Review of “The Marble Hands” by Bernard Capes: Halloween Countdwon

Plot:

Our hero rides his bike with his friend Heriot to the churchyard. Heriot wants him to check something out but doesn’t want to see it himself. Our hero soon finds what he’s looking for—a grave with no headstone or inscription. A beveled marble curb encloses a graveled area. In the graveled area stand two marble hands as if projecting from the grave. A sculptor friend of the interred made them. The woman insisted that they be her only epitaph.

The woman beneath them was a friend of Heriot’s Aunt Caddie, who disliked her. Heriot, however, liked her. He was only seven.

When the husband of the deceased remarried, the new wife insisted that the hands go. Heriot went to see what the grave looked like without them—but they were still there, looking as lifelike as ever.

Thoughts:

This story is a short-short that can be easily read in one sitting, unless you have a cat who wishes to help you with your reading.

This is a brief, creepy story. The narrator feels the eeriness of the place but doesn’t understand it. His friend tells him the backstory as the two ride their bikes away. He does not, however, settle the crucial question of whether the hands are “real” or not. While she was alive, the owner of the hands was friendly to Heriot. He liked her in return. Now, he’s not so sure…

If this little gothic tale is something less than a masterpiece, it makes for a nice little creepy read.


Bio: Bernard Capes (1854-1918) was a prolific Victorian English author and journalist who mainly wrote ghost and supernatural stories but also romances, mysteries, poetry, and history. His popularity waned after his death during the 1918 flu epidemic. Anthologist Hugh Lamb published a selection of Capes’ stories as The Black Reaper in 1989 (expanded 1998).

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (8:35)


Title: “The Marble Hands”
Author: Bernard Capes (1854-1918)
First published: The Fabulists, 1915
Length: short story