 Horror/Scary: November 07, 2007 Issue [#2045] |
  Horror/Scary
This week: Edited by: W.D.Wilcox  
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The dead do not frighten me, they are merely the fellow countrymen of my future.
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THE DEAD
The silvery veil that separates the dead from the living can be crossed on Halloween. I believe this to be true because I had one such ‘breathless sleeper’ visit me just before dawn on Halloween night.
I awoke from a disturbing dream about my ailing father that had stirred my primitive fear so deeply that my mind could not even discern its shape as it swam and circled about me in the murk. Like the hoof beats of a fearsome black horse, terror thundered through me. Then bolting upright in bed, I looked about my bedroom convinced that I was no longer alone.
An alabaster corpse stood beside me, face greasy with death, mouth working to impart secrets but producing nothing but an angry, raspy moan. When he looked directly at me, his eyes were servings of bitter brew in cups of bone, and he worked his hands into fists repeatedly, clenching and relaxing, and then clenching again.
My future countryman had not been dead long, his pallid skin finally yielding to the horrors of advanced age and murderous disease. The anger in his voice was now an undertow, while the surface current was gray despair and grief.
“I’m not who I used to be,” he groaned. “I can hardly remember what I used to be like, the kind of man I was. It’s lost.”
I had the feeling he was talking as much to himself as to me, grieving aloud for this loss of self that he imagined.
“Everything that matters has been taken from me. I’m nothing more than a dead man walking. That’s all I am. Can you imagine how that feels?”
“N-n-n-no.”
“Because even you, crawling on your belly like some slug in the night—even you have a reason to live.”
His thoughts seemed to drift into darker territory and he began to pound his balled fist into his open palm, accenting his words.
“In life I killed my family. I beat them to death. I punched them in the face over and over again; punched, punched, and punched until there was nothing left of their faces and their eyes were swollen and popped, nose and cheekbones caved in.” Lowering his voice, he whispered, “I loved it when they cried out in pain. I loved their screams, the agony on their smashed-in faces.”
As I sat there in a silent rapture of dread, the sour-yellow light of the morning sun marbled my room like the color of day-old raw meat. The dead man looked toward the window and shuddered.
Then another figure approached from the shrouded darkness and stood on the opposite side of my bed. He had been dead much longer, and his skeletal features seemed to be a mask behind which was not another face but emptiness—not as though he were a different and less frightening man than he appeared, but as though he were no man at all. Briefly, at a certain angle, his stare rippled with a yellow luminance similar to the eyeshine that many animals exhibit at night, a cold and mysterious inner light like nothing I had ever seen before in the eyes of man or woman. Usually I don’t suffer from claustrophobia, but no coffin could have been more cramped than being sandwiched in-between these two horrifying figures. “Come,” he told the first. “It is time.”
Together they turned, and slowly walked back into the shadows. The bony-faced man cranked his head and stared back at me with those inky, glimmering eyes. “I thought you deserved a visit after all those stories you've been writing. Keep it up, were dying to see you...and oh, by the way, Happy Halloween,” he said, and then disappeared with his fellow into another realm.
I sat there for a moment, stunned and shocked beyond disbelief, and then stretched and yawned my tensed and tired body. "God, I love Halloween...."
Until next time,
billwilcox
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SCARY STUFF
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A FRENZY OF FEEDBACK
GEOFFREY ROBSON 
Submitted Comment:
Billy, great job as always. Thanks for the plug my man, I don't know what to say. How about "hot diggity dog",or, "groovey, baby".
dmack
Submitted Comment:
Hello W.D., I love your newsletters and this is a great one. I especially like you list of idioms used in horror stories. My immediate reaction to this list was, what wonderful titles to stories they would make.
I also read your Action/Adverture Newsletter. It was wonderful too.
Mark
Submitted Comment:
I have to take exception to your tongue in cheek discontent! The expressions are worn out, ill-fitting and perhaps even cliche in most instances, but they embolden ones expression. The need to add punch to words is in our nature. Take your example of "And, "I feel fit as a fiddle." Since when is a musical intrument compared to good health?" - When I hear this, images of a bouncy, physically expressive blue-grass fiddle player comes to mind - but it is also neighbored by the stunning beauty of the tones when the instrument is tuned (or fit) and played well. We know imagery will be perceived in some similar fashion by those that understand cultural nuance and etymology, or simply have the exprience to "get it". That these inaccuracies (or occasionally oddly accurate expressions) add a bit of whimsey helps. Thanks Bill, for another dose of the cranial runs. This will serve me as a warning to use these babies as a tool, rather than cliche filler. I really enjoyed the NL, thank you.
Spooky, Cute & staiNed 
Submitted Comment:
--dank~~ an odd choice-- To me, I think of a smelly, musty, unlived place. In my dictionary, it says: adjective~~ unpleasantly cool and humid.
Adorable newletter, for I never realized that I use so many idioms. Thanks for sharing your creavitity for such a superb newletter, you are one of my favs I look forward to receiving each and every month!
-staiNed.
Ric The Woolicane
Submitted Comment:
I don't know the origin of all of them but certainly I can help enlighten you on a few. I have been fascinated with phrases like this for a long time. Here are three I can remmeber off the top of my head.
Flogging (not beating) a dead horse, comes from the riding world, you would flog (whip) a horse to make it go faster, but flogging a dead horse was a pointless waste, it's race had been run .
Head over heels is very interesting, it was originally heels over head, everything was upside down, but the phrase was flipped, supposedly by Davy Crocket, to say he was so upside down because of love even that phrase was reversed.
Fit as a fiddle actually began life as fit as a fiddler. Fiddlers were famous in the middleages for jumping about a lot as they played, hence they were very fit.
Hope that illuminated you. Oh, and the living daylights are your eyes.
S S
madmanmike
Submitted Comment:
WD: Thank you for submitting on of my short stories. Much appreciated!!
-MadManMike
K. Medeiros
Submitted Comment:
When certain mysteries are left unexplained, and I feel I can provide an adequate answer, I feel I MUST give some understanding toward the topic.
In the 10/11/2007 Horror Newsletter I read: "I’m gonna scare the living daylights out of you." What the heck are 'the living daylights'? How about, "I am at one with nature." Well, what if you were at two?"
I have some ideas on the source of these two idioms. "Scare the living daylights out of you" focuses on the light of life (hence "living"). To scare the living daylights out is to scare "to death" (which is often taken as a literal phrase used as an exaggeration). As for "At one with nature", I think this is a biblical idiom taking the line from Genesis where husband and wife become one being. This would be more of a stretch from the original ida...maybe it is an evolved idiom? Just a thought.
PSanta-I'm ba-ack!
Submitted Comment:
I was just talking to someone about kennings. These were phrases that Anglo-Saxon poets (think Beowulf) used to use to help them keep track of thousand line poems. The sea might be called the whale road, or a tree might be called Odins steed. Some of them are so obscure we have no idea what they mean. 'Off the wall' phrases have obviously been around a long time.
-NotFrodo
StephBee 
Submitted Comment:
Great topic, Bill! Thanks for sharing. You've got some great Editor's picks as well. Two thumbs up.
-Steph
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