"The Room in the Tower" (1912)

E.F. Benson is not to be confused with A.C. Benson or R.H. Benson, his brothers who also wrote horror fiction, though not as prolifically or as well. E.F. Benson is one of the best horror story writers of his time. This story is based on dreams, the kind you have in your sleep, which is a perilous device if you don't know what you're doing. Fortunately, he does know what he's doing. It's not a long story but proceeds leisurely, with an unnamed first-person narrator establishing common traits of dreaming and pooh-poohing any reading too much into them. Then he relates the details of a recurring dream he's had for 15 years. In it he is attending tea with strangers at a house where he will be staying, always the same house. No one speaks. The hostess, a Mrs. Stone, says to him, "Jack will show you to your room: I have given you the room in the tower." The tower is a separate building from the house, three stories high and an older structure. Mrs. Stone's words fill the narrator with dread and anxiety. Her son Jack (a boy the narrator knew slightly in school and never saw since) leads him to the room. At this point the narrator wakes up, "in a spasm of terror." Benson goes on with more details about the dream and its small variations, using repetition to establish a tempo and emphasize certain points. Benson is good at making it feel like a dream, with the strange ways a dream moves, and he's also good at making this one unnerving. The scene at the house, the strange silence, the words Mrs. Stone always uses, which never change, the unaccounted dread. Then he is invited by a friend, John, to visit him at a rental his family has taken for the summer and it's the house with the tower from his dreams. Benson slips back into reality without missing a beat. It's the same house but the scene is different from the dream. The people are talkative and friendly. There is no dread, at least not until John's mother stands and says, "Jack will show you to your room: I have given you the room in the tower," and the rendezvous that has been arriving for the narrator for 15 years is upon him. Again, Benson is so good at what he's doing. The finish may be overdone, notably the last paragraph, which felt like a compulsive flourish to a somewhat pat conclusion. Benson is known for some extremities, notably a fascination with giant worms, though this story is not about giant worms. Still, "The Room in the Tower" is often effective, breeding a constant delicate sense of unease out of an easygoing anecdotal tone. The hook is in the intimate way the narrator speaks of dreaming, a common experience to all, and the story is artful, subtle, and scary, without pounding hard on anything (at least, not until the end).

Vampire Tales: The Big Collection, pub. Dark Chaos
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