Review: Horror Story: "The Thing in the Upper Room" by Arthur Morrison

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Believing rent is cheaper in Paris than in London, twenty-five-year-old Attwater, “commonly healthy, often hungry, and always poor,” came to the former. He could hardly sell fewer pictures in Paris since he had sold none in London. The room he found on the top floor had a reputation for being haunted. Attwater didn’t care. He thought maybe he could write about it and sell an article to a magazine. How the original haunting came about, no one knows. Perhaps it has something to do with the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572), the ancien régime or the Reign of Terror. Paris, the narrator tells the reader, has a cruel history. The only tenant of the room within living memory blew his brains out while the police pounded on his door as they sought to arrest him for murder. While the room is well-lit—a good thing for an artist—a feeling of unease settles over Attwater the moment he walks into the room. He tells himself it’s just his “fancy” and laughs it off. Yet a Malay dagger he happens own occupies his thoughts more than usual. This short horror story is a see-it-coming. Attwater’s first sin is to be poor. His second it to fail to run from the room like a spooked cat. It struck me as primarily sad. The incidents mentioned as possible sources of the thing in the upper room—the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the ancien régime and the Reign of Terror are all instances of injustices and oppression. No one is sure, for example, just how many Huguenots were slaughtered on St. Bartholomew’s Day. Then again, maybe I’m reading too much into a simple horror story. Arthur Morrison was a British author and journalist who wrote for The Globe. He’s best known now for his detective stories featuring detective Martin Hewitt. Reflecting his own background, he wrote fiction about the working class of London. One popular novel wasA Child of the Jago. He also collected and wrote about Japanese art. An online version of this story can be found at Project Gutenberg Australia (thanks @egdcltd): ______ Title: “The Thing in the Upper Room” Author: Arthur Morrison (1863-1945) First published: The Storyteller May 1910 Source: ISFDB