Pandora’s Pick of the Week: “Neverland”

NEVERLAND

By Douglas Clegg

Background: First published in 1991, this creepy book was one of Clegg’s earlier published works. I, for one, am looking forward to checking out all of Clegg’s other work after speeding through this one.

What it’s about: A family summer vacation on a peninsula off the Georgia coast turns deadly when a young boy, Beau, starts hanging out with his cousin, Sumpter. See, his cousin likes to play in this creepy, rundown shack he calls Neverland, and there he keeps a crate with something mysterious inside.

Sumpter gets Beau and his older sisters to join in on his “games,” which involve praying to the terrible, merciless god, Lucy, who demands that they steal, write swear words on the walls, and give blood sacrifices. Inside of Neverland is a nightmarish world where the children hallucinate and feed on each other’s blood.

Meanwhile, the adults pay little attention to the children, as they are too busy having their own drunken arguments and dysfunction. But Grammy Weenie, who is old and severe and confined to a wheelchair, reveals to Beau that there is something not quite right about the shack, and that he should stay away from his cousin Sumpter… that he should not “let it out to play.”

The dark and brutal history of Neverland unravels as ghosts are dredged up from watery graves and Sumpter turns on Beau in order to get his final sacrifice, which will raise Lucy and the other god, the dark god: The Devourer of All.

Why it will keep you up at night: Clegg’s narrative is captivating; you are instantly transported to this old-fashioned Southern world where the kids run around barefoot in the swamp and the carnival sits half-dead with the rusting husks of out-of-service rides. Slowly, insidiously, the creepiness begins, and by the time you get to the climax you are going head-to-head with all manner of supernatural grotesqueries.

Both the descriptions and the characters pull you into this story, which is ultimately about childhood and the loss of innocence. Though the narrator is a child, this is not a book for children. Definitely not a novel to pass up.

Watch the book trailer here:

Horror on TV: The River

The renaissance of horror television continues with ABC’s new show, The River, which debuted a few weeks ago. Emmett Cole, who has hosted a nature show for 20 years, has gone missing, and his family gets a crew together to go on a rescue mission down the Amazon, filming all the while so they can make a TV show out of it. Along the way, they encounter all sorts of magical nasties from Amazonian folklore. It’s shot documentary-style, presented as “found footage.” Kind of a show-within-a-show.

Think of it as a strange mash-up of LOST, Supernatural, and Paranormal Activity.

Does it measure up to its predecessors? It’s only been on for three weeks, but in my opinion, the answer is no. It straddles that line where it’s got so much potential to be awesome, and it has those cool moments of creepiness that made the first season of Supernatural so entertaining… but something about it just feels off.

Maybe it’s the characters. I really don’t care about any of them… maybe because they don’t seem to care much about each other, willing to sacrifice others for the sake of the mission. Also, they’re a bit one-dimensional: the disloyal wife, the disaffected son, the guy who just cares about making a TV show, the mysterious traitor with an agenda of his own, and, of course, the weird girl who speaks only Spanish and whose sole purpose is to warn the others about impending danger thanks to her bizarrely huge knowledge of, and belief in, local legend.

Also, a requisite dead body or two.

The one episode that really came together for me was the second part of the 2-hour premier, where they stumble onto a place similar to the Island of the Dolls in Mexico. It’s pretty hard to screw up a bunch of creepy-ass dolls hanging morbidly in various stages of decay around a remote section of jungle.

There are some great moments in this episode where the cameras are rolling while everyone sleeps, and subtle things happem: a doll’s head turns; someone is slid from his tent. Here the Paranormal Activity-esque camerawork is in their favor, as they speed up time in that creepy way where everything moves very quickly. This episode had a satisfying resolution as they solved the mystery of the haunting.

"Come play with us..."

Unfortunately, the rest of the episodes fail to live up to this one. At this point, the most interesting part of the show is the legends they encounter, so I feel they should really focus on those. They try, but a lot of it gets lost due to shoddy exposition that fails to fully explain what’s going on, leaving the viewer a little confused and wishing she knew more about all the weird shit that’s happening to them.

This leaves me torn on the show. It could be awesome, but it just fails to live up to that potential, so I keep watching to see if it will succeed again like the doll episode did. I don’t have a whole lot of hope for that, but my curiosity about what happened to Emmett and what bit of legend they’ll encounter next might just keep me watching as long as I’ve got free time on Tuesday nights.

But that’s just one person’s opinion. Has anyone else been watching this? What do you think so far?

Flash Fiction: Cold-Blooded Genesis

Remember how I won that flash fiction contest at Necon E-Books? Well, my entry “12.21.12″ was the winner, but I actually submitted two pieces, which both came to me in one big rush of inspiration. I agree that the former is probably the superior hundred-word story, but I like this one too, so I thought I’d share it. The prompt, if you’ll recall, was “new beginnings.”

COLD-BLOODED GENESIS

From out the barren wasteland crawled a lone and broken figure, skin sizzling against gridiron ground, cracked and smoldering in the bloated red sun’s infernal glare.

How he had survived the bombs and blistered earth escaped him. He was alone. Blood boiling. Dying slowly in Hell-on-Earth.

Until the haze of smoky air parted around a green reptilian form, scaled and sharp-tailed. The female skittered closer on the deadland.

The immensity of their aloneness in this broken world flattened him.

“We’ll start a new one,” hissed the female lizard. “What’s your name?”

“Adam,” he said to his new companion. “You?”

“Eve.”

Pandora’s Pick of the Week: “IT”

IT

By Stephen King

Background: Published in 1986, this leviathan novel is over 1,000 pages. But, unlike The Stand (in my opinion), every one of those pages is well-earned. If you are interested in the story, don’t just watch the mini-series with Tim Curry; it pales in comparison.

What it’s about: Two narratives drive the story of a group of seven outcasts, one in the ’50s when they were kids, and one in the ’80s when they return to their hometown of Derry, Maine, all grown up, to face their childhood fears.

In the ’50s, they were terrorized by a shapeshifting monster that most often appeared as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. They dub the monster “It,” as it is so foreign a thing, and slowly their worst nightmares come to life. Of course, the adults don’t believe them, so the children are forced to contend with the beast on their own.

Meanwhile, in the ’80s, one of their number has committed suicide, and they are all asked to return home by the one who stayed in Derry. They converge, their memories of childhood fuzzy. Apparently, adulthood makes you forget about the psycho clown you once fought. But sure enough, Pennywise insinuates himself into their lives once again, and they are forced into the realization that they did not, in fact, best the creature back when they were kids.

The two narratives are woven together so that the climax of each of the timelines happens at the same time, doubling the tension as you scramble through the pages. The monster leads them down into its home, the sewers, for each final confrontation.

Why it will keep you up at night: Yes, the mini-series scared you when you were 5, but now it’s sort of silly, even (especially) the part where he turns into a giant spider. You are left thinking that Pennywise is a weird clown/spider, and that’s it.

Wrong.

Pennywise is a creature of Lovecraftian proportions and is much, much scarier in the book than in the movie. The creature’s real form cannot be perceived by our puny eyes, as the creature comes from a void outside of our universe. Its true form, which exists outside of our matter, is called the deadlights and appears to us as a swirling mass of orange light (and if you see it, you’ll promptly go insane).

In the book, the group must perform the Ritual of Chüd (which is a complicated way of metally biting on the creature’s tongue) to destroy it, and the climax is so surreal and outside of our perception that it is no wonder they didn’t try to render it visually in the movie, but instead left it as a silly face-off with a giant spider.

The book is so much more nuanced and complex than the movie, which is not surprising, as it is a long-ass book. It’s also creepy as hell. If you had nightmares about Tim Curry as Pennywise, just wait til you see all the horrifying stuff in the book that they left out. This one gets five stars from me, as it is my favorite Stephen King book.

Valentine’s Day Zombie Love by A7X

I can think of no more heartwarming love story than the musical number in the video below. It really has all the classic staples of true love that you want to enjoy on this fine Valentine’s Day: bleeding hearts, cannibalism, necrophilia, and a zombie wedding!

Avenged Sevenfold warms your cold corpse with their tale of undying love in “A Little Piece of Heaven” (though that might be the heater he got for your thighs). Unfortunately, the video prohibits embedding, so just follow the link to YouTube to watch it there. It’ll be better than any romantic comedy you pop into the DVD player today, trust me.

Ah, true love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Pandora’s Pick of the Week: “Hell House”

HELL HOUSE

By Richard Matheson

Background: First published in 1971 by the author of I Am Legend, this book is known as the quintissential haunted house novel. Matheson, a well-known name in the horror genre, wrote many short stories and novels, as well as the screenplays for film adaptations and episodes of The Twilight Zone.

What it’s about: Hell House is an infamous house of horrors built on a remote, foggy piece of land beside a tarn. A wealthy but ill man, Deutsch, sends four people into the house to determine if there is an afterlife as he nears his own demise, including Dr. Barrett, a scientist; his wife, Edith; Florence Tanner, a spiritualist and mental medium; and Benjamin Fischer, a medium who was the only survivor of a previous journey into Hell House.

While Tanner becomes entangled with the sex-crazed ghosts, Dr. Barrett works on a machine that he believes will reverse the electromagnetic energy that is making the house appear haunted. As the danger increases, Edith comes to believe that there is more than science at play here, and Fischer must open himself up to the horrors that he once escaped many years ago.

The four different people all come together to try and learn the mystery of Hell House… but overpowering the deadly house is more than any of them bargained for.

Why it will keep you up at night: I admit, for the majority of the book I wasn’t terribly impressed. There were great moments of violence and creepiness, but the overemphasis on sexual debauchery, the point-of-view changes, and the one-dimensional characters fell a little flat for me.

However, the ending brought together these wandering elements and finally introduced some real horror into what was otherwise a rather lackluster haunted house. There is some great imagery and real mystery at the end, answering questions that were lost, or even unasked, in the first 200-some pages.

While a killer ending (no pun intended) can never make up for a meandering middle, I was entertained by the classic book nonetheless. The legend of Hell House lives on…

Flash Fiction: 12.21.12

Hey all! I’m one of 3 winners of Necon E-Books’ January flash fiction contest. Every month they put up a new prompt, and you have up to 100 words to respond to it. They really like horror, sci-fi, etc. As it was the start of a new year, January’s prompt was “new beginnings.”

You can go to the site here to read my winning entry, “12.21.12“: perhaps the world is not what we think it is…

I find their contests to be a fun monthly writing exercise, and if you don’t feel you got it right the first time around, you are welcome to submit multiple entries every month. The winners of each month are also compiled at the end of the year into a flash fiction anthology, which is pretty cool.

It’s not easy to write a 100-word story, but it’s truly an exercise in brevity and the mark of a good writer who can accomplish such a feat. If you’ve ever thought of dabbling in flash, you should check out the contest.

For February they’re doing something a little different, though: horror haikus! Should be interesting. I’m not really a fan of the haiku but I’ll probably try my hand at it anyway. The rules for each month’s prompt are posted below last month’s winners, so scroll down to check it out.