A Shivering Breath on Your Neck

I can remember the exact moment as a child when I KNEW I was gonna be a geek of horror stories. My mom used to be a big Stephen King fan, and one night she left her worn paperback copy of THE SKELETON CREW on our fireplace. She had told me many times before not to read her Stephen King books because they'd give me nightmares. So I of course had to pick it up and look through it when she wasn't around. I wasn't sure what the big deal was, so I was of course intrigued. I opened to a random page and started reading what I would later come to know as "The Raft," a short story about a group of teenagers who go night-swimming out to a little wooden raft to enjoy themselves. However, they find themselves trapped there with a gelatinous, shadowy water blob that keeps oozing itself in between the slats and destroying whatever it touches, even human flesh. (This sounds much sillier than it actually is--it's quite the creepy story.) Anyways, I started reading somewhere in the middle of it and remember being shocked and horrified (enough that I can STILL vividly remember the exact descriptive passage that did it) by the description of one of the teenagers who made an attempt to swim back to shore--he was described as "a human fire hydrant," blood shooting from both his ears and from his mouth as the blob surrounded him and started destroying him. I could barely sleep that night.

And it was those stories that I actively sought out once my mother said I was old enough to read them.

This weekend, waxing a little nostalgic, I nabbed a new book of ghost stories while I was at the library--The Dark: New Ghost Stories edited by Ellen Datlow. I haven't read a good ghost story in a LONG while, ever since my sister gave me a wicked cool book of 'em a couple years ago, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I've chowed down 300+ pages of spooky stories from this book since Friday and suddenly remembered why I used to be so smitten with them when I was younger.

What intrigues me about them (now moreso than when I was younger) is that they abide by such similar structures/formulas--kinda like pulp novels and whatnot--and yet THAT is sorta what's inherent in their success. When you start reading a horror story, you KNOW where the story's going to take you, perhaps not specifically with regard to the plot, but in its INTENT. This cannot be said for most other kinds of literature really... You KNOW that at some point, the rug's gonna be pulled out from underneath you, leaving you disconcerted and unsettled. And it's that knowledge, that sense of impending doom, that makes them so successful. At least if it's a GOOD horror story. And that's why you read them, you SEEK this out in them.

As with ANY genre of writing, there's stories that are only mildly successful, only tweak a smidgen of fright out of you, if any. And then there's the stories that leave you checking the shadowy corners of your room when you crawl into bed, that making you start at stupid little noises and sleep restlessly all night. THESE are the reasons why horror stories are so much fun to read.

Like "The Amicable Divorce" by Daniel Abraham (from The Dark) for example. This is a story about a man dealing with the death of his infant-son and the resulting-divorce. In this tale, the ex-wife calls him up with complaints that some sorta cat or racoon keeps getting into her house, and he comes over several times to help her out, finding blood smears and destruction from the floor to about 2-feet high in most of the rooms. His character is fairly well-developed and sympathetic one, yearning for the return of his happy past, his marriage, and his child. And yet at the end, when the final horror of the story is revealed, we are not only frightened by the supernatural, but by the man himself and what a quiet horror HE can hold within.

Admittedly, this one left me a little jittery at bedtime. I kinda miss that.

Favorite horror books from my youth that always left me jittery at bedtime:

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark--as I've mentioned before--these were DAMN gruesome stories for little kids, complete with sick and twisted illustrations;

Stephen King's Skeleton Crew and Night Shift--I am still a fan of both as they have some DAMN creepy tales in 'em; I cannot bear to trudge my way through his excessively and unnecessarily lengthy novels, but DO enjoy his short stories;

Anything by Edgar Allen Poe--my mom used to have the Collected Works of his, and I LOVED to sit and read all the horribly twisted stories; particular favorites--The Black Cat, The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit & the Pendulum, and The Cask of Amontillado;

John Saul Books--I went through this HUGE John Saul-phase, consuming mass quantities of his books (all of them up through the publication year of 1990).

I actually kind of miss reading horror stories and, with Halloween coming up, maybe I'll indulge a little. So feel free to leave any suggested readings in my comment-section. BOOOOOOOO!

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