Originally published on Urban Times
Dread winds howl and rattle your window panes. The clocks have gone back and the nights are truly dark. The central heating hums warmly as you settle into your armchair and turn down the lights. You thumb the pages of your book, revelling in the noise of the rustling pages as you start to read. You did lock the door didn’t you? Didn’t you?
At this ghoulish time of year everybody focuses on watching scary films or going to live events where people jump out of haystacks to get their horror kicks. As much of a horror film fan as I am and as deliciously fun as Halloween at a theme park is there is nothing quite as terrifying as the printed word on the page. Well besides Michael Gove that is. So by all means embark upon a friend filled night of terror at a local attraction or join in the shared experience of watching The Wicker Man re-release at a cinema near you and come home at midnight smiling. This Halloween, however, take the time to sit in a chair and immerse yourself in one of these gruesomely good works of fiction. So lock the doors, climb under your covers and scare yourself witless and please let me know your choices and recommendations in the comments below;
1. Adamtine by Hannah Berry (Published by Jonathan Cape/Cape Graphic Novels)
Adamtine scared me witless. I’m not talking about cheap tactic, horror film scares like ‘Insidious’ which Mark Kermode describes expertly as “Quiet Quiet Quiet…BANG!”. I’m talking about truly, goosebumps on the neck, sleep with the light on, check under the bed scared. In the same manner as the films which have genuinely scared me like The Shining or Don’t Look Now, Adamtine is all about an all encompassing, overbearing sense of impending dread. It seeps into you because many plot points aren’t revealed, the exposition is subtle but relatable and the artwork and palette are humdrum but overwrought. Hannah Berry excels at providing me with my first comic book experience of sheer terror and I shall be seeking out her first book, Britten & Brülightly, at Dave’s Comics this Thursday. A horrifically good read which might turn out to be my favourite comic this year.
2. The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allen Poe
This short story is a lesson in pure, sensory fear. Poe is widely recognised as a master of the horror fiction genre and with rightful reason. I first read this tale of a man captured by the Spanish Inquisition and forced to endure torturous circumstances when I was about 13 and it chilled me. When I read it again as an adult I was shocked at just how slight it is, this tiny bulk of words which had filled me with such abject fear that I still suffer from a strange version of claustrophobia was only 6,000 words long! The premise itself is fiendishly simple, a man is captured and sentenced without reason and then subjected to terrifyingly subtle forms of torture as he goes increasingly more insane. The whole prose takes place in near pitch-blackness but is punctuated with exquisite details describing the sounds and sensations of the pit and the impending pendulum. Every sense is described as if you yourself are the narrator adding to the suspense, the language bores the terror deep into your mind and the mysterious location means you are never far from falling right off the edge of your seat. Read this by alone and in a quiet environment and tell me you don’t need a stiff drink afterwards!
3. IT – Stephen King
This is a horror novel list, of course Mr. King is on here. Some may scoff at his more straightforward forays in the horror fare like Christine or Pet Semetary but Stephen King is a fantastic author who can get under the skin in a way few others can match. He has written brilliant books of many styles including Misery, The Green Mile and The Dark Tower series which not only show his skills as a writer but belay those who think he just writes ‘silly horror’ books. In saying that, he does write horror books and he writes them very, very well. IT is a novel that makes you wake up as a young child, drenched in sweat, crying out in the middle of the night and if you’re like me sleeping with the lights on for years to come. No film could ever cause the kind of terror that a well written book like this can, thinking back I may have even wet myself after reading this! IT features many tropes we’re taught to be scared off as the titular creature manifests as vampires, mummies, werewolves, zombies and most famously, Pennywise the Clown. King revels in the ability to use the whole toybox of nightmares that he only briefly uses in his other horror novels and for a reader it surmounts to one of the scariest books you can imagine. Reading it as a child with child protagonists means that you live the fear with them which at times literally caused me to drop the weighty tome. Being youthful a lot of the book (especially the second adult part) went over my head so I’m intrigued to see how it stands up as an adult but I can safely say this is one of the books which has scared me the most in my life. Tim Curry may have scared you as Pennywise but read the book and things get a whole lot worse, just make sure you’ve got clean sheets!
4. The Witches – Roald Dahl
Mr. Dahl may well be my favourite author of all time. He has had such an impact on me, not just as a writer but as a human being. His dark and funny children’s tales of youth, fantasy, adventure and the grisliest of grisly are forever stamped in my brain and his adult stories are equally as thrilling and ingenious. I could have chosen The Landlady which introduced me very early on to the idea of slasher/serial killers or Lamb to the Slaughter which countless films have copied with the everyday, mundane killer hiding in plain sight idea. I didn’t. I chose ‘The Witches’ because it fucking annihilated my fragile little mind at a very young age. Seriously, Roald Dahl manages to get away with more guts, gore and ghastliness than even Clive Barker would balk at! This story is filled with wicked characters, gruesome details of the demise of infants and some of the cleverest descriptions of witches in fiction. I remember going to my Grandma’s Hospice and being suspect of women with flat toed shoes or gloves well into my teens and the less said about the Grand Witch the better. It’s a brilliantly funny book but filled with subtle moments of dread and despair that will stain your thoughts for evermore and what other children’s book ends without the hero’s getting better and everything going back to normal? A Roald Dahl children’s book, that’s what.
5. The Road – Cormac McCarthy
Ok, so this isn’t a ‘classic’ horror novel but it frightened me more than ‘Pet Semetary’ or ‘Ghost Story’ ever did. Despite it being labelled fantasy, it features many of the tropes familiar to horror including shocks, gore, violence, suspense and even cannibalism. I read this whilst in Edinburgh for a summer performing a comedy sketch show and DJ’ing every night. I don’t know what drove me to choose this as the book to enjoy during this period but all I do know is it still haunts me to this day. Even during a period of excitement, fun, comedy, celebrities, partying and spending every day with friends making people laugh, this book and it’s passages lurked sinisterly in my psyche. The Road is bleak. The Road is emotionally powerful. The Road is hideously tense. It’s a stunning piece of literature and a masterful work of horror as well as being curiously optimistic in hindsight. I am aware of nobody who has read this who wasn’t stunned and affected by it. The film adaptation is a very good film but nothing can prepare you for the tension, the pain, the fear, the horrors, the baby scene or the rising bile moments of the book. Read this book, but maybe not while you’re doing a comedy show or at a christening!