What is an Elemental?
A certain slug-like creature pops up in more than one story by Benson and is usually referred to by the strange term “elemental.” If you are ever confused or forget exactly what an “elemental” is supposed to be, turn to the story “And No Bird Sings” where the definition is provided in an easy to understand metaphorical frame of reference:
“Well, It is supposed to be some incarnation of evil; it is a corporeal form of the devil. It is not only spiritual, it is material to this extent that it can be seen bodily in form, and heard, and, as you noticed, smelt, and, God forbid, handled. It has to be kept alive by nourishment.”
The Mummy's Head
For probably the first and only time in the history of horror fiction, the terror of a coming face to face with a mummy in tomb is enhanced by the author in the story “Monkeys” through the comparison of the body’s head to one of the most delicate desserts known to man. It is a strange choice, but curiously apt and very effective and creating the necessary image in the reader’s mind.
“Round it was a mop of hair, which with the ingress of the air subsided like a belated soufflé, and crumbled into dust.”
The Worms of Benson
The horror in a Benson story never gets more malevolent or malignant than those featuring his elementals. These are those corporeal forms of the devil that are sometimes describes as worms and sometimes merely compared to worms or, just as often, slug. For some reason, those references in the form of a simile like this one which merely suggest that it something wormlike that isn’t actually a worm tend to be more unsettling than the more literal description of it actually being a giant worm.
“The blackness dispersed, and there, wriggling and twisting like a huge worm lay what we had come to find.”
A Nightmare
One of Benson’s favorite go-go metaphors to describe the uncanny sense unreality that pervades his stories—and a word that accurately conveys the sense of dream that is the defining emotional response stimulated by his stories—is “nightmare.” It is a word that pops up frequently in various guises:
“It had, as is plain, something of nightmare about it” (The Room in the Tower)
“As in some catalepsy of nightmare I struggled to tear my eyes from it” (Bagnell Terrace)
“It’s a nightmare to contemplate such a thing, and oddly enough, un-hinged people like spiritualists want to persuade us for our consolation that the nightmare is true” (Monkeys)
“Then the sense of nightmare began” (The Sanctuary)
Non-Horrific Figurative Language
While Benson engages figurative comparisons to bring to life for his readers those things which can likely not be described without them as effectively, he is also fond of introducing the simile for the purpose of more mundane connections. Under these terms, the sense of comparison is often a bit more humorous or even downright offbeat in comparison to the using similes and metaphor to create a sense of something more sinister:
“Now, a fruit-bearing determination to go to bed is, to my mind, as difficult to ripen as a fruit-bearing determination to get up.”
