It’s Time to Scare Yourself Again
POSTED BY mrenart ON October 11, 2011
Illustration by Dave McKean. From weblindmice.blogspot.com.
Yes, of course, Halloween is at the end of this month, but there’s just something about October that makes it deliciously fun to read an unsettling book. Maybe it’s the cooler weather, the darkening nights, the skitter of leaves on the pavement as you walk outside to take the garbage out and become convinced a skeleton is tap dancing toward you.
Also, I just happen to be someone who likes to scare herself silly. Spiders, if spotted near my vicinity, make me want to drive to the farthest place possible: the edge of the earth, yet I will study their photos in books and on google, and put my face up really close to the glass at the zoo. I buy my own tickets to scary movies, and no one has to shove me into my seat on the rollercoaster affectionately named The Beast.
Hairy spiders and gravity-defying drops aside, there’s still nothing like a scary book. Here are a few that still make me shiver even in hot weather:
Coraline by Neil Gaiman I still refuse to see the movie version. I’m not convinced it could spook me the way the book did. I read this in 2002, at high noon on the beach in September, and was thoroughly unsettled. I kept curling up in my beach chair until I almost turned myself inside out. Neil Gaiman gets the award, bestowed by me, for Most Disturbing Story for Children and Adults, Ever. Coraline is a smart, lonely little girl hungry for her parents’ attention and affection. An afternoon of exploration and wandering round her flat leads to a mysterious door, that, when unlocked, reveals an alternate world. A mirror world, really, of everything currently in her life, except it’s all off by one or two chilling degrees: her parents are there, but they have button eyes. Buttons for eyes! And they want her to stay on their side of the door! And they will do anything to get her to do so. Add this storyline to the elegantly creepy drawings and you have a classic on your hands.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova When I first heard that the plot involved Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula, I scoffed. And this was in 2005, before the virus Vampire Hysteria infected females all over North America. In a nutshell, the book has 3 storylines that revolve around a central idea: Dracula is still alive. Publishers Weekly sums it up nicely here: “In 1972, a 16-year-old American living in Amsterdam finds a mysterious book in her diplomat father’s library. The book is ancient, blank except for a sinister woodcut of a dragon and the word “Drakulya,” but it’s the letters tucked inside, dated 1930 and addressed to “My dear and unfortunate successor,” that really pique her curiosity. Her widowed father, Paul, reluctantly provides pieces of a chilling story; it seems this ominous little book has a way of forcing itself on its owners, with terrifying results.” Terrifying, indeed. This novel runs rampant all over Europe, building in intensity and suspense with real and imagined horrors. A historical thriller, if you will. And I will. Oh yes.
Bag of Bones by Stephen King A grieving, widowed writer retreats to his lakeside cabin following his wife’s death to discover slowly but surely that his house is a refuge for Things That Go Bump In the Night. The supernatural scares have a solid foundation in natural history, and it is this mystery that keeps the pace of Bag of Bones tightly coiled. Note: do not read this by yourself, ever—even in sunlight. Make sure someone else is in the room.
The Man in the Black Suit by Stephen King This is short story, originally published in The New Yorker, is now in his collection Everything’s Eventual. It has quite possibly scarred me for life. King masterfully creates a heart-pounding atmosphere in a calm, idyllic setting: a little boy on a fishing trip in backwoods Maine encounters the Devil.
What are your scary go-to books?
Tags: Elizabeth Kostova, Halloween, historical, Neil Gaiman, Scary books, Stephen King, thriller
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