The Strange Woman

Ben Ames Williams, author of short stories and novels, was born in Macon, Mississippi in 1889. Strangely his best work was set in Bangor Maine. Much of the book feels dated, but when he delves into a sefarers gothic his provse comes alive in a dark 'Billy Budd' kind of way. He repeatedly descibes a hydrophobia that I don't think has ever been matched.

1.

"He imagined the canoe overturning, felt the strangling water flood his laboring lungs, saw his body sinking with last spasmodic reflex jerkings of arms and legs to rest at last on the dark, slimed bottom of the lake till great sluggish fish with toothless mouths came to pluck at the soft, decaying flesh."

2.

"...and he imagined the canoe broken against these ledges and saw his own helpless body caught by the current and whirled downstream, to smash against the toothed rocks with sodden. bruising blows, and he imagined the egglike crunch of a cracked skull or the hideous grating grind of breaking bones in his arms and legs. "

The paranoid fears of course were skilled foreshadowing for the real incident