I step into a small room, bracing myself for that familiar smell. Decomposition. The full moon is just beginning to rise on this late evening on May 1st, Beltane. They say we are midway between the spring equinox and summer solstice. They say this midway point is similar to that of Halloween. They say the veil is equally thin now as it is then. Who knew?

I am taking advantage of the quiet to get caught up on skull cleaning. A line of skulls in labeled bins with metal coins, waiting for my attention. I couldn’t be happier. It is honestly a privilege to stay late on a Friday night, recovering these beloved skulls.

I put on music through my phone speakers, setting my phone face up on the cabinet behind me, under the paper towel dispenser. I settle in and pick up the first skull, bring it close to my face to inspect it for any lingering residue or grave wax. Gently scrubbing it clean with my brush, I sing along to the music.

Behind me, I hear a familiar noise and I jump. It’s the automatic paper towel dispenser. You have to place your hand under it to trigger the paper towel to emerge.

No one is there.

I look around uneasily, trying to explain it away. Sometimes I hang strainer bags around the key permanently lodged in the top of the dispenser. It’s a convenient place for them to dry out, but occasionally one will trigger the mechanism and a paper towel will roll out.

There aren’t any hanging bags today. There’s nothing anywhere near the automatic dispenser that would trigger it.

Hesitantly, I get back to my task. Gently scrubbing beneath the eye sockets, avoiding the fragile sinus cavity. The song continues, and I sing along.

After I finish the first skull, I move on to the second, but I realize I will need some tweezers for this one. I step out for a few minutes to grab them from the Aquatory next door.

When I return, the room is silent. The music has stopped. My phone is gone from the cabinet. Holy shit! It’s lying face down on the floor.

Hmmm. Maybe this job can wait ‘til tomorrow morning, I think. I grab my phone, turn the light off, and scamper full speed out of the room.

Hello and welcome to your weekend haunt

with Spook Lit, an audiobook club by dreary dendrophile

I’m your host Lyns, and I’ll be reading aloud our spooky stories. Thank you so much for being here. I really hope you enjoy.

That ghost story I just told you honestly has nothing to do with what we're talking about today. I just wanted to tell you about it. I hope you don't mind.

Previously on Spook Lit…

Last time, we started The Bell in the Fog with Part I, about an author named Orth who becomes haunted by two paintings of children long deceased. He brings their ghosts to life by writing a story about them.

I also told you guys a personal story about my own experience with a painting at the Octagon House in Washington DC. Shout out again to the Octagon Museum and the Architects Foundation for a wonderful tour. If you’re in DC, t’s only $10 to go visit the house and hear about its history.

This week’s story:

We left off Part I with an excellent cliffhanger, and I had high hopes for Part II. I even talked about splitting this whole story into three episodes since Part II is very long. But after reading Part II, I was a little weirded out by it and decided to just get through it and move on.

I don’t want to spoil you, so we’ll jump right into the story and then come back at the end to discuss. I’ve never tried this format before, so let me know what you think.

Oh, and if you want to skip the reading and go straight to the commentary, I’ve added time stamps here in the show notes:

* 00:00 Cold open (personal ghost story)

* 03:20 Intro

* 04:53 Reading

* 39:25 Commentary (my thoughts and feelings)

The Bell in the Fog - Part II:

If you’d like to read along, the full text is included at the bottom of this post.

My thoughts and feelings:

You guys, it gets weird! (And a little predatory.) Is this how things were back then?

I’m so bummed because I thought Part I was sooo good. I mean, don’t get me wrong - our protagonist Orth was a little into himself, and he did have some odd commentary about children:

“Again he turned away impatiently. ‘I believe I am rather fond of children,’ he admitted. ‘I catch myself watching them on the street when they are pretty enough. Well, who does not like them,’ he added, with some defiance.”

Stranger danger aside, he seems to really love and grieve for the children in the paintings, so much so that he brings them to life again by writing their story. This was one of my favorite quotes from Part I:

“But the children were not statuettes. He had loved and brooded over them long ere he had thought to tuck them into his pen, and on its first stroke they danced out alive. The old mansion echoed with their laughter, with their delightful and original pranks.”

Once his book is written, Orth leaves the house and settles down. And we get a really good cliffhanger at the end of Part I:

“The ivy on his old gray towers had been young with his children. He spent a haunted night, but the next day stranger happenings began…”

Stranger happenings indeed. I personally hated Part II. First, Orth meets a little kid wandering around by herself in the woods. She takes him back to her place, where everyone basically slut-shames the girl in the painting, to the extent that her grandfather gets up and leaves when the author mentions her:

“[Blanche] did not die in childhood, but lived to be twenty-four. She was an angelic child, but little angels sometimes grow up into very naughty girls.”

The little girl in the woods — also Blanche — is clearly her descendant. She has her name and resemblance, because of course she does. I assume they are implying some past life connection, which is always fun. Orth says:

“’And I think she is Blanche Mortlake working out the last of her salvation,’”

Orth leans real hard into making his fantasy with the ghost painting a reality with her real-life doppelgänger, complete with an underlying savior complex for the little girl’s virtue and social status:

“He reformed Blanche’s accent and vocabulary, and read to her out of books which would have addled the brains of most little maids of six.”

He lures this kid into his home with dolls and money and basically kidnaps her until her mom realizes she has six other kids she needs to get home to, and she has to beg this guy to give her kid back. They argue over whether or not he can adopt her, settling on letting the six-year-old decide for herself because she is just sooo mature for her age. But not before they both manipulate her first:

“’I will be the one bereft, if you leave me. I am the only one who really needs you. I don’t say I will go to the bad, as you may have very foolishly persuaded yourself your family will do without you, but I trust your instincts to make you realize how unhappy, how inconsolable I shall be. I shall be the loneliest man on earth!’”

Dramatic much?

She decides to go back with her mom, which is obviously the wrong choice because she stops all correspondence with the writer a year later. Is she sick? Did she die? We’ll never know. My hope is that she realized she was a little kid and doesn’t owe this guy or anyone anything, and she was too busy playing with her new dolls to keep in touch.

Aside from the content, the story itself just didn’t feel very satisfying. Part I felt like a legit ghost story, but Part II got a little too real for me. It was giving Abducted in Plain Sight and Interview With the Vampire. I wasn’t into it, but maybe I’m overly sensitive to grooming.

It wasn’t all bad, ok? I do love the name Blanche - it’s my grandmother’s name. It’s not a name you hear very often. I love the idea of inheriting a haunted painting and solving the mystery of the girl in the painting. I love that it had a secret compartment.

I’m so curious to know what you guys think. Please let me know in the comments. I’m dying to talk to someone about this!

Shout-outs:

Since I had some complicated feelings about our story this week, I decided to share some other books and media that have been bringing me joy, in case you also need a palate cleanser:

* A Head Full of Ghosts, by Paul Tremblay. I was craving a good old-fashioned exorcism story, and this one did not disappoint. I love a book that plays with timelines and younger and older versions of the same POV. You know it’s good when Stephen King says a book “scared the living hell out of me, and I’m pretty hard to scare.”

* Trad Wife, by Saratoga Schaefer. This book was a recommendation from Haunted Burrow Books in Capitol Hill, Seattle. It’s the first book I’ve ever read about fallen angels and I am obsessed with the concept. It was so fun. I am a sucker for body horror and she did a phenomenal job. It’s the Antichrist meets Breaking Dawn from Twilight, and I’m here for it.

* Speaking of Twilight… Do yourself a favor and check out the Morbid podcast Twilight bonus episodes.

* Did you (like me) read Twilight at a formative age or just at a time when the world was different and we didn’t understand how toxic relationships worked? Did you (like me) think the Twilight books were the pinnacle of romance and what every healthy relationship should strive for?

* It’s not creepy at all that my crush has been sneaking in through my bedroom window and watching me sleep for weeks without my knowledge. It must be love! Did he make me go hiking so he could break up with me “for my own good,” sending me into a catatonic four-month dissociation complete with screaming night terrors every night? That’s how you know it’s love! Yes, it makes perfect sense that he would disconnect my starter cables making it literally impossible for me to leave. Relationship goals!

* Isn’t it fun (and triggering) to look back on our favorite media from the early aughts with a present day lens? If you ever enjoyed or hated Twilight at all, please listen to these episodes - you’re in for a treat. I have been absolutely savoring them.

What’s Lurking on Spook Lit:

Next week, we move on from The Bell in the Fog to a short story called The Striding Place.

Until then, thank you for listening to Spook Lit. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Credits:

* Audiobook: The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories by Gertrude Atherton

* Chapter: “The Bell in the Fog - Part II”

* Music: “Horror Spooky Piano” by Nikita Kondrashev on Pixabay

* Artwork: Jeff Bent

* Photography: Lyns McCracken

* Linktree: https://linktr.ee/drearydendrophile

All Spook Lit Audiobooks are public domain.

Hauntingly yours, dreary dendrophile

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