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Other that "Pet Sematary", Stephen King's books don't really do it for me. I think he got the right mix of eerieness, psychological tension and pure macabre evil in this book, and it still scares me. The movie helped cementing some of those disturbing imageries in my mind forever.
And of course I have to indicate one by H. P. Lovecraft. The first book I read by him was "The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward" and, boy, that one really got me looking over my shoulders. This is the guy, after all, which started one short story with the line "Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror.", and another with "If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur Jermyn did; and Arthur Jermyn soaked himself in oil and set fire to his clothing one night.". Class.
The scene where Mr. Marinus Willett sees an undescribable abomination below his feet is, on the other hand, elegant and concise in the way its told, adding to the alien, detached feeling of unexorable horror lurking in the corners of human experience:
"But Marinus Bicknell Willett was sorry that he looked again; for surgeon and veteran of the dissecting-room though he was, he has not been the same since. It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measurable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnameable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark raving mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite's private hospital. He dropped the electric torch from a hand drained of muscular power or nervous coördination, nor heeded the sound of crunching teeth which told of its fate at the bottom of the pit. He screamed and screamed and screamed in a voice whose falsetto panic no acquaintance of his would ever have recognised; and though he could not rise to his feet he crawled and rolled desperately away from the damp pavement where dozens of Tartarean wells poured forth their exhausted whining and yelping to answer his own insane cries. He tore his hands on the rough, loose stones, and many times bruised his head against the frequent pillars, but still he kept on. Then at last he slowly came to himself in the utter blackness and stench, and stopped his ears against the droning wail into which the burst of yelping had subsided."
Heh? Heh?
You can read an online version here |
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