Satin

A short story for the Christmas season.

Mr Aloysuis Greaves fondles a long slender glove. The satin catches on the rough skin of his fingers. His nose draws in the leftover evening scent and his breathing halts. Over watery pupils, his eyelids close, thick with lashes. The tufted eyebrows lift with pleasure.

      With trembling lips, he kisses the smooth fabric, then lays it down on the cheap second-hand bedside cabinet. He smooths out the glove with his palms, makes it into a flat black shadow of his Julianna. Wiping his brilliantined hair back from his forehead, Mr Aloysuis says good night to his first love as he has for thirty years.

       He switches off the light and waits to hear her footsteps again.

THE MISTLETOE BRIDE AND OTHER HAUNTING TALES

A review of Kate Mosse's  supernatural short story collection.

My more frequent readers and friends probably know I have a soft spot for any variation of the Mistletoe Bride legend ( see a previous post here.) So when a book came out with two re-tellings, I had to have it - or to be precise, to hear it. I listened to THE MISTLETOE BRIDE AND OTHER HAUNTING TALES on a long dark and bleak journey to Yorkshire and back. Ideal.

This collection  is on the gentler, more lyrical side of creepy - more eerie than horrific . There is one psychological tale I found more disturbing - but I can't say much without spoilers. There's a wide range of historical settings - and as you might expect from Kate Mosse, a strong sense of place.

These are strongly visual stories. There are black and white illustrations by Rohan Eason in the hardback edition (which sadly I don't have yet) some of which I have included here. I could easily imagine many as rather arty animations accompanied with weird little waltzes and whatnot in a minor key.

If you enjoy Susan Hill's supernatural tales, and own a few by M. R. James and Edith Wharton, this will sit well on your shelves. The stories mostly deliver pleasurable chills rather than shudders of distaste and horror. They are definitely not for fans of the gorefest.

The Wedding Ghost approves.

The Return

Sunrise comes in a smear of blood red. Trees make black shadows against the low light. There's a hint of cold in the breeze as it moans over the window ledge. Autumn.

Outside bulging spiders hang on cobwebs. Some days drops of mist dangle on the thin strands instead. The first dead leaves gather under hedges.

Haws make clots of dark red on the field edges and the pheasants stalk amongst the stubble. Dusty asters bloom in neglected gardens. There has been mist rising from the rifes, the ditches that drain this low-lying land.

Mildew coats the marrow leaves with grey. Neither a bloom nor a leaf remains without a spot, a ragged edge or a stain of decaying colour.

The Wedding Ghost stirs in the cooling soil. The lengthening nights call to her.

Time to come back.

Too hot to haunt

The Wedding Ghost cannot cope with the heat - and has departed.

There will be more eeriness when the weather is cooler - and spookier.

Goodbye for now...

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Top Ten Tuesday

This has taken a while but here's a selection of Ghostly Brides. I shall start with the skull-faced Edwardian 'beauty'. Even the flowers she carries are dead.

Here the setting in Highgate Cemetery and her translucency all add to the eeriness. 

 Another see-through spectre. It's the way she challenges you to follow her - and yet the floor of the ruin shines right through her. Chilling.

A ghost bride doesn't have to be white European to be be sinister - this one is both beautiful and disturbing.

Of course, there are other ways to be scary. This zombie bride would rip anyone apart.

 Dead brides are unnerving. Would she 'wake' if you got too close?

And the sadness of this deserted bride -is it contagious, could she pass on her desperate plight?

Another waiting bride - this time from the twenties. The peeling wallpaper tells its own tale.

It's hard to beat a graveyard for the habitat of the supernatural .This bride is already in mourning - who for, I wonder?

But this has to be my Number One. There is something so implacable about her. She would never stop chasing you - slowly.

Brides and burials

On Sunday I was walking around a churchyard in Itchenor looking at gravestones. They can be very beautiful and sad - like this one here. This is from Chicago - so young and so lovely.

They can also be quite unnerving. This extraordinary funerary statue is from Brooklyn.

Rather older, this one seems to be in a shroud - or some sort of Greek veil.

It doesn't have to be white marble to be eerie. Bronze will do just as well.

I think it is the idea that they are waiting that people find unsettling. 

Left in the Lurch

The jilted bride - what a poignant idea that is! Filled with hope and joy for months, then having every expectation crushed at the last moment. No wonder we sympathise with the crazed Miss Havisham.

 Here's Cate Simmons' beautifully eerie take on Miss Havisham*

The writer Ronald Frame was so intrigued by Charles Dickens' jilted bride he wrote an entire backstory for her from the details in Great Expectations.

She may have been based on a real person: Eliza Emily Donnithorne (1826–1886) of Australia. Here's her grave:

Another famous literary disappointed bride is Jane Eyre. Mr Rochester is denounced as a bigamist at the altar. Still married to his mad wife Bertha, he cannot wed the distraught Jane.

In real life, the pain of such a loss can lead to suicide attempts.

Miss Li seen seven storeys up c/o NBC news 

Fortunately Miss Li was saved by Guo Zhongfan, a local community officer. She tried to kill herself after her fiancé had left her and married another woman just days before their wedding.

Taking quite a different approach was Angela Burrow, previously a Major in the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps. She went ahead with the reception on New Year's Day at Tylney Hall, staging it as a 'new beginnings party', after her fiancé of three and half years told her by text it was off.

Some might want revenge. Quentin Tarantino's The Bride in Kill Bill, for example, or this ghostly creation by Giulia:

How would you feel?

*For more delicate artwork, see  Cate Simmons Steering for North