Why Horror?

There’s a Goosebumps book called How to Kill a Monster. I want to say I was 7 or 8 when I read it, but I can still tell you all about it. Two siblings are staying at their grandparents’ place in the middle of a swamp, and in the attic, they find a monster. Naturally, gram and gramps are nowhere to be found for the rest of the book. The kids spend the story trying to kill the monster, and they succeed. But as the curtains close, they rush to escape the house and are stifled in their steps by the sound of growling—monsters from the swamp seeking revenge for their fallen kin. The book ends on a false cliffhanger, because we know what happens next. The kids are going to die.

As a child I lacked the language to describe my reaction to this, but I was struck by it  nonetheless. What had I just read? I didn’t know. But I knew it was true.

That’s right. I knew it was true. I knew those monsters existed in various shapes, as creatures pretending to be people, and as pressures that couldn’t be confined to names. And I knew there were kids who were trapped by them, either swallowing the tales or telling them to adults who didn’t care to hear. As an adult, I learned that the same rules apply. Monsters don’t solely seek children, and other adults can be rather hard of hearing.

Say horror tells the truth then. So what? Doesn’t a good drama do the same? Why horror? 

Consider this: if drama is drama as it is, then horror is drama as it feels. As it’s lived.

In Tim O’ Brien’s autobiographical novel The Things They Carried, he describes in vivid detail the first time he killed a man in Vietnam, his first irrevocable crime under the banner of a country that forced him into a war he didn’t believe in. He goes to great lengths to capture this trauma on the page, evoking a guilt-ridden man who can only stare in silence at a rotting corpse while his comrade continues to prod him, begging him to stop looking and to walk away. 

And it never happened. None of it. He never killed anyone.

But he was drafted. And he did suffer mentally for participating in something that took and ruined innumerable lives. For O’Brien, the truth was so weak that it may as well have been a lie. If he wanted to capture the stark reality of his experience, he needed to shove so many lies into his story that the whole damn thing swelled and burst until the only shit left was the truth and nothing but the truth. O’Brien describes this as story-truth, how something feels, compared to happening-truth, how something went down.

So it turns out drama can in fact portray drama as it feels. As it’s lived. So seriously, why horror then? Sure, the genre is rife with potential for story-truth. Ghosts and vampires make for colorful metaphors after all. But metaphor is a tool any story has access to, as I’ve established. So again: why horror?

It’s the extremity. Horror sears vile images in our brains and stirs inexplicable unease to present complex experiences that mere words could never do justice. Horror gives us a glimpse of what another person’s suffering is like. I don’t love horror because I enjoy seeing people writhe and scream. I love horror because it allows me to see how people navigate what haunts them. For the duration of a movie or book, I can live in another person’s shoes and see how they fight with blood and bone, doomed or otherwise.

One of the most derided tropes of horror fiction is the plot convenient protagonist who suffers a supernatural terror but is never believed. I think this distaste is a mistake, because again, people can be awfully hard of hearing. 

But we have horror. And horror tells us that while we may be alone in our own little battles, we aren’t alone in having lived them. Horror is the lie that tells the truth, far better than the eponymous imposter ever could.

“Clever. Overwritten for my taste, but a nice pairing of words.”

The hotel clerk tore his gaze away from his phone and the desk. 

“Say,” the short man who’d appeared beside him said. “Did you ever learn? How to kill a monster?”

The clerk rubbed his eyes as the lights flickered in the vast deserted lobby. 

“I have a special interest in the subject,” the man went on. “Could be bad for business if word like that starts spreading around.” He snapped his fingers. “Ah, but I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. It’s a children’s book, right? Fitting then, for a fantasy like monster killing.”

The clerk stood up, hand to head, towering over his accoster. “Man I uh—”

“Speak man. No one likes a passive captive. Makes for poor sport.”

The clerk shook his head, smiling. “Sorry. You get so into it sometimes. Didn’t realize I was reading out loud.”

“You weren’t.”

The clerk stared.

“Yes, yes, well,” the man said, waving a hand repeatedly. “It’s good to have an audience.”

The clerk smiled, fainter now, with brow furrowed. “Are you checking in? Or looking for a room?”

The man laughed. “At this hour? Hells no!”

The clerk sat back in his seat. “What can I help you with then?”

The man brightened. “Help. Isn’t that such a lovely word? I’m glad you asked. Yes, you can help me. It’s that piece you’ve written there. Lovely piece, just lovely. Yes, has heart, sincerity, heart, etcetera. It’s just…” He shrugged. “Well it’s all wrong, isn’t it? A lie. And not the good kind you were going on and on about.”

The clerk shook his head. “What?”

“Now don’t get me wrong. I did say it has sincerity, yes? It’s not that you’re lying… just that you’re holding back. Evading. Maybe you don’t even know it.”

The clerk sighed. “Look man, forget it. If you don’t need anything I can get you out of here if I have to.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think you can.”

“Yeah? Well—”

“That phone in your hand? Use it.”

“That’s what I was going to do.”

“No no. Well yes, you’re going to do it now because I told you to. But you weren’t going to before.”

The clerk took a deep breath and looked back at his phone. It was black. And it wouldn’t turn on. He put it down and grabbed the wired phone at the desk. No line.

The lights vanished and the temperature in the lobby plummeted. The clerk shouted and waved his hands in a frenzy.

The lights returned, but the temperature lingered. And the little man was gone. 

The clerk turned and yelped as he saw the man beside him, scrolling through his phone, the essay he’d just written. Shivering, he took several steps back.

“Ah,” the man said, nodding. “You see, now that I’ve read it a few times, I think I have it. It’s that anecdote you opened up with. As soon as you started with that children’s tale, you had a theme in mind. The scope of the essay became limited, and so you began to be steered in a certain direction.”

“No,” the clerk whispered.

The man went on, still scrolling with a single finger. “Furthermore, there is the problem of the subconscious. Can you really claim to know the answer to the question you ask? Indeed, how can a man know what draws him to a thing? How an obsession is formed?”

The clerk ran through the doors and down the street, passing by several people, office buildings, and shops. He paused, panting, hands on his knees, and looked up to find himself behind the desk again.

The man tapped the clerk’s phone screen repeatedly. “I don’t buy it. Lots of words. Lots of pretty words. But as I said before, I’m partial to the clean ones. My taste tends to the, hmm… say, fundamentals.” He turned to the clerk and whispered in his ear, “I don’t like the connotation of basic. Simple either.”

The clerk didn’t bother to move away. Staring straight ahead, he closed his eyes and whispered, “What do you want?”

“Mhm,” the man said. “Maybe I want what you’re having. Maybe I want to see how people navigate what haunts them.” 

The clerk opened his eyes and turned to the man as he put a finger to his chin and faintly smiled. “No no. I don’t think that’s right. I think I want what you’re actually having. I think I want what you really want. I think I want to watch you writhe and scream.”

The clerk did not faint.

---

The man dusted his hands off. “Well I think that’s enough play then. Business to be done and all.”

The clerk looked up, eyes glazed. “You’re not gonna kill me?” he whispered.

“No no. That’d go and make the art useless. No. I’ll leave you with something worse. Yourself, having been opened wide. Farewell partner.” The man tipped a hat he’d never had and was off. 

Feverish, the clerk wiped sweat off his back as tremors wracked his body whole. He gasped and muttered incoherences, feeling he would never again have the mouth to scream. And if he was wrong, he was certain at least of this: such shouts would have no translation.