“Don’t You Dare” (1968)

This story by John Burke is not that good but it does bear interest as a barometer of the homicidal spouse story circa the late ‘60s. I did not know the publication date as I was reading it, but was struck by the rancidly bad marriage, which are generally milder in ‘40s and even ‘50s fare. Murderous marriages seem to be largely a postwar phenomenon that waned in about the ‘80s. The first wife here is a dominating, belittling terror who openly carries on with other men. Maybe there’s some Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in here too. That would make sense. The second wife starts out like a regular old helpmeet, bad enough of course, but then is apparently possessed by the spirit of the first. The first was drowned in an accident, swimming across the river to see a lover. Swimming across the river, as one does. There is a possibility that our meek and mild husband killed her in a rage and threw her in the river. But she was also known to enjoy the challenge of swimming near a dangerous junction, called a weir, where the current ran high. I learned that a weir is a kind of dam. Maybe it’s some British deal, but a lot of things are generally murky in this story—it often feels a little rushed. The marriage to the second wife is an example. Suddenly she is there and they are married. I should say, if I have to, that marriage is not a good thing in this story. That’s a given. The first wife is a terrible person, the second wife soon becomes one, and the husband turns into a homicidal maniac. The ghost story / supernatural side is just a plot convenience or there for the atmosphere. It’s also murky. The one thing that’s plain is the murder at the end, which is surprisingly brutal. It’s useful to remember the story is from 1968. Besides Burke’s busy novelization work in the ‘60s (Look Back in Anger, A Hard Day’s Night, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, etc.), he edited a series of anthologies and was also a regular in many others with his own stories. Maybe he’s better elsewhere. As for the homicidal spouse plot line, well, next stop is probably something like Texas Chain Saw Massacre, if that had a bad marriage in it. Now that I think of it, maybe it did.

65 Great Tales of the Supernatural, ed. Mary Danby (out of print)
Story not available online.