Picture me in bed: it’s dark, I’m hiding under the duvet,
suddenly awake because of the desperate need in my bladder. The bathroom is
only a few steps away, but I can’t make myself get up. That poster of Wonder Woman
looks suspiciously different in this light…
The first
step of Edgar Allan Poe’s formula for fear is “the isolation of the reader.”
1 The most effective way of doing this can also be the most simple: Stephen
Gallagher opens “Shepherds’ Business” with “Picture me on an island supply boat”
2 which immediately forces the reader to use their imagination, and so isolates
them with Gallagher’s protagonist. In “The Embarrassment of Dead Grandmothers”
3 Sarah Lotz isolates the reader in Steven’s mind, by “[putting them] immediately
in the psychological mindset of [her] character with a musing.”
4 Lotz also ensures her story “connects to the reader on both an emotional and
intellectual level”
5 in
the opening. It’s emotional because Steven’s grandmother is dead, and
intellectual because the reader now wonders, along with Steven, what he can do
about it.
The second
step in Poe’s formula is “the stunning of [their] sensibility.”
6 The writer must convince the reader to believe in that which is unbelievable. Muriel
Gray achieves this in “Roundabout”
7 by simply presenting The Dark Thing in casual conversation and internal monologue
as if it is an everyday thing. So the reader willingly suspends disbelief and
becomes curious of The Dark Thing, and may even feel some dread. Lotz uses an
experience shared by almost everyone – fear of the unknown – making it easier for
the reader to relate to the character and feel the fear he feels. The small
amount of description also forces the reader to use their imagination, and so
they take an active part in reading, without which “there would be no literary
work at all.”
8
“The Family
Car”
9 begins with Lindsay noticing that the car her family disappeared in is
following her, then she gets into an accident. When she is questioned by the
police, it becomes clear that nobody believes her, not even her grandmother.
The reader then becomes more convinced of her honesty, in a kind of reverse psychology
– especially after we see the car again when her grandmother disappears from
the hospital. The revelation of the monster-alien that drives the car at the end is a bit
disappointing. According to Nicholas Kaufman, “a build-up of suspense is one of
the most important elements in horror fiction.”
10 Golden arguably built up the suspense too much that the reveal of the monster
at the end just couldn’t live up to it. When this happens, as it also did with
Stephen King’s
It,
11 it might be better
to never reveal the true face of the monster, and let the reader’s imagination
take over.
The final
two steps in Poe’s formula is “the victimisation of [their] emotions and the
premature burial of [their] reason.”
12 We begin to care about Steven’s plight in “The
Embarrassment of Dead Grandmothers”
13 when he flashbacks to when he was child, running away from home to his loving grandmother. Then he leaves behind her dead body in the
theatre, and the reader is left forever hanging – will there be repercussions
for Steven? Did he get the girl or did he fail anyway? We will never know. “Shepherds’
Business” ends in a similar way: “But the screaming started from within the house, just
as I was reaching the threshold.”
14 You turn the page, anxious to discover what
happened, but that’s it. It’s over. And you’re left wondering.
But I won’t
leave you wondering about me. I did eventually go to the bathroom. The poster
was just a poster, and there was nothing out of the ordinary that night, except
for the speed I used to leap from the toilet back to bed.
1 David R. Saliba, A Psychology of Fear (Washington D.C: University Press of America, 1980), 17.↩
2 Stephen Gallagher, “Shepherds’ Business”, in New Fears, ed. Mark Morris (London: Titan Books, 2017), Kindle edition.↩
3 Sarah Lotz, “The Embarrassment of Dead Grandmothers”, in New Fears, ed. Mark Morris (London: Titan Books, 2017), Kindle edition.↩
4 Elizabeth Massie, “Once Upon a Scary Time: Creating Effective Beginnings”, in Writers Workshop of Horror, ed. Michael Knost (USA: Woodland Press, 2010), 6.↩
5 Massie, “Once Upon a Scary Time”, 2↩
6 Saliba, A Psychology, 17.↩
7 Muriel Gray, “Roundabout”, in New Fears, ed. Mark Morris (London: Titan Books, 2017), Kindle edition.↩
8 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 66.↩
9 Brady Golden, “The Family Car”, in New Fears, ed. Mark Morris (London: Titan Books, 2017), Kindle edition.↩
10 Nicholas Kaufman, “Eerie Events and Horrible Happenings: Plotting Short Horror Fiction”, in On Writing Horror: A Handbook, ed. Mort Castle (Ohio: Writer's Digest, 2007), 78.↩
11 Stephen King, It (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986).↩
12 Saliba, A Psychology, 17.↩
13 Lotz, “The Embarrassment”.↩
14 Gallagher, “Shepherds’ Business”.↩
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