Horror/Scary
This week: Kids and Horror Edited by: W.D.Wilcox More Newsletters By This Editor
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Kids And Horror
Since it's Mother's Day, I'd like to give all the ladies a BIG shout-out. Sure it's pandering, but really, women are soooooo amazing. Think about it this way: a woman can grow a baby inside her body. Then a woman can deliver the baby through her body. Then, by some miracle, a woman can feed a baby with her body. When you compare that to the male's contribution to life, it's kind of embarrassing, really. The father is like, "Hey, I helped, too. For like five seconds. Doing the one thing I think about twenty-four hours a day."
Pregnant women make me jealous. When they have cravings, it's "adorable" and when they put on twenty or thirty pounds in nine months, it's "healthy." Yet when I have cravings and put on thirty pounds, I'm considered a "big fat slob." I'm not sure, but I believe that's sexism. Anyway, why does everyone want to rub a pregnant woman's belly, but when I ask people to rub my belly, I get kicked out of 'Baby's R Us?' It's not fair. I put on more weight than my wife in any of her pregnancies. But I justify it by thinking, "Well sure, it's just another thing I'm better at than she is."
Because a woman has that greater connection to her child, you can cause utter terror by putting that child in jeopardy. Stephen King does this on a regular basis; he threatens the young and innocent, and opens up a whole new level of horror. Who could not make a personal connection to the terror-filled plight of a child?
I wrote something once, trying to be all Stephen King-like, it went something like this . . . .
Three days had passed before they found the body of the little girl. Jack McDermott, the local Sheriff, tried not to gag as he gingerly tiptoed around the corpse, and scrutinized the ground.
His movement disturbed the flies that danced upon the child's face and buzzed heavily about her head. In all his years of service, he never got used to seeing dead kids. This one was young, maybe nine or ten. She looked as if God had chewed her up and then not liking the taste, spat her back out again.
Centerville had always been such a quiet little town, and Jack liked to keep it that way. He thought he had left murder and senseless killing behind him in Los Angeles, almost losing himself to the dead he tried to help as a homicide detective. One day, after leaving the scene of a horrible child mutilation, he just up and quit, hopped in his car and drove until he ran out of gas. He ended up here in Centerville, a forgotten little country town nestled in the foothills of the Sierras. Something drew him here, like a childhood memory you can’t quite put your finger on. He liked the way the town felt—it was in the boonies—but after life in the city, that suited Jack just fine.
“What kind of animal could have done this, Sheriff?” the Deputy asked, his voice muffled by the handkerchief he used to cover his nose and mouth. “Bears don’t come down this far—a mountain lion maybe?”
“Don’t know, Harry, but whatever got her must have been floating in the air...there’s not a single track anywhere on the ground.”
A car door slammed and Jack looked toward the highway—the local media networks were pulling up in their vans. “Do me a favor, will ya, Harry?”
“Yeah, sure, Sheriff.”
“Keep those assholes out of here until we can get this mess cleaned up. If this was my little girl, I wouldn’t want to see her picture spread all over the front page.”
Harry nodded. “No problem, I can’t stand to see anymore of this anyway.” The man turned and headed toward the street, blowing his nose to remove the stench of the dead body that hung in the air like the stink on a skunk. Jack watched him zigzag through the stand of trees until he was lost behind a large pine.
When he was alone, he turned back to the body. By the expression on the child’s face, he could only think that she must have been scared out of her mind when she died. It looked as though some kind of animal had tried to eat her alive. There were large chunks of flesh absent from her hip and torso—her right arm was missing completely. But the weird thing was that there were no tracks. Jack didn’t quite know what to make of it. What kind of an animal could take down its prey, eat part of it, and never leave a print? He sighed heavily knowing that there was only one way to find out.
Jack had a gift—just like his momma did—which was what made him such a good detective. Most of his life he kept it hidden and quiet—asleep. He hadn’t used his power in a long time, and he wondered if he still possessed it. The gift nearly drove him insane once—the memories of the dead—speaking to him while it sucked his life away.
But this...this was different. This killing was as baffling as it was brutal. Here the gift could prove to be invaluable if only Jack possessed the courage to use it.
These people are counting on you, Jack. If there's a monster loose, you gotta find it—you gotta kill it.
He took a deep breath as he readied himself. He could already feel the stirring in the air; a tingling sensation like the feel of an electric current. Bending to one knee, he gently reached down and cradled the little girl’s cold hand in his—felt the gift flow down his arm. As he looked into her dead face, he called her forth, “Wake up! Wake up and show me what happened.”
At first, there was nothing—and then suddenly, the girl’s eyes shot open—milky white, like the color of moonstones. He felt her grip tighten on his hand as her mouth worked desperately up and down, her throat making a horrible gurgling sound.
“Show me!” he insisted.
A mental image flashed into his mind.
It was night and she was running from something. Jack ran with her and heard her heavy breathing, her heart hammering in her ears. Then he heard the snarls of the animal, the muffled growls just out of sight along the tree line. She ran toward the highway. She was almost clear of the woods when it attacked—the girl wet herself with fright.
Jack felt the hot savage breath of the creature, its unquenchable hunger, its sick yellow grin. The child hit at it with her little fists, desperately trying to keep it off of her. He saw its large wolf-like head—its red eyes. It gazed at him, knew that he was there, and for a moment, the monster hesitated. Jack saw a glint of teeth as it suddenly bit at his face, but instead it grabbed the little girl’s arm. Then he heard the high-pitched screams, felt the utter horror she felt as something jerked and pulled at her body—eating her alive.
The images stopped; the girl’s chest arched high up off the ground—her life force realizing it could no longer dwell within this mangled corpse. With a loud sigh of anguish, she re-lived her death, and then her spirit escaped through her mouth and her body sank and lay still.
Jack slowly stood on wavering legs and backed away, visibly shaken. The power was like that—it always stretched his essence thin, piggybacking the girl’s spirit for a brief time as it fed upon his soul.
What was that thing? It was unnatural—not merely an animal, but something...unholy and evil—a perversion of nature.
The paramedics arrived, and Harry led them through the woods to where Jack was. He saw their revulsion as both men grabbed for their surgical masks and slipped them over their faces. One prepared the stretcher while the other unfolded the body bag.
“What the hell took you so long?” Jack snapped.
“This isn’t the easiest place to find,” one of them said in defense.
Jack softened, “Yeah...that's the way we like it here.”
As the paramedics went about their job, Harry studied him. “You all right, Sheriff?” he asked, coming around the crime scene to where Jack stood. “You look kinda pale.”
“Just tired," he said as he lifted his hat and rubbed where his forehead met his scalp. “Harry...I’m gonna ask you to do something that you’re probably gonna think is a little crazy.”
“Sure, anything for you, Sheriff.”
“I want you to get me a sleeping bag and a lantern. I’m gonna spend the night out here tonight.”
“Out here? But Sheriff…”
“Don’t ask, Harry...just do it, and you better bring me my rifle, too.”
You can read the rest at..."McDermott's Gift" [18+]
Until Next Time,
billwilcox
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DEAD
LETTERS
BIG BAD WOLF is Howling
Plugs:
"What's Behind Me?" [13+]
Sometimes the scariest thing isn't the ax murderer or the werewolf standing in front of you- it's what's waiting back at home.
LJPC - the tortoise
Shudders:
Hi Bill!
Just reading your powerful description of what horror is and what it can do was enough to scare me!
~ Laura
Specter
Rants:
I For Eye, Bill
Strange is the truth when suddenly it hits home into such a fastidious state of mind, which has been tampered with overrated matters of earthly decisions and concerns. There is such a sphere that astounds sense and reason. The giddy imagination comes closer to its reality than science, or anything that mankind could ever construe and compare or conjure. It always comes down that reality is a mixed bag of senses simply interpreted through organic means. I think its a shoddy way for the mind to grasp the higher elemental forces that remain unseen and unknown. The finality hangs in the corner of the eye as unspoken, or, at least, insane. And we call it horror.
Yet ... and yet, Bill, you have this uncanny finesse to snap apparitions right out of the eye. Just as easy as Itchy--Getcha--Boo! Now blink again.
You can stare and stare never to see the profound evil staring from there. So, he must've looked with his head under his arm.
writetight
Comments:
Thanks for the three plugs last issue, Bill.
Jonas Warren
WD,
Horror is the bogey in the dark petrifying the Central Nervous System as a reaction of unknown magnitude. Darkness is impenetrable and death is quizzical. Unanswerable questions mystifying the fly-by of Catch-22.
Worse yet, a statue of an angel stands eight feet in height in the city’s cemetery with hulking out-reaching wings. The town’s people call it the Black Angel. Unlike many angelic statues that gaze up into the heavens, this one stares toward the ground, as if, seeing right into the bowels of hell. These folks go on and claim that if you stand next to or touch this statue, it will cause you to feel ‘terrible sick’ and give you ‘the tingling creeps.’
Out of the horizon,
~slick
Quick-Quill
Shares:
That's why I love Shutter Island. It truly fits the horror genre and the movie was especially horrific. There are still parts I have to not watch. But I love the ending!!! The perception that this whole thing was set up as a test to see if he could break through the psychosis he believed to be the reality. I'm still in awe of the author and the director of the movie who translated that mentality to perfection.
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