What is Time?
E.F. Benson’s “In the Tube” is more like a science-fiction ghost story than a horror story. It is about time traveling and mysterious and sudden manifestations and disappearances which are similar to spectral hauntings. The story opens with a philosophical meditation upon the concept of Time made tangible through imagery:
“Time is nothing more than an infinitesimal point in eternity, just as space is an infinitesimal point in infinity. At the most, Time is a sort of tunnel through which we are accustomed to believe that we are travelling. There’s a roar in our ears and a darkness in our eyes which makes it seem real to us.”
The Beach Smell
“Ringing the Changes” has something about it of “The Wicker Man” and other stories of outsiders intruding upon strange cloistered societies in isolated coastal villages where the locals behave strangely and look unkindly upon tourists. It is a story in which imagery is essential for setting up an atmosphere of dread and ambiguous terror. Throughout the story, the smell of the beach is touched upon as particularly important:
“He took it rather to be he smell of dense rotting weed; across which he supposed they must be slithering. It was not a smell he had previously encountered in such strength…
Phrynne screamed again. `The smell. Oh God, the smell.’
It was the smell they had encountered on the beach, in the congested room, no longer merely offensive, but obscene, unspeakable.”
The Thing on the Ship
“The Upper Berth” is a haunted house story in which the house is a cruise liner. Mysterious events, sudden madness and suicide run rampant and all the trouble seems localized in the upper berth. Everything moves toward the revelation of whatever it is that is source of evil and when it finally comes, readers will not be disappointed:
“I gripped it with all my might—the slippery, oozy, horrible thing—the dead white eyes seemed to stare at me out of the dusk; the putrid odor of rank sea-water was about it, and its shiny hair hung in foul wet curls over its dead face.”
“The Sweeper”
The title character of this story is not described until late in the story. In fact, the story is about three-fourths over before it comes. And when it comes, it is pure horrific imagery that is absolutely suitable for a collection such as this:
“He was a tall, lean man with a white cadaverous face and eyes that bulged like huge rising bubbles as they regarded her. It was a foul, suffering face…a face whose misery could—and did—inspire loathing and a hitherto unimagined horror, but never pity. He was clad in the meanest rages, which seemed to have been cast at random over his emaciated body. The hands grasping the broom seemed no more than bones and skin.”
