"A Warning to the Curious" (1925)

This M.R. James story was the selection of Ramsey Campbell for the My Favorite Horror Story anthology. I'm still not sure about Campbell and haven't always been sure about James either, though I think I'm coming around on him. In his introduction to the story Campbell compares it to Sheridan Le Fanu's "The Familiar," which is a pretty good call. Once again James deploys a narrative point of view that is highly nested. There is a formal first-person narrator, who grew up in the English seaside town where the story is set. He meets a man, far from the place, who has a story to tell about the town. Within that story is a young man who is basically the main character of this story. This is typical of James, building formal distances into his stories, which can make them, as here, fuzzy and second- or thirdhand, blunting the impact in stark contrast to the vividly strange events recounted. Many things are "told of." Very little is certain. It all proceeds from a local folk legend that claims there were three crowns of East Anglia buried to protect the coast in some mystical fashion from invasion by "the Danes or the French or the Germans." I see the connection with the Le Fanu story, as something menacing begins to shadow the young man after he carefully searches for, finds, and digs up one of these crowns—the last one undiscovered according to legend. The familiar that attaches to the man is only a dark shadow, seen fleetingly, but he is accompanied by a heavy vibe. These crowns are intended to stay buried and protect the coast, see? The young man gets the point and manages to put the crown back where he found it, but it's too late. His transgression will not go unmet, and he knows it. The first time I read this it struck me as patriotic British claptrap, but then I developed a taste for James and can appreciate it more now as a potent ghost story. I like the feeling it bears of implacable antiquity and forces beyond our ken. The crown is there to protect the coastal town from Germans and such, but it will make short work of you if you get in the way even if you are British yourself. James paints his tones in blacks, whites, and grays and the story's most dramatic motions all take place under the surface, in rippling currents. It gets under your skin because that's where it takes place. The things it tells stick with you.

My Favorite Horror Story, ed. Mike Baker & Martin H. Greenberg (out of print)
Read story online.