[532] Pet Sematary – Stephen King

” Along the other, he saw some sort of monster emerging from the woods behind the house. He had accepted so much that he did not balk at the idea of monsters, or even of daemons, discorporeal beings of evil from the outerworld which might well take charge of a reanimated body from which the original soul had fled. ” (Ch.44, p.420)

After reading Pet Sematary, my second Stephen King book, it’s safe for me to say that King delivers more than just a masterful handling of conventions in his genre. His books give me pleasure above and beyond the entertainment of a good scare. He knows that we live in an over-stimulated and frightening world, so death, disease, and mere allusion to ghosts would hardly have a grip on our attention. In Pet Sematary, King creates chilling invention out of innocuous object, a cat named Church, that is, not quite a cat anymore.

And, really, it wasn’t—except he knew that now the letter would never be written because the parade has a way of moving on, and tomorrow would bring something new. But he had bought that he, hadn’t he? The rat that Church had brought in, surely clawed to bloody ribbons, its intestines dragging, its head perhaps gone. (Ch.33, p.288)

Into a beautiful old house in rural Maine the Creeds move. Louis Creed is a physician in his mid-30s, the job at the university infirmary has relocated him, his wife, his 5-year-old daughter and his infant son from Chicago to Ludlow. A path at the end of his property leads to a pet cemetery and it’s annex, a swamp that was an Indian burial ground rich with possibility and textured with strength. As a doctor he thinks he accepts death, but it’s an unexamined, shallow-rooted acceptance. What he cannot bear is his wife’s and daughter’s fear of death, a fear precipitated by a visit to the cemetery. When the family cat is killed by a truck, the old man from across the road takes Louis into the woods and shows him the town’s dark secret, a truth that is more terrifying than death itself. When the beast comes back to life, it’s hardly an animal, more a reanimated body from which the original soul had fled. The rest of the story is obvious, but not the least grisly and truly scary at times: Louis Creed will inevitably bring back a person with catastrophic consequences for all.

His screams echoed and racketed shrilly through this house where now only dead lived and walked. Eyes bulging, face livid, hair standing on end, he screamed; the sounds came from his swollen throat, like the bells of hell, terrible shrieks that signaled the end of not of love but of sanity; in his mind all the hideous images were suddenly unloosed at once. (Ch.61, p.545)

Although I don’t buy the idea that Creed would repeat the resurrection of a person given the state in which the beast returns to life—mean and reeked of stench, the book serves its purpose—a straight-up scare that is strong on dark, depressing chills. The end is predictable, but the force behind the mysterious capabilities of the cemetery that plays these people like a harp from hell is never really addressed or comforted. All I can say is that nature’s will and clock shall not be violated.

562 pp. Pocket Books. Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

[530] The Shining – Stephen King

‘The people in the hotel,’ he said. He looked at her then, and his eyes weren’t indifferent at all. They were deep and scared. ‘All the . . . the things in the hotel. There’s all kind of them. The hotel is stuffed with them. I don’t want to see,’ he said low, and then looked back at the rubber ball, arcing from hand to hand. ‘But I can hear them sometimes, late at night. They’re like wind, all sighing together. In the attic. The basement. The rooms. All over. I thought it was my fault, because of the way I am.’ (Ch.39, p.479)

I read The Shining for two reasons: I have never read Stephen King and I crave for a spooker. The classic for sure does not disappoint, and that King’s timely announcement of a sequel is on the way makes the perfect incentive to read it. The Shining is the story of Jack Torrance, who is employed as the caretaker of the gargantuan Overlook Hotel in Colorado one winter. Moving his wife, Wendy, and their son, Danny, into it for the season after all the summer guests leave, he hopes to find peace: to finish his writing project, to escape his latent alcoholism, to make amend for his marriage and to stitch his fractured family together. But when they are alone, they are astounded that the smelly reputation of the hotel has been true—the Overlook is coming to life around them.

It had been all right until he had seen Danny playing in the snow. It was Danny’s fault. Everything had been Danny’s fault. He was the one with the shining, or whatever it was. It wasn’t shining, it was a curse. If he and Wendy had been here alone, they could have passed the winter quite nicely. No pain, no strain on the brain. (Ch.33, p.415)

Now 5-year-old Danny can “shine,” a fact that recognized by the hotel cook Mr. Hallorann, who himself has that psychic ability. Danny has premonitions of Overlook’s danger to his family upon arrival but keeps to himself because he knows his father needs the job. He begins to see ghosts and frightening visions of the hotel’s past, including a woman in the bathtub of room 217 who had been dead for a long time. The Overlook Hotel has actually come alive—and this is what gives the book its sheer horror. Stephen King captures the sheer inhuman evil of his locale and thus keeps his readers riveted. The hotel is alive as we turn the pages: huge and vacant, with secrets hidden everywhere. Haunted bathrooms, the echoing memories of debauched parties, the incessant elevator, a topiary animal garden that seems to come to life. The clicks and clanks, the hummings, the rattlings, the snaps and the whooshes. The hotel wears its malevolence on its sleeve. As “it” has difficulty possessing Danny, it begins to possess Jack and gnaws at him, turning him against his family and frustrating his need and desire to work.

I heard them too. And that means the hotel is getting stronger. It wants to hurt all of us. But I think . . . I hope . . . that it can only do that through your daddy. (Ch.46, p.550)

The evil is encroaching, and it could be that Danny’s shining has empowered it. The book does end with an explosive climax, pun intended, that sends me over the edge. It’s almost like fighting against unknown, unseen evil. The characters understand the hotel is evil; that it sought Danny, his power, and that it would do anything it could to get him. This book is a big spooker, atmospherically speaking, and haunts me tremendously.

659 pp. Anchor Books. Pocket Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

Spooker

What a coincidence that The Castro Theater will be showing Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). I have started the novel three days ago and it has given my creep. Jack Torrance takes up the job to be the winter caretaker of The Overlook, a splendid hotel tugged away in the remote Colorado mountain. Jack, his wife Wendy, and the clairvoyant 5-year-old Danny move into the Overlook. The hotel has a personality in its own right, and acts as a psychic lens: it manipulates the living and the dead for its own purposes; and it magnifies the psychic powers of any living people who reside there and makes them more sensitive to its urgings. Danny has premonitions of the hotel’s danger to his family and begins seeing ghosts and frightening visions from the hotel’s past, but puts up with them in the hope that they are not dangerous in the present. This is the type of book meant to be read under the sheet with a flashlight. But I can also see myself reading it at night by the pool in Palm Springs. The movie, which seems to be a capacious spooker, is something to looking forward to.

[268] The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan

” We hardly spoke at all to each other about Mother. She was everyone’s secret. Even Tom rarely mentioned her and only occasionally cried for her now. I looked around the cellar for other signs, but there was nothing. [7; 98]

Moleskine Guy is now officially weirded out, or spooked out by Ian McEwan. Unlike The Comfort of Strangers, a suspense that amounts to an ambivalence, The Cement Garden is a horror novella, with a shocking subplot.

After his first heart attack he stopped work on the garden altogether. Weeds pushed up through the cracks in the paving stones. Part of the rockery collapsed and the little pond dried up. [1; 21]

The father of four children dies. His death is quickly followed by the death of the children’s mother. In order to avoid being taken into care, the children hide their mother’s death from the outside world, guarding the secret from everyone. They turn the cellar in the basement into a tomb, encasing their mother’s corpse in cement left over from the building of the garden.

My sisters and I no longer played together on Julie’s bed. The games ceased not long after Father died, although it was not his death that brought them to an end. Sue became reluctant. [3; 35]

Jack, the fifteen year old narrator, enters into an incestuous relationship with one of his sisters, while their youngest brother begins to experiment transvestism. To complicate matter further, Jacks feels jealous and directs hostility toward a man whom his oldest sister dates. This man becomes very interested in what might be hidden in the cellar.

We had not been at all careful with Derek. Often what was in the cellar did not seem real enough to keep secret. [10; 140]

Subversion in age and role is the main theme in The Cement Garden. Burying the dead and engaging in sexual activity are probably the type of work anybody least expects to have befallen children. It’s not so much that they are free of supervision that shocks me, it’s the the banality of evil. The book is shocking, morbid, and full of repellent imagery.

153 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]