I hope you are all having a spectacularly creepy day. I’m not very good with horror movies, something about the images really get to me, but I like scary stories. And I love Dylan Mcdermott. Really, my life is more complete when he is on my television. So, I’ve been watching American Horror Story. I am glad to know I’m not the only one forced to watch it in the daylight. I am thoroughly creeped out. I’m not 100% hooked, if Dylan wasn’t on the show I might not continue watching, but I’m definitely intrigued. On particularly horrifying part of the show is that it is on regular cable. I didn’t know they were allowed to show such things on regular cable. Apparently I don’t watch enough FX. I thought this sort of material was reserved for HBO.
I infinitely prefer creepy stories in print. I will share with you a few of my favorite creepy quotes from my favorite scary novels and short stories, because I’m a nerd.
“To think that the spectre you see is an illusion does not rob him of
his terrors: it simply adds the further terror of madness itself — and
then on top of that the horrible surmise that those whom the rest call
mad have, all along, been the only people who see the world as it
really is.” – Perelandra – C.S. Lewis
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“As I leaned from the window my eye was caught by something moving a storey below me, and somewhat to my left, where I imagined, from the lie of the rooms, that the windows of the Count’s own rooms would look. The window at which I stood was tall and deep, stone mullioned, and through weatherworn, was still complete, but it was evidently many a day since the case had been there. I drew back behind the stonework, and looked carefully out.
What I saw was the Count’s head coming out from the window. I did not see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms. In any case I could not mistake the hands which I had had so many opportunities of studying. I was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down, with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow, but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall.
What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me; I am in fear – in awful fear – and there is no escape for me; I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of…” – From the journal of Jonathan Hawker – Dracula, by Bram Stoker
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‘ “Is the playhouse still there?” asked Martyn
“I don’t know.” admitted the storyteller.
“Well,” said martin, as we reached the Tottenham Court Road and headed for the night bus stop, “I for one do not believe a word of it.”
There were four of us, not three, out on the street long after closing time. I should have mentioned that before. There was still one of us who had not spoken, the elderly man with the leather elbow patches, who had left the club with the three of us. And now he spoke for the first time.
“I believe it,” he said mildly. His voice was frail, almost apologetic. “ I cannot explain it, but I believe it. Jamie died, you know, not long after father did. It was Douglas who wouldn’t go back, who sold the old place. He wanted them to tear it all down. But they kept the house itself, the Swallows. They weren’t going to knock that down. I imagine that everything else must be gone by now.”
It was a cold night, and the rain still spat occasional drizzle. I shivered, but only because I was cold.
“Those cages you mentioned,” he said. “By the driveway. I haven’t thought of them in fifty years. When we were bad he’d lock us up in them. We must have been bad a great deal, eh? Very naughty, naughty boys.
He was looking up and down the Tottenham Court Road, as if he were looking for something. Then he said, “Douglas killed himself, of course. Ten years ago, when I was still in the bin. So my memory’s not as good. Not as good as it was. But that was Jamie all right, to the lift. He’d never let us forget that he was the oldest. And you know, we weren’t ever allowed in the playhouse. Father didn’t build it for us.” His voice quavered, and for a moment I could imagine this pall old man as a boy again. “Father had his own games.””
– Closing Time, from the short story collection Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
the thin line between optimism and delusion... 