'The Curator of Souls'

 

A middle-aged academic falls for a student twenty years his junior. Dr. Slade is unwise but infatuated. Laura is beautiful, erudite, and mysterious. She vanishes periodically, refusing to say where she has been but sending Slade postcards that sometimes bear enigmatic messages. Eventually, after introducing Slade to many and varied erotic experiences, Laura takes her lover to meet another professor, whose studies mirror certain episodes in the writings of Edgar Allan Poe.

This story bears an epigraph from 'The Oval Portrait', but Laura is very reminiscent of Ligeia and Morella. Peter Bell successfully creates a convincing affair that hints at self-destructive tendencies on Slade's part. The finale delivers the goods, as intellectual playfulness gives way to bizarre - one might say grotesque - discoveries. This is another fine tale from Hauntings, which captures some of the Romantic weirdness of Poe while remaining firmly grounded in English horror tropes, particularly the idea of horror revealed within a sleepy cathedral city.

Another one tomorrow - so far, no duds!