THE DEEP ONES: "Something There Is" by Charles L. Grant

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THE DEEP ONES: "Something There Is" by Charles L. Grant

2semdetenebre
Muokkaaja: joulukuu 3, 2022, 3:40 pm

Not easy to do that kind of name-dropping (canonical writers of horror fiction) without intruding on the reader and bringing them out of the story. Instead, it's essential here. And I always love when Grant drops in a line like, "And he was in a place not a time, nor a colour". The end in which his real muse acknowledges him at last is really chilling. The three entities that he meets before all seem very familiar:

"With a white robed man who held a world of choirs and hells of crowds in each massive hand, with golden dirty hair and his smile blinded".

"Another man, short, ugly, fiercesome, a black halo and violet cloak his only dress"/

"A Woman, at last the woman, whose beauty crippled and gave him strength, with roses and ivy and hemlock at her breasts, and deer and hyenas cavorting at her feet. Symphonies and chantings, ditties and solemnities".

I read this out of Scream Quietly. An apt title!

3paradoxosalpha
Muokkaaja: joulukuu 3, 2022, 4:12 pm

I liked this story a lot, especially the visionary bits at the end, and the quotidian part at the Bensons' party played well too.

What's with the title? Is it an allusion to the Robert Frost poem? I don't get it, if so.

4semdetenebre
joulukuu 3, 2022, 8:57 pm

>3 paradoxosalpha:

A Google search does lead to "Mending Wall" by Frost:

https://poets.org/poem/mending-wall

I dunno. Have to look a little closer. I guess the title could simply be a reference to a thing that exists, which would align with the ultimate result of the protagonist's agonized search for true inspiration/his missing muse.