He might try to help you, in his way. And that could be pretty horrible. If he didn't like you...well, that could be worse

OK, so it took me awhile to get this next post written, but I had a good reason: I'm lazy. Also I'm going to blame this on the recent snowstorm that hit the Northeast, even though that happened way after I finished reading Horrorscape. But seriously, we got a foot and a half in Jersey and it wasn't even Halloween yet, so I think that excuse can work retroactively.

Since I have been lazy getting these posts written I figure I'll just combine the last two sections of Horrorscapes together in this single entry, and instead of reviewing a couple stories, like I did in my last post, I'll give you a quick comment about each of them.


Part 3: Belief and The Supernatural

Pickman's Model by H.P. Lovecraft - This is the first Lovecraft I'd read and it is what makes me want to read more of the guy. Plus it takes place in Boston's North End, which I lived in for awhile, and could totally believe that evil things are crawling around just below the city.
The Roaches by Thomas Disch - A good though somewhat forgettable creepy crawly horror story and what happens when someone is a lonely clean freak.
The Boogeyman by Stephen King - You can always tell a King story without even knowing he wrote it. He has a certain tone and no matter how crazy things get the characters sound real and flawed. It's fun to see him take on the creature that hides in children's closets.

It's a Good Life by Jerome Bixby - You (probably) know this one, even if you don't know you know it. Twilight Zone and Simpsons did it. Little kid can read thoughts and control things with his mind and hates when people are unhappy or think bad things. What happens when someone with a 5 year old understanding of morality has complete control over everyone? It just confirms that kids are terrifying.

Part 4: Avenging Angels and Faustian Devils
They Bite by Anthony Boucher - Locals tell outsider of the haunted house. It's a simple premise that every horror writer has taken on at some point and this one has a little lesson worked into it. Granted the lesson is along the lines of don't be an ass or you'll get bitten but still.
The Black Lake by Tony Richards - I always have to remind myself that this isn't a King story. It feels like it could be. Who knew a lake could be such a successful predator?

The Raft by Stephen King - OK, so this one is actually a King story. It has those believable characters and then a crazy (and gory) attack. I probably mix up The Black Lake with this one because they're next to one another and they're both about malevolent lakes, which really isn't a horror category I thought would exist, but there you go. I saw a short film version of it but like a lot of King things, go for the book instead of the movie.
Sweets to the Sweet by Robert Bloch - First up, I love the Shakespeare reference. Second, it's another story where children are terrifying. This time the kid's behavior is more justifiable but still, don't mess with kids. If you call someone a witch often enough, will they become one? Bloch is also the guy that wrote Psycho, so you know he can do some quality writing. This is no exception.
If Damon Comes by Charles L. Grant - Another horror story about a kid. See how scary kids are? Although this is more like Bloch's tale where the kid being a super creepy is kind of justified. Kinda creepy but not outright scary like some of the other stories in here.
Ceremony by William F. Nolan - It's kind of like the Boucher story, where someone gets punished by these "avenging angels". Also it's a good reason to avoid taking long bus rides because those always seem to invite creepy things to happen.
Dark Angel by Edward Bryant - Don't think that this is like that Jessica Alba TV show. It's a question of how far should revenge go and how do you know when you've gone too far?

The Playground by Ray Bradbury - Again! children are the creepy factory here. How much can you really protect your children? How far will you go? What do your childhood memories mean for your kids?

Title quote from page 132, from the story It's a Good Life.

Goshgarian, Gary ed. Horrorscape. Kendall Press, 1993.

There is no delight the equal of dread

Now I'm onto part 2 of Horrorscapes called The Horror We Do. Sometimes horror is caused by the supernatural and sometimes it's just people who suck. I guess that's the simplified way of describing it but I am here to simplify.  The horror that we do  is, in general, my preferred type of horror fiction. I may get freaked out watching the supernatural stuff* as well, but it's the horrors coming from the mundane, the realistic stuff,  that keeps me awake at night.

So I figured I do 2 quick mini-reviews of the stories in this part because I can't pick just one to talk about. So here we go:

The Horror We Do
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Dread by Clive Barker
Something About Camilla by Juleen Brantingham

First up, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. Have you read this one yet? If not, just stop reading this and go read it. *This is absolutely going to contain spoilers. Really the fact that I'm writing about it as a horror story is already kind of a spoiler so I apologize for that. If you had just read it already, we wouldn't be in this mess*
This is a messed up story that makes me repeat "WTF people?" when I finish it. Seriously, every time I have that reaction, even when I know what's coming. According to the intro before the story, when this was first published in The New Yorker many people were "disturbed to the point of cancelling their subscriptions," which is awesome. I want to get that powerful of a reaction out of people. Granted I just picture people with monocles and top hats reading this and then crying "Good heavens!" or "What the devil?!" when they get to the end, so it may not be the most difficult group to shock, but still. It starts out so innocently, with a small town and everyone taking part in this lottery that at first sounds kind of like a game. Then slowly you get these feeling that something is off but you can't figure out what. And then it ends with a lady being stoned to death by her friends and family and how can you finish this and not be like WTF? and have your monocle go flying off? It's so scary because these seem like normal people. There's nothing sinister about them or the town; they're just doing what they've always done. And that is the scary part. They're doing it because they've always done it and how many things can you think of people do just because it's always been done that way?
*Spoilers are contained, but seriously, just read the story.*

Now I need to mention Clive Barker's "Dread" because it also makes you go WTF people, but you don't have the same innocence that is part of "The Lottery". It's also much more violent, much more graphic, than anything else in the book so far. The character Quaid is looking to study and understand dread. And isn't that, on some level, what anyone reading horror fiction is doing? You want to be scared from a safe distance. Goshgarian says in the intro to Horrorscapes

What horror fiction does is allow us to partake in horror and terror at a distance. It's a safe way of giving into primitive pleasure, of speculating about unseen powers, impossible creatures, and a dark nature. It's a way of getting scared without being scared.

Quaid doesn't want to be scared, but he wants to experience and understand other people's dread. Which means the other people must be scared. He argues the concept as a philosophical notion and he can riddle prettily, but he's interested in more than just the academic side of things. I suppose it's the difference between reading something in a book and learning about it first hand. It's just messed up when other people's dread is what you're most interested in.

I'm trying to keep this one spoiler free, so you don't have to actually read all of these stories in order to read the post. So again I'll just repeat how my professor described Barker: "[The] stories are powerful and raw. The violence is extreme, the sex explicit, and the horror exquisite." Enjoy.

"Something About Camilla" is a good story and if it wasn't up against these other two I would definitely enjoy it more. But these are two powerful stories and it's hard to compete with them.

Title quote from page 55, from the story "Dread" by Clive Barker.

Goshgarian, Gary ed. Horrorscape. Kendall Press, 1993.

*Seriously, don't watch The Walking Dead with me. I am normally a very passive TV/movie viewer but that show seems to require me to spend half the time screaming and the other half yelling instructions to the characters. Like "in the brain, you moron!" when characters seem to spend time hacking at other parts and that is a total waste of time and quit using your gun, you know the noise only draws more of them to you!

It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself

For my next Halloween-worthy read I decided to scan my own bookshelves in an attempt to save some money, and I stumbled on a packet I had for one of my college classes. Specifically for my Horror Fiction class. And if that doesn't indicate some good Halloweeny reads, I don't know what is.

The packet is a selection of short horror fiction stories pulled together by my professor and has an intro to horror fiction overall as well as brief information about each of the stories. I loved this class (and ended up taking 2 more of the professors courses: the modern bestseller and science fiction) but haven't revisited most of these stories since I first read them and figured now is a perfect opportunity.

The packet/book/whatever is split into 4 parts: Dark Roots; The Horror We Do; Belief and The Supernatural; and Avenging Angels and Faustian Devils. I feel like it's difficult to write about a collection of short stories*. Do you write about the collection overall? (If so, how cos I have no idea how to even go about that.) Do you write about all of the stories? Just a couple? How do you pick which ones? To solve this problem I decided to split up my posts based on the different sections and select one (or two if I can't help myself) of the stories from each parts. Excited? I bet you are. Here we go!

Part 1: Dark Roots
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allan Poe
Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe
The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs

The first part is clearly Poe heavy, but obviously Poe is one of the grandfather's of the genre, so expect to see the guy there. Personally out of these stories, my favorite is the Jacob's contribution with "The Monkey's Paw". Since I'm sure everyone is familiar with Poe (and if you aren't, fix that!) and also because this is my blog, I'm gonna talk about the ape appendage.

Simpson's covered the story so I'm going to assume that means there is no need for spoiler warnings. Or I guess this counts as your spoiler warning. Also if you haven't read it yet, go do that. Here's a link to make this easy for you.

"The Monkey's Paw" is a story I can read again and again. It's short (all of 9 pages), but it's full of such a creepy atmosphere.  And I love a creepy atmosphere. It starts out with such a sweet domestic scene, father and son playing chess next to the fire while mom sits nearby knitting. Doesn't get too much more Norman Rockwell-ier than that. And then things get all messed up by this "old friend" and his mysterious monkey paw. I put "old friend" in quotes because he may have warned them against using the paw but he certainly talked it up and made it sound like something you had to see. And of course in the end he did give it to them, after a half-hearted attempt to destroy it by throwing it into the fire. You know, after bringing it up in the first place. So this paw will grant you wishes, but it will make it just seem like it's a coincidence so you can never really be sure the paw did anything. And of course this wouldn't be a horror story if the coincidence/wish didn't mean something terrible for the family, which is all the more cruel because this is an innocent family. The father even says at one point he can't think of a thing he'd wish for because he already has everything he could ever want (Awwww). Then a simple wish of two hundred pounds brings the death of the son and so much misery. You can't help but feel heartbroken right along with the family.

No matter how many times I've read the story, no matter that I already know how it ends, I always wish things to be different while knowing they're going to end unhappily. It is a good reminder not to mess with fate.

*I ran into the problem of writing about a collection of short stories last October when I wrote about Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories. We'll see if this way works better.

Title quote from Poe's story "The Black Cat", page 11

Goshgarian, Gary ed. Horrorscape. Kendall Press, 1993.