It’s that time of year. It’s that time of year. What is the scariest short story or novel you read? The scariest that you wrote and why?
I don’t read or watch horror very often, so it’s hard for me to answer all of this week’s question. But I will do my best on the second half.
First, let me ask you, are you afraid of the woods? What about the woods at night?
The following paragraph is from my fourth Ellie Stone mystery, Heart of Stone, which won the Anthony Best Paperback Original and the Macavity Best Historical Mystery Award in 2017. It was also a finalist for the Edgar Best Paperback Original and Lefty Best Mystery Novel that same year.
In the book’s opening passage, I wanted to create a wistful, nostalgic mood. And somewhat mysterious. I used the five senses in the present tense to describe fragments of Ellie’s memories. Considered together, they paint a picture of the dense Adirondack woods that terrified Ellie when she spent her summers there as a child. But it wasn’t the feel of the cool night air that frightened her. Not the sight of moonlight, the smell of the earth, or the taste of the wild berries either. Her fear manifests itself in her recollection of the sound the wind made when hissing through pine needles.
In this scene, the first four senses are benign. Perhaps not warm and fuzzy remembrances of things past, but not malignant either. For me, this passage succeeds thanks to the personification of the fifth sense—sound. The wind and the accompanying simile comparing the pine needles to sharpened blades. Sighing, whispering pine trees can be spooky enough, but needles cutting voices into the wind? I don’t know about you, but that scares me.
I remember the cool breath of the night woods on my neck. I see the glow of moonlight on the highest boughs, filtering down in a pale cast, weak and washed-out, fading into darkness. I smell the moss and the decay of the forest floor, heady, damp, musky. And I can taste the earthy mushrooms and bitter berries on my tongue. But most of all, I hear the pines whisper and sigh, their needles, like millions of tiny blades, carving voices into the breeze.
—Heart of Stone
Well done! A different way of remembering those Adirondack pine woods. For me, they were never scary, but then I was never in the woods at night. I like how you used only one of the five senses to raise the chill factor.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a powerful passage, Jim, because it's so unexpected. The wind in the trees is normally portrayed as a positive sound, except maybe for someone standing in the middle of a blizzard. So I do a double-take and then really pay attention when I read about pine needles like knives carving voices. I can't ever remember being afraid walking alone in the woods--but who ever heard of scary SWISS forest, right?
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