Deep Sea Frisson

A wholer, not a whaler?

THE HABITANTS OF MIDDLE ISLET: William Hope Hodgson

“…’ow bloomin’ clean an’ tidy she is. It aren’t nat’ral.’ He waved his hand towards the surrounding deck furniture. ‘Everythin’ as if she was just goin’ inter port, an’ ‘er a bloomin’ wreck.’”

This is a suspenseful tale, of a man, with a friend as narrator, who arranges a trip to the South Atlantic to investigate the ship Happy Return in which his beloved and agonisingly missed sweetheart was lost, the ship having been earlier located as a tenantless derelict wreck in a chasmic pit between islets, as located by a whaler who spoke the above words in perfect elision and he accompanies the two men as guide on this mission. It is a whole experience, I guess, much like the Marie Celeste, except the calendar in the cabin has today’s date. And when they return the next day it has been changed yet again to today’s date. A mystery eventually blossoming by means of a vision of a tentacular Kraken creature or the pareidolia of faces in the water, and which of these you will have to find out for yourself. A tale of still unrequited love? All, I can say is that this story possesses its own pareidolia of eliding and eluding images within it that, together, dearly gave me one of those rare deep fiction frissons I ever seek.

***

The above review stems from the UNFINISHED BUSINESS of my deep fishing within an anthology’s fiction: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/unfinished-business-a-ghost-story-anthology/#comment-26192