Short Story Review: The Hand

title: The Hand
author: Guy de Maupassant
genre: short story classic/horror
source: http://www.americanliterature.com/
first line: All were crowding around M. Bermutier, the judge, who was giving his opinion about the Saint-Cloud mystery.

I am a fan of Guy de Maupassant's short stories. He had a knack for simply telling an entertaining story. I like his scary ones best. I actually wondered whether I'd want to read this one, because hands freak me out. I was brave and read it anyway. What I found here is an enjoyable, creepy short tale.

In the short story The Hand, Judge Bermutier is telling a group of ladies a strange story.
Bermutier had once been living and working in a small town when he met a man named Sir John Rowell with a mysterious past. The two men were neighbors and all kinds of unsavory rumors were circulating about Rowell.

Bermutier observed Rowell as best as he could, trying to figure him out and ended up somewhat befriending him. He learned the man was a hunter. Rowell shows Bermutier the inside of his home and a creepy collectible he has acquired, a mummified human hand. The hand is chained to the wall.

How gross is this?

"One night, about three months after the crime, I had a terrible nightmare. I seemed to see the horrible hand running over my curtains and walls like an immense scorpion or spider. Three times I awoke, three times I went to sleep again; three times I saw the hideous object galloping round my room and moving its fingers like legs."

I'll leave my post at that so as not to ruin the story, but there is a bit of mystery involved. The author was supposedly inspired to write this story because he was shown a mummified human hand as a teenager.
I found this short story to be a nice quick dose of horror.

You can read The Hand online for free.

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents.
Maupassant suffered from mental illness in his later years and attempted suicide on January 2nd, 1892. He was committed to a private asylum in Paris and died the following year.