Terror, A List of Those Few Special Scenes

I don’t think that horror is defined by fear. Atmosphere, yes, certainly, but there’s a difference between atmosphere and fear. For me, atmosphere is the creeping sensation that the story’s real, that it’s inescapable, that it’s all around you. It’s what makes you believe in everything the author says and swallow every loathsome idea whole and unexamined.

Pure terror, though, is something rarer. Anyone who loves to read is obviously changed to a greater or lesser degree by what they’re reading at the moment, but to have that change become the dominant portion of your existence, for words on a page to push the fight or flight reflex to such extremes that you’re ready to beg for your life, well, that takes talent. So no, I don’t think that terror is the point of horror, but I definitely do think that it’s evidence that the author’s doing something right.

This is a Halloween list of those few books that have managed to terrify me, that made me forgot all about it just being a book, that had me on the edge of my seat with one hand gripping a the armrest so hard that my knuckles were turning white, frantically wondering how I could flee the room before It got there. Most of these scenes are not the climaxes of their respective books. Sometimes, they’re almost a throwaway. Yet, without exception, they all scared the shit out of me. So let’s take a look.

Before do, though, a warning: the following has spoilers for all books discussed.


To some degree, I think we all fear being helpless, and I’m damn positive that Evenson was thinking of that when he wrote one of the opening scenes in the second novella of Last Days. Kline is grievously wounded and under guard at a hospital. It starts: “Mr. Kline,” said the voice. “We’re coming for you.” And then the line went dead. (p. 113) There is nowhere for Kline to go, no way for him to get there.

He wakes up as his guard is killed, and then the assassin is standing over his bed. What follows is a game of wits, with one player feigning sleep the entire time, the whole struggle between them one of stealth, with near certain death hanging over every action. Unpredictability is the name of the game, and careful plans are devised, enacted, and abandoned, all without the other party ever knowing about their conception:

Inverting the syringe, she tapped the air out.

Now, he thought, tensing slightly, she will bring the needle close so as to inject it into my arm. When she does, I’ll plunge the mirror’s stylus into her eye and will kill her did.

Only it didn’t work quite the way he imagined. Instead of coming close and injecting it into his arm, she simply injected it into his IV bag. (p. 116)

Gripping, original, and paralyzing in its strength; this is how you write a horror scene, as far as I’m concerned.


In my review I said that the hypnosis scenes were horrifying, but it’s hard to really understand just how much of a betrayal it is to watch your own vicariously inhabited and completely trusted body go insane, to watch it betray everything it holds dear:

Stop her, said the only voice left in the world, and as she lunged past him, Judge saw himself catch her hair in one first and snap her head back. She was wretched off her feet. Judge pivoted and threw her down. The furniture jumped when she hit the floor. A stack of CDs on an end table slid off and crashed ot the floor without a sound. Jude’s foot found her stomach, a good hard kick, and she jerked herself into a fetal position. The moment after he’d done it, he didn’t know why he’d done it.

There you go, said the dead man. (p. 114)

Powerful and painful, Hill’s writing leaves you feeling complicit in an act that never happened.

I first read 'Salem's Lot quite a few years ago, on a Sierra Club hiking trip with my family. We’d just gotten back from some six mile uphill monstrosity, and I sat down in the lodge to read. I opened my book, and the two boys within decided they were going to walk through the woods to get to their friends house. As they walked, the woods creaked secretively around them (p. 115), and I started to get a little on edge. A branch snapped somewhere behind them, almost stealthily. (p. 115) Alright, more than a litte. Another branch snapped off to their left. (p. 115) A lot more than a little. Another branch snapped. Well, wait, calm down, Nat, they’re just kids. Nothing bad’s going to happen to the kids, right? Not quite right, as it turns out:

“In just a minute we’ll see the streetlights and feel stupid but it will be good to feel stupid so cunt steps. One…two…three…”

Ralphie shrieked.

“I see it! I see the ghost! I SEE IT!” (p. 116)

I skipped the next day’s hike, in case you were wondering.

But why was the scene so scary? I’m not sure. On reread a few weeks ago, it was still powerful, but nowhere near as horrifying. I think that the excellence was in large part derived from my situation – being a kid of roughly comparable age to the protagonists, in the woods – but the scene is still perfectly developed. The reader, of course, knows that there’s evil afoot well before it takes place and sympathies far more with Ralphie’s whining than his older brother’s rationalism, but the way the atmosphere gradually builds as branches snap, the way that (even at the end) the older boy is convinced they’re at least being hunted by a human foe, the way the scene climaxes in disorientation and uncertainty, it’s all great writing and Stephen King at his chilling best.


This is the first book that I read that scared me, actually. I’d read Cell before hand, and Needful Things, but both were more entertaining than upsetting. This one, on the other hand, dripped atmosphere. We’re a third of the way through, here, and Danny’s investigating Room 217. He goes into the bathroom, and sees the expected corpse in the tub. Well, duh. It’s a horror novel, after all. The woman was sitting up. (p. 326) Oh shit, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Danny runs, reaches the door, but The door would not open, would not, would not, would not. (p. 328) Shit. Double shit. But it’s okay, because Danny figures out how to get clear, so it’s all gonna be fine:

His eyelids snapped down. His hands curled into balls. His shoulders hunched with the effort of his concentration:

(Nothing there nothing there not there at all NOTHING THERE THERE IS NOTHING!)

Time passed. And he was just beginning to relax, just beginning to realize that the door must be unlocked and he could go, when the years-damp, bloated, fish-smelling hands closed softly around his throat and he was turned implacably around to stare into that dead and purple face. (p. 328)

No. God damn it, no! That wasn’t supposed to happen. These things just aren’t supposed to. The kid doesn’t get taken by the monster. He was okay, god damn it, O fucking kay! For about thirty seconds, I was determined to never read another word of The Shining. Then I decided that, if I did that, I would never know what had happened, and that would be far, far worse. So I finished and loved the book. But that scene scared me a hair’s breadth short of badly enough to make me give up on horror, and it did much the same thing on reread.

I think the reasons it’s so effective are fairly obvious, here. The investigation of the disturbance is something that we all know, and we play along with King for a bit when he first shows us the monster. Nice description, cool special effects, etc. Then it sits up, and the stakes raise a bit, but it’s okay, because Danny’s running to the door.

This is where the scene goes from entertaining to brilliant. See, here, horror comes from hope. Danny’s going to be okay, if he can just get to that door, except that it won’t open. Alright, fine, we expect the first attempt to fail, but there is a way out, there certainly is because Danny’s found it. And then King snatches that hope away, and it’s far more painful to have your chances dashed before your eyes than it is to have never had a chance.


The Ash Tree builds up its story of witchcraft and vengeance in an engaging but not revolutionary manner. Your average horror reader will no doubt be able to guess that when the rest of the party wishes Sir Richard a better night, his odds aren’t too great. Things happen exactly as you’d expect. What you probably won’t expect, though, is the friendly, inviting way in which the tragedy is told, the amiability of the words multiplying their effect tenfold:

And now we are in his bedroom, with the light out and the Squire in bed. The room is over the kitchen, and the night outside still and warm, so the window stands open.

There is very little light about the bedstead, but there is a strange movement there; it seems as if Sir Richard were moving his head rapidly to and fro with only the slightest possible sound. And now you would guess, so deceptive is the half-darkness, that he had several heads, round and brownish, which move back and forward, even as low as his chest. It is a horrible illusion. Is it nothing more? There! something drops off the bed with a soft plump, like a kitten, and is out the window in a flash; another – four – and after that there is quiet again.

“Thou shalt seek me in the morning, and I shall not be.”

As with Sir Mathew, so with Sir Richard – dead and black in his bed! (p. 48)

The simple, unadorned language, the easy candor of the words, all of it lures you in to the easy confessions of a friend. Instead, you’re treated to the writhing monstrosities that cover a sleeping, a dying, man’s form.

Lovecraft is unmatched when it comes to atmosphere. A Shadow Over Innsmouth builds up a rich tapestry of history and weaves a palpable feeling of unease. Still, Lovecraft stories are more cerebral than visceral, the ultimate horror more philosophical than emotional. Or, at least, that’s true of every story besides A Shadow Over Innsmouth. Because, see, while I was getting drawn further and further in by the view from the window, something was coming up the stairs:

I was irresolutely speculating on when I had better attack the northward door, and on how I could least audibly manage it, when I noticed that the vague noises underfoot had given place to a fresh and heavier creaking of the stairs. A wavering flicker of light shewed through my transom, and the boards of the corridor began to groan with a ponderous load. Muffled sounds of possible vocal origin approached, and at length a firm knock came on my door. (p. 842)

That knock broke all the rules. Lovecraft stories were about approaching elder gods, about learning horrible truths, about realizing that some cosmic force was about to crush your world without ever really knowing it was there. A Shadow Over Innsmouth, though, climaxes with a chase scene. All of a sudden, the cosmic force was right fucking behind you, and you were running for your life. The descriptive language that drew you so far into the story is suffocating, trapping the character in a world of sludgy details.

I read this story in a sitting at an airport, and I didn’t look up once until I was done. If I’d gotten there a few minutes later, I would’ve missed my plane without noticing until I’d turned the last page. As it was, I was practically shaking when I took my seat.


Sandkings is the story of a horrible thing happening to a horrible person. No big deal, right? Sucks for him, we laugh, move on, etc. Well, not quite. Because this bad thing is an army of sandkings all over every inch of his house. And those things are freaking terrifying, no matter who they’re directed at. It’s impossible to appreciate how much of a crescendo this tale builds to without reading it. The sandkings are everywhere and unstoppable, and the specialists called in to defeat them are slaughtered. The main character runs and…well, the twist in the final sentences is just yet another break breakingly awful thing about this story. Unfortunately, no quotes here, as I’ve been meaning to reread Sandkings for a while now, and I don’t want to dilute the effect by rustling through it a few days beforehand.


Banquet for the Damned’s opening is filled with little dream sequences. To crib my own review:

Throughout the first quarter of the narrative, we find ourselves inside character after character’s heads. They are not in their beds. They do not know how they got where they are. They have been suffering increasingly disturbing nightmares for days on end. Within a few pages, they will be dead. The inevitability of these sections is horrifying, and I found myself reading as fast as I could, sometimes having to force myself to not skip whole paragraphs, because growing acquainted with these pre-damned characters, understanding their thoughts and what makes them tick, was simply too painful. And, since this is horror, I mean that in the best possible way.

Horror can come from hope and from hopelessness, and this was definitely the latter. Disorientation begins the scenes and death ends them, the same every time, and you’re left watching as yet another sleepwalker is ripped to shreds. It’s a night empty of cloud and as still as space (p. 1), and the reader’s all too aware that it will end with death.


So, readers, what're your special scenes?

Brian Evenson - Last Days

Last Days is a streamlined punch to the gut. There are no wasted words here, no auxiliary threads to subtract from the main thrust, nothing to prevent Evenson’s ideas from shooting directly into your skull. The tone is fast and fevered throughout, events always accelerating towards a conclusion that promises to be anything but neat, the resolution of plot threads anything but surgical.

It is impossible to get over a feeling of unease while reading these two novellas, impossible not to feel dirtied with each word that passes beneath your gaze. Kline’s past is heroic, but it’s taken to such extremes that the reader can’t read it without feeling a tad queasy, the sort of victory that the celebrants will always wonder if it might have been better for everyone involved if it had been a defeat, instead:

[They had] read about his so-called heroism and how, even when faced with the man with the cleaver – or the “gentleman with the cleaver” as they chose to call him – he hadn’t flinched, hadn’t given a thing away. Was it true, they wanted to know ,that he hadn’t flinched? That he had simply watched the man raise the cleaver and bring it down, his hand becoming a separate, moribund creature? (p. 25)

In the same vein, every sympathetic character is also a monster, every simple decision a potential moral abyss, every simple task labyrinthine and difficult. The reader feels sympathy for Kline but should they? Gous is nice, companionable, even. And yet he is also depraved in their own way, caught up in the cult until it is more powerful than right or wrong, life or death, to him

That cult, The Brotherhood of Mutilation, is the center of this story. Taking Mathew 29 (And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out…) to the extreme, they’ve developed a religion out of the process of self mutilation, glorifying in disfigurement to the point that their leader is nothing but a tongue-less head and a nipple-less torso. It’s easy to simply classify the Brotherhood as evil, and it often seems right to do so, but they are often more alien than wrong, more amoral than immoral. The utter incomprehensibility of their mindset, held together by its unapproachable but unassailable logic, is one of the greatest strengths of the text, dictating the course of almost every conversation between Kline and the cult members:

“You can’t all be Paul,” [Kline] said.

“Why not?” said the man. “Is this a teaching?”

“A teaching?” said Kline. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Should I write it down?”

“Write what down?”

“’You can’t all be Paul.’ And whatever else comes thereafter from your lips.”

“No,” said Kline, a strange dread starting to grow within him. “I don’t want you to write anything down.”

“Is this too a teaching?” said Paul. “Write nothing down?”

“Nothing’s a teaching,” said Kline. (p. 132)

The Brotherhood is a place of contradictions. On one hand, mutilations are a source of distinction approaching religious ecstasy, something that is an unbelievable honor and something to be revered above all else. At the same time, lower members of the Brotherhood often get their amputations at amputation parties, events were everyone socializes and drinks until the evening culminates with anesthesia and the bite of the knife or cleaver. That combination of reverence and irreverence colors much of Last Days.

Evenson’s narrative is one of disorientation. Events move at an intentionally jerky, artificial pace, as Kline is thrown, shoved, and otherwise man handled to revelation after revelation. This is effective at subjecting the reader to Kline’s confused mental state, forcing the reader to struggle to process information at the same speed as Kline. Over long periods of time, however, the technique becomes tiresome, leaving the reader with almost nothing to grasp onto as progress for the occasional long stretch. Up until the end, Kline is not the arbiter of his own destiny, and very few of the book’s events are determined by him until then. Kline, though physically and mentally powerful, is not a strong character in the traditional, plot-driving sense, and it can grow annoying to have a story almost wholly directed by outside elements, though Evenson’s writing and pacing are too strong for that to ever grow into a truly debilitating issue.

Combining with the tautness of the story, Evenson’s prose is so bare as to be effectively invisible for most of the book, simply dragging the reader along by the throat and standing aside to let them see the events looming up above them. Motivations are rarely shared, and the dialogue is almost always declarative, often in fragments. Character’s seem to talk at one another far more often than to one another, leaving whole aspects of story and mysteries open to be connected, if there even is a connection, by the reader. Every once in a while, Evenson will display the same irreverence that he does to mutilation and matters of faith to the characters’ conversations and the book’s mysteries:

“I’m here because of Aline.”

“Who’s either dead or not dead.”

“Exactly,” said Kline.

“There’s a big difference,” said Gous. “That’s what we intend to find out.”

“What?” said Ramse.

“That,” said Gous.

“What?” said Ramse, looking around. “What’s going on?”

“Exactly,” said Kline. “That’s what I want to know.” (p. 84)

Much has been made of how terrifying Last Days is. Now, fear is obviously a fairly personal thing, and it’s unlikely that the same section will affect two different readers in the same way, but I have to say that, for the most part, I did not find Last Days frightening. Grotesque, yes. Disturbing, yes. Terrifying, no… Except for one scene in the beginning of the second novella, that is, where the powerlessness of the narrator is rammed home so hard that I was almost falling off my chair I was so freaked out while reading it. So I guess I’ll take it back, Last Days can be pretty frightening when it really wants to be.

The first novella here, Brotherhood of Mutilation, is the tighter of the two. The concepts are at their freshest and the disorientation at its most acute, yet least forced. In addition, the novella twists its central scene and throws it back at us again and again, in dreams and memories and recurrences, until we feel as haunted as Kline, turning the pages in order to escape his past.

By contrast, the first while of Last Days feels like the reader’s treading water in a shifting sea; they may be moving, but it’s by no action of their own. Once that part concludes, however, Last Days begins to pick up speed and never stops doing so. Despite a few mishaps, it becomes almost the equal of the first novella and in many ways that book’s inverse. Brotherhood of Mutilation was all about Kline being controlled, about Kline being powerless in his own destiny, but that theme was so much a part of the story’s structure and foundations that it was never questioned. In this novella, on the other hand, Kline lashes out at the ties that bind him, the novella concluding in him asserting his own dominance to the detriment of everyone around him.

The differences between the two novels are what gives the collection as a whole its identity, the overall tale managing to take the strengths of its two halves, with each novella generally balancing out the other’s weaknesses. Last Days is an immersing and a disturbing read.

Reading in September

The concept behind Shine is interesting, but the stories are uneven, to say the least. In addition, it’s hard to tell what Vries means when he talks about Optimistic SF. In the introduction he says that it’s not just a tragic, or even an average, world that people learn to adapt to or prosper in, but rather something where everyone is truly better off, and yet a good majority of these stories don’t fit that definition. Not that that makes those bad stories, of course, some of those are the best in the collection, but they further muddy the waters of whatever Vries was trying to say. There’re also an annoying number of stories that are either purely didactic or incredibly obvious allegories.


Visions is a short story collection from one of Russia’s premier writers in the early twentieth century. Andreyev’s writing is dark, precise, and evocative, and his use of the supernatural to show his ideas in stories like The Red Laugh has convinced me that, if he had lived twenty years later and published in England, he would be mentioned in the same breath as many of Lovecraft’s contemporaries (Machen, Blackwood, etc). In fact, his story Lazarus has been in a Famous Modern Ghost Stories collection. Anyway, review on the way.


Matter is an enjoyable book that likes the building up part of its story so much that it really doesn’t do anything else, going from transit to conclusion in only a few dozen awful pages. Still, I will be reading more of Banks’s work. Review here.


Last Days is so taut that putting down the book at any point, whether it’s a chapter break or the middle of a sentence, feels like physically prying yourself away from some addictive drug. The narrative has its problems, but they’re comparatively minor. Review on the way.


It was enjoyable when Heinlein was actually trying to, you know, tell a story. The two hundred pages of tensionless philosophizing that followed, however – not to mention the painfully predictable sacrifice scene – did not help. Neither did the irony of “Nine out of ten times, if a woman gets raped it’s her fault,” appearing in a book about equality and free love. Neither did the other fifty-five sexist or otherwise offensive quotes and situations that crop up. Nor the playboy super-genius author insert.


There are certain things that you expect when going into a classic. Powerful writing, interesting themes, deep characterization, you know the drill. The Odyssey delivers on all those fronts, as well as being something I didn’t expect: a page turner. It may have been written a few thousand years back, but it’s still a damn fun read.


Though I’m always comparing King’s later books to his earlier classics, I’d almost forgot what it was like to read him when he’s actually firing on all cylinders. This is, without a doubt, one of King’s best novels – though not one of the very best – and a frightening and acomplished horror novel no matter the standards you hold it to. Review coming.


May as well continue the Policy of Silence on Breaking New Ground posts, because it amuses me. Review on the way.


The Folding Knife is the personal tragedy that lies at the heart of an epic. Parker’s characterization and prose are impeccable, and, even if the conclusions and events are bleak, the book is impossible to put down due to the sheer charisma that every word of dialogue brings with it. Review on the way.


I think that just about everyone has heard about the Way of Kings at this point. In my opinion, it’s quite good, but not great, and it’s reviewed to death. So I’ll be adding yet another review, just because. Until then, there are a huge number of great reviews of this out already, including Niall’s for Strange Horizons.