Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #33: The Horror Zine, "The Chamber"

I had published in The Horror Zine (an award-winning ezine I highly recommend) before (and I recommend that particular journal highly). I've said several times, I'm not real big on horror and find it difficult to write. I always stray into the habits of literary fiction—slow character development, more inner conflict, plot focused on philosophical or ethical questions—rather than following Stephen King's advice and writing on one of the three levels of horror:  mayhem, horror, and terror.  Now and then, however, a story is able to bridge the gap, and "The Chamber," with some editing help from the Horror Zine's editor, made it into this very fine, high-rated horror magazine.

If you haven't read King's formula, found in his book on horror writing, Danse Macabre, his sketch of what he believes are the different kinds of horror writing goes like this:  Level 1 is mayhem:  slasher stuff, blood and guts, people dismembered—well, you get the idea; Level 2 is horror:  something  or someone—a monster, a predatory animal, a serial killer—is chasing you—you know what is after you and it's something scary; Level 3 is terror:  something horrific is happening, something is trying to get you, but you're not sure what it is or what you can do to get away from it or what it will do to you, though you know it will not be pleasant.  In King's formulation, terror is the best kind of writing, followed by horror, then by mayhem. The final quote he gives on the topic is memorable:  “I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.”

The story I came up with for The Horror Zine was "The Chamber"—a bit more on the terror side, or at least I like to think so. Talaith, a girl living in rural ancient Greece is suffering, with her family and everyone else in her village, through a famine. Rain has not come and food is scarce. One day as she kneads bread, she remembers than in ancient times the villagers offered human sacrifices—usually an unmarried girl—to appease the gods and bring rain. She shudders at the thought. But even she contemplates this, a delegation from the village appears at the door of her family's house. She knows why they have come.

Talaith

Victims are killed by being sealed in what is called The Chamber, a room in the Temple of Artemis that, when wax is put around the edges of the door, is airtight. The sacrificial virgin suffocates.

Talaith is sullen and tells Modthryth, the priestess, who is preparing Talaith and enjoying her helplessness, that she doesn't want to die, the matter is not fair, and she thinks that if the goddess Artemis is above human beings and expects humans to behaved morally, the goddess would behave morally herself and not demand the life of an innocent girl. The priestess rebukes her and says she has absorbed heretical thoughts from Pythius, her brother, who has studied with the philosopher Heraclitus and has new ideas. Still, she is quiet. No use in fighting. No use in blaspheming or cursing the priestess. She is sealed in The Chamber.

She feels the air begin to thin and then feels her lungs ache as the oxygen in the room is used up. Just as she is about to die, she looks up at a thin ceramic portrait of the goddess. It is glowing. She fears at first, but then realizes it is glowing because the moon is shining through it. Just then it shatters. Pythius has come and broken the window at the deserted temple and saved his sister.

He wants them to run away, but Talaith has an idea. She tells him to leave, uses a shard of broken clay to cut her dress so it is above her knees, and unties her hair. She waits. As she waits, she hears the rain begin to fall.

When the villagers come to retrieve her body, she steps out of The Chamber. Her short skirt and loose hair make her look like the Goddess Artemis. Everyone, including Modthryth, gapes at her. She says the goddess appeared, spoke to her, and made her the new priestess of the temple. And Talaith has some plans and thinks of the changes she will make as the new priestess. She will stop the sacrifices and she will appoint her brother to teach the children of the village a new way of thinking.

Her ruse works. The people proclaim her Artemis's messenger. Even the sadistic priestess bows down to her. As the rain falls, she goes home with her family, the danger at an end, the prospect of change a certainty.

I hoped I at least achieved a bit of terror in this. The creepy idea of slowly suffocating, the fear that she might have blasphemed and Artemis might appear to drag her down to hell, go through the girl's mind as she waits to die. For all horror writers, terror is something to shoot for—or horror or mayhem. We're not proud.

You can read "The Chamber" by clicking here. The way the story is set up, you'll have to scroll down just a bit. The story was reprinted in the Horror Zine's 2011 anthology, What Fears Become (also highly recommended). 

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Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer #19: Horror Through the Ages, Horror.

I've talked about how I'm not a horror writer, but people are not consistent. I went through a phase where I wrote and published horror. I had done this before. One of my first stories, "The Snow Demon," was a horror story, and I had written a few others, but mainly my stories did not go along the lines of horrific supernatural. Then a streak of them came, and most of the tales were more traditional and "dark" horror. As for my aversion to that kind of writing—well, as Walt Whitman once said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself." Some of the stories were quite fascinating and interesting to compose.

A series of horror stories came from my pen (I write in longhand). The first one, "Dream Catcher," was about a serial killer with Satanic connections who goes after a young man's girlfriend (he has already killed her sister). His attempts to get at the girl are blocked because the young man possesses a dream catcher from a friend who is Native American and practices their ancient spirituality. Also, his girlfriend is a sculptor, and art communicates.

That's probably the best part of the story. An artist puts 

something of himself or herself into a

work of art. Any writer knows this. Margie, the girlfriend of Daniel, who narrates the story, has done a sculptured bust of Amy, her sister. So much of Margie is in the bust, and so much of Amy in Margie, that Daniel begins to have a recurrent dream. Amy is communicating through the statue, and which has captured so much of her soul—which has, like all good art, immortalized her. The dream catcher Daniel has facilitates this. He begins to see an old train signal tower, an anchor, and something having to do with Alabama.

All of the substance of the dream came from my home town. There is an old, fading, creepy train tower from the days when railroads hung lanterns out for signals so trains would not overlap on the tracks and crash into each other. Near-by is the Anchor Bar. And the street that runs just past this is Alabama Street. Daniel does not comprehend this, but eventually he recognizes the landscape and begins to investigate.

In the tower he finds a photo of Amy. It is surrounded by cryptic writing in  ancient languages. With the evidence he needs, Daniel climbs the narrow steel ladder to the street below.

Rail Tower near Alabama Street, Grand Rapids, MI

He is attacked by shadowy creature but manages but destroys it with the dream catcher. After that, Daniel confronts the killer himself, who has a gun. He hears voices. He has killed Amy as "tuition" (Daniel terms it this) so he can gain occult power from these higher powers he hears. Daniel is not impressed. He has the dream catcher. The killer scoffs at the dream catcher, calling it an "Injun charm." In reply, Daniel says, "This 'Injun charm' draws on power that was recognized and feared thousands of years before your ancestors or mine ever set foot on this land. Whatever two-bit magic you learned will collapse when it comes up against this."

The serial killer's gun won't work. He eventually flees. Daniel calls the police. At first they suspect him, but he tells them they will find the real culprit somewhere on Alabama Street. They find him hiding in a warehouse. Amy's murder is solved, as are the murders of three other women. The dream catcher has proved its potent magic.

But, as I've said before, horror is not my thing—at least not the type of horror I often encounter,where characters face unopposable evil. To me, such writing is simplistic. It strikes me rather like the classic cartoon Bambi vs. Godzilla, which is only about ten seconds long. You see Bambi grazing. He looks up to see Godzilla approaching. A shadow falls and then Godzilla's foot comes down and squishes Bambi. End of movie. This typifies a lot of horror. Where is the conflict, the complication, the plot twists—other than the protagonist fleeing from the monster and ending up in a box alley where he or she can't escape—or the woman in the fifties 

horror movie, Tarantula, who gets her skirt caught in 

the door of a car as the spider closes in on her?

In "Dream Catcher" evil is not ultimate because, unlike good, it is derivative. It has no existence in itself but is only the twisting of something good. It can exist, but when it runs up against its opposite—no, not it's opposite, the genuine thing of which is the perversion—no contest.

But the horror-writing phase went on for a while. More on this to come.

If you want to read "The Dream Catcher," here is a link to it. The Horror Zine, an award-winning online horror publication, is one of the very best and I highly recommend it.

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