With Halloween done, it is time for some winter reading…
I’m aiming to read one a week through the winter months and into spring, maybe more than one if the spirit (ho-ho) takes me.
First up is Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book, not the scariest tale by any means, but the description of the beast in the picture is ghoulishly unnerving.
The ending (SPOILER WARNING) does puzzle me. A photo of the painting is taken and the original destroyed. But doesn’t this mean that the cursed image still exists, and the beast may strike again? Can a curse move from original to copy? And if it does, is the power of the creature diminished?
Or is that the point… that the terror is thought to have been contained by typically human hubris, but the true horror is only just beginning?
Next up is Lost Hearts…
What is your favourite M.R. James story? Let me know in the comments below.
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