Over the next 31 weeks, I’ll be releasing one single each Friday. This thematic series is inspired by the dark literature and strange stories I’ve cherished over the years, and my goal for each is to provide a quick write up about which story influenced it. Some of the stories are new favorites, while others left an indelible mark years ago. Together, they form a tapestry of the weird and quietly wrong.
Despite being published in 1907, William Hope Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night” is a short story which I only encountered more recently.
Two sailors on a schooner in the Northern Pacific are approached by a man in a rowboat who asks that they put away their lanterns, thus obscuring him from view. He begs for rations for his fiancé, currently marooned on an island nearby, and departs upon the sailors obliging. Later that same night he returns and tells his tale; one of love, body horror and resignation. Departing a final time, the sailors can make out a head, “nodding into the mist” like some “great, grey…sponge.”
Like several of the pieces on “do the dead sing?”, “Nodding into the Mist” started as a jam session on the
@cymaforma Alt. As it developed, I found that the
@patchpoint Ciat-Lonbarde Cocoquantus added the perfect amount of evening grit.
“The Voice in the Night” is in the public domain and available to read here: /wiki/Avon_Fantasy_Reader/Issue_01/The_Voice_in_the_Night Huge thanks to
@lucasallencook for his amazing cover artwork, and
@alijaa.wav for additional production and mixing.
