Expressions of Horror: Emotional Storylines

Copyright 2012 by Gary L. Pullman

In Danse Macabre, Stephen King admits, “If I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out.” These two emotions--horror and disgust--are viewed by many as the two main emotions--some might argue the only emotions--that horror fiction evokes.

However, King doesn’t believe that himself, nor, it seems likely, does any other writer or editor of horror stories, any writer or director of horror films. Like any other genre of literature, horror fiction makes use of a range and variety of emotions--and mental states or conditions--among which are the following:

Desperation (Mrs. Cornelia Hilyard embodies desperation when she begs stranger to assist her in Lady in a Cage.)

Humiliation (In Dahmer, Jeffrey Dahmer is humiliated when his father discovers that the mannequin that his son stole and dresses is a male, rather than a female, mannequin.)

Grief (Both Dr. David Callaway and his daughter Emily express grief following the death of David's wife [Emily's mother]).

Curiosity (Caroline Ellis’ curiosity as to what lies behind the locked attic room gets her killed in The Skeleton Key.)

Anxiety (Marion Crane exemplifies this emotion at the start of Psycho, both before and after she absconds with her boss’ money and particularly when she is followed by the state police officer after she has left town with the stolen loot.)

Madness (Norman Bates’ close ups at the end of Psycho, when he has, for all intents and purposes become his dead mother, illustrate this emotion.).

Vulnerability (Jane Hudson personifies this condition in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.)

Sadistic delight (Tuesday Wells reflects sadistic delight as a murderess in Pretty Poison.)

Wonder (Marte in Day of Wrath emotes wonder.)

Innocence (Regan MacNeil is the very picture of innocence--before and after she is possessed in The Exorcist.)

Hysteria (Heather Donahue, in tears in The Blair Witch Project, expresses hysteria as she videotapes herself.)

Ecstasy (Catherine Ballard, in Crash, experiences ecstasy.)

Shock (Juno is shocked when she accidentally kills her friend Beth in The Descent.)

Revulsion (Andre Delambre is repulsed at his personal appearance after he becomes a human fly in The Fly; the human body, especially its sexual parts and aspects, is a source of repulsion for characters in body horror films, such as many of David Cronenberg's movies.)

A series of such emotions can, in fact, create what might be called an emotional storyline. The looks of anxiety, indecision, anxiety, relief, disturbance, repentance, shock, fear, and horror on Marion Crane’s face in Psycho, for example, both complement the film’s action and are complemented, in return, by the film’s action as these expressions tell--or show--the story, in their own way, as much as the overt action and dialogue do. The same is true of other horror films--or for movies in general, for that matter. Often, in fact, such emotional storylines follow formulas such as the one suggested by the expression “curiosity killed the cat” (The Skeleton Key is an example: Caroline Ellis’ curiosity as to what lies behind the locked attic room gets her killed.)

Leftover Plots, Part V

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Plot Generator XY112G

One way to come up with ideas for short stories and novels is to steal--I mean, borrow--them from other writers. I write of this practice in earlier posts, “Leftover Plots,” parts I through IV. Those articles are more general than this one (and, possibly, future ones, which will focus specifically on the works of horror fiction’s current bad boy par excellence, Stephen King.

I’m not really going to tell anyone how to steal from King (or anybody else, for that matter), of course, because (a) stealing is wrong and ( b) plagiarism can be costly, to one’s reputation as well as to one’s purse.

However, ideas (like titles) cannot be copyrighted. They are free to anyone and everyone, which is why, for example, The Lost World (1925), Jurassic Park (1993), and 10,000 Years B. C. (2008) (or, for that matter, The Land Before Time [1988]), and many, many more movies about either dinosaurs or dinosaurs in conflict with human beings have been made. No doubt, many another will follow.

Often, horror writers throw off ideas for short stories and even other novels in the novels and screenplays that they write. The concepts sometimes fall like sparks from the tail of a fiery comet (or, at least, comets of the type that we generally see in science fiction movies and tend to imagine in the theaters of our minds). King’s novel, Desperation, suggests a few ideas that could become the bases for additional short stories or, perhaps, even novels. Others of his many works offer similar suggestions.

One of these ideas, the one that appeals most to me, is that of someone’s discovery of idols that might or might not be like the images of the false gods that King depicts in Desperation. If one devoted his or her story to only one (or a few) idols, their properties, and the results of human interaction with them, he or she would be apt to write a short story, but were he or she to consider a number of these false gods, their characteristics, and their effects on those who make contact with them, he or she might well produce a narrative of novel, or even epic, scope.

One’s development of this idea would, of course, have to be one’s own; otherwise, borrowing an idea would, in fact, likely become stealing a treatment of such an idea, or, in a word, plagiarism.

In his novel, King depicts his idols as being like “some kind of stone artifact,” and they have a decidedly sexual effect upon those who make contact with them, as Cynthia discovers when she touches one of the idols with “a tentative finger” and “her hips jerked forward as if she’d gotten an electric shock and her pelvis banged into the edge of a table,” making her blush (254-255). King’s omniscient narrator then describes the idol in more detail, indicating that it has an animal shape:

It was a rendering of what might have been a wolf or a coyote, and although it was crude, it had enough power to make them both forget, at least for a few seconds, that they were standing sixty feet from the leftovers of a mass murder. The beast’s head was twisted at a strange angle (a somehow hungry angle), and its eyeballs appeared to be starting out of their sockets in utter fury. Its snout was wildly out of proportion to its body--almost the snout of an alligator--and it was split open to show a jagged array of teeth. The statue, if that is what it was, had been broken off just below the chest. There were stumps of forelegs, but that was all. The stone was pitted and eroded with age. It was glittery n places, too, like the rocks collected in one of the Dandux baskets. . . .

“Look at its tongue,” Cynthia said in a strange, dreaming voice.

“What about it?’ [Steve asks]

“It’s a snake” (255).

The narrator’s description is vivid and detailed, allowing the reader to visualize the artifact readily, which makes the idol seem both more bizarre and, paradoxically, more realistic than it would be had the storyteller merely glossed over the strange artifact with a few adjectives or descriptive phrases.

The idols can make those who touch them experience orgasms; can make them forget their surroundings; and, readers learn a few pages later, can have a devastating effect upon their self-esteem. As Cynthia later tells Steve, when she touched the idol, “it seemed like I remembered every rotten thing that ever happened to me in my life,” and, she admits, its touch made her think of “sex. . . the dirtier the better” (318). Moreover, contact with the idols can spur its victims into acting upon these lusts, as both Cynthia and Steve find out soon enough.

There are other idols than the image of the wolf or the coyote:

He thought at first that there were three odd-looking charms lying in her open palm--the sort of thing girls sometimes wore dangling from their bracelets. But they were too big, too heavy. Not charms, but carvings, stone carvings, each about two inches long. One was a snake. The second was a buzzard with one wing chipped off. Mad, bulging eyes stared out at him from beneath its bald dome. The third was a rat on its hind legs. They all looked pitted and ancient (480).

The artifacts are obviously images of gods or demons, as they have inexplicable, supernatural effects upon those who come into contact with them. At the same time, however, they are tangible; they are material; they have concrete form. Made of stone, they are subject to the long-term effects of natural forces; they erode: they are “pitted and eroded with age,” and they appear “ancient.” Moreover, they can be “broken,” “chipped” and, presumably, destroyed. They have powerful effects upon the humans who make contact with them, but the artifacts are not invulnerable. The

Were another writer to write about such statues, he or she would have to do so in such a way as to make them his or her own creations, with properties different from those whitish King ascribes to his, and with effects that also differ from those that King’s false gods have upon those with whom the carvings come into contact. There are various ways to accomplish this task, which are better left to each individual to determine for him- or herself.

Another idea that spins off, so to speak, King’s novel is the creation of demons out of the whole cloth of one’s imagination rather than to embody such evil spirits on the basis of research concerning demonology. King’s demon is a spirit from another dimension, utterly dependent for incarnation upon possessing the bodies of other, corporeal beings, such as humans or animals. However, the demon’s metabolism is extremely fast, and it soon wears out the body of its host, so that it must possess another and another. His possession results in the deaths of the possessed, whose bodies thereafter enlarge, possibly in response to the greater demands upon the organs of Tak’s greater metabolic rate. Tak is able to exercise control over animals and insects through a power similar to telepathy. He is also able to project his power into the stone idols, or can tahs, that various characters discover in Desperation. When he possesses a human being, the body’s senses, strength, and natural abilities are heightened, although Tak can also perceive phenomena by other, extrasensory means, as when he is aware of the presence of a nameplate inside the Carvers’ recreational vehicle without entering the vehicle of looking through any of its windows (“Tak [Stephen King],” Wikipedia).

By imaging one’s demon (perhaps on the basis of one’s own inner demons or the problems and issues that best society), one is pretty much guaranteed an original creation. This approach is as wide open as one’s own ability to think outside the box of tradition. Where King creates Tak, you or I might create Tik or Paddywack in the same fashion, by using our own imagination or our knowledge of social problems, past or present, to envisioned to embody our own concepts of the demonic, creating one or more demons in our own image and likeness as a result, as King apparently did in writing of the idols in his novel.

Another provocative consideration is what might happen to animals that survive Tak’s telepathic influence? Would their exposure to the demon’s mind have a long-lasting, or even permanent, effect upon them, and, if so, what, exactly, might the animals change? Perhaps they would become monstrous versions of their previous selves, retaining the enhancements of their natural abilities that they experienced as Tak’s cognitive thralls. Would big game hunters ally themselves with demonologists or scientists to hunt down these demonic beasts and capture or kill them?

At the end of the novel, not much remains of the town of Desperation, but what if it--or, rather, another small town, elsewhere, that has experienced a similar catastrophe--remember, be inspired to borrow, not to steal, and make other writers’ ideas your own--were to be rebuilt? With its horrific past, could new horrors occur to the community’s children or grandchildren, a generation or two after the original calamity? King’s novel It suggests that such could easily be the case.

Could the demonic entity that destroyed your first town return to destroy another community? The answer is in King’s simultaneous, mirror-image release of a twin novel, The Regulators, which features many of the same characters as appear in Desperation, but living wholly different lives in a wholly different community.

Other of King’s noels suggest other ideas for additional stories or novels, which, possibly, I will consider in future posts, although not necessarily in a continuous order.

What Sort of Man Reads "Playboy"

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

For half a century, Playboy magazine has defined its targeted audience in a page devoted to fashion and style, the contents of which answer the rhetorical question, “What sort of man reads Playboy?” According to this page, the Playboy reader is urbane, stylish, wealthy, single, and literate. He’s handsome, loves women, drives a convertible sports car, attends college (unless he’s already graduated), smokes cigars, drinks brandy, and has a thing for sweaters. Advertisers took note of this description, running full-page, full-color ads that pitched just such products to the bunny-loving sophisticate.

Until Penthouse debuted, focusing its appeal on the blue-collar worker, Esquire was one of Playboy’s biggest competitors. It focused mostly on fashion and literature, publishing fiction by such literary luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and Terry Southern. It also included some cheesecake art, including pinup art by George Petty (the “Petty Girls”) and Alberto Vargas (the “Vargas Girls”). Like Playboy and Penthouse, Esquire was chauvinistic and sexist, but popular among teenage and young adult males.

Women liked these magazines, too, for a different reason. Those who succeeded in appearing in their nude “pictorials” or as centerfolds were often exposed to opportunities in modeling or even acting, and quite a few celebrities owe their careers to appearances in such magazines, Playboy in particular. Being the subject of a pictorial or a centerfold was equivalent to having society stamp its seal of approval upon a young woman’s beauty and sexuality, making her, even more than a Miss America winner, a glamour girl.

Knowing the significance of artifacts of popular culture allows writers to characterize their characters simply by alluding to these objects, using them as props in a manner similar to that of product placement, which is the deliberate inclusion, in a conspicuous location, of a product in a filmed movie or television scene, in exchange for remuneration from its maker. For example, a character on a television situation comedy, or sitcom, might open his or her refrigerator door, thereby providing viewers a glimpse of the interior, well stocked with Pepsi, Coca-Cola, or some other soft drink.

Here’s an example of how an allusion to Playboy could be used to characterize a woman of fading youth and beauty:

The magazine cover showed Susan Willis naked, in all her glory--well, not quite all her glory; the set decorator had placed a caladium in a strategic location--lying languorously upon her desk, surrounded by the accoutrements of her vocation: a typewriter, a Dictaphone, a Rolodex, manila folders, and a calendar with a circled date. The photograph’s caption read, “Don’t forget to show her your appreciation on Secretary’s Day!” The implication, of course, was that the boss was having an affair with his personal secretary. Corny, Susan had thought, even twenty years ago, when her image had adorned the cover of the world’s most popular men’s magazine, thereby authenticating her beauty and confirming her sexuality, or “glamour,” as the industry had called that attribute in those days. Susan had tried hard, over the intervening years, to maintain that figure and that face, and, thanks to dieting, exercise, and a bit of nip and tuck, had mostly succeeded. She was a handsome woman at thirty eight. She’d never again be the glamorous girl she’d been then, though, except in the blown-up, framed photograph of that long-ago cover.

Magazines and other products have spent thousands, even millions, of dollars in marketing research to identify and analyze their customers and consumers in general. By analyzing their advertisements, a writer has a good idea of “what sort of man reads Playboy,” what sort of woman reads Good Housekeeping or Ms.; drinks Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Southern Comfort, or Jack Daniels; drives a Volvo, Toyota, or Rolls Royce; enrolls his or her children in a private school; and so on. By alluding to these products in a story, of the horror genre or otherwise, writers have a shorthand means of characterizing their characters. Of course, there should be additional characterization, through the characters’ dialogue and actions, but a reference to Playboy, Rolls Royce, Saab, or Chef Boyardee is a quick way to establish the basic tastes, values, and even, at times, mindset of characters.

Dean Koontz does so in his novels, although his allusions are to products and cultural artifacts that his typical reader is unlikely to be acquainted with. Stephen King, who once described his own style as “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries,” alludes to icons that are more in the domain of popular culture, letting his readers know that the author is one of their own (even if, as a multimillionaire he is not anymore). In the first three chapters of Desperation alone, King makes these references to popular culture:

• Acura
• Caprice
• Sam Browne
• Daisy canned ham
• Bonny Raitt
• Smokey Bear
• Conoco
• Rollerblades
• Marlboro Man
• Grateful Dead
• Smiley-face keychain

Many others occur throughout the remainder of the 690-page novel.

While it is true that an author can overuse such allusions (and King probably tends to do so, not only in Desperation, but also in most of his other books and, indeed, short stories), a judicious use of such references, whether to high culture, low culture, or something between the two, is a handy, dandy way of inviting a particular type of reader into one’s fictional world and, at the same time, characterizing the dramatic personae who live and breathe and have their being in this imaginary world.

The Protagonist as Leader

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

From the earliest days, since the time that the theory of the four humours was popular among ancient shrinks, the concept of personality types has been popular with psychiatrists and psychologists, and, indeed, the idea that human beings can be pigeonholed as this, that, or the other type of personality remains attractive to some social scientists even today.

One such personality type, they contend, is the leader, who is said to demonstrate specific character traits, or qualities, among which are intelligence, the ability to adjust, extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and general self-efficacy (“Leadership,” Wikipedia). Others identify various other traits, among which, according to “Leadership Theories and Summary”), the “central” ones are intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity, and sociability. The matter is much more complex, of course (what isn’t?), but this is the gist of it, as leadership theory relates to personality traits.

The protagonist of a horror story, short or long, is typically a leader and, therefore, he or she will, according to psychology, demonstrate the qualities just mentioned. Let’s consider a few examples of horror fiction protagonists. Do they fill the bill?

David Carver is the protagonist of Stephen King’s Desperation. He’s not one’s typical protagonist; he’s chosen by God Himself to lead the ragtag band of survivors and near-survivors against the demon Tak. To me, he seems intelligent, but not overly so. He is certainly able to adjust to changing situations and shifting responsibilities. He doesn’t appear all that extroverted, but, then, on the other hand, he doesn’t seem all that introverted, either. He is definitely conscientious. Open to experience? Nothing suggests that he isn’t, but he doesn’t seem to seek out new experiences, either. Does he demonstrate self-efficacy? Yes and no: he is willing to obey God, but he doesn’t act of his own accord. He does what he is told to do, and he is willing to allow others to take the lead on occasion. His self-confidence ebbs and flows (as whose wouldn’t who is called to face a demon?). He is definitely a determined soul, and he has integrity to spare.

How does Father Damien Karras, of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, stand up as a leader? Since he is a priest, the reader must assume that he, too, is called by God, for Catholics believe that one is called to the priesthood: he does not choose, but is chosen. Intelligent? Yes, but not more than average, perhaps. Able to adjust to changing situations and expectations? Pretty much. Extroverted? No. Open to experience? Hard to say. Does he demonstrate self-efficacy? He depends more on his mentor, Father Lankester Merrin, and upon God than he does upon himself, although he does take it upon himself to jump out of Regan MacNeil’s bedroom window, sacrificing his life for hers, at the end of the story, so, to that extent, perhaps he demonstrates some self-efficacy. He appears to have little self-confidence, although he shows determination and integrity, despite his crisis of faith.

Like David Carver, Father Karras seems to have some of the traits that psychologists claim a leader must have, but not others. Nevertheless, God has apparently selected him as a leader.

What about Moses, who, at an advanced age, was called by God to lead the ancient Hebrews out of bondage to the Egyptians? Moses does not seem especially intelligent, although he is certainly not stupid. He sometimes has trouble adapting to change. He may be extroverted (or not). He is usually not open to experience: he does not want to be a leader, and he is angry at his people when they began to worship the golden calf instead of Jehovah. He has little self-efficacy, distrusting even his speaking ability and his other abilities in general because of his advanced age. He does appear, at times, to have a fair degree of self-confidence, as might be expected of a high member of pharaoh’s court. He is definitely determined, refusing to take pharaoh’s “no” for an answer, and he is willing to wander about in the desert for forty years, seeking the Promised Land. He is certainly a man of integrity.

Once again, as in the cases of David Carver and Father Karras, Moses appears to possess some, but not other, leadership qualities, but, even so, he accomplishes his mission, where others would be likely to fail.

Let’s conclude our musings upon the psychological theories of leadership qualities with a consideration of Satan, who some scholars contend is the true hero of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. He seems to possess all the qualities of leadership but integrity (the religious would probably add, as a necessary leadership trait, faith in God, so I likewise include it in my consideration); obviously, Satan lacks this quality as well.

Psychiatrists and psychologists who enjoy playing the personality traits game might argue that one need not possess all of the qualities of leadership to be a leader or, perhaps, that one is a more or less effective leader, depending upon the number of leadership qualities that he or she does possess. Such thinkers usually argue from a secular, rather than a religious, perspective, of course, which is a point of view that does not consider theological alternatives.

The Bible’s stories of heroism tend to suggest that God expects faith, or imputed “righteousness,” and integrity, which may be defined, in this context, as the willingness to obey divine commands, more than He demands any other qualities, being more than able Himself to supply whatever those whom He chooses to lead may lack. Indeed, traditionally, He has chosen the weaker, or even the weakest, vessel as his instrument, pouring His Holy Spirit into them so that, in His name and for His sake, they can work miracles, perhaps to demonstrate that it is He, and not those whom He calls, who actually gets the job done.

If a story features a secular protagonist, he or she should be expected to rely upon him- or herself, and, it may be argued, may be more likely to achieve his or her goals if he or she has more, rather than fewer, of the leadership skills that trait theorists have identified, whereas, if a story features a religious protagonist, he or she may well succeed in spite of not having many of these traits, since it is God, presumably, who is acting within and through such a vessel or instrument.

Plotting the Horror Story: Lessons from Poe, King, and Koontz

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

As I mentioned in my “‘The Philosophy of Composition’ and ‘The Red Room’” article, Edgar Allan Poe argues that a writer shouldn’t write anything at all until he or she knows how his or her story (or poem) will end and, in fact, should plot the narrative backward, from the ending to the beginning, so that he or she is able to maximize the impact of the story’s emotional effect. This is sound advice, but, for many aspiring writers, it poses a difficult question: how, precisely, would a writer know how to write a story backward, as it were?

I certainly wouldn’t challenge the advice of a writer of Poe’s stature. Among horror writers, he is in class by himself, a true master among masters. Not even today’s maestro, Stephen King, whose output dwarfs Poe’s own work, measures up against Poe.

What I am prepared to do, though, is to offer two other, alternative methods of plotting horror fiction. One is based upon my analysis of King’s work--or, at least, my analysis of a few of King’s novels. I believe that this alternative approach can suit today’s writers, whether of horror or another genre of fiction, well.

Let’s consider a novel that has been the topic of quite a few of my own recent posts to Chillers and Thrillers: Under the Dome. The evil that takes place in this story occurs as the result of the descent of a transparent dome, or barrier, that cuts off a small town in Maine, Chester’s Mill, from the rest of the United States and, indeed, the world. The wickedness ends when the dome is lifted. What comes down must go up. This is the basis of the alternative method of ending stories that I mentioned. Not down and up (or even up and down, for that matter) per se, but a pair--any pair--of binary opposites: down/up, left/right, start/stop, right/wrong, good/evil. . . you name them

We tend to think in dualities, ordering reality according to a twofold structure of opposite categories, traits, or values. Of course, such a structure is far too simplistic and, therefore, erroneous. There is always a middle ground, always a great many shades of gray between the extremes of black and white.

King is aware of this, of course, and his novel takes advantage of the simplicity of the duality of dome-down/dome up. First, the military tries to destroy the dome by launching two Cruise missiles against the barrier. When this tactic fails, the brass douses the dome with an experimental acid that is capable of penetrating solid rock. Again, the attack fails. The dome remains in place, unharmed. It is only when Julia Shumway persuades the adolescent extraterrestrial female who has set the dome in place to remove it that the barrier is taken away.

In Desperation, King uses another pair of opposites to structure his problem-solution plot. The demon Tak escapes from a caved-in mine which is opened by a local mining company. He wrecks havoc until the mine is closed again. The dichotomy: open (mine)/closed (mine). The horror and terror and evil and pain and suffering takes place between these two polarities. Again, a duality (open/close) is used to structure the novel’s plot.

Any duality can become the basis of a plot, and using the array of points between the extremes of the continuum, the writer can create the middle of his or her story, creating suspense while, at the same time, disguising the fact that the end of the story will be based upon the opposite of the continuum with which the narrative began.

Let’s look at one additional example. The novel Insomnia is based upon the extremes of sleeplessness (insomnia) and eternal rest (death). At the story’s outset (and throughout the rest of the narrative, until the end), the protagonist is unable to sleep. He begins to see things from another dimension, and discovers that beings from this alternate universe seek to kill a woman; by sacrificing himself, he prevents the woman from being killed. The story that started with his inability to sleep ends with his death, or eternal rest. Once again, a duality (insomnia/death, in the sense of eternal rest) is used to structure one of King’s narratives, the middle of which is taken up by the conflict between two adversaries from the alternate dimension, who vie for the woman’s life.

It seems odd that a novel--especially a novel as long and seemingly complex as King’s--could be based upon such a simple--indeed, simplistic--duality of extremes or opposites, but Under the Dome, Desperation, and Insomnia show, as do several other of King’s books, that such is the case.

Finally, Dean Koontz’s novel The Taking illustrates the second alternative method of beginning and ending a novel to that which Poe suggests in “The Philosophy of Composition.” I have mentioned this technique in a previous post, calling it the bait-and-switch approach. The writer suggests that a story will end in a particular fashion, but, using situational irony, surprises the reader by ending the narrative in a different, unexpected, but appropriate fashion. Koontz suggests that the bizarre doings in The Taking are due to a reverse-terraforming of the planet Earth by invading extraterrestrials who seek to make the hostile Earth habitable for their fellow aliens. Instead, the extraterrestrials turn out to be Satan and his angels.

Although Poe’s prescription for writing horror stories (plot backward from the end to the beginning so as to maximize the narrative’s emotional effect) is a superior method of storytelling, the ones exemplified in several of the works of King, such as Under the Dome, Desperation, and Insomnia, and the one that Koontz’s fiction, including The Taking, illustrate, are alternatives that can work and are much less demanding upon the writer than Poe’s approach.

Quick Tip: Vilifying Villains

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In popular fiction, including horror, it is to the writer’s advantage to make his or her villains despicable so that readers will despise them. In other words, it behooves writers to vilify their villains.

Normally, this feat is accomplished fairly easily. One need only show the antagonist, monster or otherwise, do something that is so utterly atrocious that readers refuse to sympathize with him, her, or it.

As human beings, we want to sympathize with others. We would prefer to like them, but, if we are unable to do so, we would, at least, like to understand them, for understanding others, even those who are cruel and evil, humanizes them.

That which is inhuman is more than merely frightening; he, she, or it is terrifying, largely because he, she, or it is altogether alien. What is totally strange and unknown is also unpredictable, and the unpredictable is terrifying.

Some deeds, by their very nature, put those who do them in the Totally Other, or Alien, category. We cannot sympathize with them, and we refuse to identify with them; they are inhuman. They are monsters. Their despicable deeds make them so.

Genres other than horror also sometimes make their antagonists inhuman and, therefore, monstrous. The Western Tombstone begins by depicting a band of outlaws’ slaughter of a wedding party, including the bride and groom--and the priest who was to marry them. From the outset, audience members regard them as fiends in human form and are rooting for Wyatt Earp to destroy them.

Usually, stalking, harming, and, especially, killing an innocent, such as a faithful canine or feline companion or, worse, a child will automatically put the perpetrator of such a crime on the readers’ most wanted list. Stephen King adopts this tactic in many of his novels; IT and Desperation are good examples. William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist is another.

The brutal beating or rape of a woman also suffices to render a villain beyond contempt. King employs this stratagem in Rose Madder, and Dean Koontz favors it in many of his novels. Likewise, in the Clint Eastwood film Sudden Impact, even Dirty Harry lets the killer of her sister’s rapists off the hook when she takes the rapists to task with a bullet to the groin, followed by a second to the brain.

Vilifying the villain has another benefit for writers, too. After an antagonist’s inhuman deeds has rendered him, her, or it monstrous, readers will support virtually anything the hero or heroine does to the villain, including torture, for such a fiend, they will believe, deserves whatever befalls him, her, or it. Some deeds bring not only retribution, but also vengeance with a vengeance, so to speak. Think of Hitler. What punishment would have been too harsh in repayment for the horrors he inflicted upon millions? Or Ted Bundy. Was electrocution too light a penalty for what he did to all the women he tormented and killed?

Vilifying the villain allows writers to up the intensity of the action and, when payday finally comes, the price that he, she, or it is forced to pay at the hands of the protagonist-become-avenger.

When the Center Does Not Hold

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep were
vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats

In “The Shopping Mall as Sacred Space,” Ira Zepp, Jr., states his belief that shopping malls represent contemporary and secularized “sacred spaces” that energize human beings. Although his thesis may strike one as highly unlikely, he does mention several points that are worth considering, taking them, for the most part, from the ideas of Mircea Eliade Paul Wheatley. One of these ideas is that human architecture features centers--town squares, or “parks, groves, or recreational centers”--that reflect their archetypal “heavenly counterpart.”

These mystic centers, often circular in design, are separate from the ordinary world surrounding them and are, therefore, potentially sacred, integrating “space at several significant levels,” including “global (cosmic), state (political), capital (ceremonial), and temple (ritual).”

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Jerusalem is an example: “The heavenly Jerusalem, the historical Jerusalem, and the coming Jerusalem are all reflections of a city already found in the mind of God.”

When religious faith declines, religious centers are replaced by secular surrogates, a point made by Zepp in his quotation of Eliade: “To the degree that ancient holy places. . . lose their religious efficacy, people discover and apply other geometric architecture or iconographic formulas.” In the larger community, that of the nation, such surrogate centers include Washington, D. C., the political center, New York City’s Wall Street, the economic center, and New York City’s Broadway and Los Angeles’ Hollywood, as prominent cultural centers.

In addition, various other centers, universities, sports arenas, national and state parks, military bases, state capitals, town halls, railway stations--are scattered, as it were, around the country, at regional, state, and local levels. Many of these serve the general public, but some are more or less the exclusive provinces of those who work in them or frequent them--trucks stops, shopping centers, research laboratories, factories. Zepp lists several such centers in his essay, identifying facilities for conferences, civics, medicine, agriculture, shopping, senior citizens, recreation, and students, all of which incorporate the term “center” as part of their designations.

Horror fiction and other genres of literature, especially those which feature an element of the supernatural or the fantastic, frequently contains such centers, which may be narrative or thematic or both, so it is illuminating to discern what attacks these centers and how and why they are attacked. The enemy without (or within) tells us much about both that which a society holds to be sacred and that which it sees as threats against what it values most as the focus and center of communal life.

Much of Stephen King’s fiction takes place in American small towns. In some of these towns, the church is still active as a sacred center. In Needful Things, ‘Salem’s Lot, and The Cycle of the Werewolf, the church, in its Catholic or Protestant version (or both versions) is active, if relatively ineffective. The Catholic and Protestant churches in Needful Things are both unable to resist the temptations of the devil, as he appears in the person of Leland Gaunt, and, in fact, literally take arms against one another in a riot of violence, death, and gore. In ‘Salem’s Lot, Father Callahan’s religious faith is so weak that the priest is easily overcome by the vampire Barlow, who transforms him into one of his followers, a member of the brotherhood of the evil undead, and, in The Cycle of the Werewolf, the local Baptist pastor, Reverend Lester Lowe, is the story’s antagonist from the very beginning of the story.

In other of King’s stories, the church, if there is one in the town in which the tale takes place, is not mentioned at all. Instead, other places have taken upon themselves the function that such sacred places served in previous, more religious times. However, places that have, in mainstream society, typically taken the place of the church, the temple, the synagogue, and other religious centers, seem to be defunct. Groves, recreational centers, universities, sports arenas, national, state and city parks, military bases, state capitals, town halls, railway stations, trucks stops, shopping centers, research laboratories, and factories may exist, but there is nothing set apart, or “sacred,” about them.

Indeed, as in Bentley Little’s University, The Resort, The Academy, The Store, and similar works of horror, such secular surrogates for sacred objects which have lost their holiness are apt themselves to be centers for demonic or chaotic forces rather than for divine and healing powers. If the sacred center does not hold, neither, horror writers suggest, will their secular surrogates.

King, like Dean Koontz, Dan Simmons, Robert McCammon, and other contemporary horror writers, tends to relocate the sacred center not in surrogate places, but rather in the solitary holy individual or the consecrated few. In some cases, these individuals are not religious in the traditional sense; other times, they are. In Desperation, David Carver is the religious protagonist whose faith carries the day against the demo n Tak. In Koontz’s The Taking, Molly Sloan and her husband Neil fend of the onslaught of Satan and his minions. In Simmons’ Summer of Night, altar boy Mike O’Rourke leads his peers against the ancient evil that attacks his hometown. In William Peter Blatty, Father Damian Karras exorcises the legion of demons who have possessed pre-pubescent Regan MacNeil. These characters are more or less religious in the traditional sense.

In other novels, however, the holy one is him- or herself secular in nature and outlook, although he or she occupies the novels’ surrogate sacred centers and drive the action forward against the evil figures or forces which menace their society, sometimes despite the presence of an active, if ineffective, institutional church. Father Callahan of ‘Salem’s Lot, Sheriff Alan Pangborn of Needful Things, and writer Bill Denbrough of are the secular leaders who lead the forces of a secular society against the menaces that threaten to annihilate them; their religious counterparts prove as ineffective against the antagonists as the churches that they lead.

What about the forces of darkness themselves which attack these surrogate and secular “sacred centers”? What do their natures tell us about the forces which contemporary horror writers view as threatening contemporary secular society? Desperation’s demon, Tak, threatens the community by tempting people to sin and by attempting to destroy their faith in the true God. Therefore, Tak is a threat to the righteousness that results from obedience to the divine will and a threat to faith itself. ‘Salem’s Lot’s Barlow sows seeds of fear and distrust among the small town to which he, an ancient European evil, comes, causing mother to turn against son, wife against husband, and neighbor against neighbor. He is a menace to the moral values and brotherly love that makes a community of a town’s populace, instead of their remaining nothing more than a collection of suspicious and uncooperative residents. Needful Things’ Leland Gaunt likewise pits neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, family member against family member, and lover against lover, disrupting the tie that binds, whether the tie is one of love, friendship, or faith and fellowship. As a man of the cloth turned bestial, Cycle of the Werewolf’s Reverend Lowe is literally a wolf in sheep’s clothing, violating the trust of the flock over which he has been assigned the responsibility for the welfare of their souls. In King’s fiction, as in that of Koontz and many others who mine fiction’s horror lode, the major threat of antagonists, human, monster, and otherwise, is to the community and its individual members and to the spiritual and social glue, so to speak, that hold them together--their faith, respect, concern for moral goodness, personal sacrifice, and romantic and brotherly love.

To discern the nature of the threats in other horror writers’ fiction, first ask what the “sacred center” is that brings the characters together, that unites them, that makes them care for one another, and then ask yourself what is the nature of the beast that attacks this center. Everyone seeks a center to his or her life, as do villages, towns, cities, states, nations, and the world, and, although these centers differ somewhat from time to time and place to place, the ties that bind them are often the same, even if the monsters also sometimes change.

Presto! You Have a Plot!

Copyright Gary L. Pullman

 

It’s fairly easy to plot a contemporary horror novel if you know the formula, which is also fairly simple--quite simple, in fact, consisting of three phases:

1. A series of bizarre incidents occurs.
2. The main character discovers the cause of the bizarre incidents.
3. Using his or her newfound knowledge as to the cause of the bizarre incidents, the main character (usually assisted by others) puts an end to them (often by killing a monster).

With this formula in mind, all a writer has to do is to:

1. Establish the cause of the series of bizarre incidents; if the cause is human or humanoid (for example, a monster with a will and personality), give it a plausible motive for its actions.
2. Make a list of the bizarre incidents that will occur.
3. Establish the means by which the main character learns the cause of the bizarre incidents.
4. Have the main character use this knowledge as to the cause of the bizarre incidents to put an end to them.
5. It helps (but is not mandatory) to associate the monster or other cause of the bizarre incidents with a real-life horror.

In a nutshell, that’s all there is to plotting the contemporary horror novel.

Let’s conclude with an example (Stephen King's Desperation):

1. Establish the cause of the series of bizarre incidents. The demon Tak escapes from the caved-in mine in which he has been imprisoned for several decades and battles God, seeking to demonstrate its superiority to the Christian deity.
2. Make a list of the bizarre incidents that will occur. In Nevada, a dead cat is seen nailed to a highway sign. An abandoned recreation vehicle (RV) sits alongside a lonely stretch of highway, its door flapping in the breeze. A sheriff, acting crazy, arrests a couple on trumped up drug charges, threatening to kill them on their way to jail. The nearest town, Desperation, seems abandoned, except for the corpses that litter the streets. The sheriff has arrested several other individuals, also on false charges; among his prisoners are the members of the RV family, whom he supposedly rescued from (non-existent) gunmen. Vultures, scorpions, wolves, and other animals, under the sheriff’s telepathic control, attack people. A preteen prisoner, David Carver, miraculously escapes from jail, afterward performing additional miracles (using a cell phone with a dead battery and multiplying a supply of sardines and crackers). The demon Tak, who is behind the series of bizarre incidents, serially possessing the sheriff and others as he wears out their bodies, fears the preteen. Strange idols cause sexually perverse thoughts and feelings in those who touch them.
3. Establish the means by which the main character learns the cause of the bizarre incidents. A character who has witnessed several of the bizarre incidents that befall his town tells David and the others in their party about the demon that has escaped from the caved-in mine and how it possesses one person after another.
4. Have the main character use this knowledge as to the cause of the bizarre incidents to put an end to them. Assisted by others, David reburies Tak inside the collapsed mine.
5. It helps (but is not mandatory) to associate the monster or other cause of the bizarre incidents with a real-life horror; for example, the monster of cause may symbolize such a real-life horror. Tak could represent social anarchy and its consequences.

Presto! Flesh out the skeleton of your story, possibly adding a related subplot or two, and you have the plot for one scary horror novel (especially if you happen to be Stephen King.)

It Is Necessary to Suffer To Be Beautiful. . . Or Believable. . . Or Interesting

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, once told the show’s star, Sarah Michelle Gellar, that, to create interesting television, it was necessary to make her--or her character, at least--suffer.

His tongue-in-cheek statement has a serious aspect to it, for it refers to the need of a narrative to depict conflict. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, authors of Understanding Fiction, point out that without such conflict, there is no, nor can there be any, story.

In longer works of fiction, such as epic poems, television series, movies, and novels, the main character is going to be beset by problems. Several, not just one, is going to impede his or her progress toward reaching the goal that he or she has set for him- or herself. Some are likely to be due to circumstances, others to the actions of other characters, and still others to the protagonist’s own internal conflicts. In general, such conflicts will be natural, psychological, social, or theological. Most likely, two or three--or perhaps all--types of conflict will be operative in such a story.

A couple of examples, represented by simple diagrams, will illustrate the point. In the diagrams, the circle represents the character whose name it bears, and the text at the ends of the lines radiating from the circle represent the conflicts, some psychological, some social, some theological, some situational, in which the character finds him- or herself.


The first diagram shows the plight in which the protagonist of Stephen King’s novel Carrie finds herself. On the edge of adolescence, Carrie lives with her mother, Margaret, a mentally disturbed religious fanatic who considers sex to be wicked. Carrie’s mother has never bothered to tell her daughter the facts of life, and, when, while Carrie is showering following a physical education class, she begins her first menstruation, she is horrified to think that she is bleeding to death. Her classmates find her horror a cause for amusement, and, cruelly, they toss tampons at her, chanting, “Plug it up! Plug it up! Plug it up!” Although the teacher puts an end to the girls’ taunts, Carrie is humiliated.

A social pariah among her peers even before this incident, Carrie continues to be tormented by her schoolmates. However, her life seems about to take a turn for the better when one of the school’s more popular boys, Tommy Ross, asks her to be his date to the prom. Instead, after she is given a taste, as it were, of what it would be like to be accepted by her peers, she is again publicly humiliated when she is drenched in pigs’ blood. She loses control of herself, unleashing, with devastating effect, the telekinetic power with which she was born. Before she is through exacting vengeance, she has killed most of her fellow students and many of the school’s teachers, destroyed the gymnasium, and obliterated her city’s downtown area. Returning home, she has a showdown with her mother, in which she learns that she is the product of her mother’s having been raped. Margaret stabs Carrie, but Carrie kills her before, later, Carrie herself is killed.Another King novel, Desperation puts its protagonist, twelve-year-old David Carver, through his paces, as indicated by this diagram. As a younger child, David had promised God that he would serve him, no matter what God required of him, if God would heal David’s friend, who was dying. God honored David’s prayer, and, now, years later, God has a mission for David: save the captives of the demon Tak, who, having escaped burial in an abandoned mine, possesses the bodies of various residents of Desperation, Nevada. David manages to do so, at the cost of his little sister’s and his mother’s deaths and his father’s near-loss of his sanity. David concludes that “God is cruel.” However, another character, John Edward Marinville, something of a stand-in for King himself, it seems, advises David that God is beyond human understanding and that, although his actions may seem “cruel” to human beings, God possesses many attributes, including, especially, love.

During the course of the seven-year-long series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, protagonist Buffy Summers suffers many a conflict, not only with demons, but with inner demons as well, as the diagram representing her struggles suggests. It is her lot in life to have been “called” as the “chosen one” by The Powers That Be, to protect the world from vampires, demons, and other monsters that slither, creep, or crawl out of the Hellmouth (located beneath her high school’s library) each week. Instead, Buffy longs to live a “normal life” in which, as a teen, she can moon over boys and whine about homework. Over the years, she is unlucky in love (to put it mildly), and a number of people she loves, including her parents (her father through divorce, her mother through death) are taken from her. She herself dies not once but twice along the way.

Writers who want to create fully developed characters who seem lifelike enough to be a tormented soul trapped in the hell that is high school, to serve as latter-day servants of God, or to fulfill whatever other role he or she is assigned should take Whedon’s dictum to heart. Just as it is necessary to suffer to be beautiful, as the French say, it is necessary that the protagonist suffer to be believable and for the story to have interest to its reader, as Whedon says.

Everyday Horrors: The Police

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In more innocent times, parents taught their children that the police were their friends. Cops were good guys, who could be trusted. If one were ever to be in trouble, he or she was to run to an officer of the law (assuming that an officer was available, although, adults often joked, “there’s never a cop around when you need one”). In those days, only a few policemen were women--mostly crossing guards and meter maids. Police officers were respected, if not admired, or, at least, they seemed to be, and, among bakers, glazed doughnut-crazed cops were loved. Whenever the police appeared in films (other than as the Keystone Kops), they were cast as good guys who were brave and noble, living, like Superman, to enforce “truth, justice, and the American way,” if not always life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In the interval between the 1950’s and the turn of the century, something happened. Cops lost their shine. The badge became a badge not of honor so much as of disgrace. Rather than receiving praise from the public that the police claimed to “protect and serve,” the blue knights became the recipients of doubt, fear, and disdain, especially among minorities, who complained of “police brutality” (a charge that has often been shown to be true in videotapes of brutal police beatings and of cops' unnecessary use of their favorite new weapon, the taser). Newspaper and television reports cited police corruption, detailing cases in which cops had been bribed or became extortionists, rapists, and even murderers. The police became criminals themselves. They were just another gang among gangs. The public no longer trusted and admired, or even respected, the police. Instead, they feared and loathed their supposed protectors, their alleged servants, their supposed defenders.


As the public’s confidence in the police waned, the police became “pigs,” and the ways in which they were portrayed in fiction changed as well. In science fiction and horror stories, as in mainstream literature, when the cops weren’t shown as incompetent or as victims themselves (as in The Terminator, in which a cyborg killer goes on a rampage inside a police precinct, slaughtering the officers and detectives on duty), the police were revealed as just another threat in the ever-growing cavalcade of monsters. They were seen, and portrayed, as fiends with badges, handcuffs, Mace--and guns. In Terminator 2, the villain, a new breed, as it were, of cyborg assassin known as a T-1000-series android, is a shape shifter among whose many disguises is that of a policeman. A cop-killer, the T-1000 assumes the identity of its victim, tracking down his target, John Connor, using the computer aboard the dead cop’s patrol car. The movie’s anti-police subtext is anything but subtle, showing the public’s fear and hatred of corrupt peace officers who use their badges and guns to perpetrate crimes against members of the very public they are sworn to protect and serve.

Not surprisingly, Stephen King’s novels sometimes depict police as everyday horrors. Like his fans, King knows the horror that can lurk behind the badge of a cop gone bad. In Rose Madder, the protagonist’s husband, Norman Daniels, is a brutal, sadistic cop who routinely beats his wife, Rose, within an inch of her life, even when she is pregnant with their child (causing her to have a miscarriage). Norman is, in fact, a misogynist, having been charged, recently, with assaulting a black woman, Wendy Yarrow. The internal affairs investigation has been as fuel to his fiery rage, which explodes in his near-fatal assault upon Rose. Her latest beating, for the “offense” of having accidentally spilled iced tea upon Norman, makes her again consider leaving him. She’s been the victim of his brutality for fourteen years. If anything, his mindless rage has become even worse, and she fears that if she continues to stay with him, she’s liable to be killed. If she isn’t killed, she might well wish she were dead if she suffers at his hands for another fourteen years. By then, she may be unrecognizable, she thinks. She finally flees, but Norman, adept at skip-tracing, soon locates her, and the story takes on a supernatural dimension that leads to a particularly violent and gruesome climax and a resolution that underscores the permanent damage that domestic violence, especially at the hands of a rogue cop, can have upon its victim’s life.


As bad as Norman Daniels is, he’s not King’s worst monster behind a badge. This distinction (so far) belongs to Desperation’s Collie Entragian, whose very surname is an anagram for “near giant.” The deputy sheriff of Desperation, Nevada, a small mining town along U. S. Highway 50, the “loneliest road in America,” Entragian makes a habit of stopping, kidnapping, torturing, and killing hapless motorists, using the highway as if it were a strand of spider’s web bringing victims into his jurisdiction. True to the experience of many a driver, the deputy uses one trumped-up charge after another to justify his many traffic stops. However, the arrested offenders are, in reality, his captives, and they soon discover that Entragian is a madman. (In reading one couple their Miranda rights, he reserves his “right” to kill them.) In fact, he’s worse even than a psychotic killer; he’s possessed by a parasitic demon named Tak who uses the police officer as his latest host. The device of having the deputy possessed by a demon allows King to depict the mindless violence of a policeman whose own soul has become corrupted by the power that society has bestowed upon him. This cop could care less about bribes and payoffs; he wants nothing less than the power to bludgeon, torture, and kill those who fall into his demonic hands. In this novel, the power of the police is absolute, and absolute power not only corrupts but kills in the most horrific ways imaginable. Again, the subtext is hard to miss: a police state is a terrible state of affairs, indeed, even in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Entragian--or Tak--is such a threat to society that God himself intervenes to put things right, just as the deity does, implicitly, in Thomas Jefferson’s call to revolution, in The Declaration of Independence.

Of course, the police are sometimes dependable, if perfunctory, characters in King’s fiction. In this dichotomy as dutiful, but unimaginative, defenders of the status quo on one hand and as vile and brutal criminals or worse on the other hand lies the true terror of the men (and, increasingly, the women) in blue. Daily news stories of out-of-control cops reinforce the ambiguity with which law-abiding folk view those whom they’ve trusted to protect and to serve them. It’s a horrible experience to know that the police officer who, today, saves a hostage from a psychotic drug addict with nothing left to lose may be the same one who, tomorrow, pulls over a female on a dark and deserted highway and rapes and kills her or who turns a blind eye to a mob killing.

Modern-day variants upon the Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde theme, police fare the same in other horror writers’ fiction. They’re both the good guy and the bad guy (sometimes at the same time). For example, in the novels of Dean Koontz, cops are sometimes competent and trustworthy, but they are, other times, corrupt and treacherous. When they’re neither the good guys nor the villains in his novels, they’re often simply ineffective, incompetent, and moronic. Velocity, The Husband, and The Good Guy are cases in point. Cops don’t generally fare well in such novels as Bentley Little’s The Store and The Ignored, either, where they’re cast as barely a blip on the Stanford-Binet I. Q. scale.

Even when the police aren’t stupid, bungling, or vicious and corrupt, they’re not good for much when it comes to matching wits--or tooth and fang--with the monsters of horror fiction. As the protagonist of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer says, “Cops can’t fight demons. I have to do it.” (Besides, as the town’s high school principal says, “The police in Sunnydale are deeply stupid.”)

In horror fiction, cops are often creepy--maybe it's because of their fetish for polyester and doughnuts.

“Everyday Horrors: The Police” is one in a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured in Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.

The God of Desperation

Copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman

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 the soul and body in hell. -- Matthew 10:28

Some say that the most frightening character in Stephen King’s Desperation is not the demon Tak or any of his human hosts but God.

The God of Desperation is not the Sunday school God, and he’s inscrutable and alien, unknowable and mysterious. He’s also omniscient and omnipotent. Everyone, it seems, underestimates him, including his servant, the pre-teen David, whom, because God’s power is evident in the boy, Tak fears and loathes.
When one of the characters is hesitant to follow the plan God, through David, lays out, saying that doing so could cost all of them their lives, David replies that God doesn’t care whether any of them lives or dies; all he wants is to stop Tak, and he’s prepared to do whatever he must to accomplish his purpose.

By the end of the story, most of the townspeople are dead, as are David’s family--both parents and his younger sister--and David concludes, “God is cruel.” The reader has seen that Tak rejoices in cruelty as well as death and destruction. What might have happened had the demon escaped from the Nevada desert town? Stopping him, even at so great a cost as the lives of those who resisted the demon, might have been worth it.

Years before, having been released early from school, David had nailed his pass to a tree outside his tree house, hundreds of miles from Desperation. At the end of the story, another character finds the same pass in his pocket and gives it to David. On the pass the words “God is love” appear. Which God seems, cruel or loving, is a matter of perspective, it seems, and perspective, in this world, is always finite.

Tak learns that, far from there being no God in Desperation, as he’d supposed, it was God who, from the beginning, had ordered all the events that transpired since--and maybe even before--the demon escaped from his imprisonment in the collapsed copper mine outside the town. Tak was defeated before he began his campaign of terror. For the demon, God seems to rule by virtue of his might. The God of Desperation is like the elephant in the parable of the blind men. Whatever part of the animal one happens to touch suggests the nature of the animal, but it is none of the things the men imagine it to be; it is more, and other.

By bringing God to Desperation to battle a demon never heard of before, rather than a familiar spirit such as Satan, King renews the mystery and the majesty of God. The God of Desperation is, again, transcendent and unknowable--mighty, cruel, loving, all of these things and much, much more. In Desperation, it is a terrible thing, once again, to fall into the hands of the living God.