THE ROOM IN THE TOWER (1912) – This story was written by E.F. Benson. The British narrator has a recurring nightmare in which he visits his friend John Clinton at his family manor. The other family members, including his mother Mrs. Stone, are cold and grim toward him.
Mrs. Stone assigns the unnamed narrator to a room in the tower and has John lead the way. When the dreamer enters the room, he sees something horrific but always awakens before whatever it is fully registers in his mind.
This goes on for years, with Clinton family members aging in the dream. At one point Mrs. Stone dies, yet in the illogic of the narrator’s dream she is still in the manor when he visits, and she still has John lead him to the room in the tower. The ending of the dream is the same.
After years of correspondence, John Clinton invites our narrator to actually visit his family home. Warily, the narrator accepts the invitation.
The place looks exactly like it appeared in the recurring nightmares, both inside and out.
Pleasantly enough, Clinton’s family members prove to be friendly and welcoming. Most importantly, the friend’s mother looks nothing like the woman in the dreams.
Toward evening, a thunderstorm rolls in and Clinton’s mother assigns the narrator a room in the tower. She has the now-frightened visitor led up the stairs to the room.
Once inside, the narrator is shocked to see a portrait of the dream’s Mrs. Stone on the wall. Embarrassed, the visitor confides in his friend John Clinton about the dreams and John agrees to help him move the portrait out of the room. When they are done, they are both disturbed to note that their hands are bloody from contact with the painting.
It turns out that the Mrs. Stone of the portrait was a family member who was feared in life and sometimes shunned as an evil woman. When she died long ago, she was buried in a nearby churchyard cemetery but each morning her coffin would be back above ground and had to be buried again.
After a few more burials it was decided to bury Mrs. Stone’s coffin in unconsecrated ground. Once that was accomplished, the coffin finally stayed buried.
Still uneasy, the narrator agrees to sleep in the tower room anyway. A particularly loud clap of thunder wakes up our narrator, and he sees Mrs. Stone standing over him.
She tells him she has been waiting for him. She is a vampire and now plans to turn him into one as well. The visitor frantically fights with her and screams for help.
His friend John bursts into the room to help fight the undead Mrs. Stone. She at last departs, and the two men see that not only has her portrait somehow reappeared on the tower room’s wall, but a moldy burial shroud now lies on the floor.
The pair flee the room, never to reenter it.
*** I found it an interesting change of pace to have a female vampire who is old and haggard rather than a sexy temptress like Carmilla and others.
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