Crooked Houses - 'The Piner House' by Timothy Granville

So we come to the end of this lockdown review of a book about being indoors - Crooked Houses from Egaeus Press. And what an intriguing anthology it is. We conclude with a tale not of some ancient and stories Gothic mansion, nor yet a grim tenement harbouring a  dark secret. No, the Piner House of Timothy Granville's tale is an ultra-modern design, likened to a flying saucer mounted on metal legs. It reminded me slightly of the kind of premises J.G. Ballard describes in his Vermilion Sands stories. And, like those once-futuristic structures, it turns out to be far from pristine in spirit.

The house in question exerts a strange power over its residents. A woman visits her brother and his and finds the normally energetic couple somewhat torpid. The same strange lethargy begins to affect the woman, and eventually she is possessed by the house. The story raises the question of how power the spirit of place might be, hinting at a haunting by the architect (who was apparently rather unpleasant in unspecified ways). My takeaway from this was that the house is in a sense the ghost, a very substantial echo of human depravity.

So we have come full circle, from the traditional haunted house of urban legend to something altogether stranger. It's been an interesting journey down some strange byways. I enjoyed it, and I would recommend that you get hold of this fine anthology if you can. 

*Note, I received a pdf of the book from one of the authors.