.
Here are two excepts you may enjoy,
which sort of – I hope – prove that point.
In good weather, this was a stunningly
beautiful spot. Fellstead Corrie was a natural amphitheatre in the hillside,
its gentle slopes thick with bracken, gorse and springy heather, and ascending
on all sides to high, ice-carved ridges. The farmhouse itself stood close to a
bubbling pool at the foot of a cataract, which poured from the dizzying heights
of High White Stones like a helter-skelter. At its rear there was a network of
allotments, greenhouses (mostly dingy with mould and filled with brambles),
decrepit barns and sheds which all belonged to Annie, and swathes of overgrown
pasture for which there were now no animals to graze upon. The building, which
was early eighteenth-century in origin, was large and sprawling, comprising
various wings and gables, and built from solid Lakeland stone with a roof of
Westmorland slate. Spruced up, it would be magnificent, and in a location like
this it would make a superb country house or holiday inn. But in its current state
of semi-dereliction, it was an eyesore. Both the walls and roof were crabbed
with lichen, the rotted iron gutters stuffed with mosses and bird’s nests.
But of course, none of this dilapidation was visible at present.
But of course, none of this dilapidation was visible at present.
With the basket over her left wrist and
the shotgun cradled under her right arm, Hazel felt her way across the rickety
bridge. Fellstead Beck gurgled past underneath, having circled around the farm
from the waterfall plunge-pool. A few dozen yards to her right somewhere, it
dropped down a narrow gully into the lower valley, eventually at some point –
Hazel wasn’t sure exactly where – flowing into the tarn.
On the other side of the bridge, beyond
a pair of moss-clad gateposts, she entered the farmyard proper, her feet
clipping on aged paving stones as she approached the darkened structure just
vaguely visible in the fog. When she halted again, the only sound was the
distant rushing of water. Meanwhile, not a single light shone from the eerie
edifice. In the icy murk, it resembled an abandoned Viking long-hall; the
remnant of some Nordic nightmare rather than a family home. Disconcertingly,
the darkness beyond its windows seemed even darker than the darkness outside.
Annie Beckwith had no electricity, no gas … but surely she would keep a fire in
her living room? Didn’t she even have candles?
Hazel checked her phone again. It was
now after seven-forty. Too early even for Annie Beckwith to go to bed. She
approached the front door. If the old lady was sleeping, Hazel didn’t like the
idea of disturbing her. But she’d not come all this way to turn back without at
least trying to make contact. She knocked several times on the warped, scabby
wood. There was no thunderous echo inside; the door was too thick and heavy.
Likewise, there was no reply.
Hazel tried again – the same.
She fumbled for the handle, a corroded
iron ring, which, when she twisted it, turned easily. There was a clunk as the
latch was disengaged on the other side, and the door creaked open an inch. To
open it the rest of the way, she had to put her shoulder against it, grating it
inward over the stone floor.
This was also a tad discomforting. It
wasn’t common practise for folk in this part of the world to keep their doors
permanently locked, but surely a lone OAP like Annie would do so at night,
especially living all the way out here?
‘Hello!’ Hazel called into the
blackness.
Again, there was no response.
She sidled through, unbidden, and was
hit with an eye-watering stench, the combined aromas of grime, mildew and
decay.
Hazel shone her torch around the room,
which was so cluttered with broken and dingy furniture that it was more like a
lock-up crammed with rubbish than an actual living space. Dust furred
everything, so that colours – the fabrics in the upholstery and lampshades and
the many drapes and curtains – were indiscernible, each item a uniform
grey-brown. And yet, evidence of the fine old farmhouse this had once been was
still there. The fireplace was a broad stone hearth, elaborately carved around
its edges with vines and animals, though currently filled with cinders, burnt
fragments of feathers and what looked like chicken bones. The mantel above was
a huge affair, again constructed from Lakeland stone and heavily corniced, and
yet dangling with tendrils of wax from the multiple melted candles on top of
it. A mirror was placed above the mantel, so old and tarnished that only cloudy
vagueness was reflected there. Ancient sepia photographs hung in cracked,
lopsided frames, the faces they depicted lost beneath films of dirt. These
added to the house’s melancholy air, but also created the eerie sensation that
eyes were upon her. Hazel turned sharply a couple of times, imagining there was
someone hidden in a corner whom she hadn’t previously noticed, perhaps peering
out through one of those veils of dust-web, eyes bloodshot, yellow peg teeth
fixed in a limpid, deranged grin.
‘For God’s sake, woman, what’s the
matter with you?’ she said to herself in a tight voice. Her and her bloody
imagination. ‘Annie?’ she called out. ‘Annie, it’s Hazel Carter! You know, from
The Witch’s Kettle down in Cragwood Keld!’
There was no answer, but her voice
echoed in various parts of the house. Immediately on her left, an arched
doorway led into a passage that Hazel thought connected with the kitchen and
dining room, but the blackness down there was so thick it was almost tangible.
She ignored it, moving into the centre of the lounge, only to freeze at a
skittering, rustling sound. She turned, just as a whip-like tail vanished
beneath the web-shrouded hulk of an age-old Welsh dresser.
Hazel had to fight down a pang of
revulsion. The place was clearly unfit for human habitation as it was, but if
it was crawling with rats as well …
A furry, grey body scuttled along the
mantle, casting a huge, amorphous shadow as she followed it with her torch.
Stubs of candles went flying to the floor, their ceramic holders shattering.
The rat leapt after them and moved in a blur of speed down the passage towards
the kitchen.
There was no question, Hazel decided –
they had to get the social services onto this. Annie would hate them for it,
but what choice did they have?
But this was assuming Annie was still
alive.
At least there was no sign of forced
entry, or that there’d been any kind of struggle in here. Not, if Hazel was
totally honest, that it would be easy to tell.
She glanced at the brown-stained
ceiling, realising with a sense of deep oppression that she had yet to check
the upstairs. So unwilling that it was difficult to set her legs in motion, she
advanced across the room to a square entry in the facing wall, which led to
other rooms as well as the foot of the main stair. She approached it and gazed
up. Even without fog, the darkness at the top was impermeable. It seemed to
absorb the glow of her torch rather than retreat from it. Hazel hesitated
before placing the basket of food on a side-table and, with shotgun levelled in
one hand and torch extended in the other, slowly ascended. The hair was stiff
on her scalp. It was actually a terrible thing she was doing here; she’d
entered someone’s home uninvited, and was now processing from one area to the
next with a loaded firearm. But she couldn’t leave. She’d called out and no one
had responded, and with the house unlocked, implying someone was at home, she
knew there was some kind of problem here. The temptation to call again was
strong, but now some basic instinct advised her that stealth was a better
option.
Hazel reached the top of the staircase.
The landing was all cobwebs, bare floorboards and plaster walls, the plaster so
damp and dirty that it was falling away in chunks, revealing bone-like lathes
underneath. Various doorways opened off it. The doorway to the room that Hazel
thought Annie might use as a bedroom was at the end of a short passage on the
left. When she directed her torch in that direction, the door was partly open,
more blackness lurking on the other side. Someone could easily be waiting in
there, watching her, and she wouldn’t see them from here.
Despite this, Hazel trod slowly forward,
only halting when she was right in front of it. Even close up, the room was
hidden from view. There was insufficient space between the door and its jamb
for her torch to illuminate anything beyond. But now there was something else
too – a faint but rather fetid smell, like open drains.
Hazel knew she was going to have to say
something. It wasn’t the done thing to barge unannounced into someone’s private
room, especially with a gun, not even if you were concerned for their
wellbeing. Steeling herself in the face of an urge to hurry back downstairs and
leave the building, she spoke loudly and clearly.
‘Annie? Are you all right in there? It’s
Hazel Carter … you know, from The Witch’s Kettle down in Cragwood Keld.’
Again there was no response, but the
silence was beyond creepy. It was intense, weird; a listening silence. Despite
every molecule in her body telling her to flee this odious place, Hazel
propelled herself forward, pushing against the door, and as it swung open,
entered with torch in one hand and shotgun balanced over the top of it.
What she saw in there had her blinking
with shock.
And then screeching with horror ...
***
Did I hit the Halloween(ish) spot with
that? I don’t know. Only you readers can provide an answer.
Here’s another example. This one also has an autumnal setting, but comes from the first Lucy Clayburn novel, STRANGERS,
which sees a young policewoman go undercover as a good-time girl on the back-streets of Manchester at a time when one of the more deranged of the city’s
prostitutes is brutally and sexually murdering her male clients.
Nehwal said nothing but waited outside
the Lexus, while Lucy stripped off her raincoat and then wrestled her way into
the much heavier parka. Once it was on, she zipped it and then tugged up its
stovepipe hood, so that her head and face were almost completely covered.
She jumped out and they approached the
Fiesta side-by-side, though Lucy’s stilettos were hardly the ideal footwear on
the softish clay surface, which broke and shifted under their pinpoint heels.
They halted by the vehicle’s front-offside corner. In the weak, brownish glow
of the interior light, the figure in the front passenger seat was covered by a
sheet.
That sheet was dingy and blotched with
crimson.
Nehwal dug a pair of disposable latex
gloves from her back pocket, and pulled them on. Then she moved forward to the
open passenger window, and reached through, catching the edge of the sheet
between two fingertips and trying to pull it. Initially, the sheet resisted but
then, slowly, it began to slide free, rancid fold after rancid fold passing
down over the inert shape beneath, until it dropped into the footwell.
Involuntarily, despite their near
half-century of combined experience, the two policewomen grunted with shock.
It was an elderly man – quite elderly in
fact, maybe somewhere in his seventies – though actual identification would not
be easy. His face hadn’t exactly been obliterated, but it was so puffed and
bruised and cut, and so much blood had streaked down over it from his dented
cranium, that it would have been difficult even for a relative to recognise
him. Whoever he was, his trousers had been pushed down to his ankles and his
grimy shirt torn open into two flaps; the women didn’t need to look too hard at
the gory mess exposed between his thighs to guess at the cause of death.
‘God almighty,’ Lucy breathed.
‘There’s a spool of crime-scene tape in
the boot of my car,’ Nehwal said dispassionately, taking her phone from the
frontal pouch of her sweat-shirt. ‘We want a perimeter ASAP.’
Lucy made to move but then stopped.
‘Ma’am … what about that idiot we saw running?’
‘He’s well gone by now, but we need to
trace him.’ Nehwal tapped in a number.
‘A male suspect after all, ma’am?’
‘Unlikely. Unless he had his own clever
reasons for pointing us in the right direction.’
‘A dogger then? Looking for some fun.’
‘Probably. Doesn’t know how lucky he is
he didn’t get it, does he? But he’s a witness … so we need him. Blast it …
can’t get a signal.’
‘Lowest part of town. Reception’s always
poor down here. Ma’am … this body looks very fresh.’ Though it broke all the
rules, Lucy couldn’t resist placing a knuckle against the corpse’s neck. The
banging of her heart steadily increased. ‘He’s still warm.’
Before Nehwal could respond, there was a
clatter of woodwork from inside the pump-house. They swung around together,
gazing at the gloomy structure.
Instinctively, Nehwal pocketed the phone
so that both her hands were free.
They waited, their smoky breath furling
around them.
Aside from a renewed popping and fizzing
of distant fireworks, there was silence. Nehwal switched her torch on, its cone
of light embossing the mossy, red-brick exterior of the old industrial
outbuilding, yet intensifying the blackness behind its apertures. Lucy couldn’t
help glancing back at the mutilated form slumped in the car. An OAP yes, but
the seventh in line, and the others hadn’t been even close to that age. One of
them had weighed twenty-five stone, for God’s sake! Two of them got chopped together
at the same time!
Just how physically powerful was this
killer? What kind of chance would they realistically stand in a full-on
confrontation, even the pair of them together?
‘Go round the back,’ Nehwal said
quietly. ‘Cover the rear exit.’ Lucy nodded and made to move, only for Nehwal
to grip her wrist. ‘Go armed.’
‘Ma’am, I’ve been plain clothes all day,
I’ve got no …’
‘Find something.’
Lucy was initially bewildered by this,
but then spotted the way Nehwal was wielding the torch – now like a baton
rather than a flashlight. She leaned down and picked up a broken half-brick,
before proceeding warily around the exterior, stepping with difficulty through
clumps of desiccated weeds and thorns. At the rear, she halted in front of a
single narrow doorway, the door itself broken off and lying to one side.
Various stagnant odours leaked through
the gap: oil, mildew, rotted rags.
She listened again. Something creaked
inside, very faintly – but that could have been Nehwal progressing in from the
front.
Unable to believe she was doing this
while wearing a skirt, heels and a heavy old coat that wasn’t hers, and with a
jagged lump of brick in her hand, Lucy edged forward into the darkness – and
almost immediately came to another bare brick wall.
From here, she could go either left or
right. Theoretically she should have held this point, to ensure no one slipped
past. But there was no conceivable way she could allow her boss, who was no
more than five-five and in her early fifties, to enter the building alone.
Heart thumping, Lucy went left, turning
a corner into open space. Nothing stirred in the inky blackness in front of
her. Instinctively, she reached for the phone in her pocket, to switch its
light on, only to remember that it was in the pocket of the other coat. Not
that she was completely blinded; after so long at the bottom of Dedman Delph,
her eyes were readjusting quickly. She spied a row of broken windows further to
her left, all covered in wire netting. It gave sufficient illumination to show
a floor strewn with boxes and piles of old newspapers, and what looked like
masses of wood and timber piled against the walls.
Still there was no movement, neither
from Nehwal nor anyone hiding out in here. Even so, Lucy only shuffled forward
with caution. ‘Ma’am?’
There was no reply. Until a fierce red
light seared through the windows, a loud series of rat-a-tat bangs accompanying
it.
More fireworks … but even so Lucy froze.
In that fleeting instant, she’d seen a
figure standing in a corner.
Indistinct but tall – taller than she
was – and wearing dark clothing, including some kind of hat pulled partly down
over its face. It stood very still between an old wardrobe and an upright roll
of carpet.
Lucy pivoted slowly towards it. As the firework flashes diminished
again, only its outline remained visible – its outline and its face, which,
though it was partially concealed, glinted palely, and, she now saw, was garish
in the extreme; grotesquely made-up with bright slashes of what in proper
lighting would no doubt be lurid colour.
An icy barb went through her as she
realised that the figure was wearing a mask.
It could even be a clown mask.
And yet still it didn’t move. Its build
was difficult to distinguish, but there was something slightly “off” about it,
she now thought: it seemed to sag a little.
Injured maybe? Tired? Or playacting?
Lucy hadn’t glimpsed any kind of weapon,
neither a blunt instrument nor a blade, but the hunk of brick in her hand
suddenly felt ungainly and inadequate.
She faced the figure full on. There was
about six yards between them. At any second, she expected it to lurch forward
in a blur of speed, maybe silently, maybe screaming.
She lofted the brick as though to throw
it.
‘Listen …’ She spoke quietly, calmly. ‘I
am a police officer, and I am armed … and you are going to have to show me both
your hands.’
The figure made no move to comply.
‘I will tell you one more time …’
‘Relax,’ a voice interrupted.
Lucy jumped as the room filled with
brilliant white torchlight.
Nehwal stepped in through a connecting
door, which in the dimness Lucy hadn’t previously noticed. The DSU’s beam
focused itself on the shape in the corner.
It wasn’t a living person at all, but a
mannequin, an effigy suspended between two corroded bolts in the wall by loops
of string tied under its armpits, which explained the odd posture. It was made
from an old dark suit and a tatty brown sweater. Its head was a crumpled
football, with a plastic mask attached to the front, the latter not depicting
the face of a clown but the face of a grinning male with a sharp moustache and
pointed beard. The broad-brimmed Guy Fawkes hat looked like a fancy dress shop
reject …
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND
KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark
fiction (crime, thriller, horror and sci-fi) – both old and new – that I have
recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum;
there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail,
but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these
books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I
particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all
about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these
particular posts will not be your thing.
THE LITTLE STRANGER by Sarah Waters
(2009)
Outline
Rural Warwickshire, the late 1940s. A country doctor called Faraday attends Hundreds Hall, a historic local estate, which he has fond memories of as a child. His mother worked there for a time, as a domestic, and Faraday is still moved by memories of an Empire Day party there back in 1919, when his younger self was so entranced by the 18th century grandeur of the place that he performed a minor act of vandalism, breaking off an ornamental acorn to keep as a memento.
Rural Warwickshire, the late 1940s. A country doctor called Faraday attends Hundreds Hall, a historic local estate, which he has fond memories of as a child. His mother worked there for a time, as a domestic, and Faraday is still moved by memories of an Empire Day party there back in 1919, when his younger self was so entranced by the 18th century grandeur of the place that he performed a minor act of vandalism, breaking off an ornamental acorn to keep as a memento.
However, things have now changed dramatically. Faraday is shocked to see how badly the house has declined and how overgrown and unkempt its extensive gardens have become, but he keeps this to himself for the time being. He has been called in to treat a maid who has taken a strange dislike to the building and is feigning illness, but he later strikes up a relationship with the widowed aristocratic owner of the property, Mrs Ayres, and her grown-up children, the shabby, eccentric but not unattractive Caroline, and the crippled ex-fighter pilot, Roderick (or Roddie).
A burgeoning friendship follows, as Faraday uses new methods to successfully treat Roddie’s long-lasting war-wounds, but he is unimpressed by the family’s management of the estate, which, even though his own origins are humble, he considers a grand property and a great landmark in the district. In time he learns that the cause of this lies not so much with Roddie’s ineptitude – though that is also a problem – but with the family’s rapidly dwindling finances. A new era is dawning, complete with a determined and belligerent Labour Government, and what remains of the English rural gentry must diversify into successful business ventures in order to generate new income, or it will simply die out. The ageing Mrs Ayres, ‘a true Edwardian at heart’, regards all this with a fatalistic gloom, as though resigned to her fate, Caroline feels the solution is to sell things off (various family heirlooms and considerable portions of the estate have already gone under the hammer), while Roddie becomes ever more cynical and stressed.
Faraday, a relative newcomer, continues to observe these unfolding problems rather than participate in their attempted resolution, but he is present when Caroline’s loveable Labrador, Gyp, unaccountably attacks and mauls a visiting child, and in response to strident demands from the authorities – and in a truly heartbreaking scene – assists in putting the animal down.
The tragedy brings Faraday and Caroline closer together, though romance still feels elusive, but Roddie responds by sinking into a trough of drink and despondency. Faraday suspects this is due to self-loathing stemming from the young man’s inability to reverse the estate’s failing fortunes, only for Roddie to then insist that some malign entity invaded his bedroom on the night of the dog-attack and that, if he allows it to, it will switch its hostility to his mother and sister. The rest of the family are bewildered, but then burn marks are discovered on the walls and ceiling of Roddie’s bedroom, and one night, Caroline detects a smell of smoke and finds the entire room ablaze.
Roddie, so drunk that he didn’t even notice, continues to rant that a mysterious, malevolent being regularly visits their home, and in due course, again with Faraday’s help, is committed to an asylum, where he quickly makes himself at home because he can no longer stand the thought of residing at Hundreds.
Caroline and her mother are left so distraught that they struggle to maintain interest in the state of their house and are unconcerned by how the rest of the county views them – both of which were formerly big issues – so Faraday becomes more and more involved, particularly in regard to Caroline, whom he increasingly suspects he has fallen in love with. Caroline responds in kind, though is less enthusiastic overall, at times seeming confused about her feelings rather than enamoured with the new man in her life.
Meanwhile, the haunting – if that is what it is – appears to intensify. Weird, juvenile writing is discovered on the walls, the maids are summoned by bells rung from the abandoned nursery, phone-calls are received in the early hours of the morning – apparently from no-one, and, most chillingly of all, a weird, malformed voice is heard burbling on the other end of a long-defunct communications tube that still runs through the heart of the house.
Faraday is aggressively dismissive, mocking Caroline’s notion that some kind of curse or taint is affecting the family’s fortunes, and openly worried by Mrs Ayres’ belief that the ghost of her long-dead first daughter, Susan (or Suki), has returned to her family home, which he suspects is a sign of mental disintegration. Things almost come to a head when the elderly matriarch has a particularly terrifying experience in the nursery – a hair-raising scene by almost any standards – and is physically injured in her attempts to escape.
Faraday is frustrated, considering much of this a distraction from his new purpose in life, which is to marry Caroline – who is still only vaguely agreeable to his proposal – and take charge of the crumbling estate in order to rescue it.
But even Faraday cannot ignore the next ghostly event. No-one can. Mrs Ayres, who never really recovered from her ordeal in the nursery, and who has now relapsed into a distant, dreamy state, repeats her conviction that the ghost is Suki, who may be unaware that her visits are causing damage, but who is essentially a good spirit, seeking only the love and companionship of her lost mother.
Mrs Ayres could not be more wrong …
Review
Let’s get to it directly. The Little Stranger is one of the best ghost stories I’ve ever read. But it’s actually a lot more than that. No-one could seriously expect a stylish literary writer like Sarah Waters to pen a supernatural novel with no more intent than to frighten her readers.
Let’s get to it directly. The Little Stranger is one of the best ghost stories I’ve ever read. But it’s actually a lot more than that. No-one could seriously expect a stylish literary writer like Sarah Waters to pen a supernatural novel with no more intent than to frighten her readers.
When you pick up The Little Stranger – though you will be frightened trust me – you’ll also find yourself immersed in the decaying world of the landed gentry as the second half of the 20th century dawns. This isn’t just to be found in the Ayres family, who for all their wartime service are so incapable of living well in the ‘post feudal’ era of the new modern age that we suspect they must perish, but in the nouveau riche Baker-Hydes, who have the money but not the manners, and in Doctor Faraday, the educated commoner from rustic stock, who, though he initially likes the Ayres, gradually finds his power and influence over them growing, and starts to enjoy it. Throughout, the narrative is dominated by the imposing structure of Hundreds Hall, which initially appears to us in happier times as a grand ‘wedding cake’ of a country mansion surrounded by acres of manicured parkland, but later as a gloomy, dilapidated edifice accessible only through a dank, dreary wood. If that isn’t a metaphor for the collapse of the privileged class in postwar England, then I don’t know what is.
First, though, let’s talk about the actual ghost story.
The ability to inflict a genuine chill on your readers is a rare one. Not every horror or thriller writer possesses it, so I took real pleasure in discovering that Sarah Waters, who hasn’t strayed often into this kind of darkness before, does.
Though the author has a much bigger job on here than merely telling a spooky yarn, none of it would have worked if the ghostly elements in The Little Stranger hadn’t been frightening. Thankfully, in seeking to achieve that effect, she emulates one of literature’s great mistresses of the ghost story, Shirley Jackson, by opting for the ‘less is more’ approach.
When eeriness first arises in Hundreds Hall, it is very subtle, very slight, barely detectable even – especially as all the characters have so many more important issues to content with, but one by one, as they fall victim to it, their unease spreads to the reader.
Questions abound, however.
Is there really a supernatural presence in Hundreds Hall? If so, why is it only manifesting now? Even when an explanation of sorts – the ghost of deceased daughter, Suki – is provided by the dazed and confused Mrs Ayres, the question remains: Why is it so malicious?
Even then, for the longest time, this mystery seems almost inconsequential. The deterioration of the family and their property is a much more serious problem. Faraday’s attempted wooing of the stand-offish Caroline occupies centre-stage, and rightly so; she is the only one who can get things back on track, but only, he suspects, if she will accept his courtship, because she too is scatty in many ways. Even after Roddie’s breakdown, which he squarely lays at the door of an evil spirit, it seems more likely to us – because we witness no supernatural occurrences – that the son of the house has finally succumbed to the combined horrors of his wartime ordeal and his abject failure to restore the family’s pride.
After this, of course, things change, genuine haunted house type phenomena occurring more frequently. The curious writing on the wall is reminiscent of the real-life Borley Rectory, which only burned down nine years prior to the commencement of this story. The ringing of the servants’ bells when there is nobody there may take us back to the opening scenes of A Christmas Carol, but there is no good humour to be had here, because the terrible voice on the communications tube, and the growing conviction that a baleful intelligence is coming and going as it wishes, soon takes us into full-on psycho-supernatural territory, reminding us of classic chillers like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and Richard Matheson’s Hell House. It’s certainly the case that by the last quarter of The Little Stranger, you wouldn’t want to be marooned in Hundreds Hall, a gaunt, dreadful relic of the past, seemingly cut off from modern civilisation. When the ‘Little Stranger’ actually appears, it’s a ghastly and harrowing moment, which leaves everyone sickened with fear.
Everyone except Faraday, that is. Which brings me neatly to the characters, and the main two protagonists, Faraday himself and Caroline Ayres.
While Faraday is our central character, he’s not exactly the hero of the piece. If anything, he is more the yardstick by which the decline of the Ayres family and the dereliction of their once magnificent family home are measured. He was the one who attended Hundreds for that wonderful Empire Day celebration so many years prior to the main narrative. He is the only non-Ayres personality who falls in love with the estate – so much so that he even takes a bit of it away with him (which upsets his mother because, though he’s clearly enamoured by the place, such a deed implies covetousness rather than deference).
All that complexity aside, Faraday is a fascinating and multi-layered character. As a doctor, you’d think him a pillar of the community; a well-spoken, well-regarded chap in whom anyone could confide. But the class factor comes into play here too. Faraday, who is not the Ayres’ first choice doctor, attempts to ape the breeding of his hosts, but innately lacks it. He is also an intemperate man; he carries grudges and when he doesn’t get his own way, resorts to private but heavy drinking. He’s an efficient and reliable doctor, but he is also a hardcore rationalist, and this – a deliberate ploy by the author – becomes tiresome as the tale moves on, the entire family soon living in fear of a supernatural adversary, but Faraday continually and testily dismissing the whole thing as nonsense, finding vapid explanations for some of the most mysterious happenings.
He also lacks self-awareness, blissfully unaware that such an attitude is an implied criticism of the family, at the same time as clumsily courting Caroline Ayres, in his own mind very successfully, though to the readers it’s an evident disaster. When on occasion, his frequent presence at Hundreds Hall is queried, he fails to understand why the family might deem him intrusive.
In contrast, Caroline Ayres, is a more traditional but perhaps more-flawed-than-usual heroine. She is all that remains of the great family, but there is no glamour to her, and little in the way of wisdom or spirit. But she is determined and brave, and even when almost everything else has gone, her common sense remains. Towards the end of the book, Caroline, worn almost to the bone, is literally the last bastion of the Ayres family name. It’s quite a responsibility if you care about these things, as we readers have come to at this stage.
She also goes on a similar if opposite journey to Faraday. Even though her growing fear that something evil is dogging them takes much longer to manifest that it does with her mother and brother, she becomes – in a great twist of irony – progressively more realistic than her suitor. He may mock her eventual conviction that they are somehow cursed, but Caroline handles her problems by whittling down her hopes and expectations, and planning a more frugal future, while Faraday’s ambitions grow steadily more preposterous.
The Little Stranger is an amazing piece of writing, and it’s no surprise to me that it was short-listed for the Booker Prize. It’s hard to classify, for sure. I only tend to cover what I call ‘dark fiction’ on this blog, but it fulfils every aspect of that, even if it is many more things besides.
You just have to read it. Whether you’re a ghost story fan, or not, you won’t be disappointed.
I normally sign off on my book reviews with some fantasy casting, selecting the key characters and telling the world – which obviously will pay scrupulous attention – who I’d choose to play them onscreen. But, as I write, a movie version of The Little Stranger is already doing the rounds on the cinema, so any thoughts from me on the matter would be even more irrelevant than they usually are.
