The Exorcist: A Marriage of Spirit and Matter in the Style of William Peter Blatty

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

William Peter Blatty, the author of The Exorcist, has an eccentric style that is marked by his tendency to create similes and metaphors that unite concrete and abstract terms. This practice is so commonplace in his novel as to indicate that it is more than merely a technique; it is essential to his narrative voice and, therefore, part of both his novel’s point of view and its theme.

 
In just the prologue to his novel, he includes the following tropes, each of which combines the physical and the spiritual, the literal and the figurative, the concrete and the abstract:

• a “premonition clung to his [Father Merrin’s] back like chill wet leaves” (3);
• “[the] tell had been sifted, stratum by stratum, its entrails examined, tagged and shipped” (3);
•  “he dusted the thought like a clay-fresh find but could not tag it” 4);
• “slippers, [the] groaning backs [of which] pressed under his heels” (4);
• “shoes caked thick with debris of the pain of living” (4);
• “The Kurd stood waiting like an ancient debt” (4);
• “a splintered table the color of sadness” (5);
• “he waited, feeling at the stillness” (5);
• “the fractured rooftops of Erbil hovered far in the distance, poised in the clouds like a rubbled, mud-stained benediction” (5);
• “it [“safety” and “a sense of protection and deep well-being”] dwindled in the distance with the fast-moving jeep” (5);
• “some dry, tagged whisper of the past” (5-6);
• “its dominion was sickness and disease” (6); “the bloody dust of its predestination” (7-8);
• “icy conviction” (8). 
  

What, one may ask, does Blatty gain, as an artist, by mixing the sensual and the ideal, the real and the intangible, the concrete and the abstract? The author himself offers a clue, in his novel’s prologue:

The man in khaki shook his head, staring down at the laceless, crusted snows caked thick with debris of the pain of living. The stuff of the cosmos, he softly reflected: matter; yet somehow finally spirit. Spirit and the shoes were to him but aspects of a stuff more fundamental, a stuff that was primal and totally other (4).

This paragraph suggests that Father Merrin does not view reality in dualistic terms, as consisting of matter and of spirit, both of which are real. Rather, he is a monist, someone who believes that reality consists of only one essential element, although this element can appear to have two distinct expressions, that of matter and that of spirit. Truly understood, however, each is a mere shadow, as it were, of the one, true “stuff,” which is “more fundamental” and “totally other,” which is, in religious terms, God. According to Father Merrin's faith as a Catholic, God is omnipresent, or everywhere present at once; therefore, the Spirit of God penetrates, if it does not actually embody, all things, shoes and “spirit” alike. If matter and spirit, like matter and energy, are interchangeable with one another, the body which housed a human soul in the distant past may now be mere bones, an artifact among other artifacts, as Blatty’s inclusion of human bones in his catalogue of other relics at the outset of the novel’s prologue indicates:

The dig was over. The tell had been sifted, stratum by stratum, its entrails examined, tagged and shipped: the beads and pendants; glyptics and phalli; ground-stone mortars stained with ocher; burnished pots. Nothing exceptional. An Assyrian ivory toilet box. And man. The bones of man. The brittle remnants of cosmic torment that had once made him wonder if matter was Lucifer upward-groping back to his God. And yet now he knew better. . . (3-4).

The “he” in the final sentence of this paragraph might seem ambiguous: does it refer to Father Merrin or to humanity? Is it an individual or a universal perspective, the understanding that human skeletal remains do not signify a Luciferian “upward-groping back to. . . God?” The ambiguity is resolved almost as soon as it arises, if it does, in fact, arise at all, by the context of the paragraph in which the personal pronoun appears, for the paragraph speaks not of the priest, but of humanity: “he,” therefore, refers to “man,” not to Father Merrin, whose own point of view is very different, as one may already have discerned, than the worldview implied by metaphysical dualism, which sees both matter and spirit as opposite, if not opposing, realities, whereas Father Merrin sees them as both but “aspects of a stuff more fundamental, a stuff that was primal and totally other,” or as expressions or, perhaps, indications, of a transcendent divinity.
 
Blatty’s mixing of the concrete and the abstract also has the effect of making the latter seem more substantial, even more sensual, than it might be if it were linked, in simile or metaphor, to other abstract, rather than with concrete, terms. A “premonition” that clings to one’s “back like chill wet leaves” can be felt: it is thick and wet, clammy and cold; a “tell” that has “entrails” is a living thing—or, perhaps, a once-living thing, murdered by the archaeologists as much as by time, in order that it might be dissected, and its ancient artifacts, including the “bones” of “man” examined and catalogued; “stillness” that can be felt is tangible, indeed.
 
By mixing the concrete and the abstract, Blatty breathes life, as it were, into dry and withered concepts and sensations, giving them the “flesh” of sensual qualities that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched; at the same time, his marriage of matter and spirit suggests the monistic metaphysics that Father Merrin believes expresses the reality of a wholly “other” God who transcends both and yet, paradoxically, somehow also brings the two “aspects” of reality and, indeed, of divinity, together in himself, just as, in the same cosmic sense, Jesus Christ brings matter—the flesh—and spirit together as the incarnation of God.
 
It is the notion that God is not physical or spiritual, but other, that Father Karras has not yet understood. Therefore, for him, the physical and the fleshly aspects of human existence are grotesque and offensive, as is seen in Father Karras’s reaction to a homeless man, whom he sees as vile. Karras has come, of late, to doubt his faith, partly because of the concrete embodiment of sin in human flesh and partly because of the reality of evil, which is also often associated with the physical and corporeal aspects of existence. The priest sees the decadence of sin in the person of a homeless man who pleads with him for alms:

. . . He could not bear to search for Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement, the Christ who could not be. . . (51).

Father Karras seems to equate human existence, or its fleshly aspect, at least, with evil:

A harried man with many appointments, the Provincial had not pressed him for the reasons for his doubt. For which Karras was grateful. He knew that his answers would have sounded insane: The need to rend food with the teeth and then defecate. . . . Stinking socks. Thalidomide babies. An item in a paper about a young altar boy waiting at a bus stop: set on by strangers; sprayed with kerosene; ignited. . . (54).

He has not yet attained the revelation that Father Merrin has experienced. Once, like Father Karras, the older, in some ways worldlier, Father Merrin found it difficult to love his neighbor as himself and to see in the human face and form the image and likeness of God; he has since overcome this stumbling block to faith, just as he has come to understand that evil is an offense to the goodness of God, not a quality inherent in mere matter or fleshly existence:

. . . The old man in khaki looked up into eyes that were damply bleached as if the membrane of an eggshell had been pasted over the irises. Glaucoma. Once he could not have loved this man (3).

Indeed, it might be argued that Father Merrin has come to love the downtrodden and the oppressed because of their suffering, because of the evil in the world. Unlike Father Karras, who believes that demons are merely personifications of various evils, Father Merrin knows that the “Legion” of demons that claim to haunt Regan MacNeil are lying, that “there is only one,” the enemy of God, for Father Merrin has encountered—indeed, has fought—him before, in the guise of the demon Pazuzu, and knows that the true identity of the demon represented by the idol with the “ragged wings; taloned feet; bulbous, jutting, stubby penis and a mouth stretched taut in feral grin” is none other than Satan himself, the source and living embodiment of evil.
 
Father Karras is a materialist—or is in danger of becoming one. As such, he is obsessed with the physical, the fleshly, disease, and death; he is close to believing that only matter is real; and he has come to believe that evil is explainable in natural terms, as the effects of organic malformations of the brain or other physiological abnormalities.
 
Father Merrin, as a monist, accepts both the material, including the fleshly, and the spiritual as real, believing them to be but two aspects of a higher, unknowable “stuff” that is “totally other” than either of them and that evil is essentially nothing more than an offense to God. He is able to love Regan, despite the horrific onslaught of the demon—or the devil—who assaults her from within, often by the vilest and most corporeal means available to him—Regan’s own body.
 
Father Karras, on the other hand, is reluctant to seek “Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement.” It is only after he understands that God is beyond good and evil but is himself the essence of love that Father Karras can love Regan, in all her humanity, the way that Father Merrin has come to love human beings, whether a Kurd or the daughter of an actress who is temporarily residing in Georgetown. It is then that Father Karras can be the exorcist he has been called upon to be and can deliver the child whose body has been both a source of demonic violation of a temple of the Holy Spirit and a stumbling block to his own faith.
 
By mixing the concrete with the abstract in the peculiar similes and metaphors that appear frequently throughout his novel, Blatty brings together the material and the spiritual, making the former seem as tangible as the latter and suggesting one of his novel’s themes, which is that both aspects of reality find resolution, if not synthesis, in a higher, “totally other” form of being.

Source of quotations: Blatty, William Peter. The Exorcist. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Print.

Horror Fiction: The Appeal of the Need to Aggress

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

According to communications professor Jib Fowles, we all have the need to aggress, or to be aggressive. He attributes this need to the pent-up frustrations and tensions of everyday life. Typically, people repress the impulse to act aggressively, as society frowns upon eruptions of violence. We are taught to use our words, rather than our fists (or knives or guns). For advertisers, appeals to the need to aggress can backfire, Fowles warns, causing potential consumers to “turn against what is being sold.” Therefore, advertisements often substitute gestures (a raised middle finger, sarcastic “gibes,” or the insistence of getting “the last word in”).

Horror movie directors don't need to be quite as sensitive to alienating their audiences, although even they are not granted total license. In the United Kingdom (UK) and elsewhere, Cannibal Holocaust was banned for its extreme violence. The UK and other countries have also banned The Human Centipede, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Cemator, Peeping Tom (aka Le Voyeur), Friday the 13^th, Dead and Buried, The House on the Edge of the Park, The Devils, Just Before Dawn, Antichrist, Nekromantic, I Spit on Your Grave, Saw VI, Hell of the Living Dead, The Return of the Living Dead, Halloween, Land of the Dead, and Evil Dead. Although some of these films were banned for legal reasons (e. g., obscenity), religious (e. g., blasphemy), or political reasons (e. g., unflattering depictions of a particular regime), most were banned because of the extreme violence of their contents. In particular, the slasher film is often cited by feminists and others as misogynistic, sexist, and chauvinistic, since the victims are mostly, if not exclusively, women and the serial killer is almost always a male who kills his prey using a knife or other “phallic” weapon.

On the other side of the coin, critics who defend even extreme violence in cinema and other forms of fiction, such as novels, contend that such displays or descriptions of violence provide an emotional outlet for the impulse to injure or kill, helping people to vent these antisocial and dangerous emotions. Aristotle is one of the earliest critics to argue a similar point in his Poetics's theory that drama promotes catharsis.

Reading horror novels or watching horror movies has been shown to cause physiological responses, such as an increase in respiration and heartbeat, muscle tension, elevated cortisol levels (cortisol is the 'stress hormone”), increased eye movement, a “spike: in adrenaline levels, and a release of dopamine. Most likely, these responses are associated with the fight-or-flight impulse. If we believe that we can eliminate a perceived threat, we will fight; otherwise, we will take flight. Our physiological responses to fear energize and otherwise equip us to take either action.

In a psychological and aesthetic context, some believe that these physiological responses may be a reason that readers and audiences enjoy being frightened. At the same time, theorists believe, readers and audiences are secure in the knowledge that the events unfolding on the page or the screen are purely imaginary, so there is no existential threat to them.

In any case, it seems clear that the appeal of horror fiction lies, in part to its appeal to the need to aggress that everyone feels but, fortunately, few act upon and fewer still to the degree shown in the most violent horror films or described in the pages of the most ferocious horror novels.

The Death of a Beautiful Woman

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Poe did write this, in his essay, “The Philosophy of Composition”—but what did he mean by it?

Some critics might contend that he was merely creating a pithy defense for “The Raven,” which concerns the speaker of the poem's grief for an unnamed woman who had died, a grief which has driven him insane with despair at the thought that he shall see her “nevermore.” If “the death . . . of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world” and Poe's poem deals with this theme, obviously the work concerns the most elevated theme possible, which supports the idea that “The Raven” is itself likely to be one of the most poetic poems ever written.

In any case, horror movies and, quite often, novels frequently include the death of a beautiful woman. In fact, they often feature the deaths of any number of beautiful women. In horror movies, slashers, in particular, beautiful women are killed with abandon.

Some of the reasons for horror writers' bias in favor of female victims are fairly obvious. Typically, women are physically weaker than men and are, therefore, less able to defend themselves. Watching them as they are stalked by a suitably powerful, often grotesque and relentless, monster is likely to make viewers or readers who identify with them (and, yes, research shows that either sex is able to identify with its own or the opposite sex) feel that much more helpless.

Beautiful women do not always die, of course. Sometimes, they are rescued. According to evolutionary psychologists, men may be hard-wired, genetically, to risk their lives in the defense of beautiful damsels in distress, even when the men do not know the damsels personally; men are less likely, perhaps, to do the same for male strangers. Men's motives may not be entirely altruistic; often, in fiction, if not in “real life,” women reward heroes with more than just a thank you and a shake of the hand. Yes, such a subtext is sexist, but sexism, as such, doesn't necessarily make such a plot ineffective, as there is much tension in romance, regardless of its nature or source.

In addition to experiencing the terror of a damsel in distress, male audience members or readers can also vicariously enjoy the accolades and rewards of the victorious hero who rescues the distressed damsel. Most men don't get a chance to be a white knight in their everyday lives, or at least not in as dramatic a fashion as a horror story permits. Being allowed to experience the pride and self-esteem that such a role confers—as well as the rescued damsel's hand—is a perk hard to resist.

A female audience member or reader, on the other hand, can feel special. After all, her predicament—and her beauty—as represented by her stand-in, the story's beautiful damsel in distress, has caused a man to risk his life to save her. That's quite a testament to her charms! Then, should she care to express her gratitude in a “physical” fashion, she again demonstrates the power of her beauty by “conquering” the man who conquered the monster that tried to kill her. If the monster-slayer is powerful, how much more so is she, whose beauty conquers his strength. If he is Samson, she is Delilah.

The human species could survive with relatively few men, as long as there are a sufficiently large number of women. Theoretically, one man can impregnate millions upon millions of women over his lifetime. (In reality, in an extreme situation, he might actually impregnate a few thousand.) However, a woman can bear relatively few children before she is past her childbearing years. Each woman who is killed lessens the chance of the species' survival far more so than each man who is killed. For this reason, women symbolize life more frequently than men do; we speak of Mother Nature, after all, relegating men to the representation of mere Time. It makes more sense, from an evolutionary perspective, to rescue women (and children) before rescuing men. Therefore, we are likely to view as more horrible a woman's life at risk than we are to view a man's life at risk.

Today, male victims are increasingly shown, although there are still fewer of them than there are of female victims. Often, in fact, the last man standing (so to speak) isn't a male character at all, but the “final girl.” As originally conceived by Carol Clover, in her book Men, Women, andChainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992), the final girl was viewed “as a stereotype of the pure, virginal sole survivor in 1980’s slasher films such as TexasChainsaw Massacre and Halloween.” Sometimes, as in Backcountry, the male (Alex, in this case) is killed, despite his macho posturing, because of the poor judgments he makes, while the female (Jenn, in this instance) survives because of her greater maturity and common sense:

Alex's Errors in Judgment

Mistake	Type	Reason for Mistake	Consequence
Alex refuses ranger's offer of a park map.	Judgment	Alex's overconfidence; he seeks to impress Jenn with his woodcraft.	Jenn and Alex become lost and have no guidance out of the woods. His behavior could endanger their lives.
Alex secretly leaves Jenn's cell phone in their car	Judgment; deceit	The lack of a prevents Jenn from communicating with others, focusing her attention on camping trip (and on Alex).	Without a phone, Alex and Jenn have no way to call for help. His behavior could endanger their lives.
Alex leaves Jenn alone when he goes to chop wood.	Judgment	Unclear	The stranger, Brad, who happens upon Jenn could be dangerous: he might have raped or killed Jenn. His behavior could endanger their lives.
Alex does not tell Jenn about the presence of a bear in the area.	Judgment; deceit	Alex wants their trip to continue. He hopes to impress Jenn with his woodcraft and intends to ask her to marry him.	Jenn has bear spray and a traffic flare that they could use against the bear, but she is unaware of its presence. The bear could (and, later, does) kill someone. His behavior could endanger their lives.
Although he is uncertain of the correct path to the lake, Alex continues their trek through the forest.	Judgment; deceit	Alex wants their trip to continue. He hopes to impress Jenn with his woodcraft and intends to ask her to marry him.	Alex and Jenn may be lost. His behavior could endanger their lives.
Alex does not leave the woods after seeing a bear print.	Judgment	Alex wants their trip to continue. He hopes to impress Jenn with his woodcraft and intends to ask her to marry him.	Jenn has bear spray and a traffic flare that they could use against the bear, but she is unaware of its presence. The bear could (and, later, does) kill someone. His behavior could endanger their lives.
Without investigating, Alex tells Jenn sounds she hears are merely acorns falling from the trees, onto their tent.	Judgment; possible deceit	Alex wants their trip to continue. He hopes to impress Jenn with his woodcraft and intends to ask her to marry him. He may believe the sounds are the effects of falling acorns, as he says, or he may not want Jenn to think the sounds are caused by a bear, whether to keep her from being afraid or to prevent her from wanting to leave, in which case he is also being deceitful.	Jenn has bear spray and a traffic flare that they could use against the bear, but she is unaware of its presence. The bear could (and, later, does) kill someone. His behavior could endanger their lives.
Even after hearing the sounds of what might be a bear, instead of falling acorns, Alex refuses to leave the park.	Judgment	Alex wants their trip to continue. He hopes to impress Jenn with his woodcraft and intends to ask her to marry him.	His behavior could endanger their lives.
Even after seeing a broken tree branch indicative of a bear's nearby presence, Alex refuses to leave the park.	Judgment	Alex wants their trip to continue. He hopes to impress Jenn with his woodcraft and intends to ask her to marry him.	His behavior could endanger their lives.
Even after seeing the carcass of a dead deer indicating the presence of a bear—and of a bear that is both starving (bears, otherwise, don't eat meat—and predatory)—Alex refuses to leave the park.	Judgment	Alex wants their trip to continue. He hopes to impress Jenn with his woodcraft and intends to ask her to marry him.	His behavior could endanger their lives.
Even after the bear visits their campsite, Alex refuses to leave the park.	Judgment	Alex wants their trip to continue. He hopes to impress Jenn with his woodcraft and intends to ask her to marry him.	His behavior could endanger their lives.
Alex leaves his axe outside the tent.	Carelessness		With his axe inside the tent, Alex would have had a weapon with which to fight off the attacking bear; without it, he has nothing but his hands and feet. His behavior could endanger their lives.

Jenn's Errors in Judgment

Mistake	Type	Reason for Mistake	Consequence
Jenn did not insist that Alex accept a park map from the ranger or accept one herself.	Judgment	Jenn probably did not want to embarrass Alex by casting doubts on his knowledge of the park.	Alex and Jenn may be lost. Her behavior could endanger their lives.
In Alex's absence, Jenn invites Brad onto their campsite.	Judgment	Jenn is being friendly.	Since she does not know Brad, Jenn could be endangering her and Alex's lives and could be putting herself in danger of being raped.
Jenn does not insist that Alex make sure the “acorns” he says are falling on their tent really are acorns.	Judgment	Jenn probably did not want to embarrass Alex by casting doubts on his knowledge of the park.	Her behavior could endanger their lives.
Jenn does not insist that Alex take her home after she sees evidence of the nearby presence of a bear.	Judgment	Jenn allows Alex to persuade her to stay because she has feelings for him and may feel sorry for him.	Her behavior could endanger their lives.
Jenn returns to their campsite after the bear has killed Alex so she can retrieve the engagement ring he has shown her.	Judgment	Jenn, who had feelings for Alex, wants a memento of his love for her.	Her behavior could endanger her life. lives.

Note: Although Jenn, like Alex, makes mistakes in judgment, she is not a woodman and the couple's survival is not primarily her responsibility. In addition, she is not deceitful toward Alex, as he is to her. When she is alone, after Alex's death, her decisions are wise, allowing her to survive the bear and the wilderness.

Female characters have come a long way since the days of King Kong's Ann Darrow. Today, many are as kick-ass as Buffy the VampireSlayer. Pity the poor monster that attacks one of these “damsels in distress.”

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.

11/22/63: A Book That Shall Live in Infamy

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Stephen King can’t seem to help himself. For the past twenty years or so, he’s been writing when he really has little or nothing more to say (worth saying, at least). Instead, it bashes Republicans, conservatives, or whatever he sees as the monster of the moment.

His self-indulgent attacks upon all-things-not-Kingly are tiresome, not entertaining.

Apparently, he’s now given up even pretending to write about horror. Instead, he’s taking up alternative history--or alternative history and science fiction--as his new “literary” genre--or genres. In his latest tome, which is quite the doorstop at over 800 pages, King stretches his readers’ ability to suspend their disbelief to the breaking point and beyond by introducing a time machine (in the form of a “wormhole.”) A local butcher has been using the device to slip back a few decades and buy some cuts of meat at way more than bargain basement prices for resale in the here and now. King’s protagonist has a better idea: he uses the time machine to throw himself (and horror fiction) back more than half a century so he can prevent the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, or “JFK,” as King prefers to refer to the former president.

The whole idea sounds rather more tiresome than entertaining.

But that’s understandable. After all, 11/22/63 is King’s fiftieth book. Apparently, he’s too tired himself, at this point in his career, to trouble himself to write words when numbers will do--or, perhaps, in his pastiche-prone way, he’s simply trying to associate his book with 9/11, another date which, like 12/7/41, lives in eternal “infamy.”

Apparently out of gas (or maybe full of gas), King trots out the trite and the familiar: time travel, JFK’s assassination, chaos theory, high school, teacher-writer protagonist (the novel’s hero, Jack Epping, is a high school English teacher, as King himself once was, before he became the Big Mac and fries of the literati), domestic violence, and a classic car (shades of Christine and From a Buick 8). He even tosses a little Groundhog Day into the mix. (Something’s gotta stick, right?) About the only thing missing is a St. Bernard.

Recommendation: Don’t buy it; if you must read it, wait until your local library pays for a copy out of your tax dollar.

"Terminal Freeze," Blow By Blow

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

I just finished reading Lincoln Child's novel, Terminal Freeze.  It's 320 pages long.  I read it in five hours.  That's 64 pages an hour, or a little more than a page a minute.  I'm not bragging, just making a point.  By using the same method that I use, you can read novels quickly, too.  Why would you want to do so?  You can read more of them, gaining a better perspective on either an individual's entire collection of work, a better understanding of the entire genre itself in which he or she works, or a better appreciation of both an individual author's work and the genre to which the work belongs, all with a minimum investment of time.  In addition to reading the novel, I also wrote one-sentence summaries of each of its chapters as I went, so that, by the time I'd read the entire novel, I had a summary of the entire story, which enhances my memory of what I've read and provides a handy dandy means of evaluating and critiquing the novel, should I ever wish to do so.

If you'd like to follow the method of my madness (or the madness of my method), here's what I do when I want to speed up the reading process:

1. First, read the blurb. A blurb is the text on the inside of a hardback book’s flyleaf (the paper cover in which hardback books are usually wrapped) or on the back cover of a paperback. by reading them, you’re saving yourself from having to read maybe fifty, or even 100, PAGES of the novel itself, and you will know the main character’s name, the setting, the basic storyline, and the names of lesser, supporting characters.
2. Realize that a chapter can be summarized in one sentence. Then, read the chapter only until you can summarize it in one sentence.
3. After each chapter, write a sentence that summarizes what it presented
4. Keep a list of characters’ names, brief phrases that identify them, and the names of the places in which the action takes place.
5. Skip most of the description and exposition. Read just the dialogue. By reading just the dialogue, you will be able to keep track of the story well enough to summarize it. Only dip into the descriptive or expository blocks of text when you need to do so to reestablish a sense of continuity and context--maybe twice or so every four or five chapters. You will find that you are skipping entire pages of the text and still know what’s going on.
6. After reading and summarizing each chapter and updating your list of characters and settings, stop! You are done with the book. 

Here is the result of my application of this process to Terminal Freeze:

Chapter 1: The face of a melting glacier near Alaska’s Mount Fear falls away, revealing the mouth of an ice cave.

Chapter 2: Scientists exploring the cave find a monstrous beast (a gigantic cat) frozen in the ice.

Chapter 3: Although Usuguk, who travels south with his people, warns the scientists to leave the region, declaring that they have trespassed upon holy land, defiling it with their presence, the scientists refuse to leave.

Chapter 4: Kari Ekberg, a Hollywood location scout, arriving at the scientists’ research station to prepare for a docudrama about the discovery of the frozen beast, is given a tour of the facility--except for the northern section, which is off limits to her and everyone else, including the squad of soldiers who maintain and guard the post.

Chapter 5: As they escort Ekberg to the ice cave to see the beast, two scientists, paleoecologist Evan Marshall and evolutionary biologist Wright Faraday, explain their expertise to her.

Chapter 6: In an underground bunker below Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains, Jeremy Logan, allegedly a professor of medieval history, reads a secret memorandum concerning the deaths of a team of scientists who had been encamped at Mount Fear.

Chapter 7: Emilio Conti, the executive producer, begins filming on location, explaining that the host of the docudrama will arrive before the crew ascends Mount Fear to cut the beast from the ice--live, on camera, before millions of viewers.

Chapter 8: The Hollywood team’s legal representative, Wolff, shows the scientists a contract that their leader, Gerard Scully, signed, authorizing them to extract and thaw the beast’s carcass, on live television, despite the scientists’ objections.

Chapter 9: Using a laser and a diamond-tipped drill, the television crew extracts a block of ice in which the beast is entombed from the ice cave’s wall and transports it to a climate-controlled vault to thaw before the eyes of their television audience.

Chapter 10: Conti interviews Marshall, dramatizing the setting and dialogue, but angering the scientist when he asks him about his “dishonorable discharge” from the army, despite his having been awarded the Silver Star, and his refusal to carry a weapon, and Marshall refuses to cooperate further.

Chapter 11: Faraday reports to his colleagues that tests he’s conducted indicate that the beast is not the saber-toothed tiger they’d supposed it to be; it is at least twice the size of such an animal.

Chapter 12: An examination of the carcass--or what can be seen of it inside the block of ice--proves inconclusive as to the animal’s identity.

Chapter 13: The docudrama’s host, Ashleigh Davis, arrives, by helicopter, along with her trailer, which has been trucked in aboard an eighteen-wheeler driven by Carradine, an ice road trucker.

Chapter 14: Logan, identifying himself as a hitchhiker, who was picked up by Carradine on his way to deliver Davis’ trailer, introduces himself as the scientists gather to watch the docudrama host film a sequence of her show outside the climate-controlled vault.

Chapter 15: Marshal awakens to discover that a hole has been cut through the floor of the climate-controlled vault.

Chapter 16: Wolff locks down the compound so he can investigate and recover the carcass stolen from the vault, but the new arrival, Logan, is nowhere to be found.

Chapter 17: Faraday, having taken pictures of the hole in the vault’s floor, determined that the hole was made from above, not from below, as Wolff had supposed, which indicates that whoever sawed the hole through the floor knew the combination to the vault’s lock.

Chapter 18: Conti believes that the carcass was stolen through an act of sabotage to be disposed of and vows to make a documentary of the crime, asking Marshall to star in the film.

Chapter 19: Logan tells Marshall about the recently declassified memorandum concerning the deaths of the scientists at Fear Base.

Chapter 20: Josh Peters relieves McCoy Tyner, searching the compound for the carcass of the beast, and is attacked from behind and knocked unconscious.

Chapter 21: Faraday and the team’s graduate assistant, Ang Chen, tell Marshall of test results they’ve obtained on ice from the cave in which the creature was encased: it seems to contain ice--and a microscopic view of the photograph Faraday took of the hole in the floor suggests that the hole was made from teeth, not a saw, as if it had been chewed through.

Chapter 22: Logan reconnoiters E Level of the research facility, where he encounters the military leader, Sergeant Gonzalez, who tells him that the facility’s off-limits section had “extra berths” in it “that no military ever used” and is rumored to have involved the mauling by a polar bear of scientists who were involved in top secret work.

Chapter 23: After Marshall and his team’s computer scientist, Penny Barbour, put Conti, Wolff, and Ekberg on notice that the filmmakers will be sued if they libel or slander the scientists in their docudrama about the climate-controlled vault’s having been sabotaged, they inform the Hollywood executives that one of their men, Josh Peters, has been “torn apart” beyond the compound’s “security fence.”

Chapter 24: At Wolff’s request, Marshall examines the body, concluding that a polar bear could have killed Peters, but Wolff still insists that the creature’s carcass was stolen in an act of sabotage and suggests that Peters was killed to frighten the rest of them from continuing the Hollywood team’s search for the missing creature.

Chapter 25: Intent upon making a revised docudrama of the creature‘s theft and Peter‘s supposed murder as part of the sabotage of their original film, Conti sends one film crew to photograph the fearful reaction of the rest of the crew to the news of Peter’s horrific death and a second crew to film Peters’ corpse before it is put into cold storage.

Chapter 26: Logan discovers a notebook--perhaps a journal--that one of the scientists on the earlier, catastrophic, aborted mission kept while at Fear Base.

Chapter 27: A he prepares to leave the room in which Peters’ corpse is temporarily stored., having photographed the body, cameraman Ken Toussaint encounters “the face of nightmare.”

Chapter 28: Faraday reports to Marshall his suspicion that the ice that encased the creature was unusual and melted below the freezing mark, allowing the animal trapped inside, which may have been alive rather than dead, to escape after its ice prison had melted.

Chapter 29: Trying to pitch a screenplay to Davis, Carradine escorts her to her trailer, where they hear a loud knocking, which turns out to b Toussaint, hanging from one of the trailer’s window awning support arms, who, although he first appears dead, screams, “It plays with you! And then when it’s finished playing--it kills.”

Chapter 30: Toussaint, who has survived the attack upon him, describes his attacker as huge and equipped with many teeth; Peters’ corpse is missing; Wolff refuses to allow Carradine to drive the crew to safety in Davis’ trailer, which he offers to tow behind his eighteen-wheeler.

Chapter 31: Logan tells Marshall that the dead scientist’s journal hints at horrific events at Fear Base, and Marshall decides to take a snowmobile to visit the Tunits to see whether they can shed any light on the incidents, past and present, that have occurred at the research facility.

Chapter 32: When Allan Fortnum returns from shooting images of the Hollywood crew’s horrified reactions to Peters’ death, Conti gives the cinematographer his next assignment: stand by to film the monster as it tears its next victim apart--but Fortnum refuses to be party to this outrageous task.

Chapter 33: Both Davis and PFC Donovan Fluke, who escorts to her new accommodations, which are closer to those of the military troop attached to Fear Base to afford her better protection, are attacked by the monster.

Chapter 34: Visiting the Tunits’ settlement, Marshall finds it deserted except for Usuguk, who has remained behind to speak to the scientist, certain that Marshall would come.

Chapter 35: Sergeant Gonzalez orders the camp evacuated; everyone will ride in Davis’ trailer, which Carradine will tow with his eighteen-wheeler; meanwhile, Gonzalez plans to hunt for the beast; when Marshall returns, his colleagues plan to meet with him; only Conti and Ekberg refuse to leave, staying to film yet another revised docudrama.

Chapter 36: After Marshall tells Usuguk how he had accidentally killed his friend during the war in Somalia and had refused to cover up his mistake, thereby earning a dishonorable discharge, Usuguk agrees to accompany him on his hunt for the creature, but only as an unarmed advisor--and the shaman won’t share what he knows about the slaughter of the earlier scientific expedition party.

Chapter 37: Sergeant Gonzalez and his two men, Marcelin and Phillips, remain at Fear Base to hunt the beast after everyone else but Creel, Faraday, Scully, Marshall, Logan, Conti, Ekberg, and Wolff leaves in Davis trailer, which is towed by Carradine’s big rig.

Chapter 38: Conti and Ekberg plan to follow the soldiers, filming their hunt of the creature.

Chapter 39: Marshall returns to the nearly deserted research facility with Usuguk and learns of the monster’s killing of Davis and Fluke; Usuguk tells the others that he was the sole survivor among the earlier research party, “the one who got away.”

Chapter 40: The military troop, commanded by Sergeant Gonzalez and accompanied by Creel, the roustabouts’ foreman, follow the beast’s bloody tracks through the base‘s power station, and it attacks the group, killing Creel, after which Gonzalez retreats.

Chapter 41: Usuguk, a former soldier who had been stationed at Fear Base, tells the others how another, smaller spirit-beast killed the scientists of the earlier expedition and declares that the larger one awakened by the present expedition is an invincible and immortal guardian of the mountain in which Fear Base is installed--it cannot be killed, but it will kill them all.

Chapter 42: After crossing a frozen lake, the tractor-trailer is caught in a gust of wind that slams it into a rock and breaks one of the fuel tanks; the other tank is only one third full, and there is not enough fuel to take them the rest of the way to their destination, Arctic Village.

Chapter 43: Inside the base’s power station, the soldiers try to electrocute the creature, but to no avail.

Chapter 44: Following the soldiers, Conti, Wolff, and Ekberg find the bloody trail and Conti films Ekberg’s reaction to seeing the head that the monster had ripped from Creel’s body.

Chapter 45: Faraday finds that the monster’s white blood cell-rich blood makes it impervious to bullets but is hypersensitive to--and may be killed by--sound, so maybe they can convert the secret wing of the base into an echo chamber; meanwhile, Sergeant Gonzalez’s attempt to raise Conti and Ekberg on the radio is unsuccessful.

Chapter 46: Conti, having forbidden Ekberg to respond to Gonzalez’s radio call, orders Wolff and Ekberg to investigate a stairwell with him, and they feel pressure inside their skulls as the monster approaches them through the darkness.

Chapter 47: As Usuguk tells the party his people’s legends concerning the monster, Gonzalez, Sully, Marshall, Faraday, Phillips, and the shaman find an already-built echo chamber in the secret section of the facility.

Chapter 48: The creature kills Conti, but Ekberg escapes.

Chapter 49: Ekberg radios Marshall, advising him of Conti’s death and of her own risk, and, while Scully seeks batteries to operate the echo chamber’s sound equipment, Marshall rendezvous with Ekberg to protect her from the monster and lead her back to a site outside the echo chamber, where the monster can be ambushed.

Chapter 50: As the monster pursues them, Marshall and Ekberg retreat toward the ambush site, only to learn that no batteries are available and that the scientists have had to connect the sound equipment to a power source inside the echo chamber itself, which is farther than Marshall had anticipated.

Chapter 51: The sound equipment fails to stop the creature (as does a barrage of bullets), which attacks Scully, who is operating the sonar weapon, and tears him limb from limb.

Chapter 52: Marshall retreats with the sonar weapon into the echo chamber, where the sound is magnified, and, using a different set of “harmonics,” kills the monster with the sound waves, which cause its head to explode.

Chapter 53: Against all odds, Carradine’s big rig manages to haul the trailer to Arctic Village.

Epilogue: Logan suggests that the first beast was the second creature’s pet and that the latter had been searching for the former when it became encased in the wall of the ice cave.