Pelan fumbles a bit with this choice. In his own introduction to the tale, he admits that the strongest competition for this year came from “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. However, he should have chosen Faulkner, as this tiny tale offers very little.
Once more, we have a frame story, in which the narrator turns the story over to another narrator, Ronald Dalton, right away. Dalton describes what happened when a scholar by the name of Gavin Thomson stayed with him and his brother while researching Stonehenge. The young man clearly had thoughts that the place was haunted by elementals, spirits without form who seek out human beings to possess.
Naturally, Gavin starts acting strangely, and Dalton, accompanied by his brother, investigates what is happening to their friend, only to find him on the center stone with a dagger in his chest.
SPOILER ALERT: Gavin has left a letter to absolve his friends of his death, which he had foreseen. He knew he was acting strangely (once, he sacrificed a dog to the spirits of Stonehenge, which was a pretty good indication), but he started wanting to kill his friends to appease whatever lived within the stones. Instead, he chose to offer himself, thus saving Dalton’s life. This letter was sufficient enough to convince authorities that Gavin had lost his shit and offed himself. END OF SPOILERS.
There is embarrassingly little to this story, so much so that it’s barely worth the time reading. Whatever we do have amounts to hacky crap. That Faulkner lost out to this trifle should haunt Pelan to the end of his days. Granted, just about everyone has read “A Rose for Emily,” and it can be found in countless pages, but it is clearly the winner of 1930.
[This story first appeared in SINISTER STORIES (oddly enough, under the pen name Jasper John), and it cannot be read online at this time. This is probably for the best.]
I am slowly reading my way through CB. This was my most recent reading. I agree totally with your review. While I've liked some of the stories up to this point less than others, I agree that the Muspratt was empty and clumsy. That dog! Was the dog he killed the dog that ran after him - i.e., Dalton's dog? A weird glitch in an otherwise lovingly curated anthology.
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