Fearsome Five: Five Books For When the Weather Outside is Frightful

When the weather outside is frightful, the song says, but it can be frightful because while the snow might be falling outside there might be something sinister inside. Christmas has come and gone, and it was for many a soggy one. But there is some bitterly cold weather around the corner. I enjoy the snow, but I enjoy it from the safety of my home, watching the snow majestically fall outside without me having to shovel it. Polar vortex, you say? Then don’t be outside if you can be inside, and cuddle up to some reads that keeps the snow where it belongs: in our imaginations.

Snowblind by Christopher Golden. The editor of Hark!The Herald Angels Scream, as well as an author of his own fiction, demonstrates he knows what chills someone’s blood. The town of Coventry has weathered some bad blizzards, storms that have taken loved ones literally without a trace. Now there’s a new blizzard but its bringing back old ghosts, and these ghosts have very specific people to haunt. Brothers, spouses, and others are targeted as this storm looks to increase its tally of lives stolen.

The Terror by Dan Simmons. Not content to simply stay home and watch the snow around them, the crew of the HMS Terror has journeyed to find the Northwest Passage only to find a harsh winter approaching and a truly terrible creature haunting them. A blend of historical fiction and supernatural horror, this book could be for fans of Alma Katsu’s diabolical Donner Party tale TheHunger. Also, any fans of the series on which this book is based may want to see where the Terror originated.

Travelers Rest by Keith Lee Morris. Those familiar with the gothic tradition/trope of stormy nights and being forced to stay the night in a place where they obviously shouldn’t be staying will recognize it as a the Addison family (husband, wife, son, and fresh-from-rehab Uncle Robbie) to stop for the night in the town of Goodnight, Idaho as a snowstorm rages around them. However, the book takes a hard right into the Twilight Zone as the family is not only physically separated but experiencing their own separate time periods and realities, unable to find one another. The book might not be the best beach reading, and not because of the snowstorm within. With reality unmooring as readers flow along Morris’s surreal sentences, it becomes very easy as a reader to drift into Goodnight’s clutches.

30 Days of Night by Steve Niles. It’s a graphic novel, with an emphasis on the graphic as some vampires finally begin using their heads and head up north to the town of Barrow, Alaska, where the sun goes down and stays down for 30 days, leaving plenty of time for the undead to feed. If the snow-covered scenery and plight of Barrow’s sheriff doesn’t give you a twinge of cabin fever, picture a night that never ends, a night that is full of artist Ben Templesmith’s vampires that are mostly teeth and tongue.

The Shining by Stephen King. People can argue all day about how the Shining entered our pop culture lexicon. Was it through Jack Nicholson’s performance as frustrated novelist Jack Torrance? The eye-catching and subversive visuals of Kubrick’s film? Kubrick’s film may have spawned a few parodies, from Simpsons to memes about Jack being a dull boy, but where would the film be without Stephen King’s tale of overbearing isolation and bubbling-to-the-surface trauma? People probably know the story: Jack Torrance, writer and disgraced English teacher, is forced to take the job of winter caretaker at the Overlook hotel. He, his wife, and son soon discover that despite the wind whooping outside and snowdrifts piling up that they are not alone in the house, that the Overlook wants to make the family, especially Danny and his Shining, a permanent part of it. Nicholson’s performance is memorable but nowhere near as subtle or as heartbreaking as King depicts. Jack Torrance in the book is a broken man, who might have been a good man if not for his demons, exploited by the hotel until Jack succumbs to them. Add King’s depiction of the hotel as not just the setting but the primary antagonist and this is a book that lives up to the adage of the book being better than the movie.

New Arrival: Review of Laird Hunt's In the House in the Dark of the Woods

Long-time readers of fairy tales know that it’s a terrible idea to go into the woods. Not only are there wolves in terrible disguises and old women who love their children medium well, journeying into the woods means straying from the path you know and that you know is safe. Sure, Bilbo had a grand adventure, but there were plenty of times he could have died, a victim of his great adventure. In horror fiction, the dangers in the woods can cause not only physical harm but psychological as well. In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt (a short read despite a long title) is a great example of the woods, the antithesis of civilization, being apt to change you in ways you didn’t expect.

The story is told through a woman simply named Goody, a woman in the 1800’s who narrates how she has gotten lost and is unable to get home to her husband and son. From Goldilocks and the Three Bears to The Blair Witch Project, stories like this have illustrated how not knowing your way creates unease and drives the plot. As Goody wanders, trying to find her way back home, she finds assistance, as well as obstruction, from women she encounters on her journey, including the crusty Captain Jane and the effervescent Eliza, doing everything for her from feeding her to taking her on enchanted boat rides. The story, though short, isn’t necessarily a breeze to read through as Goody’s narration sometimes devolves into stream of consciousness and the very strange aspects of the experience means the very underpinning of logic is suspect. Is what she experiencing real? If it’s a dream, Laird Hunt’s sentences make sure it’s a darkly beautiful one.

Like Jeremy Shipp’s home invasion (and mind invasion) novel Bedfellow, this book is not one to be breezed through. The reader, as they accompany Goody on her journey, will start to doubt what came before, who exactly is who, and what exactly is going on. This book is not a book with a neat, tidy ending. This story owes much of its bones to Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” but becomes its own animal by traversing away from the straight-ahead morality tale and letting itself drift on the currents of a fever dream, becoming a fairy tale more about female empowerment than rather than any hard lesson. The wilds of the forest are all around Goody, and the reader, but they may also be inside.