"Going, Going" and "Resistant to Change"

Meghan Arcuri, "Going, Going" and Adrian Ludens, "Resistant to Change" in Where the Silent Ones Watch, ed. James Chambers (Hippocampus Press: 2024).

In William Hope Hodgson’s novel The House on the Borderlands, little is said of the Recluse’s sister, Mary, and, in part, it is this absence of information that makes her a fascinating character. The reader can’t help but wonder about the old man’s sister.

Two short stories from the James Chambers edited anthology Where the Silent Ones Watch pick up on themes of Mary’s story, albeit in two different ways.

In her short story “Going, Going,” Meghan Arcuri takes the strange and awkward background role that Mary plays in Hodgson’s work as an opportunity to explore the psychological horror of not being seen. The protagonist of Arcuri's story gives a little away and those around her, particularly her partner, take much, much more. She slowly loses herself and disappears from the view of those around her. It is a creeping kind of horror–it starts with small sacrifices and then, before long, she is swallowed by the background and finds herself stuck in the Borderlands.

In constrast, Adrian Ludens puts Carnacki on the case. We find Hodgson’s famous investigator recounting his visit to the site of the ruins of the Borderland House. While there, Carnacki confronts the sister (but can it be Mary?). Ludens story puts a very different interpretation on the events recounted in The House on the Borderlands, and the account that Mary offers Carnacki recasts the Recluse’s journal as the hallucinations of an old man descending into a madness that turns violent.

Illustration by Dave McKean.

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