Top Ten Halloween Reads, Take Two!

Top Ten Halloween Reads, Take Two!

In an effort to secure my place as a Connoisseur of Creep, I have been losing myself in the creepiest novels I can get my twisted little fingers on. You’re welcome, in advance, for the psychological damage I have imparted on myself to make it worth your while.

It doesn’t just have to be approaching Halloween Time for me to enjoy a scary book or movie either, I indulge all year round. But one has to admit that there is just something about Halloween and the fall season that is undeniable.

The warm, long days we had gotten used to get a little cooler and a little crisper, and the night starts to stretch out a little longer.  Pumpkin EVERYTHING comes back into existence. Cinnamon is everywhere. Apple cider is a staple. The colors are vibrant and almost kind of magical and when the leaves fall it’s like something out of a storybook. You start thinking about the approaching holiday and trick or treat and then haunted houses start popping up all over.

That’s when it’s my time. As much as I adore the colors and the spices and all the flavors of fall, the creep factor is what brings me out. The clouds roll in to blot out the sun so the shadows seem to get a little darker, the trees start to look a little more like gnarled fingers reaching in the dark, and the sounds completely change. The skittering of summertime animals and songs of birds become replaced by rustling leaves in chill breezes and the air starts to hold the impending quiet of winter. There is mystery to be had in the October night. What’s around the corner? You’ll find me on a walk in the foggy evening air, that’s for sure.

So, without further ado, the list you’ve all been waiting for! My Top Ten Halloween Reads (in no particular order) to add some spooky into your pumpkin drenched world.

1. Harvest Home - Thomas Tryon

How I forgot this book on my first list, I will never know. I read this book about a decade ago but reread it specifically for this list and it made me just as uncomfortable. The Main Character moves his family to a remote country town in hopes of simpler life but the town hides a very dark secret. It’s full of fantastic suspense and an ending I don’t think you’ll see coming. It is unnerving in the best kind of way and makes you think twice about an idyllic life in the country. Written in 1973, it’s another one of those classic scary stories with staying power.

2. Hex - Thomas Olde Heuvelt

This book was ridiculous, in a good way. I couldn’t put it down. I read it in days, which is no easy feat for me. The picturesque town of Black Spring on the edge of the Hudson Valley in New York is plagued by a curse. A curse that involves a centuries-old woman known as the Black Rock Witch. But she isn’t some green woman with a wart on her nose… She’s a dusty, wrinkled, old woman with her eyes and mouth sewn shut. She wanders the town at will, spending hours (and sometimes days) wherever she pleases, from the corner of the street to the room in which you sleep. And the townspeople can do nothing about it. They adapt as best they can to living with her until a group of teenagers decides to mess with her, thus plunging the town into a series of dark days. This book was as powerful as it was creepy. The witch’s nightmarish face lingers in my mind’s eye still.

3. Bird Box - Josh Malerman

This book was incredibly unsettling. It didn’t scare as much as it scared some readers, but at its core, the idea is a solid one. Some phenomena is occurring in our modern day world where if you set eyes on these creatures outside, the sight of them makes you act out violently not only against anyone you might be with, but yourself also. These survivors of this new world, go outside blindfolded, if they have to go out at all. A woman, Malorie, has two children to care for while she tries to navigate this new world and make her way to a safe house.

4. Security - Gina Wohlsdorf

Mmkay, so I suggest this book, not because it’s some deep and philosophical read, but because it’s a good old-fashioned slasher read. Manderley is a swanky brand new hotel, getting the last of its items in order on the eve of its grand opening. However, someone in the hotel is systematically murdering all of the people in it, one by one. It’s enough to make you uncomfortable and a little spooked, with plenty of murder and solid twist at the ending.

5. A Stir of Echoes - Richard Matheson

This guy, I’m telling you. If his name is familiar, that’s because he made my list a couple years ago. I’m fairly certainly every one of his novels will make it into my list at some point or another.  The main character Tom Wallace, lives, by all accounts, a mostly normal life until a party trick grants him psychic abilities. A Stir of Echoes is a good old-fashioned ghost story fraught with psychological turmoil and all the uneasiness that entails. Hallucinations, whispers, and menacing messages from beyond. Plus, there’s a creepy child! Win, win, right?

6. Pet Sematary - Stephen King

Just. Wow. This book was more than just scary and unsettling. It was horrifying. It truly was. I think what makes King such a brilliant writer is how well he is able to make you sympathize with the characters. You become invested in them. This was no slow burn, either. Things get going a couple chapters in and you’re in the thick of it. The beautiful family, the beautiful home, the beautiful town, the tragic accidents, the gore, the horror…. This an excellently crafted book with Stephen King as his best. Powerful is not a strong enough word to describe this book.

7. The Last American Vampire - Seth Grahame-Smith

Oh, this was a solid sequel to his first novel, Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. It follows in the same vein as the first, campy but scary in some parts too. As a general piece of fiction, this book is so good, weaving together tales of blood-thirsty vampires and actual American history to make a solidly plausible plot.

8. The Long Walk - Stephen King/Richard Bachman

So this book was unsettling more than it was creepy. It’s a different kind of scary. A group of a hundred teenage boys take part in a reality TV-esque contest in which they walk hundreds of miles. The last one standing receives whatever his heart desires for the rest of his natural born life. The catch? If you fail the Long Walk, you don’t just get eliminated. You’re shot dead on the road where you stand, or collapse. From torrential rains and bitter cold, to bloody feet and exhaustion-induced hallucinations, this book covers it all. Written in the 70’s, it’s virtually timeless and remains a classic King novel, solidifying its place as a remarkably relevant book.  

9. Johannes Cabal, Necromancer - Jonathan L. Howard

Time to shake up this list and add a little humor to your creep. Johannes Cabal is, as the title implies, a Necromancer, who is more or less trying to strike what will be his second deal with the Devil himself for his earthly soul. If he can steal a hundred souls via a traveling carnival, he can have his soul back. But let’s not forget, he’s dealing with the Devil here… There’s always fine print. This book is number one in the series and I have read the second which was also quite funny. This is campy horror at it’s finest. It also strikes a powerful nerve by addressing some of our base human instincts and what may or may not pave the road to Hell if the right person gives us the deal. It’s The Night Circus, meets Something Wicked This Way Comes, meets the Walking Dead with a whole lot of sass thrown in.  Highly recommend this as a way to get a mildly scary story dripping in sarcastic humor.

10. Earthbound - Richard Matheson

Ok, so hear me out on this one. This book falls under the category of erotica (we’re all adults here), but it is deeply horrifying. An angry ghost haunts the cabin that David and his wife Ellen are staying in as a way to save their crumbling marriage. Marianna, the cold and vindictive ghost sets her sights on David, tempting and baiting him, all the while stealing bits of his life and the life of his wife. This is a solid Matheson story that’s about more than sex. It plays at the animalistic nature of lust and the fragile willpower that exists in all of us. And Marianna, well, hell hath no fury...

You can also check out my first top ten list on my good friend Marissa's blog here for another ten solidly scary reads! Be sure to check out her other killer content too!

Have a Horrifying Halloween!!

Someone

I was on the train that morning. The floor rumbled with motion under my feet. The car was empty. Or so I thought. We passed through a tunnel, came out the other side. A seat was suddenly occupied.

The hair on my neck stood on end.

I got off at my stop. Headed up the stairs. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. Uneasiness spasmed my guts into knots.

There’s someone behind me.

I don’t want to look. I just know they’re there. I can feel them. The eyes staring holes into me.

An icy chill races up my spine. I want to run but I can’t. I just walk.

My flesh is beginning to crawl, my mind running rampant with desperate attempts to dissuade myself from what I know is true.

I’m going to die today.

***

There’s someone behind you.

Don’t look. Don’t run. Don’t speak. Just wait.

Can you feel it? The eyes, that are staring at you? They stare intently. They stare without purpose.

Can you feel that? The hair on your neck that’s standing on end? That’s because you’re uneasy.

Do you feel that sensation? The flesh on your arms as it rises? That’s your skin trying to crawl from your bones. It wants to drag you away from this unseen threat.

Do you feel the cold? That chill as it creeps down your spine? That’s the last bit of your instinct begging you to flee, the desperate plea of your mind to run away.

Now… Do you feel that? That lump that’s knotted your guts?

That’s the weight of a decision you took too long to make.

You didn’t look. You didn’t speak. You just waited.

And now you’ll die.

Because it’s me behind you.

And you didn’t run away.

A Little Musing and Some Throwback Thursday Goodness

I'm taking a short break from writing all of the short stories to do a fun little Throwback Thursday post and just kind of talk about how things are going. 

I've been a little quiet the last week or so since finishing up the Inn of Cali, and that's mostly because my work schedule has increased AND my oldest child started preschool. So life has been quite busy, but I do have a few projects I'm working on.

I have two short stories I'm working on, though one is shaping up to be something bigger, so we'll see how that pans out. The other is going to serve as the perfect segue into yet another short story I wrote some time ago, and I'm really excited to see where it goes. 

So, on to your Throwback Thursday awesomeness... my good friend and fellow partner in word-crafting crime, Marissa, over at her blog Marissa Writes challenged me a couple years ago to do a Top Ten Halloween Reads list and so I thought I would post a few of them here as a way to get ready for my next Top Ten Halloween Reads to come in October. 

I'm not sure what it is about horror or thriller reads that appeals to me... For that matter, I'm not sure what it is about writing scary things that appeals to me either. I think maybe I see it as a challenge to be able to craft some seriously unsettling shit and make people uneasy. I've always been a firm believer that what I see in my head is far scarier than what I see on the screen, and so when I'm reading, I see the images so vividly. Then when I'm writing, I feel challenged to use the right words to convey what I see and hope that maybe other people are spooked by it.

Of course, all of this is probably why I'm afraid of the dark... And that is no lie, I am actually quite alarmed by dark rooms and dark spaces. I panic. I sweat. It's not pretty. 

Anyway, check out the list below for the first five of my top ten, or the full list, you can click here. 

Amanda's Top Ten Halloween Reads 

(in no particular order)

1. Patient Zero – Jonathan Mayberry

                The first in a trilogy with protagonist Joe Ledger, it explores a zombie outbreak from the moment it happens. Suspenseful and thrilling, it’s the perfect read for a cool fall evening.

2. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter – Seth Grahame-Smith

                Classic vampires reimagined to involve a famous historical figure. It’s campy and creepy in the best possible way, with a few awesome and clever cameos along the way. A must read for fans of vampires and history.

3. I am Legend – Richard Matheson

                This story, included in a collection of equally scary short stories, Legend is classic and unsettling. Written in the 1950’s to be set in the 1970’s, Matheson was able to capture the essence of what it’s like to be the last man on earth that transcends time. Dr. Robert Neville finds himself living amongst the vampires who are out for his blood the same way he is out for theirs.

4. Hell House – Richard Matheson

                Truly the master of horror, in Hell House, Matheson successfully tells the tale of a house haunted by a sordid and gruesome past. The house seems to be alive in its own right; and desperate to keep its secret hidden from the latest group of ambitious investigators to tempt fate. (*This book has some disturbing sequences involving sexual violence)

5. Salem’s Lot – Stephen King

                More vampires abound, but always in completely different ways. Stephen King never fails at writing about the small towns with the dark secrets that make your skin crawl. Salem’s Lot is no exception, being set in a sleepy New England town, it’ll have you looking over your shoulder before you’re done.

Don't forget to hit up Marissa's blog for the full list of creepy books for your fall reading list!

A Short Review on a Slasher Book

Initially, I wasn't going to post anything about this book on my blog, but then I was like, meh. Let's talk about it. As most people know, I'm into horror, but that comes with a caveat: I do not care for gore or torture. To me, that is not scary it's gross. So you won't catch me talking about 'Hostel' or 'Saw' or anything where you're chopping off toes or anything like that. Gross. Of course, there are exceptions to that rule, in that I liked Texas Chainsaw Massacre and there were gratuitous amounts of violence in that, but I digress.

I'm talking about Security by Gina Wohlsdorf. Basically, you have this swank hotel called Manderley with the highest of the high tech security systems and a day before its lavish opening, all of the people working inside are getting systematically and graphically murdered, all the while the person narrating this is some unnamed person. There's a love story thrown in, there's some sex. There's all the makings of a decent B-Horror movie in book form. 

Anyway, I got to thinking about this book and while, overall, I was disappointed in the character development and the sections of rambling introspectiveness by some unidentified narrator, as a slasher book, this was good and inventive. When you get right down to it, you don't really get any concrete answers from the killers as to who they are or why. They just murder. That also made me think, do we ever really know why someone kills? Do we ever really understand a motive? Not really. They just do. Something just snapped and they just decided that killing people was the best way to handle their angst.

So, the underdeveloped characters irritated me because they were whiny. I really wanted to feel for Tessa and Brian, the main characters, I really, really wanted to, but like, shut up. That's all I kept coming back to. Just shut up. I guess part of my feeling is, if you're going to give me a slasher book, don't throw in some love story tripe and hope it pushes the story line. It didn't. They were flat and uninteresting. It was a little like the author tried so hard to push the girl as some strong, independent, workaholic, take no prisoners kind of woman and the guy was some over-emoting, knight in shining armor, desperate, albeit smart, dude. The author kind of tried too hard to reverse your typical horror stereotype of girl needs saving by the smart strapping guy and it felt too forced.

Now, having said that, there were things I really did enjoy. I really like the movies/books where you're seeing the story from the perspective of someone and you don't know who they are or what they role play. Plus, the unnamed narrator was funny. A little comedy in your gross. Win, win. I also liked the juxtaposition of graphic violence and graphic sex, showing how the two can very closely mirror the other. I hear collective giggling, but we're all adults here. It's true. Violence knows no bounds and in some ways, neither does sex. Violence, love, and sex are some of the things in life that transcend all barriers. You can experience them regardless of sexuality, race, social standing, religion, etc.

And in some ways, you can experience them because of those things.

Anyway, I'm rambling. In short, if you're looking for something earth shattering and thoughtful, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a good slasher book, I recommend this for sure, especially with Halloween on the horizon.

Enjoy your stay at Manderley...

If I Had (A Work of Short Fiction)

Maybe if I hadn’t turned my back, things would have come out differently.

If I had just faced the problem, if I had just waited that extra second, I wouldn’t be where I am right now. Maybe if I hadn’t turned away the way I did, or if I stepped a little more to the right, or even the left, I would still be standing.

Maybe if I had waited for one more breath before I spoke the words I did when I turned to walk away, I wouldn't be bleeding to death.

I didn’t feel the bullet at first. For a moment, I thought I had a spasm. I remember thinking, “Was I punched?” Then I fell to my knees, as if my body wasn’t my own anymore. Realization dawned as I hovered, a prisoner to a gravity pulling me forward from my knees, that was no spasm or shove. That was a bullet. Pain began to bloom.

Time slowed down to an agonizing crawl. I had all the time in the world to relive the choices that lead me to this moment, to wonder what would have happened if I had chosen differently. I would hold my daughter one more time. Nuzzle into her blonde ringlets, hear her musical laugh, and tell her I loved her. Call her my lady bug. Remind her that she’s my best girl.

A wild thought ran through my mind the nearer the ground came, a second chance. If only I could get a second chance, I would do this over. I would make this right. I wouldn’t be dying. If I had a second chance, I could fix this. I would change things.

I landed on the ground. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt. The only I thing I felt was the pain in my back, but even that had begun to fade. The light around the edges of my vision began to dim as the story of my life faded so slowly to black.

Maybe if someone had given them a second chance, they would take it all back. Maybe they wouldn’t have stolen my life. Maybe they would have helped me instead of running away.

Maybe if I hadn’t turned my back, I would still be alive.

HEX and Human Tendency

I keep coming across these books that are accidentally relevant and I hope that never ever changes.

Who says horror can’t be thoughtful?

I discovered Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt one day while perusing Amazon for some horror/thriller reads and oh my lord am I glad I did. I’m going to do my best to explore this book without giving the plot away but that’s going to be a challenge.

“Whoever is born here is doomed to stay ‘til death. Whoever settles never leaves.”

The Grant family live in the sleepy town of Black Spring, just on the edge of Hudson Valley in New York. It’s almost Halloween time and the colors of fall take hold and turn the Valley into beautiful autumn fire. The town seems like the kind of place anyone would want to live and raise children except the town lives with a well kept secret. Her name is Katherine and both she and the town are cursed. Katherine is a centuries old witch who haunts the town, showing up at will wherever she feels, from your bedroom, to your grocer’s freezer and may stay there for days on end until she moves on to the next place.

But there’s something else.

Her eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Blind and mute she walks the town, this Black Rock Witch, and the townspeople sort of exist around her. They deal with her like you would a stray cat, ignore it and hope it goes away. In one instance, someone hangs a dishtowel over her face and goes about her business. Simple as that.

A group of teenagers living in the town grow impatient with the regulations set down by the Council about how they must all live and work around the witch. They do what teenagers do and they start messing with her, pushing the boundaries of the council and the witch. But as their antics increase, the habits of the witch start to become erratic. It’s almost as if, instead of wandering blind, she actually has been watching the people.

There’s more to this book than this horrifying idea of a cursed town and a mutilated witch. This book evoked so many emotions in me and I don’t even know where to start. At the crux of this book is one simple idea that has existed as long as humans have and has never failed in proving itself to be true: People never change. Things never change.

It’s more than just frustrated teenagers and complacent adults. Katherine represents a larger aspect of life. She’s the elephant in the room. A problem that exists that we refuse to acknowledge and talk about and change. At the base of who we are is the idea that we never get past our inherent urge to judge and assume and then punish. It isn’t until after we condemn someone that we see whether or not we were right or wrong. That basic human tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.

Once upon a time, Katherine was just a woman. Shitty people made her what she had become. She is existing proof that the sins of the past will always haunt us and that we will always shoot first and take something innocent and destroy it.

There are always exceptions to that characteristic, of course, but mob mentality rules. Where there are those that challenge the status quo, there are those that are punished for it. It’s a never ending cycle we’re caught in.

I cannot recommend Hex enough. It’s gripping and moving to the very last word. It’s creepy and unsettling and it plays on a range of emotions. It sheds light on problems that still exist in the world today.

Let’s acknowledge the faults in our histories and change them moving forward…

...instead of just covering them with dishtowels.

Perspective and The Book of Night Women

There’s a word that I always come back to in my life that I think is invaluable. It’s one of those words that, in my humble opinion, defines life. It defines life, and a life well lived, because it leads to the other words that are crucial to human existence.

Perspective.

Perspective leads to understanding, leads to sympathy, leads to empathy, leads to kindness, leads to caring, leads to education. You can only understand someone else’s perspective if you’ve tried to see the human experience through their eyes. You can only gain sympathy, or empathy, or both, when you’ve understood the human experience. You then become kind and you then seek the education to understand more about that experience.

Reading The Book of Night Women was a departure for me, a step outside of my comfort zone, if you will, but not entirely. Most of my life I have been fascinated by the Civil Right’s movements, the concept of slavery, and the struggles of people different than myself. I’m a white woman. I have absolutely no idea what it is like to look at the color of my skin and wonder if I’ll be judged on sight for that. The only discrimination I have faced is that I’m a woman and therefore seen as the weaker sex. But that’s a topic for another time.

‘Every negro walk in a circle. Take that and make of it what you will.’

The Book of Night Women follows a girl named Lilith who was born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar cane plantation in the late 1700s. Lilith learns early that she’s different, chiefly because she has green eyes. That trait in a slave girl means that  her father was likely a white man. Lilith also learns that she’s different because she feels in her soul a sort of darkness that she can’t quite explain. She just knows she feels it. The other black women on the plantation feel it in her, too. Through a series of experiences, some horrifying, some not, Lilith and the other women on the plantation come to understand how real and deep that darkness goes and how much of Lilith’s own strength it takes to combat that.

A girl becomes a woman, a forbidden love blossoms, a war is waged, and through it all, a perspective is gained.

This book was published in 2009 so I’m a little behind the curve in picking this up, but I am glad I did. Marlon James is a brilliant writer. He’s Jamaican which I think makes him a natural storyteller in its own, but he tells such a beautiful story. You feel for her. You ache for her. You get mad at her, and mad for her, and at other times, you feel just as confused as she is. But you understand her. That’s the most important part. And James doesn’t mince words either. He presents this human experience with all the language and imagery necessary to drive home to points of the time. This is the way it was. Period. It’s brutal, it’s upsetting, it’s compelling.

I think what I feel is what anyone feels, you don’t want to believe these kinds of things happened to people. You don’t ever want to believe that people are responsible for these kinds of hellish acts against other humans. I also think that we’re so removed from the time of slavery that it’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking that issues like this no longer exist. The problem, is they do. When you read this book, it gives you some perspective on what it took to break down the spirit of a human and drive them to believe that they are lesser. Lilith comments to herself that she finds herself thinking so many thoughts and having so many feelings, but how can she have them when she’s as dumb as they say she is? That kind of feeling still exists today. So much time was spent breaking down the human spirit and drilling home feelings of superiority and inferiority that the ghosts of the past still haunt us. The easiest way to eradicate those ghosts is to admit they existed, learn from them, and do what we can to protect the people most affected by it going forward.

This story is a fantastic retelling of history from a different part of the world at that time and it is worth every minute you spend on it.

Let’s not walk in circles any longer.