That got me to thinking about not just my favorite horror stories but about my favorite horror novels. I love top ten lists, so I thought I'd compile my top ten list of favorite horror novels.
Now you should know that I grew up on horror novels. The first time I ever remember going to the new Red Lake Falls public library, I couldn't believe they were going to let me walk out with a hard cover copy of Stephen King's Pet Sematary! And I was in sixth grade!
I never made it all the way through it. I did get to the part where the Judd's explore the area behind their house, which the kids have turned into a pet "sematary" due to the busy road that runs through the area and claims pets at an alarming rate.
But it bored me, and I gave up. But then in seventh grade I discovered the magazine Fangoria, which was devoted to all things horror - movies and books, and I was hooked. That lead me to Dean R. Koontz's Watchers. Then I read his Twilight Eyes, Phantoms, and Midnight. Then I worked my way through most of King's books. Eventually I came across King's classic nonfiction book on horror, Dance Macabre. At the end of it, King compiles a list of a hundred of the best horror novels.
Once I discovered that - along with the fact that by this time we had moved to a farm where I had little to do (and the fact that my mom was a voracious reader too) - it was game on. The RLF library could hardly keep up with my inner-library loan requests.
Though I have been reading mostly nonfiction for the past 15 years, I still will carve out time to read a new horror book every so often, and some of those have made it onto this list!
Here we go . . .
10. Watchers by Dean Koontz.
I have only read this once, and I'll explain why in a bit.
This one was my first Koontz book, and I still think it's one of his "best." It is the tale of a dog and a monster. The dog - a golden retriever - is the positive result of the experiment, while the monster is the negative result. The monster - which is like a werewolf that never changes back into its human form - escapes from the secret government lab. I can't recall why on earth the government was performing this experiment (and to be honest, in books like this, it's better off not even wondering about that), but the do manages to escape too.
While the monster goes on a rampage, the dog somehow finds the main character and the two bond when the man realizes just how intelligent the dog is. They go on a quest to stop the beast.
Two things about this book - the is one scene that just crushed me. Of course, the monster is evil and must be killed. But at one point - just as they are about to kill it - the monster sees a picture of Mickey Mouse (of all things). And it exclaims "Mickey!" In a moment of joy (of course, right before it's killed). It seems that while it was being created or genetically engineered, it had seen or watched Mickey Mouse cartoons.
That scene just crushed me as a kid. Yes, it was a horrible monster, but it still had that one little innocent part inside it.
The second thing about the book - I have never re-read it. Why not? I find that books like this are better left in the past. In other words, I would rather have my memories of it as they are, from my seventh grade perspective. I don't want to read it now from my English teacher perspective.
I learned this lesson when I ordered a copy of Koontz's Twilight Eyes during the summer after my first year teaching when I had some down time. I remember that book so fondly and loved it. I thought it was great and creepy as hell.
When I started re-reading it, though, I realized just how bad it was. Cliche word choices, horrible prose, and giant leaps of chance and coincidence. It was absurd. I only made it about 50 pages in before I gave up.
It's like re-watching a film you loved as a kid (like Godzilla) and then realizing just how "cringey" - to use my son's wording - it really is (like thinking Godzilla was so cool when you were five but then when you were 15, you realize it was just a guy in a crappy giant lizard suit doing a terrible job of acting).
So I'm never going to re-read Watchers. I'm just going to remember it from my 13 year old point of view.
It makes this list solely on the fact that the "Mickey!" scene with the monster just hit me in the gut and leveled me.
9. The Manse by Lisa Cantrell.
I realize that part of the reason I love these books so much is the story of how I acquired them. I bought Cantrell's Halloween haunted house fest while Christmas shopping way back in 1987. I managed to land this when Mom, Dad, and I made one of two annual trips to Grand Forks (the other was for buying fireworks). I still remember seeing that wicked cover in B. Dalton in the Mall and being hooked. I started reading it in the back of our Skylark on the way home.
If you know me, it seems perfectly normal to pick up a Halloween book while Christmas shopping. I recall spending several days in Mr. Matzke's room for study hall reading this. I didn't realize it until years later that this book actually won a Stoker Award (think of the Academy Awards for horror fiction) for best first novel.
Unlike Watchers, I did re-read this just last year. It still held up. There are some truly horrific scenes. The book opens in a town that has the annual JayCee's Haunted House. It takes in thousands of dollars and draws crowds from all around the area. The only problem - the "Manse," the house in which the JayCee's hold their haunted house has a terrible history. And it's been holding all of the terror that the JayCee's have been invoking on the attendees over the years. On the 30th anniversary of the JayCee's Haunted House festival, the house will strike.
One of the best scenes happens right away. One of the main characters is doing crowd control outside of the house when he sees some kids wandering around off limits. He catches them sends them home. One of the kids comments how crazy the living statue in the back garden was. It scared them all. The JayCee chuckles. Then he wonders, but there isn't any living statue or anything even set up in the back garden . . . And then we are off and running.
The ending is great too. The only problem is that the book is so good the author had no where to go but down from here. She has published two more novels - one Torments is a very uneven sequel to The Manse.
But she can at least claim that she beat out some incredibly talented writers (including Clive Baker, who we will see later on this list, and his debut novel, The Damnation Game) to earn a Stoker award for her first book.
8. Pet Sematary by Stephen King
One thing I like most about a book is how reading it is far more than just the story. Every book I've ever read connects to the context in which I read it. As I said earlier, I remember walking out of the RLF public library proudly carrying the hard cover version of this book, but only making it part of the way through (and it ruined me on how to spell cemetery too).
When I finally got around to reading this it was the summer of 1989. I began it on the front porch of my parents house - which always seemed cooler than the rest of the house and allowed for a nice breeze to run through. I continued to read it all the way down to Minneapolis, where we stayed with my Jack and Sal (my uncle and aunt) while Mom went to the U of M hospital for a condition with her eyes. I read it in the waiting room. I read it on the way home, even when Dad insisted on driving us north of Minneapolis to Duluth to see the large ships come in.
I recall him several times telling me to look up and see the beauty of Duluth and how big the ships were. I did, but I also soon returned to Pet Sematary. I am reminded of that now when I tell my own two kids to look up to appreciate something, and they are staring at their books or phones or Nintendo DS or something other piece of entertainment.
As for the book, this is one that is still every bit as good as it was when I first read it all those years ago, I just had to stop reading it, for I've changed too much since I read it as a 15 year old.
The book features the Creed family: dad, mom, daughter, and toddler son. They move to a smaller Maine town so the dad can run the medical program at the university. However, tragedy ensues, despite the warnings from the older - grandfather like - neighbor.
First the dad has a student die whose last words are directed solely to him as a warning. Then the daughter's cat is hit by a car. And we have our first major theme rear its ugly head: death.
Dad is going to bury it in the "Pet Sematary" that the children of the neighborhood have constructed in the nearby woods. However, the neighbor, Jud, states that there is a way to bring the cat back . . . if Dad buries it in an older cemetery far beyond the "Pet Sematary." It's an old Indian burial ground.
Sure enough, the two do just that. And the cat returns. Kind of.
Well, things continue and soon one of the children dies. It is at this part that the story is truly horrific. This is why I can't re-read it. I found it horrific in '89 when I was an idiot 15 year old. What would I think of it now when I have my own family? That's too much.
In fact, after King wrote this - he had a young family at the time too - he put it in a drawer and left it. It was just too raw and painful. It's one thing to write about the death of a child when you're a bachelor. It's another thing to write about it when you have a child yourself. That causes you to envision horrific scenarios and experience those terrible emotions.
And the ending. Well, I've never forgotten those last few lines. They are one of the best in all of horror fiction.
7. Wolf Hunt by Jeff Strand
Buckle up and hold on. This is the wildest book on this list. And that is saying something! I read this a few years ago, and I've read it again since. It is that good.
First, it's hilarious. I haven't read a horror book with so much humor in it before. In fact, Kristie actually read this one because I would just break out laughing while reading it.
Second, Strand's work is amazing. He is a purple cow (read this and you'll see what I mean). He takes charters and puts them in such insane situations that you have to just wonder how he came up with it. I think he has some dice game he uses. He has a card of improbably situations related to the number on one di and then a card of crazy characters related to the number on the other di. Then he tosses them and compares the numbers to the situation and characters on their respective cards and comes up with a story.
I don't know how else he does it.
In this case, you have Lou and George. They are kind hearted thugs, mercenaries, basically, for whoever wants to pay them. In this case, it's a crime lord who is paying them to transport a man, Ivan, in a van across Florida. Doesn't sound too crazy, right?
Oh yeah, Ivan is in a cage.
Oh yeah, he is a werewolf.
They just have to deliver him alive and undamaged to the crime lord and they will get paid.
Well, it all goes to hell from there.
George gets angry at Ivan, who keeps antagonizing the two. George is just going to punch Ivan once in the face to get him to shut up. Unfortunately, for George, this is just what Ivan wants, for he is a werewolf. Unlike other "traditional" werewolves, though, Ivan can transform any part of himself into a werewolf instantly and any given moment.
So he transforms his arm into a werewolf arm, which is must longer and stronger than the average human arm, and he seizes George by the throat.
Of course, Lou takes Ivan up on his bargain to either let him free or he will rip George's head free of his shoulders.
And that's just the first 25 pages! Ivan is a true psychopath. He is going to cause as much death and destruction as possible.
The crime lord still wants his shipment back, so he sends in a professional group of werewolf hunters.
Of course, George and Lou still have pride in their work and seek to catch Ivan and return him to the cage and deliver him to the crime lord.
And it just gets insane along the way. You won't regret this one. I've never read an author with such a flair for the horrific and the hilarious all on the same page.
6. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.
This came way of King's list of the 100 best horror books of the past 50 years, which he includes at the end of his first nonfiction book, Danse Macabre (which I picked up at a book store in downtown Minneapolis on the same trip with Mom and Dad when I was reading Pet Sematary).
Don't let the horrible Will Smith movie-version of this book dissuade you from reading it. This is far superior to that terrible excuse for a film.
This is the story of Robert Neville, who, thanks to a bite from a vampire bat when he was in the military (if memory serves me correctly), he is the lone survivor of a vampire plague that sweeps across America - and it seems - the world.
He spends his nights barricaded up in his house safe from the vampires while during the day he scours the city to try and find and kill as many of them as he can.
This was my first introduction to Matheson's writing (I would go on to read The Incredible Shrinking Man a few months later). It is all straight forward, no-holds-barred, in-your-face horror.
I remember my pulse racing in one scene where Neville loses track of time - I think he was at a library - and realizes that he only has a few minutes before sunset and he has miles to go before he can get safely to his house. That creeped me out. It was as if I was right there in that scene with him.
That's the best when that happens.
I think this book stuck with me and had such an impact due to the ending (spoilers ahead). The vampires eventually organize themselves and come for Neville. He sees them killing his neighbor, a vampire himself, but not one of the 'worthy' vampires. Neville, who had searched for the sleeping spot of his neighbor for years (it was his chimney), sees them kill him, and it hit me - this book isn't about just vampires. It's about us. These could be the Nazis.
In the final scene, as Neville is going to be publicly executed in front of the vampires, he sneaks a peek at the crowd gathered to witness his death. He realizes that he is the monster. He is the 'legend.' He is the one they will tell stories about this terrible man who hunted them down while they were sleeping and killed them.
Mind blown! I'll never forget that moment.
5. The Fisherman - John Langan
I just wrote about this book. Easily the best horror novel I've read in the past year.
4. The Traveling Vampire Show - Richard Laymon
Another Stoker Award winner here. This book is the day in the life of three teenagers: Rusty, Slim, and Dwight. One day while Rusty and Dwight are out prowling around their small town one day when they see a poster nailed to a tree advertising the one-night only Traveling Vampire Show. Rusty, especially, is intrigued and talks Dwight into going, even though Dwight's dad is the sheriff and would never let him actually attend.
As they venture around town, they see more advertisements for the show. And they are determined to attend.
That's about everything. Only it isn't. Laymon does such a good job depicted the minds of teenagers that it felt like he was writing about my life (I would have been Dwight, NOT Rusty).
Laymon turns every day occurrences into creepy events that unnerve the reader. He slowly builds up to the climax (the vampire show, of course). Suddenly, you realize he has an incredible amount to resolve . . . and there are only 20 pages left! And it is the wildest finish of any book I have ever read.
I recommend this book to a few of my College Comp II students who like horror books, and none have ever been disappointed. In fact, I had one read the entire book in one day while another bought me a new copy to replace my old, beat up one, and he wrote me an incredibly kind note on the inside cover.
3. The Books of Blood by Clive Barker
The only short story anthology to make this list. I recall coming across Barker's name in an issue of Fangoria. I was elated when this book came in to the RLF library via the inter-library system. I even recall reading my first story from it, "Rawhead Rex," as Mom drove up to TRF for one of her eye appointments.
I had never read anything this unrelenting before. The story is one of his best, and it's absolutely vicious. The good guys are almost helpless against Rex. I recall early on in the story, Rex, a primordial monster who is freed from his prison by accident when a farmer digs him up, gobbles up an infant in front of the child's mother. I had never read anything like that before. And the story never lets up.
Another one of my favorite stories is "The Yattering and Jack," which is about a minor demon of hell sent to torment a man whose soul was promised to Satan, only to have the child's mother recant before her death. Thus, he must send the yattering to haunt Jack so that he damns himself and the devil can get his soul. But Jack is on to the scheme after awhile, and he isn't going to give up his soul so easily. This is one of my all time favorite Christmas stories.
"Twilight at the Towers" is one of the best werewolf stories I have ever read. "In the Hills, the Cities" is one of the most wildly original horror stories I've ever read. "Human Remains" is one of the best horror stories I've ever read, which reads me to the best horror story of all time, "Pig Blood Blues," which is the best story in the book.
I won't wreck it for you, but this one is nastier than "Rawhead Rex," and is still one that I try to re-read every fall.
2. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris.
I saw this reviewed in Fangoria too, but dismissed it because of the cover. What great horror movie has a freaking butterfly on it? But my older brother, Kevin, read it from the library and raved about it, so I had to check it out. I read it in the fall of my junior year - ahead of the movie that came out later that same year.
The movie is amazing. But the book is better. Not far better, but better.
Harris has a knack for imagining the most horrific things possible and rendering them in prose. Below is an example I use with my College Comp class for the power of suggestion.
His pulse never got over eighty-five! What does this poor nurse's face look like now? Harris never shows us. He just gives us this description.
Blew me away.
Harris has several other books in the Hannibal Lecter series (the first, Red Dragon, is excellent, and the follow up to Lambs, Hannibal, is okay while the prequel Hannibal Rising is average), but I think this is the best.
I have never seen a villain like Buffalo Bill. I have never seen a villain, like Hannibal Lecter, used as a hero before.
I've read this three times since, and this classic holds up.
1. Cry Wolf by Alan B. Chronister.
First, the cover has nothing to do with the book. Don't let it fool you.
Second, Alan B. Chronister has to be a pseudonym for another author. Chronister has never written another book, even though this one is set up perfectly for an equally horrifying sequel.
Third, this is the best werewolf novel I have ever read (edging out RR Martin's classic The Skin Trade - mainly because that book really is more of a novella and not a true novel). I read this in the summer of 1987. Oddly enough, I listened to the album Priest . . . Live by Judas Priest which somehow became a soundtrack to it (Breaking the Law, Love Bites, Heading out to the Highway, Metal Gods, Some Heads are Gonna Role, Out in the Cold . . .). In fact, if I hear any of those songs, I'm reminded of this book.
Unlike Koontz's work, I did go through with a second read of this book in 2017. While it was still good, nothing will replace how this book gripped me in the summer of 1987.
It is the story of a man who is the bastard son of a priest born on Christmas Eve. That mixes a bit of folklore about how a werewolf is actually made. Some say a bastard son of a priest is cursed to be a werewolf and others say that if a child is born on Christmas Eve, it is destined to be a werewolf too.
This man, Joshua, starts his own colony in a small rural town. He seeks to select specific people to follow him into lycanthropy.
While this is happening our main character, Rudy, a book illustrator, and his girlfriend, Evelyn, a children's author, moves to the same small town for the summer. Well, Joshua takes a liking to Evenlyn and seeks to eliminate Rudy.
But that is really only part of the story. Joshua's "pack" preys on campers and hikers, so it has some incredible hunt scenes.
The final third of the book is excellent and the book ends with one of the best conclusions to any werewolf story I've ever read.
No comments:
Post a Comment