THE DEEP ONES: "Dress of White Silk" by Richard Matheson

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THE DEEP ONES: "Dress of White Silk" by Richard Matheson

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2gwendetenebre
Edited: Nov 17, 2017, 11:27 am

I'll be reading from my vintage paperback copy of Third from the Sun.

3AndreasJ
Nov 17, 2017, 1:21 pm

I read it, I confess, from the link Kenton provided - since he's now edited the OP to say there's no legal online versions I guess that was digital piracy. (Arrr!)

4paradoxosalpha
Nov 17, 2017, 1:32 pm

My local public library really sucks compared to what I've been used to from before my move last year. I'm sure that this story would have been in one or more volumes of the collection at my old library. Here, I can only get it in a "DOWNLOADABLE AUDIOBOOK."

Fuck you, 21st century.

5gwendetenebre
Edited: Nov 17, 2017, 1:41 pm

>3 AndreasJ:, >4 paradoxosalpha:

The link I originally posted was to an instructor's WordPress discussion site for students (I think) BUT, as I am a FB friend of R.C. Matheson, and since I posted notice on FB that we'll be discussing his Dad's story next week, I didn't think it prudent to keep that link up there as I'm unsure as to the tale's copyright status. So I went with CYA. Just in case.

6elenchus
Nov 17, 2017, 3:44 pm

>5 gwendetenebre:
Understandable, but double-arrgh for me: no online link, and my copy of Kaye's Masterpieces is in storage.

The break will give me a chance to catch up on last week's read, in any case.

7housefulofpaper
Nov 18, 2017, 2:44 pm

I'll be late to this one. I've ordered The Best of Richard Matheson, but the publication date is 30 November.

8AndreasJ
Nov 22, 2017, 1:17 pm

That was very short. I think I'd enjoyed it better if the mention of Vamps in the OP hadn't spoiled it (an underappreciated risk pf themed collections). Still, it's nicely done, I liked the childish voice of the narrator and the apparent dual reality of the dress etc.

9gwendetenebre
Edited: Nov 24, 2017, 10:54 pm

The narrator's child-voice is very reminiscent of Matheson's classic "Born of Man and Woman", which was written at around the same time. The final two words are still quite startling and unsettling, even though the story has already taken a tilt into the ominous. I'm not even sure that we're dealing with a vampire by the end, just something... hungry. What's with the bad smells in the mother's room and from the dress box? Death and decay? There doesn't seem to be a corpse in the vicinity.

10RandyStafford
Nov 24, 2017, 5:44 pm

Read this one out of the 1995 collection I Am Legend.

Yes, it's very reminiscent of "Born of Man and Woman". If someone hasn't done it already, you probably could put together an anthology of weird and horror stories told through the written accounts of children.

But that story was much clearer. I'm not sure what we're dealing with this in this story.

What has the narrator done? A simple murder? An act of cannibalism?

And what is the motive force behind the act? Is the child an innate monster with bad blood inherited from her mother? Is this a case of bad blood, the mother's buck teeth and ugly hands indicative of an inhuman creature whose inheritance is passed down to the narrator? Psychic possession via some force in the white dress or by the ghost of the mother?

11housefulofpaper
Nov 30, 2017, 5:29 pm

>7 housefulofpaper:
The book arrived today.

Probably influenced by the story's inclusion in Vamps I didn't doubt that this was anything other than a vampire story. I imagined the mother (in the painting) as a horrible Lee Brown Coye type of vampire. The smell of decay in the room suggests that she's in there. Is the white dress a shroud? Is it imbued with her vampiric essence now, like the cloak in Robert Bloch's story - and as in that story, pass on/infect others with this vampirism.

Of course there are also suggestions of tainted inheritance and a dreadful inevitability, and a neat and nasty payoff.