William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson is part of the horror subgenre known as cosmic horror, which has in H P Lovecraft its most famous author. It was published in 1908, and Hodgson considered it part of a cosmic horror trio, along with The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” and The Ghost Pirates. Warning: SPOILERS.
First, a quick synopsis: two friends go on a fishing trip near an isolated Irish village and find a mysterious diary describing the experiences of a man in a strange house that’s being haunted by inexplicable (and unexplained) cosmic phenomena.
In the Author’s Introduction to the Manuscript, Hodgson adopts the typical found footage formula by writing about the diary as if it really exists. The story even starts as any horror movie, pointing out how the village doesn’t show up in maps and how the friends can’t communicate with the villagers. They also send their driver away for two weeks, cutting themselves even further from the outside world. However, since this is cosmic horror and not regular horror, instead of running into a secret druidic cult and being offered as human sacrifices to some pagan deity, they find the diary of a man whose life alternates between being besieged by man-pigs and being taken across time and space on haunting cosmic trips.
I had passed beyond the fixed stars and plunged into the huge blackness that waits beyond. All this time I had experienced little, save a sense of lightness and cold discomfort. Now, however the atrocious darkness seemed to creep into my soul, and I became filled with fear and despair.
Up until the Fragments chapter, The House on the Borderland seems to be going somewhere. The first cosmic trip that sees the nameless narrator being transported across the cosmos to a silent plain surrounded by a ring of mountains from where giant (living?) statues of non-Christian gods look down on a replica of his house is pretty eerie and hints at the kind of primordial, pre-human truths that Lovecraft liked to write about. It also has the first appearance of the top radioactive man-pig, which is a really random choice of cosmic menace. At one point, we’re told the house has a bad reputation which is why the nameless narrator got it so cheap. This of course means that there’s definitely something there and opens up the possibility for him to dig up the stories of former owners. Perhaps it involved the lesser man-pig infestation that forces him to barricade himself in the house, along with his sister and his dog. I had some issues with this sequence, namely the sister’s weird reactions. I started to think that her brother had morphed into a man-pig, which was why she was freaking out around him, but he didn’t. And if for some reason she couldn’t see the attackers, why didn’t she ever remark on his obviously crazy behaviour? Really, the sister’s presence added nothing and ended up creating some problems. It would probably have made more sense for the narrator to live alone.
After the attack, the nameless narrator examines the cellars looking for possible breaches, and we find out it’s a great construction, with columns, a vaulted roof, and an archway with strange carvings (oho, strange carvings!). There’s also a hatch that opens into darkness from whence he thinks he heard some mysterious mocking laughter (oho, mysterious mocking laughter!). We later find out that the hatch opens into a tunnel, above a bottomless pit, which end up being both flooded. Even so, the nameless narrator feels some strange force drawing him to it. But why would he insist on staying in this clearly dangerous place? Well, one day, he was visited by the spirit of his dead love who told him that she wouldn’t be able to visit him anywhere else. She also told him to leave the damned house, but he chose to ignore that bit because he’s still so much in love that he’s willing to fight man-pigs from outer space if it means spending a few moments with her.
The House on the Borderland is split in twenty-seven chapters plus the Introduction. After Chapter XIV, The Sea of Sleep, which reveals the nameless narrator’s romantic motivations, everything goes to cosmic hell. It starts with The Fragments, which are parts of the diary recounting another one of the narrator’s cosmic trips and add nothing to the story. Then, between Chapter XV, The Noise in the Night, and Chapter XXII, The Dark Nebula, the narrator describes how he was forced to witness the days pass until first the Earth and then our Sun died a slow (very, very slow) (really, it’s slow) death and our galaxy was pulled into a mysterious green Sun, the same one that lit the plain where the replica of his house stood. The accelerated passing of the time is annoyingly repetitive, and the subsequent cosmic sequences never achieve the surreal, nightmarish quality of the first trip. Hodgson’s descriptions were no doubt considered interesting and wildly imaginative when the story was published, but reading them now, I didn’t find them particularly compelling. This is the moment when you’d expect some sort of revelation about what’s going on with the house, the mysterious plain with the watchful gods, and the stupid man-pig. There isn’t one. Also, the nameless narrator isn’t nearly as freaked out by what’s happening around him as you’d expect.
He wakes up back in his own time and finds out his dog really did die, no doubt because he touched him during the accelerated time vision. After his return, he starts to get nightly visits from the radioactive man-pig who leaves glowing burns on both him and his new dog. He also mind controls the nameless narrator into opening the door because apparently, he can’t burn his way through wood, though he was able to vaporize the sister’s cat. In case you’re wondering, no, the sister doesn’t in any way, shape, or form react to her no doubt beloved pet simply disappearing. Anyway, this part is just too rushed. The diary doesn’t have an ending, but the two fishing friends find out that the house simply disappeared one day, along with its occupants. One of them is sceptical, but the other one says he sensed an evil presence in the abandoned gardens. So, the cosmic man-pig is still around? Why? And what the hell has he been doing all this time? Guess we’ll never know.
There are just so many wasted opportunities. The carvings in the cellar, the bottomless pit, the house’s past, the giant god statues, the presence that the narrator’s dead love wanted to avoid… Instead, Hodgson decided to give his readers seven chapters of a never-ending end of the world described in a nondramatic way before rushing through an attempted break-in by a radioactive mind controlling man-pig from another dimension (which isn’t nearly as awesome as it sounds). I don’t usually need to know everything to enjoy a story, but The House on the Borderland is way too long (or at least felt like it) to get away with not even attempting to explain or at least hint at something beyond the two houses being connected. Hodgson also crossed the line separating Slow Build from Needs An Editor several times.
After reading this, I’m forced to conclude that I’m not a fan of cosmic horror in general, just Lovecraft. It’s funny that the main complain about him is his inability to describe things and being too vague. Compared to Hodgson, he actually described and explained a lot. There’s also something about the overdramatic, campy way he wrote that makes the abundance of adverbs work. Hodgson just comes across as too serious. And his radioactive man-pig is no match for Lovecraft’s ancient eldritch tentacled cosmic threats. Not describing the supernatural entities in The Ghost Pirates was a smart choice.
By Danforth
EDITED TO ADD
Looking back, I feel like I may have been a little too harsh, but the novel does have issues. Hodgson's inability to know when to stop undermines his haunting cosmic descriptions, and the sister was wholly superfluous. Also, I just couldn't get past how ridiculous the radioactive man-pig was. It's such a random threat with no explanation to make it better.