Vocational Horror: The Tools of Its Trade

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

 

A device often used to generate plots is to imagine a vocational role that, given a dark twist, produces unusual, horrific goods or provides equally bizarre, terrifying services. Stephen Kings; characters include writers (“1408,” Bag of Bones, The Regulators, Misery); painters (Duma Key); politicians (Under the Dome); a shop owner (Needful Things); a former police officer (Black House) and prison guards (The Green Mile); journalists (The Colorado Kid), government agents (Firestarter), and military personnel (The Tommyknockers), among others, whose wares and services are anything but mundane—or safe.

Other writers of horror have used the same technique. Bentley Little, King's “poet laureate of horror,” is a great example. His novels' protagonists include a mailman (The Mailman), store clerks (The Store); a homeowners association (The Association); resort staff and guests (The Resort); an insurance agent (The Policy), teachers (The Academy, University); and others.

In part, such fiction—what we might designate as vocational horror—works because it is associated, as it typically is in King's works, with forces equipped with vast resources, investigative abilities, access to the general public, political power, are backed by the authority of the state, or are imbued with supernatural or paranormal power (King) or perform essential services, operate in remote locations, or, again, enjoy supernatural or paranormal power (Little).

Another reason that vocational fiction works is that it is based on a twist, or a perversion, of the normal purposes of offering goods for sale or a perversion of the normal functions of a service, as is almost always the case in Little's satirical novels, synopses of a few of which suggest the nature of his twists:

[The Mailman:] “the strange new mailman is up to something sinister, an idea bolstered as people in town start receiving increasingly disturbing hate mail” (Wikipedia).

[The Store:] “customers are hounded by obnoxious sales people, and strange products appear on the shelves. Before long . . . [is] taking over the town!”

[The Association:] “Members of the neighborhood's Homeowners' Association, a meddling group that uses its authority to spy on neighbors, eradicate pets and dismember anyone who fails to pay association dues and fines” (Publishers Weekly).

[The Resort:] “[At] the exclusive Reata, an isolated resort in the Arizona desert, . . . . unnerving encounters with strange employees, wild parties in empty rooms and bizarre sex antics in the family restaurant prompt . . . key characters . . . to think about leaving early. Yet the Reata's magnetic pull essentially brainwashes all the guests into believing that their odd experiences are normal” (Publishers Weekly).

[The Policy:] “Recently divorced Hunt Jackson, his new wife, his co-workers and his best buddy from high school . . . are continually harassed by a pesky insurance salesman [who] tries to convince them to purchase bizarre policies protecting them from the law, their bosses and even death, and if the clients refuse, inexplicable consequences usually follow” (Publishers Weekly).

[The Academy:] “Students and faculty who embrace [a school's new] charter get steadily darker and more sadistic; teachers and students who oppose the charter find strange things happening and people disappearing; and the school seems to have taken on a life of its own” (Publishers Weekly).

The Ending of the Tale

 Copyright 2021 by Michael Williams

In this post, Michael Williams concludes his remarks about writing a well-plotted story along the lines laid out by Aristotle. Thank you, Michael, for your contributions to Chillers and Thrillers!

In his Poetics, Aristotle points out that the end of a story should be both logical—in other words, the cause-and-effect relationships that have existed among the incidents of the plot throughout the drama (or narrative) should be maintained—and emotionally satisfying. The end of the story, in other words, should “make sense,” both intellectually and emotionally. Otherwise, the audience (or readers) are apt to be disappointed. He used the example of the deus ex machina, or “god of the machine,” a device employed, in his opinion by inferior playwrights, for ending a play for no other reason than that the playwright wanted the story to end. An actor portraying a deity was suspended upon a rope, which was lowered by a stagehand situated out of sight, above the stage, to descend onto the boards and, by dint of divine fiat, bring the drama to its conclusion. Often, the conclusion had little or nothing to do with the performance prior to the descent of the god of the machine. The expression deus ex machina has come to mean, therefore, a “tacked-on ending.”

 

Unfortunately, in genre fiction, some authors, including Stephen King, have sometimes tacked on just such arbitrary and unsatisfying conclusions to their novels, an offense that is especially annoying in volumes of the length that King writes. The violation is all the more offensive when, on a previous page, the author has already provided several other, more plausible possible causes of the novel's many apparently otherworldly incidents, as King does in Under the Dome (a 1,074-page tome).

 

Bentley Little, once praised by King as “the horror poet laureate,” is notoriously lax about ending his novels well. When it comes to endings, he puts little or no effort into writing a conclusion that makes sense of the mysteries of his plot and in no way satisfies his readers, especially when his books are really rehashes of the same formula. How many times can readers stand another slight variation on a worn theme, especially when there is no meaningful (and, often, no intelligible) resolution to his books' conflicts, no meaningful motivations for their characters' actions, and no discernible theme?

To read such books is to understand not only the wisdom of Aristotle's demand for an intellectually and emotionally satisfying ending, but also to see what the lack of such an ending does to a book as a whole. Playwrights and novelists ignore Aristotle's advice at their own peril.

 

If the beginning of a book shows characters undergoing a quest, the end must show them fail or succeed in discovering the object or, perhaps the truth, they have sought (Dorothy discovers that happiness is in her own backyard).

 

If a novel sets forth a mystery to be solved, the end must solve the mystery—and the solution has to fit the facts and account for any apparent contradictions and red herrings (Paula Darnell's Amanda Trent always explains to the readers of her A Fine Art Mystery series not only who committed the novels' murders but also how and why the dastardly deeds were done).

If a tale showcases a series of bizarre incidents, these incidents must be explained through logic; through scientific knowledge, theory, principles, or verifiable empirical means; or through other pertinent and convincing evidence (after presenting us with an invisible creature in “The Damned Thing,” Ambrose Bierce is good enough to explain to us why the creature is invisible).

 

If beginning a story in media res avoids providing a context for incidents, the end of the story must establish this context (we may not know why characters are being attacked by supernatural creatures during the beginning of AWhole World Full of Hurt, but we learn the reason [and a whole lot more] by the novel's end).

Only when these tasks have been accomplished will readers be satisfied that they have read the full, complete story.

 

Michael Williams's Twisted Tales series, consisting, at present, of Tales with a Twist, Tales with a Twist II, and Tales with a Twist III, is available on Amazon. Not only are they entertaining, but they're also textbooks on how to write fantastic flash fiction!

 

Horror Fiction: The Appeal of the Need to Dominate

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

All of us feel the need to dominate others, Jib Fowles notes. Advertisements, he says, appeal to this universal “basic need.” The desire for “clout,” this need is characterized by “the craving to be powerful—perhaps omnipotent”—and it may take the form of a desire to “dominate and control one's environment.”

Although Fowles doesn't mention these other forms specifically, it seems that the “basic need” to dominate would also occur in such endeavors as those involving social, personal, economic, governmental, and technological ends, to name but a few.

Horror fiction, like other genres of literature, often appeals to the need to dominate.

In one of Stephen King's novels, Gerald's Game (1992), men sexually dominate a woman; in another, Misery (1987), a woman physically dominates a man.

Gerald's Game: After Jessie tells her dominant husband, lawyer Gerald Burlingame, she does not want to engage in another session of bondage and discipline with him, he persists, climbing atop her after handcuffing her to the bed, despite her protests. She kicks him, he falls onto the floor, has a heart attack, and dies. Alone in the remote cabin to which they have repaired, and shackled to the bed, Jessie begins to hallucinate, seeing a figure she calls “Space Cowboy” and hearing voices, each a different aspect of herself that she's repressed. The voices help her to better understand her past as a victim of paternal sexual abuse and her present as a wife who is more valued as a trophy than as a human being who's an equal partner in marriage. She has settled for Gerald, despite his emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of her, because he is financially secure. After several attempts at escape, she finally frees herself of the handcuffs by cutting away enough of the skin on one wrist to lubricate her skin with her blood. She pushes the bed to the bureau, retrieving a key with which to unlock the cuffs and free her other hand. However, the blood loss she has suffered causes her to lose consciousness, and, upon awakening, she imagines she is being pursued by the Space Cowboy and wrecks her car. Later, as Jessie is recovering, a nurse tells her that the Space Cowboy is actually a necrophiliac killer, Raymond Andrew Joubert, who was passing through Maine when he came upon her cabin.

A victim of her father, her husband, and a serial killer and necrophile, all of whom abused and dominated her for their own sexual and sadistic purposes, Jessie is a survivor because she is willing to do whatever it takes—repress horrific memories of her past to the extent that she becomes three personalities, rather than one; kill her husband; and evade a killer who had apparently left her to die in the cabin so he could return to have sex with her corpse.

Misery: Romance novelist Paul Sheldon wrecks his car during a blizzard and is rescued by his “number one fan,” Annie Wilkes, a former nurse who lives in a remote house in the mountains. Angry that Sheldon has killed his heroine, Misery Chastain, in the last book of the series, Annie keeps him prisoner, demanding he resurrect Misery in a sequel, Misery's Return. He discovers she's a serial killer but isn't aware that she plans to kill them both after reading Misery's Return. After Sheldon finishes his manuscript, he sets it ablaze. (In fact, however, the manuscript is merely a counterfeit of the actual document.) He and Annie struggle until Annie collapses after falling and striking her head on the mantelpiece in his bedroom. The next day, he gets the attention of state police who are seeking her in connection with a trooper she'd killed earlier. At first, they cannot find her body, but it is later discovered in the barn. She'd made her way there to get a chainsaw with which to kill Paul, but died from the injuries she'd sustained in their fight. Paul publishes Misery's Return, before working on a literary novel, planning to launch a new career as a serious author.

The ordeal through which Sheldon goes, suffering emotional and physical abuse at the hands of his psychotic “biggest fan,” is not only a testament to his courage, perseverance, and will to survive, but they are also the reasons that he is able to endure the torment to which he is subjected, escapes, and emerges alive, more or less in one piece. His tenacity also allows him to overcome the alcoholism that plagues him and the writer's block he suffers as a result of his ordeal. By showing the traits of character and will that Sheldon requires to come back from the brutal abuse of a dominant personality, King suggests the way forward for actual individuals who have experienced similar barbarity.

As Fowles observes, dominance doesn't have to be sexual or depend on relationships between men and women. In William Golding's The Lord of the Flies (1954), a novel King says he wishes he'd written, the need to dominate is expressed socially.

Economic dominance occurs in Bentley Little's The Store (1998). A national chain of big-box department stores has virtually taken over the brick-and-mortar retail world. The Store is everywhere. Its ever-expanding growth wipes out mom-and-pop stores, most franchises, and any vendors and suppliers who don't want to meet its terms. Stocking anything anyone could ever want to buy, and selling merchandise at discount prices, The Store is quickly becoming the only place to shop. Its benefits—a huge inventory, low prices, thousands of locations, employment for an army of workers, and taxes to local, state, and federal governments, are as numerous as its operations are vast. However, there's a downside to The Store—and, like its benefits, its negative effects are tremendous.

The Store: Juniper, Arizona, wants The Store, so officials offer tax breaks and other incentives to entice its executives to build one in its community. From the beginning, there are indications that The Store may not be the blessing local politicians believe it will be: dead animals—and a human corpse—at the construction site, black vehicles delivering mysterious merchandise in the middle of the night, and The Store's taking over of the town. Bill Davis senses trouble, and he's uneasy when his daughters become employees of The Store. Night Managers terrorize the staff. Employees disappear. Bizarre merchandise, including a line of dildos and other sex toys, show up on the shelves. Through its economic power, The Store runs roughshod over the lives of employees, customers, townspeople, politicians, vendors, suppliers, and other businesses. Just who is The Store's CEO, Newman, and what does he want to accomplish through his domination of the town—and of the nation?

Sometimes, we forget the true power of money, thinking of power in physical terms, as brute strength, weapons, or military force. However, economics is the basis of every enterprise, especially in capitalistic countries, and its potential for evil, like its potential for good, is tremendous. How is such economic clout to be resisted and overcome? How are individuals, families, communities, and nations to survive against such a powerful economic threat to their autonomy, safety, welfare, and liberty? The need to achieve through economic dominance, Little reminds his readers, is a force to be reckoned with.

Dean Koontz's The Taking(2004) depicts attempt to dominate the environment. 

The Taking: After a torrential downfall of semen-scented rain, a mysterious slime appears overnight, coating buildings, streets, trees, lawns, bushes, and the rest of the landscape. The small town in which Neil and Molly Sloan reside is isolated from the rest of the world as telephone, radio, television, and Internet service fail. The Sloans gather a group of their neighbors. Some among them believe the apocalypse is upon them. The truth is that an advance team of alien scientists have arrived, and they're reverse-terraforming the earth to make it habitable for them in preparation for a massive invasion.

By showing the effects on the environment through the lens of an alien invasion, Koontz provides a fresh look at the effects of pollution and energy waste that societies are inflicting on their own planet, offering an ironic portrayal of some of the effects that continuous neglect and abuse of the planet could have on Earth and its inhabitants, including human beings themselves. It's a harrowing story condemning the dominance of the environment that is underway today, as it has been for generations. 

The story is made all the more unsettling, indeed horrible, because of the actual use of pesticides to control weeds and defoliants to denude vast acreages of plants. 

Developed in the 1970s by Monsanto, Roundup, a “glyphosate-based pesticide,” is today used in more than 160 countries, on a variety of crops, despite controversy concerning whether the product is a carcinogen. 

During the Vietnam War, the United States military used Agent Orange to strip the foliage from “3,100,000 hectares (31,000 km²; 12,000 sq mi)” of forest, in the process exposing millions of Vietnamese people and thousands of U. S. military personnel to the agent, which has been linked to a variety of cancers. The “herbicidal warfare” operations occurred from 1961 to 1971, but their effects continue to cause health problems to the Vietnamese people and to Vietnam veterans. 

Whether the intent has been to protect crops by controlling pests or to defoliate forests during “herbicidal warfare” operations, chemical attempts to dominate the environment have had effects even more chilling than those of which Koontz writes in The Taking, because, unlike his novel's horrors, those that resulted from the use of pesticides and defoliants are real, not imaginary. 

Both King's and Koontz's novels also chronicle the results of attempts by the federal government to dominate society. King's Firestarter (1980) and Koontz's Watchers (1987) depict how ruthless the United States government can be in its quest to use science and technology as instruments of government dominance.

Firestarter: “Charlie” McGee develops telekinesis and the ability to “push,” or make hypnotic suggestions using the power of thought, after her father, Andy, participated as a subject in a clandestine government experiment. Over time, Charlie's powers become enormously powerful. She and Andy are hunted by government agents, including an assassin known as Rainbird, after they escape from the government laboratory, “the Shop.” Eventually, they escape to a cabin in Vermont, but they are subsequently captured and taken to a secret location in northern Virginia. Using their powers, they escape again, destroying the government facility, although Andy is killed. Charlie informs a national publication of her experiences.

Watchers: Travis Cornell, formerly of the Delta Force, stumbles upon a golden retriever and a hulking creature, the outsider, which have escaped from a top-secret government laboratory. The latter is pursuing the former, in an attempt to kill the canine. Because of the retriever's extremely high intelligence, Cornell names the animal “Einstein,” and he and the dog save a woman, Nora Devon, from a sexual predator. They become a trio, pursued by the Outsider, federal agents, and a Russian operative, Vince Nasco, who wants to kill the scientists involved in the experiments that produced Einstein and the Outsider and capture the dog to sell.

What makes these novels truly terrifying is that they address issues that have actually occurred in similar government experiments in which the human rights of test subjects were wantonly violated with impunity. In 1953, during MKUltra, the Central Intelligence Agency administered lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to Frank Olson, an army biologist, without his knowledge or consent. As a result, he leaped to his death.

For forty years, from 1932 to 1972, the United States Public Health Service conducted the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. Six-hundred-and-twenty-two poor black men, supposedly receiving free medical care, were monitored without being treated for the disease, despite the proof that penicillin could cure them. None of the participants in the study were notified that treatment was being withheld, and none of them consented to the withholding of treatment. Forty of their wives contracted the disease, and nineteen children were born with congenital syphilis.

During Operation Top Hat (1953), the United States Army Chemical Corps deliberately “exposed personnel” to biological and chemical warfare agents, including phosgene, a suffocant; blister agents; and nerve agents, so decontamination methods could be tested.

James Patterson's novel Humans, Bow Down (2017), written with Emily Raymond, focuses upon technological dominance, as do the films the Terminator (1984-present) franchise, Demon Seed (1973), and many others.

Humans,Bow Down: In a war between humans and smart robots, which occurred some time ago, robots were the victors. Now, as the title of the novel suggests, humans have been subjugated to their conquerors. Whenever a robot leader appears, humans are ordered to “bow down,” showing their submission to their dominant masters. When a small band of humans dares to defy their mechanical overlords, there is hope that humans may regain their freedom, but liberty will not come cheaply, if at all.

Terminator: In the future, smart robots rule the Earth, and humans live minimal lives in filth, discomfort, and poverty, until John, the son of Sarah Connor, leads his fellow humans in a war against their brutal conquerors. To prevent this event from happening, the robots send one of their own, The Terminator, into the past to kill Sarah before she can conceive him. However, Sarah is not alone: her son also sends a soldier of the resistance back through time to protect her.

Demon Seed: Dean Koontz's 1973 novel, which was adapted to the big screen under the same title (1977), features Proteus, an artificially intelligent, state-of-the-art computer that plans to impregnate Susan, a wealthy divorcee whose home is controlled by a computer system. After commandeering Susan's home computer system, Proteus imprisons her in her home, in effect putting her under house arrest, and uses hypnosis and subliminal perception on her, interacting physically with her by using “pseudopod” tentacles that Proteus designs and constructs in the nearby university that houses “him.” From their union, a monstrous human-hybrid creature results, their “child,” with which Susan must do battle. 

Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has been used to dominate workers and consumers, the economies of both domestic and foreign markets, military forces, politicians, and, indeed, entire political systems. It is only now becoming possible, some believe, for technology to dominate individuals in personal ways, such as by enslaving them or transforming their sex lives through the use of “sexbots” (robots designed as surrogate sex partners). If this proves to be the case, such visions as those presented in Humans,Bow Down, Terminator, and Demon Seed may be closer to realization than many might imagine. 

Although horror and science fiction are both forms of fantasy, writers of each genre have made some fairly horrific speculations about the abuses that stem from the need to dominate others and the environment.

In the past, it seems, more authors were likely to be optimistic about the future effects of present-day personal, social, economic, governmental, and technological efforts to dominate the world. After experiencing such horrors as two world wars, the medical experiments of Josef Mengele, the gassing of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis, the effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and such covert operations by American organizations against their own citizens, as carried out during the Vietnam War, the MKUltra project, the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, and Operation Top Hat (to mention only a few), contemporary authors do not seem to share such an optimistic view of the need to dominate, as Gerald's Game, Misery, The Store, The Taking, Firestarter, Watchers, Humans, Bow Down, Terminator, and Demon Seed unanimously suggest.

The need to dominate may be universal among all individuals, but that doesn't mean its practice will necessarily produce beneficial outcomes.

All's Well That Ends Well

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror writers with longstanding records as bestselling authors are not exempt from writing novels with unsatisfying endings. When the novelist is Stephen King, whose novels typically run as many as eight hundred pages (sometimes more), an unsatisfying ending is more than annoying; it's horrible.

Many of King's novels do end poorly, as It, Under the Dome, Revival, and many others attest. After reading hundreds of pages in which reality seems fairly real (other than the presence of the centuries-old, shape-shifting “It”), only to discover that the universe isn't a product of the Big Bang, as astronomers apparently mistakenly believe, but that it resulted from a gigantic turtle's need to vomit—well, readers are apt to think the effect is anything but agreeable. In fact, readers might think they'll be sick enough themselves to vomit a universe of their own. Likewise, the ending of Under the Dome is beyond frustrating. After plodding through hundreds of pages (many of which are devoted to King's Democratic progressivism and his obsessive hatred of Republicans and of President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney in particular), readers discover that the invisible and impenetrable dome that cuts off Chester's Mill, Maine, is the result of a gigantic, mischievous female adolescent alien who placed an inverted dome over the town, much as a mischievous Earthling might invert a bowl over an anthill. Consequently, readers are likely to work out until they've acquired sufficient strength to rip this ridiculous novel page from page. While writing Desperation, King seemed to find nothing amiss with the views of Christian fundamentalists. He even sought out one of them, a pastor, as his adviser. But, as The Regulators, the companion novel to Desperation, indicates, King likes to turn the tables on himself. He does just this in Revival. He'd had no problem with the beliefs and teachings of Christian fundamentalists when he wrote Desperation, but, while writing Revival, he said he couldn't stomach the Christian fundamentalists' idea of hell, as it's described in the Bible. He doesn't cite chapter and verse, but here are a few passages, from the King James Version of the Bible, concerning hell, that most Christian fundamentalists would probably accept:

For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains (Deuteronomy 32:22).

The sorrows of hell compassed me about . . . (Samuel 22:6).

Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit (Isaiah 14:15).

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell (Mathew 5:29).

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell (Matthew 10:28).

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18).

Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? (Matthew 23:33).

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched (Mark 9:23).

And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments . . . (Luke 16:23).

For . . . God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment . . . (2 Peter 2:4).

According to these verses, hell, an expression of divine wrath, is a locked pit below the earth. Made of several layers, it's a place of eternal darkness and everlasting fire, in which the damned, who are cast therein bodily, are beset by sorrows and live in constant torment (although both body and soul can be destroyed in hell). It's occupied by both fallen angels and by human sinners, and it's set against the kingdom of heaven, which shall overcome it.

This is the conception of hell that King finds ridiculous. In its place, he offers something so extremely absurd that it's laughable, and it is with this, his own conception of hell, which he believes is superior to the Biblical depiction of hell, that he concludes Revival, describing hell as a gigantic anthill full of gigantic, ravenous ants. Huh?

Somehow, King sees a huge anthill in which huge ants crush sinners with their huge jaws as superior to the depiction of hell provided in the Bible, the King James Version of which is, without argument, one of the greatest literary masterpieces of the English language. With judgment this poor, it is truly a wonder that King ever managed to write his much better, earlier work.

The endings of the stories by Bentley Little, another prolific horror novelist, are as bad as those of King's worst books. They're tacked-on, rather than being integral to the plot, and, typically, they explain nothing concerning what has transpired in the hundreds of pages preceding them. They seem to hint at an explanation, but, as there is no actual explanation at which to hint, the intimation itself is nothing more than a half-hearted, meaningless gesture. Read virtually any of Little's novels, including the one for which he won the dubious Bram Stoker Award, and you'll see what I mean—but be prepared for a major disappointment. For example, The Resort suggests the bizarre incidents which occur at the present resort are somehow linked to those which occurred at an earlier, nearby resort, which now lies in ruins. How and why the two resorts might have shared some common causal link is unclear because unexplained. Therefore, readers are within reason to assume that there never was such a link. Likely, they will feel cheated of the time, effort, and money they spent in reading the novel.

Horror master Edgar Allan Poe offered a solution to the dilemma of the sloppy ending 172 years ago. In “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846), he explains how he wrote his narrative poem “The Raven.” First, he decided how the story would end. Then, he selected everything—every word, every image, every figure of speech, every point of the plot, every character, every line of dialogue, every nuance of the setting—so that the final result, the story's effect, would be inevitable, given what came before and led up to it. It seems clear that neither King nor Little (nor many other writers, of the horror genre and of other genres, have any idea where their stories are going or why, but write only in the moment, making up the plot as they go.

Poe applied his technique not only to “The Raven,” but to most of his stories and other narrative poems. One story for which the ending isn't as clear and fitting as the conclusions of his other tales is “Ligeia.” As Kevin J. Hayes points out, in The Annotated Poe:

The ending leaves many questions unanswered. The reappearance of Ligeia can be interpreted as a phantasmagoric illusion [an image projected by the so-called magic lantern, a type of early projector], an opium-induced hallucination [the narrator uses laudanum], a psychological fantasy, a modern recurrence of a traditional transformation legend, or an actual event. . . .

Comments Poe made concerning the story's problematic ending indicate that he'd intended the story to have a supernatural ending. A friend of his, Pendleton Cooke, asked about the story's resolution. In response, Poe “suggested how he might have improved it”:

One point I have not fully carried out—I should have intimated that the will did not perfect its intention—there should have been a relapse—a final one—and Ligeia (who had only succeeded in so much as to convey an idea of the truth to the narrator) should be at length entombed as Rowena—the bodily alterations having gradually faded away.

It seems that Poe, unlike King, Little, and a host of other writers, learned his lesson about writing sloppy endings. He was careful, from then on, to plan more carefully the outcomes of his stories, the vast majority of which have the unified structure and the single effect for which he has become famous. For example, “The Pit and the Pendulum” is based an article, “Anecdote towards the History of the Spanish Inquisition.” According to this article, “when General Lasalle entered Toledo, he immediately visited the Palace of the Inquisition,” where he tested a torture device, which he found to be in good order.

As Hayes observes, the way in which the article recounted the story was ineffective from “a dramatic point of view,” so Poe reversed its chronology:

Though fascinated by the story, Poe nevertheless recognized what was wrong with it, at least from a dramatic point of view: it was backwards. By having Lasalle arrive in the first sentence, the article destroys all possibilities for tension and terror. Poe turned the story around, describing what happens to one particular prisoner while saving Lasalle's timely intervention for the final paragraph.”

Poe had learned the lesson that he would teach in “The Philosophy of Composition” and exemplify in the majority of his own short stories, essays, and narrative poems: in the words of the bard, “All's well that ends well.”

Unsafe

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

For most, home is a sanctuary, where it's safe to be oneself, to relax among loved ones, and to share one's innermost thoughts and feelings. In such a place, we let down our guard; we lower our defenses; we unbend. It is a safe place, free from the “slings and arrows” of everyday life, if not of “fortune.”

Other safe places, other retreats, include resorts; city, country, state, or federal parks; churches, temples, or mosques; friends' or neighbors' houses; the lodges of fraternal organizations; schools; and workplaces.

That is, they are usually safe.

Which is why they're all the more horrific and terrifying when they turn out to be anything but safe. 

Part of the horror and terror we feel when safe places are no longer safe stems from the overturning of our expectations. We expect to be safe, to be secure, to be protected. Experience has taught us that we need not fear danger in our homes, resorts, parks, houses of worship, lodges, schools, or workplaces. We have come to believe they are protected havens. When these expectations are upset, the horror and fear we experience are intensified.

In horror fiction, our safety is violated by various means. A sanctuary may be invaded. Certain parties may defy laws or moral strictures. Poor judgments on our part or another person with whom we're associated may lead to unpleasant, injurious, or even fatal consequences. We may be subjected to the cat-and-mouse maneuvers of an obsessed stalker or the machinations of a serial killer. A house guest may become our worst nightmare. Someone we trust may prove untrustworthy. 

Horror movies and novels play on our fear that, even in a retreat, we may not be safe, that there may, in fact, be no safety, no matter where we are, where we go, or with whom we spend our time, whether with family, friends, neighbors, vacationers, worshipers, lodge brothers or sisters, faculty or classmates, or workplace colleagues. When a safe place proves to be dangerous, there is no safety anywhere.

Such truly is the case, of course: none of us is safe, not entirely, not really. At every moment, our lives hang in the balance. We could die of disease, of injury, of poisoning, of automobile or airplane crashes, of workplace accidents, of falls, of animal attacks, of drowning, of choking on food or drink, by fire, by insect bites or stings, by drug overdoses, through starvation, from complications of surgery or medical care, by explosives, to name but a few common causes of death. Life is fragile. 

Our susceptibility to harm and our dependency on nature for the fulfillment of our needs puts us at the mercy of disease, pestilence, famine, flood, wild animals, each other, and a host of other dangers. We are not as in control as we might have supposed; we are not as able to defend or provide for ourselves and others as we might have thought.

In horror fiction, our dependency, our fragility, our vulnerability are highlighted by extreme dangers. We face monsters, not germs; aliens, not insects; paranormal and supernatural figures and forces, not natural disasters. Such adversaries personify these actual threats, giving them, if not exactly a human face, a personality. Anthropomorphism makes the monstrous relatively human. In the monsters of horror fiction, we encounter that which both is and is not ourselves.

It is we ourselves who make our safe havens unsafe, just as it is we ourselves who are endangered by these threats. We are both hunter and hunted, victimizer and victim, killer and killed. We are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, the man and the wolf as well as the wolfman.

Movies and novels in which such threats occur, as reminders of our own finitude, vulnerability, dependency, fragility, and relative helplessness, include:

When a Stranger Calls (1979): A baby sitter is terrorized by a stranger who calls her repeatedly, asking whether the children she has checked on the children she is watching. Later, the babysitter, now a married woman and mother, is enjoying dinner at a restaurant when she receives a telephone call. The caller, the same man who'd called her years ago while she was babysitting the children he killed, asks, “Have you checked the children?”

The Resort (2004): Bentley Little's 2004 novel is summarized by the publisher, Signet:

. . . Welcome to The Reata, an exclusive spa isolated in the Arizona desert. Please ignore the strange employees and that unspeakable thing in the pool. And when guests start disappearing, pretend it isn't happening. Enjoy your stay, and relax. Oh...and lock yourself in after dark.

Club Review adds.

. . . Opulent doesn't begin to describe the Arizona getaway where Lowell Thurman, his wife, Rachel, and their three young sons have come for one glorious week. Everything at The Reata is perfect-although Rachel is a bit unnerved by the openly lustful gaze of one of the gardeners, something she doesn't mention to Lowell. Nor does he tell her about the frightening sensation he has in the pool of hands clutching at him, trying to pull him under. . . . . To the Thurmans' horror, guests begin to disappear.

For those who'd like to test the waters, here's a dip into The Resort:

He was halfway across the pool when someone grabbed his foot.

Lowell kicked out, flailing wildly, shocked more than anything else, but the grip on his foot tightened, bony fingers digging into the thin flesh, holding him firm. For a brief moment he was swimming in place like a cartoon character, then the hand let go and he floundered [sic] in the water as he fought against a force that was no longer there. 

Twisting, spluttering, trying to keep himself afloat and determine who had grabbed him at the same time, Lowell looked down into the choppy bubbly water beneath him, then scanned the surface of the pool. It was empty. There was still no one in the room but himself (48).

Summer of Night: A Barnes & Noble overview of Dan Simmons's 1991 novel, which has been favorably compared to Stephen King's It, states:

It's the summer of 1960 and in the small town of Elm Haven, Illinois, five twelve-year-old boys are forging the powerful bonds that a lifetime of change will not break. From sunset bike rides to shaded hiding places in the woods, the boys' days are marked by all of the secrets and silences of an idyllic middle-childhood. But amid the sun-drenched cornfields their loyalty will be pitilessly tested. When a long-silent bell peals in the middle of the night, the townsfolk know it marks the end of their carefree days. From the depths of the Old Central School, a hulking fortress tinged with the mahogany scent of coffins, an invisible evil is rising. Strange and horrifying events begin to overtake everyday life, spreading terror through the once idyllic town. Determined to exorcize this ancient plague, Mike, Duane, Dale, Harlen, and Kevin must wage a war of blood—against an arcane abomination who owns the night One of the most frightening scenes of this novel occurs in the town's park, during the showing of a free movie. It is impossible to do more than to merely suggest the eerie, frightening quality of the scene's setting, but this excerpt will, hopefully, provide a slight indication:

“What's that?” whispered Lawrence, stopping and clutching his bag of popcorn.

“Nothing. What?” said Dale, stopping with his brother.

There was a rustling, sliding, screeching from the darkness in and above the elms.

“It's nothing,” said dale, tugging at Lawrence to get moving. “Birds.” Lawrence still wouldn't move and Dale paused to listen again. “Bats.” 

Dale could see them now, dark shapes flitting across the pale gaps between the leaves, winged shadows visible against the white of First Prez as they darted to and fro. “Just bats.” He tugged at Lawrence's hand. 

His brother refused to move. “Listen,” he whispered. . . .

Trees rustling. The manic scales of a cartoon soundtrack dulled by distance and humid air. The leathery flap of wings. Voices.

Instead of the near ultra-sonic chirp of bats scanning the way ahead, the sound in the motion-filled darkness around them was the screech of small, sharp voices. Cries. Shrieks. Curses. Obscenities. Most of the sounds teetered on the brink of actually being words, the maddeningly audible but bot-quite-distinct syllables of a shouted conversation in an adjoining room, But two of the sounds were quite clear.

Dale and Lawrence stood frozen on the sidewalk, clutching their popcorn and staring upward, as bats shrieked their names in consonants that sounded like teeth scraping across blackboards. Far, far away, the amplified voice of Porky Pig said, “Th-th-th-that's all, folks!”

“Run!” whispered Dale (52).

Summer of Night also presents harrowing scenes set in its characters' homes (especially Dale's basement!), the children's school, and a local church.

Another novel by Bentley Little, The Revelation (2014), recounts the evil deeds that ensue the arrival of a revivalist following the mysterious disappearance of a small-town preacher. According to Library Journal—

—In Randall, Arizona, portents signal a looming disaster of apocalyptic proportions: there are stillbirths, animal sacrifices, church desecrations, and mysterious disappearances. An ancient-eyed and omniscient preacher arrives and claims that Satan is collecting the souls of the stillborn infants and murdered townspeople, causing them to commit further grotesque crimes. He recruits the sheriff, the Episcopal priest, and expectant father Gordon Lewis, whose unborn daughter is, apparently, Satan's goal, but how this will cause the apocalypse is never explained. However, Little's story, is as typical of his novels in general, ends poorly, with no logical or believable explanation of the central conflict, and Library Journal contends, ill-defined and unmotivated characters, the lack of “revelations,” and a “flimsy plot” make “a forgettable book.”

Most of Little's books end the same way, unraveling toward their conclusions, which is more than frustrating. His faithful readers know this will happen and forgive him, because, until the end, he takes them on one hell of a scary, eerie ride and almost always includes some form of unconventional sex which is, although disturbing, titillating enough.

Stephen King also offers a novel set, among other locations, in a church, but Revival (2015), like The Revelation, has an unconvincing, theologically shallow—indeed, absurd— ending, suggesting that the author was writing from the hip, as it were, with no clear idea of the story he was telling. Would Little and King to take the advice Edgar Allan Poe offers in “The Philosophy of Composition,” and write their stories backward, with a solid, believable (within the context of the story itself) conclusion firmly in mind, their fiction would improve immensely.

A blurb summarizes the story, such as it is:

The new minister came to Harlow, Maine, when Jamie Morton was a boy doing battle with his toy army men on the front lawn. The young Reverend Charles Jacobs and his beautiful wife brought new life to the local church and captivated their congregation. But with Jamie, he shares a secret obsession—a draw so powerful, it would have profound consequences five decades after the shattering tragedy that turned the preacher against God, and long after his final, scathing sermon. Now Jamie, a nomadic rock guitarist hooked on heroin, meets Charles Jacobs again. And when their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil’s devising, Jamie discovers that the word revival has many meanings.

Sorry, I don't have a sample excerpt on hand, having tossed my copy a while back, which is just as well.

IMDb offers a succinct synopsis of director Robert Angelo Masciantonio's Neighbor (2009), a horror film in which “a mysterious new girl arrives in posh suburban neighborhood and quickly sets out to terrorize the town. As she starts breaking into homes and torturing the occupants, they begin to realize that she isn't just another girl next door.”

An oldie but goodie, The Stepford Wives (2004), directed by Frank Oz, involves a fraternal organization of wealthy men who have perfected a way to give their wives a complete makeover worthy of a modern-day Pygmalion who uses high tech rather than a hammer and a chisel to create his version of the perfect woman.

High schools and universities are frequent settings for both horror novels and horror movies. The Roommate (2011), directed by Christian Christainsen, is one of the latest to locate its eerie incidents in a university: “a college freshman who realizes that her new best friend is obsessive, unbalanced . . . and maybe even a killer” (IMDb). Disturbing Behavior (1998), director David Nutter's part-sci fi and part-horror movie, set in a high school, is a junior version of The Stepford Wives, in which “The new kid in town stumbles across something sinister about the town's method of transforming its unruly teens into upstanding citizens.”

These films and others of these types reflect many individuals' fears as well as societal insecurities. If one's home is not inviolate, what place is? If we are not safe in our homes, are we safe anywhere? Dangers often come without, in the form of stalkers, serial killers, or murderous burglars, but they can also come from within, in the form of abusive parents, deviant children, or, as in Stephen King's novel Cujo, and the film adaptation of the same title, the family pet. 

Resorts are supposed to be places at which we can get away from all the petty concerns of everyday life and enjoy ourselves as we pursue pleasures we don't usually have the time to indulge, but, when things go awry, these retreats can become anything but a place of refuge; they can be transformed into places from our worst nightmares or from hell itself.

We often visit city, county, state, or national parks to picnic with family or friends. Companies may treat their employees to picnics in the park. We go there to walk our dogs, to ride horses, to visit nature (but on our own terms, in comfort, maintaining communications with the outside world at all times), or to witness wonders we can't imagine in our backyards back home. When earthquakes, flood, fires, landslides, or wildlife threaten us, we realize just how alone we are. If we're not well versed in the techniques of survival, we're not apt to live to tell of our adventures. 

Horror novels and movies, such as Stephen King's 1999 novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, director Adam MacDonald's Backcountry (2015), and Maurice L'Heureux's Into the Back Country (1982), director Keith Kurlander's Cold, Creepy Feeling (2010), and a slew of others show that human beings, no matter how much they might like to believe they've tamed nature and domesticated animals, are definitely not in control of their destinies.

Millions of people around the world believe in God, although their concepts of the divine sometimes differ widely. What is common to the majority of the world's great religions, however, is faith in Providence. God, the members of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam believe, not only created the universe but also takes a direct, personal interest in its operations, including the affairs of the men, women, and children He created. God loves and protects humanity, adherents of these religions believe, although He is also a God of justice and righteousness. That doesn't mean sinners and God's own greatest adversary, the devil, won't resist, defy, and disobey their Creator. Many exorcism films, such as William Friedkin's The Exorcist (based on William Peter Blatty's 1973 novel of the same title), director Scott Derrickson's film The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and director Mikael Håfström The Rite (2011) explore the conflict between the divine and the diabolical, with humans as their battlegrounds.

It's not a neighbor, but a landlord, who represents danger for the young married couple in director Victor Zarkoff's voyeuristic thriller 13 Cameras. The problems with neighbors today is that they're not very neighborly. We don't really know them, and they don't really know us. Occasionally, when we chance to meet, we exchange pleasantries with them, smile, and wave, but they are essentially strangers to us, and strangers are unknown quantities. What we don't know could get us killed, horror novels and movies insist, so it's best to avoid them, as much as possible. Such movies as director Craig Gillespie's Fright Night (2011), director Mac Carter's Haunt (2013), director Rodney Gibbons's The Neighbor (1993) remind us of some of the dangers neighbors can represent, including vampirism, murder victims' ghosts, and adultery.

Bentley Little's novel The Association (2017), Peter Straub's novel Ghost Story (1979) and the 1981 film adaptation by John Irvin, suggest, respectively, that homeowner's associations and men's clubs are evil or possess evil secret that can destroy or end lives.

Are our children safe at school? (The spate of school shootings since 1999 suggest, quite clearly, the answer is no.) Are they being taught what they need to learn, or, worse yet, are they learning lessons no child should be taught? Are the teachers helping or hurting my child? A lot of parents are uneasy about school staff and educational curriculum. More than a few teachers, at every level of public education, except, perhaps, preschool and kindergarten, have had illicit sex with students, some of whom have, indeed, been raped. Not every parent wants young children to learn about every sexual practice imaginable. Novels like Little's The Association play on this fear, while King's novella Apt Pupil, examines the threats that students sometimes pose toward faculty members. Other novels and movies explore themes associated with colleges and universities: Little's University ( 2017) and such films as director Mark Rosman's The House of Sorority Row (1983), The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982), directed by Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow, Black Christmas (1973), director Fred Dekker's Night of the Creeps (1983), and a host of others depict college and university days as something much less nostalgic than most graduates are likely to remember them.

Many horror novels and movies are also set in workplaces: director Tobe Hooper's The Mangler (1995) (one of the silliest premises for a horror movie ever!), Psycho (1960) (a classic Alfred Hitchcock set largely in the roadside Bates Motel), The Funhouse (a carnival setting, courtesy of director Toby Hooper) are only a few of the myriad. Novelists, too, favor such settings, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child do in Relic (2003) and as Bentley Little does in The Consultant (2015) and The Store (1998), and as Dean Koontz does, in part, in Watchers (2003) and several of his other novels, including his Odd Thomas series (2007-2015), to mention but a few. We all have to work, but few of us truly enjoy our jobs, some of which are dangerous in themselves. On top of that, we may have a diabolical manager, monstrous colleagues, and crazed clients. These books and movies tap into these daily frustrations and annoyances, exaggerating them to the point that our jobs don't look all that bad, after all. At least, no one's trying to kill us (as far as we know).

Of course, urban fantasy novels in the horror mold, including my own A Whole World Full of Hurt (2016) have cities as their settings, but that's the topic for a different post.