Tuesday Terror! The Wonderful Tune by Jessie Douglas Kerruish

Shall we dance?

Most of the best known writers of horror and weird tales are men, but in the collection Queens of the Abyss, Mike Ashley sets out to show that many women were writing in these genres too around the late 19th/early 20th century period. This one is deliciously horrid, from the pen of a Manx writer entirely unknown to me…

The Wonderful Tune
by Jessie Douglas Kerruish

“What is the Huldra King’s Tune?” asked Iris.
“It is the crowning piece of Huldra music; and there is a spell attached to it,” said Larssen.

Our narrator, Cyril Lambton, is a young man escorting his new fiancée, Iris, and her mother across the Rhaetic Alps, when an accident causes the three to seek refuge in a Swiss inn. Cyril has been hurt and the people in the inn help Iris to treat his wounded arm and shoulder. When he comes to, he is introduced to one of his fellow guests…

“And my name – I have no card on my person – is Einar Larssen.”
We three started in unison – “The violinist?” exclaimed Iris, and he bowed and pushed back a straggling lock self-consciously.

The inn is a welcoming place but there is a hidden horror. When the women go off to check out the accommodation, the innkeeper and Larssen tell Cyril what is concealed behind the closed door off the parlour…

“Three corpses.”

Cyril is not unnaturally a little discombobulated by this information. The innkeeper tells him the three men were lost in an avalanche some weeks earlier, and earlier that day their remains had been found…

“Caspar Ragotli is entire,’’ said mine host, with a nod at the door; “Melchoir Fischer—” He told us, detailedly, how this Melchoir was in pieces, most of them there, while of the third, Hans Buol, only one hand had been discovered, “But we know it for Buol’s, by the open knife grasped in it,’’ our entertainer proceeded, gloatingly. “A fine new knife from your Sheffield, Monsieur Lambton.”

The three men agree that the women should not be told about the corpses, since their delicate minds obviously couldn’t cope with the thought. So they all have a merry supper, and afterwards Madame Larssen persuades her husband to play his violin. He begins to play some folk tunes…

“You will not hear these at a paid-for concert—God forbid! ” he observed, his dreamy voice filling a pause between two melodies. “You are hearing, my friends, what few but children of Norway ever hear, scraps of the Huldrasleet. The melodies of the Elf-Kind—the Huldra Folk we name them— no less. Snatches that bygone musicians overheard on chancey nights out in the loneliness of fiords and fells, and passed on down the ages.”

Hulderfolk by August Schneider 1842-1873
Spot the tails peeping out from below the women’s skirts

Then he tells them of how he himself once heard the Huldra, one snowy night much like this night. He tells how their music made him dance…

“It got into my fingers and toes; I began to dance to it. There in the snow I danced, and my senses flowed out of my body in sheer ecstasy, while my emptied heart and head were filled with the tune.”

He plays a little snatch of the tune, and his wife cries out…

“Einar, can it be you heard the Huldra King’s Tune? Then thank Heaven you cannot play it!”

Larssen tells them the legend of the tune, that when it is played all who hear it must dance whether they will or no, and the player must repeat the tune again and again…

“He can only stop if—let me consider—yes, if he plays it backward or, failing that, if the strings of his violin are cut for him.”

The other guests laugh, of course, and beg him to play the tune. Before he begins, he relates one last piece of the legend…

“There was one more detail,” he went on. “Ah, it is that if the tune is played often enough, inanimate things must dance, too.”

What could possibly go wrong?

* * * * *

This seems to be based on an old Irish folk tale about a wonderful tune that makes all who hear it dance, but Kerruish has taken that basic idea, mixed it in with Scandinavian folklore, and added more than a touch of the macabre to create a horridly chilling little tale. It’s very well told, starting off slow and building to a crescendo as the guests all begin to dance… and then as the tune continues find they cannot stop… and then we remember what is in the other room behind the closed door…

As with so much horror writing of times gone by, it’s all in the art of understatement. Most of the horrors are in the mind of the reader. Kerruish gives us just enough hints so that our imagination is filled with dread – so much more effective than laying out every detail on the page.

If you’d like to find out what happens, here’s a link. I’m afraid it’s not very well formatted but it’s the only online version I can find – you need to scroll down to page 157 to find the beginning of this story. Otherwise, you can of course find it in Queens of the Abyss – I’ve only read a couple of the stories so far, but it’s shaping up to be an interesting collection.

(The porpy is exhausted from all that dancing…)

Fretful Porpentine rating:   😮 😮 😮 😮

Overall story rating:            😀 😀 😀 😀

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