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.  

Screen to Scream: Krampus and Wraith: Welcome to Christmasland

Ellen Datlow has an anthology of stories called The Doll Collection. The Child’s Play movies features a killer doll possessed by the soul of a serial killer, and that series is getting a more robot-goes-wild kind of remake. I could give more examples of demonic toys (Demonic Toys is also a franchise), and I could also talk about the notion of the uncanny valley and how it relates to a fear of dolls, but in horror, there is always a tendency to take something innocent (a child’s toy, for example) and twist it into something frightening. So let’s hop in Krampus’s magic sleigh, travel past the island of misfit toys with a stop at Christmasland because the Scary Librarian is looking at some twisted toys and horrid holiday celebrations in this month’s Screen to Screams.

Many people are familiar with the Krampus legend, which is basically anti-Santa, about a demonic creature that whips naughty children and then ferries them to the underworld. Michael Dougherty, the director of Trick R’ Treat, offers a nasty nugget of humorous holiday horror in Krampus by having the titular holiday bogeyman terrify a family who were caught without the holiday spirit. Many might think of spending the holidays with family as a sort of endurance test, but young Max is really not looking forward to having his boorish uncle and his family pay a visit, especially as it adds stress to his parents’ fracturing relationship. After a holiday blowup, he tears up a letter to Santa, which invites Krampus to wreak havoc on everyone from his Martha Stewart-esque mother to his gun-toting uncle. If you like holiday horror, this movie has everything from angry Christmas cookies to toys that play way too rough. More funny than scary at times, Krampus is a holiday movie that revels in its zaniness while keeping at its core a relatable family who, despite their obvious differences of opinions, come together to face the horrific nonsense that explodes around them.

Still zany but a little darker is Charlie Manx’s version of Christmasland. For those of you who’ve read NOS4A2 (I recently did a review about it), you remember Charlie Manx, the ruler and creator of Christmasland, but there was a time before he had his fateful run-in with Vic McQueen. Fans of Joe Hill’s Locke and Key graphic novel series will enjoy his prequel story/graphic novel The Wraith: Welcome to Christmasland. The story begins with a prison break with Charlie driving his very famous getaway car, and the escapees do indeed get away to Charlie’s magical land and get to see some of the children-turned-monsters he has brought there. This story has an emotional core as one of the prisoners, a father who’d just lost his son, is one of the few among the ragtag group Charlie takes that has a heart and that heart hurts for his lost son, who helps him stay ahead of Charlie’s minions. One of the great things about this being a graphic novel is actually seeing Christmasland thanks to the disturbing artwork of Gabriel Rodriguez and Charles Paul Wilson III. Prepare to see in all their sinister glory the monster-children-turned-Manx-minions in costume and a moon with Manx’s face whose massive size alone is terrifying. The graphic novel even presents the origin of Charlie Manx and how Christmasland came to be, injecting a syringe full of tragedy into Manx’s character.  Both stories are a great method of catharsis after a stressful holiday, allowing you to both laugh and scream.

Have You Read This? Review of NOS4A2

Around this time of year, people may have noticed that there are a lot of movies featuring homicidal Santas (Silent Night, Deadly Night and Santa’s Sleigh are two examples). There’s also, believe it or not, more than one movie about Krampus, the dark side of the Santa legend, a monster that punishes the bad rather than reward the good. Christmas, it seems, is fertile ground for horror, but the most unique take on a Christmas-themed monster is Charlie Manx from Joe Hill’s NOS4A2. Not only does Hill use the Christmas backdrop in an originally frightening way, but he also adds his own spin on the vampire mythos.

The book’s title comes from the license plate on his car, a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith. The car is linked to Charlie Manx as well as the device he uses to feed: it is his main mode of transportation throughout the novel, the key to entering a world of Manx’s own creation called Christmasland, and the talisman used to drain the children he takes to Christmasland, turning those children into monstrosities as twisted as Manx. Christmasland not only serves as a lure for the children Manx takes there but it’s also the “stomach” he uses to digest their goodness. The stolen kids practically have the run of Christmasland, but their ideas of fun and games have degenerated into games like “Scissors for the Drifter.”

Enter Vic McQueen, a young girl who, like Manx, has a power tied to an object. She has a bike that can allow her to go virtually anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, that power brings her into the path of Charlie Manx. Though she survives the encounter, she is traumatized by the event, prevented from living a normal life by Manx’s children. The stakes are raised even further when Manx, who wakes after a long coma, discovers Vic has a son and a potential candidate for Christmasland. Vic McQueen is a compelling character, a woman who tries to ignore her gift but ultimately finds the strength to confront Manx thanks to the unconditional love of her son, making her a hero to root for. However, it’s hard to compete with Charlie Manx, who is such a unique villain, one who claims that he is “saving” his victims, very much like an adult Peter Pan.

The descriptions of Christmasland could easily be a neighborhood in the North Pole where Santa is afraid to park his sleigh. Think about Santa Claus, Indiana abandoned for the night, where the rides might work but there are monsters hiding beneath them, in alleys. Eventually, you notice there are a lot of places to hide, lots of dark alleys. The rides are distracting and you find yourself turning just a little too slowly to catch something moving in your peripheral vision. Hill takes a Christmas-themed amusement park and adds his own monstrous twists to all the attractions, including the children brought there to play forever.

Like his father Stephen King, Hill definitely knows how to create a strong emotional core to underpin his horror, and Christmasland and Charlie Manx and every other twisted bit of lore he incorporates works because of that underpinning. That’s what makes this story a delight not just during the holidays, after the kids are in bed and the egg nog’s all drunk, but all year round.