Darkscribes Blog for The Mustachioed Cat

Terror Threshold

February 11, 2008 | No Comments Posted

Been reading me some Duma Key, which appears in some ways to be King's revisiting of It. The connection is kinda tenuous, but whatever. Got me thinking, as Edgar Freemantle went through a certain basket of sketches, about the fulcrum between the normal, the strange, and terror. Where the balance tips one way or another.

Live in a dorm. 'magine me going to the restroom (down the hall) and finding a fellow standing on his hands, right there in the middle of the hallway. 'round 4:00AM. Strange, yeah? S'ppose I don't ignore him. S'ppose I start to noticing how his face is never visible, by dint of long hair and weak light. S'ppose I speak to him, and get no response other than him starting to move in my direction. S'ppose he has a herky-jerky quality to his movement, like an old film missing a few frames.

Another scene. Walking down a slice of suburbia. What you're feeling is a warm summer heat pressin' in 'round you, wet and with the occassional insect. You're thinking on pleasant things, which is why you couldn't sleep. The face of a girl, the way she smiled last night, for example. Maybe you just hit the job jackpot, looking at having some serious scratch flowing in the next few months. Maybe use it to do something nice for Miss Beautiful. You're thinking all this shit, walking down the sidewalk on a nice, summer day, when a bunch of people start emerging from around the houses of the cul de sac a half-block away, moving through the sideyards and crossing over to the windows and front door.

The motion don't catch your eye, not really. You're too busy thinking on all these things. Approaching the cul de sac. Kinda see the people move from one house to another, looking-looking-looking before moving on to the next. What you do notice is when they all notice you, each and every one of them orienting their faces toward you in the same fuckin' moment. And you realize that the whole time they've been there, they ain't made sound one. And you realize, up close, they don't seem to be touching the ground. By the time you marry all that with the certain knowledge some of them are facing backwards in order to gander you, something that should have broken their neck, easy, and some of them seem quite transparent, you've got a half-skip to turn and run as they glide across some manicured lawn toward you. Get a glance, as you turn to beat tracks, that there's someone inside that last home, pressed against the glass, skinless, not movin'.

Scene One, Scene Two. First takes something ridiculous and makes it menacing. Second is a bit more obvious, projectin' itself in zombie language - when there is a group of people all moving the same way, and you don't notice them at first, they are zombies (or, as in this scene, something else). Looking at the fulcrum there, getting a feel for it seems a good idea. Balancing it from one to another - from reader-anticipated terror to something a bit unexpected that the character has to translate - seems a good trick for keeping suspense would nice and tight. Just some thoughts while I was reading Duma Key.