Crooken Sands

Crooken Sands by Bram Stoker (1901)

Arthur Fernlee Markam, a London merchant, rents the Red House above the Mains of Crooken in Aberdeenshire and, inspired by a music-hall performer, commissions an elaborate and entirely invented Highland costume from the MacCallum More and Roderick MacDhu's Scotch All-Wool Tartan Clothing Mart in Copthall Court. He debuts the outlandish tartan suit—complete with eagle's feather, cairngorm brooch, claymore, dirk, and sporran—upon landing in Scotland, to the ridicule of fellow passengers, his own children, and eventually the entire population of the Mains of Crooken, who follow his carriage in astonished crowds. His wife and daughters are mortified, but Markam, proud and stubborn, insists on his right to dress as he pleases and vows to persist. Walking alone through the village, he is confronted by Saft Tammie, a half-crazy local fixture known for uncanny warnings, who denounces his vanity and prophesies that he will "meet himself face to face" and be swallowed by the quicksand near the shore. That evening, sitting on a rock beside the dangerous quicksand between the dunes, Markam glimpses what appears to be his own image on the opposite rock, panics, slips into the quicksand, and is rescued just in time by a salmon-fisher who hauls him free. Markam swears the fisherman to secrecy about the danger and later rewards him anonymously with a fine fishing smack. Sleepless and shaken, Markam broods on Saft Tammie's prophecy. Domestic friction escalates: his wife scolds him over the ridiculous costume after a tea-spilling mishap, and he stubbornly vows to wear nothing else during their stay, alienating his family further. Saft Tammie continues to appear at his gate daily, repeating his warning. Markam grows ill from poor sleep, recurring nightmares of the quicksand, and obsessive research into dream phenomena and doppelgänger lore (via a German book by Dr. Heinrich von Aschenberg), which convinces him he is living a double existence. He tests this by chalking his name on his shoe soles before bed, then finds the chalk undisturbed yet his own footprints on the shore leading into the quicksand with no return marks—deepening his dread. He also learns Saft Tammie's background: once destined for the ministry, he became a taciturn whaler and fisherman, eventually settled at Crooken by a laird's charity, and is credited locally with a strange predictive gift tied to impending death. One evening Tammie visits again, cryptically declares "I forgie ye" and departs. That night, sitting by the quicksand under a full moon, Markam resolves to abandon the costume for good—but immediately confronts the phantom double again, this time watching it advance into the quicksand and sink while crying out, his own foot briefly caught before he tears free, losing a shoe, and flees in terror. He tells no one, sleeps soundly, and wakes restored; Saft Tammie never returns to his post. Markam bundles the Highland costume and ceremonially casts it into the quicksand, announcing to his family that he has abandoned his vanity, and the rest of the summer passes happily. Some time after returning to London, Markam receives a letter from the MacCallum More (real name Joshua Sheeny Cohen Benjamin) explaining that his partner Roderick MacDhu (real name Emmanuel Moses Marks), who had ordered an identical Highland costume and traveled to Aberdeenshire, has gone missing after writing home in distress that he too had seen his "wraith." The letter asks whether Markam encountered any sign of him or his costume near Crooken. Markam, troubled, does not reply. The text ends here.

By Bram Stoker · First published 1901 · Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Adventure · 10,051 words

First lines

Mr Arthur Fernlee Markam, who took what was known as the Red House above the Mains of Crooken, was a London merchant, and being essentially a cockney, thought it necessary when he went for the summer holidays to Scotland to provide an entire rig-out as a Highland chieftain, as manifested in chromolithographs and on the music-hall stage. He had once seen in the Empire the Great Prince-"The Bounder King"-bring down the house by appearing as "The MacSlogan of that Ilk," and singing the celebrated Scotch song, "There's naething like haggis to mak a mon dry! " and he had ever since preserved in his mind a faithful image of the picturesque and warlike appearance which he presented. Indeed, if the true inwardness of Mr. Markam's mind on the subject of his selection of Aberdeenshire as a summer resort were known, it would be found that in the foreground of the holiday locality which his fancy painted stalked the many hued figure of the MacSlogan of that Ilk.

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gothic · horror · vampire · supernatural · mystery · thriller · fiction · novel · Ireland · 19th century · historical · literary

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