Blackwood generally makes use of psychological vulnerability to evoke excessive terror – often by placing his younger, male protagonists in both morally dehumanizing city slums or the bodily punishing wastes of wilderness. However this story achieves its purpose not by way of a type of place, however by way of a type of particular person: a rapacious woman-killer whose inexplicable consideration to 1 younger clerk on his protection staff instantly raises questions on gender and masculinity. Its protagonist, a secretary named Johnson, finds himself stalked and dominated by the psychic impressions left by a person who brutally killed and butchered a girl.
Blackwood’s specific use of feminizing descriptors (“girlish,” “like a woman”) and mannerisms locations Johnson in jeopardy of discovering himself remoted within the periphery of a society which had clearly outlined requirements for masculinity and prosecuted homosexuality with the legislation. Victorian England had largely ignored homosexuality’s existence (and the social issues and abuses which rose from its marginalization) till the Cleveland Road Scandal and the Oscar Wilde trial – two occasions in Blackwood’s current reminiscence – compelled it to lastly reply to what we now would possibly seek advice from as queer tradition: all the gamut of gender identification, from uncloseted homosexuality to straight males with mannerisms and constitutions which fall exterior of society’s definitions, expectations, and beliefs of male identification.
Falling exterior of the stereotype of Edwardian masculinity, no matter his sexual orientation, Johnson is susceptible: unprotected by the fraternity of British manhood, and topic to its abuses.
The story follows the holiday plans of Mr. Johnson – the younger, unimaginative non-public secretary of the well-known protection legal professional Arthur Wilbraham. It’s a darkish, December night time, and Wilbraham has simply gained a case defending a psychopath named John Turk, who had been accused of gruesomely murdering and dismembering a girl. Turk’s guilt was evident and unquestioned, however he was discovered not responsible by motive of madness after a ten-day trial. Johnson, who joined Wilbraham every day on the Previous Bailey is relieved to be rid of Turk endlessly, having been uncharacteristically disturbed by the trial’s particulars and haunted by Turk’s white, ghoulish face, sadistic eyes, and lank, black hair.
To rejoice, he has deliberate a Yuletide trip to the Alps, and is busy packing a large, canvas kit-bag – a mortgage from Wilbraham himself – in his lonely, Bloomsbury residence. At ten o’clock one in every of Wilbraham’s servants personally delivered the kit-bag (an enormous, flat-bottomed, open-ended, sack-like duffel bag secured by a drawstring laced by way of brass gromets on the high), and Johnson begins to load it with sport gear, winterwear, and toiletries.
He rents the higher flooring, however the suite under him is empty, and he is aware of not one of the renters on the decrease tales. That night the constructing is distinctly quiet, and he’s stunned by the sound of footsteps ascending the steps. He assumes they belong to the landlady, Mrs. Monks, however they cease all of a sudden and he strikes on with packing.
As he does this, he’s struck by the poor situation of the kit-bag: it’s soiled, tattered, and stained, nearly foul, and his delight at having been loaned it by Wilbraham begins to show into offense at what now looks like an insult. As he strikes concerning the room, the unfilled high of the bag flops over, and he’s stunned to notice its similarity in look to a human face: the creases and folds appear to have organized themselves like brows, cheekbones, lips, and a nostril, and the hollows into darkish sockets, with one gromet ring taking up the facet of an eye fixed, and an oily stain alongside the highest trying oddly like a fringe of greasy hair. It appears precisely like John Turk. Johnson shakes it off and blames his nerves, trying much more ahead to a vacation of snowboarding and skating removed from England.
In the meantime, he as soon as extra hears footsteps within the unoccupied flat, and decides to test it out. Turning on the intense lighting fixtures, he probes every room, however finds nothing and returns to his process, however is all of the whereas bothered by an impression that he’s in the course of doing one thing that he shouldn’t, or one thing about which somebody disapproves – somebody watching him grudgingly.
He crosses the room to retrieve a forgotten merchandise, and is shocked by the temporary glimpse – by way of his doorway – of a hunched determine scowling at him from the touchdown on the high of the steps. As quickly as he rushes to the door, the imaginative and prescient is gone, however when he turns, the sound of operating footsteps is unmistakable, and he journeys over the kit-bag in his fright. It’s not the place he left it.
Shaken, Johnson sits by the fireplace, and finds his creativeness consumed by Turk’s leering face. Resolved to complete packing and instantly fall asleep, he heads to the bed room the place he’s horrified to see that – not solely has the kit-bag as soon as once more moved, this time nearer to the door – now he distinctly sees a white face duck behind it, accompanied by a baleful sigh. Johnson rushes to its facet, however nobody is to be seen. That doesn’t imply, nevertheless, that nothing is to be seen: he notices, for the primary time, that the darkish, brown stains are clearly blood.
Staggering again in shock, he by accident falls over, banging the door shut behind him, and knocking out the sunshine. He desperately waves round looking for the sunshine swap, all of the whereas petrified by the sound of the kit-bag scuffing closely alongside the floorboards, transferring by itself. Lastly he feels the swap, however when he turns it on, John Turk is standing at full top in entrance of him. He wheezes out a sighing demand: “It’s my bag. And I would like it.” Then it dawns on Johnson: he has seen the kit-bag earlier than, when it was admitted into proof. It was this very bag the place the chopped up lady was found, clumsily packed away with quicklime and buried.
Johnson surges for the door, flees the room, and faints within the hallway. Brilliant and early within the morning, one in every of Wilbraham’s manservants arrives carrying a clear, sturdy kit-bag, alongside together with his apologies: apparently the incorrect bag had been delivered to him final night time. Johnson just isn’t stunned, after all, however he does sense that there’s extra to this message primarily based on the servant’s nervous demeanor. There may be: regardless of his favorable verdict, John Turk killed himself the earlier night time – at ten o’clock – and left one request in his suicide be aware: that he be buried within the an identical kit-bag the place he had tried to cover his sufferer’s corpse. In brief, Wilbraham wants the opposite bag again.
Johnson’s alienation could have mirrored Blackwood’s personal wrestle to really feel safe throughout the stable boundaries of Edwardian masculinity: as a member of the New York journalism’s hardscrabble boy’s membership, and a member of innumerable searching and tenting expeditions into jap Canada’s woolly frontier, he was granted admission into quite a lot of male societies famend for his or her machismo, posturing, and codes of manly standoffishness. In such conditions (as illustrated in “The Wendigo”), hints of femininity, sensitivity, or lack of nerve may spell skilled and social peril. Within the Canadian wilds they might spell desertion or demise.
Mike Ashley – in his foundational biography, An Extraordinary Life – means that Blackwood’s lifelong bachelorhood and obvious later-life celibacy was attributable to a humiliating gay affair, a reality which he would have been keen to cover from his macho cronies. Johnson – physiologically and constitutionally coded as female – is neither afforded the hearty and inclusive fraternity of his friends, neither is he spared the predatory attentions of Turk, a person who butchered a lady and escaped the demise penalty (assisted by Wilbraham’s skilled fraternity).
Failing to slot in along with your friends is lonely, painful, irritating, and complicated. Failing to slot in to the privileged courses can also be harmful. Johnson is unable to shake Turk’s subjecting gaze from his reminiscence – it’s dominating, difficult, and belittling. Away from the safety of his socially honored pals, nothing can restrain the rapacious menace that Turk represents from spilling over from unconscious insecurity to supernatural manifestation: particularly, the specter of being acknowledged as completely different, stripped of the securities that homogeneity presents.
