Scary Books

[Randy]

What is the scariest book you have ever read?

Any genuinely scary books out there to recommend?

 

[Nebulous]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-buntin-/10-novels-that-will-scare_b_4156089.html

As a kid I was obsessed with an abandoned house in the cow pasture across the street from my friend Anna's house. We never went inside, but just walking by was enough to freak me out. The roof caved in on the stone walls, every window was a punched-out eye, and I knew that if there was a murderer lurking around the woods at night, the murderer lived in that house. The rumors didn't help either. Local legend had it that high school boys used to hang out there until someone fell through the rotted second floor and broke his leg. No town is complete without a haunted house and the lore that comes with it. In honor of that ghoulish and seasonally appropriate fact, here are 10 haunted house novels that will scare you more than the chained-up shed at the edge of your neighbor's property or that condemned mansion behind your elementary school.

"The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson
The greatest haunted house novel ever written. Remember all those crap movies where a bunch of attractive people get together in a house that's purportedly haunted to study the frequencies, or whatever, and then they get slashed one by one (after having rampant sex with each other)? Thank Shirley Jackson. "The Haunting of Hill House" inaugurated that premise, and its first iteration is about fifty-five million times more terrifying and subtle and well-written than anything you've read or seen. Which is probably why it has been stolen and shittily adapted so many times (with a few notable exceptions-including #9). Jackson understands there's a fine line between fear and hilarity-you'll love her characters for cracking jokes to stave off their anxiety, but their glibness will also frighten you.
Still have doubts? Consider the opening: "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more."

"Rustication" by Charles Palliser
When opium-addled Richard Shenstone, the 17-year old narrator of Charles Palliser's Gothic melodrama, grabs your hand and leads you into his twisted world of sexual obsession, murder, and sadistic letters (which may or may not be Richard's doing), you won't want to let go. The newly destitute Shenstones are forced to inhabit a dilapidated old mansion where Richard's unsteady mind makes much out of rooms with beds made for people he's never met and things that go bump in the night. Though the house isn't the source of evil, it deserves lots of credit for the book's spooky atmosphere. 

"The Shining" by Stephen King

The Overlook isn't a house, but it's more thoroughly haunted than any place in the fictional universe. Nobody who's read "The Shining" can forget the images from its pages--the twin girls at the end of the hallway, the magically stocked bar, the topiary animals, the party hat in the elevator, the blood-smeared walls, the naked woman from the bathtub transforming into a rotting corpse. Stephen King, puppet-master behind the world's worst nightmares. 

"The Little Stranger" by Sarah Water
The once-aristocratic Ayres family is clinging to Hundreds Hall, their crumbling 18th century estate that's a relic of its former glory. After a visiting child is mauled by a typically docile family dog, strange things begin happening at Hundreds. Childish writing appears in places where various family members have reported hearing tapping; even the maids are convinced that there's something (and something possibly contagious) wrong with the house. The novel only gets creepier as the ever rational narrator Dr. Faraday tries to explain away each frightening incident with a dismissive blend of science and logic. The discord between his unsatisfying explanations and the burned walls, source-less noises and eventual violence will leave you with unsettling memories of creepy things you've dismissed--and maybe shouldn't have.

"O My Darling" by Amity Gaige
You won't find Amity Gaige's ("Shroder") first novel classified as horror on Amazon or at your local indie (well, maybe at your indie). But this story of a marriage that almost implodes after Charlotte and Clark Adair move into their "dream" home has all of the elements of a true haunted house novel: ghosts/shadows fluttering around corners, discontented characters losing their ability to communicate, intruders with nefarious intent, disembodied voices. 

"We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson again! I like to think of this slim, stylistically astonishing novel as a kind of haunted house origin story. (See also: Miss Havisham, "Great Expectations.") Merricat and Constance Blackwood live with their batty Uncle Julian in a lavish house on the outskirts of town. They are the only survivors of a poisoning incident that killed off the rest of their family. The townspeople are convinced that Constance is a murderer, but is she really the one responsible for the mass killing? When the townspeople turn on the remaining Blackwoods they're forced into total isolation, entombing themselves in the home that's both their sanctuary and their curse.

"The Shining Girls" by Lauren Beukes
Harper Curtis is far more deadly than your garden variety serial killer. Harper isn't constricted by time--he can move freely between the past, present, and future, planting memories in his victim's childhoods before chasing them through the years to the moments of their gruesome deaths (which of course feel horrifyingly inevitable). The mechanism for his time travel is a House. The House is described as a being with godly power over Harper--it urges him on, inspiring the bloodlust that drives him to kill. 

"Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens
When I first read "Great Expectations" as a high school freshman I completely glossed over the terrifying reality of Miss Havisham, who wears an old wedding dress and has left her mouldering wedding cake on the table for decades. Every clock in Satis House, her decaying mansion, is stopped at twenty minutes to nine-the exact moment she found out she was being left at the altar. She wears a single shoe, and eventually dies of burns (after the wedding dress catches fire). Is anything more upsetting than this? The story of Miss Havisham is the story of HOW a house becomes haunted. She's Satis House's ghostly lore. Or would be, if Satis House existed. 

"Hell House" by Richard Matheson
It's clear to any Shirley Jackson fan (cough, cough) that Richard Matheson's "Hell House" owes a significant debt to "The Haunting of Hill House." But this novel, in keeping (perhaps) with its later pub date, is less psychologically unnerving than it is Hollywood in-your-face scary. It favors the holy trinity of horror tropes: Blood, Sex and Suspense. "Hell House," unlike so many Jackson knockoffs, is a fitting tribute to its inspiration--and it embellishes Jackson's storyline with scares that are all its own. 

"The House of Leaves" by Mark Danielewski
Haunted house novels work best when the house is the scariest character. After returning from a trip, the Navidson family notices that there's something wrong with their home. Doors appear where there weren't any before, secret passageways seem to have been formed by someone/something with sinister intent, staircases lead nowhere. Characters report hearing a low growl, as if the house, itself, is a monster. Danielewski's novel looks more like a puzzle box than a book, with typographical hijinks on almost every page--lines of text running vertically or backwards, copious footnotes, unpredictable blasts of white space. This visual chaos exponentially increases the goose-bump factor.

 

[DrLeftover]

How about a couple you can read FOR FREE?

Short Story:

"The monkeys are so cute."
"Yeah. Until they kill you."

300 Kilometers

Introduction.

"Rick, are we still in Brazil?" One of the biologists asked me in French as she wrote some notes.
It was a reasonable question. We weren't supposed to cross the border from Guyane Francaise, or French Guiana, into Brazil, but in jungles like we were in, that fine broken line on the map wasn't marked on the ground and when the river divided and rejoined and wandered around, it was hard to tell where we were. Between that, the boats being out of gas, not having a map, and the many branches and eddies in the river, we just could not tell where we were until we saw a sign yesterday in Portuguese that said something about the Amapa State Wildlife Commission.
"I have no idea. Let's just keep going." I answered.
It had been a really long couple of weeks since our trip upriver began so optimistically.

Read the rest For Free at:
http://www.themediadesk.com/newfiles5/monkey.htm

 

[DrLeftover]

FREE! (as in, No Charge, No registration, No email disclosure, etc) Novel length work:

The Woodstone
A haunted hotel in Indianapolis gets a new manager, and the 'night shift' approves

...
She looked away, Patty was bringing our salads. I paused.
"Are you going to do something about the pantry?" She asked me.
"What about it?" I said playing dumb.
"Hifi says he's not going in there again." She said.
"Oh, can I see this storeroom?" I smiled at Ms. Karol.
"Sure." Patty said.
We followed her back into the kitchen, she pointed down a flight of metal stairs and Ms. Karol started down them. An elderly Oriental man was walking up the stairs.
"Meiss Karor. It is beack." He said seriously.
She nodded and said it'd be all right. We continued down the stairs.
The basement looked like a maze. From the base of the stairs the hallways went in six different directions with all sorts of doors and openings everywhere. Without my assistant, I would have been completely at a loss. But she pointed around to the left and we went that way.
The hallway wound through a line of huge ovens and a production table. The smell of baking bread was almost intoxicating.
"This is it." She said.
"Spice closet. Main line cookstaff only." I read off the sign. Then I looked up and down the hallway. "Let me see if I know where we are." I walked down a little.
Against the wall was an ancient lift with huge screws than ran clear to the ceiling. An old service lift.
"We're actually under the street?" I said to her.
She thought about it. "Probably."
"OK. I was just trying to get my bearings." I went back to the door and reached for the handle. "Let's see who's home."
Ms. Karol actually took a step back.
"You've met our friend in here?" I said to her.
"No. And I'm not sure I want to."
I pushed the door open and looked inside. There was no cloud of noxious smoke with a writhing demon in the middle of it. It was just a small storeroom full of shelves. I reached for the light switch. But my hand didn't want to cooperate. Against all logic and better judgement I walked into the room with the lights off.
Did you ever have the feeling you were being watched and judged?
I attributed the first three seconds of the feeling to prior suggestion. I was supposed to feel something in here. This room had a nasty in it that scarred an antique line cook to the point he had started looking for another job.
But then the feeling didn't go away.
"OK. Here's the deal. I'm the new manager and I can't afford to replace an experienced cook every time I turn around because you like it in here. We'll leave you alone except for when they need stuff, I'll even see if we can keep the more popular of the supplies upstairs or somewhere. IF you'll let Hifi and the others come in and get what they need without trouble. Otherwise. I'm going to have these two walls knocked out and a whole new shelving system and lighting installed in here. Maybe with a speaker into the dining room's music system." I looked around. "Got it?"
There was no reply. I felt that maybe the speech wasn't going to work on this one. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. My eyes started to water. I took a deep breath.
"It's up to you. My brother in law is in the construction business. He'd love to get the hotel contract."
The feeling eased a bit. I played it right to the ground. "That's better. When the restaurant is closed, we'll keep this door locked and the lights off." Something in me said that whatever it was, it was coming from outside the wall, from under the street.
It passed. I found my diaphragm was shaking as I walked to the door. "See. They'll work with us."
I stepped out into the hall and the door behind me slammed so hard the plaster around the frame cracked.
"Oh, yes." Ms. Karol said with a grin. Then her face blanched and her lip trembled.
"I feel it too. Walk to the stairs slowly."
Whatever it was, whatever was in that room, had no intention of playing ball with us.
I looked back at the door. I couldn't see anything. But I could feel it. The hallway was full of it. And it was rolling this way like a London pea soup fog of fear.
I had to. I just had to.

As Ms. Karol started up the stairs I steeled myself and set my jaw, then I walked back down the hall and forced myself to open the storeroom door.
The room was pitch black. I could barely make out the shapes of the shelves. Not five minutes ago enough light came in from the hallway I could read the labels on the spice bottles and boxes of baking soda.
"Have it your way." I said to the room. I turned to walk away and the feeling of dread and oppression vanished so suddenly I had to put my hand on the wall to get my balance.
Ms. Karol came back down the stairs. "What happened? I felt it go back down to wherever it came from."
I nodded and blinked. "It's not from here. Something, and that's the word, something, lives out under the street, down and out, quite a ways too."
"Will it stay out of here?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. I hope so, at least for awhile. Maybe long enough to get that cook..."
"Hi-fee." She said slowly to emphasize the pronunciation.
"Hifi, to get him to relax a little."
I closed the door slowly. And we walked back to the stairs. But I could feel whatever it was still watching me.
And now, I got the impression it was angry with me. I decided it was a good thing that fetching garlic powder was not the normal job of the hotel's general manager.

http://www.themediadesk.com/files5/woodst1.htm

 

[DrLeftover]

Alone

"If ya don'a come back wit' the money, we'll kill 'em."
"An' if ya don't come back alone we'll kill them."

"So whatcha gonna do about it?"
I looked at my friend. Henry's question wasn't whether or not I was going to do something, or even when. As I looked into his eyes he nodded. I looked over at my cousin Chuck, part owner of the shop my uncle had founded and where my father had worked until he died. Now I worked there as well as a machinist.
"Don't even ask. You know I'm with you," he nodded.
Tibolt, the old welder, didn't even know the whole story, but he was nodding as well.
"Well, Janet?" Henry was forcing me to say it.
"You still got that one magazine?"
"In my locker."
"Could we build something like that?"
"No doubt."
His confidence was encouraging.
"That way you would be alone, like they said. But by the time they figured something was up it'd be too late."
Chuck grinned, "I like it already. But what do you have in mind?"
"How long you got?"
"They said I had to be back with the money by next weekend."
"It's Wednesday now," Henry said. "We got a week and change." Then he looked at Chuck. "Trust me, you'll love it."
"Let's do it. Dammit! Let's do it!" I said.
....

Read the rest FOR FREE
http://themediadesk.com/files4/alone.htm