One Ring - To Scare the Crap Out Of Me

by Abir

 

It’s that time of year. What is the scariest short story or novel you read? 

 

Here’s the thing. I’m one of life’s natural cowards. I say coward, I mean I have an overdeveloped sense of self-preservation. This involves removing myself with utmost haste from any form of danger, real or imaginary, physical, emotional, visual or auditory.

 

This is why I have reached the age of almost fifty without ever being in a fight, (I don’t count stuff that happened before I was seven) and why my skin is still crease-free and my hair still lustrous and black.

 

My unwillingness to get into a fight, I pass off as a principled, Mahatma Gandhi-inspired espousal of an ethos of non-violence, but really it’s cos I don’t want anyone punching my perfect face.

 

As you can imagine, this philosophy of cowardice means I’m not a big fan of horror, and tend to treat anything in the genre as if it were infected with covid or possibly the plague. It is a policy that has served me well, and as though vaccinated against such things, my brain reacts to the slightest hint of fear in a novel by propelling me to shut the book, hurl it across the room and run away, sometimes screaming, sometimes crying. 

 

But like a covid vaccine, it’s not always 100% successful. The odd scary thing has beaten the sensors (and censors). In terms of books, the thing that first scared the bejeezus out of me (and possibly responsible for my lifelong fear of everything) was Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. I can’t recall whatever possessed me to pick it up in the first place. The cover had a ghostly mask of a woman with a single drop of blood hanging from the corner of her mouth – I mean, that should have been enough to let me know it wasn’t exactly easy reading for a ten year old, but I started reading it and have had a negative impression of vampires ever since. I got so scared I even had to cover the book in brown paper.

 

My next few brushes with fear tended to come visually – on the TV of cinema screen, in my teenage years and generally involved some sort of peer pressure (generally not wanting to look like the complete coward I was/am in front of friends or girls). Three such moments spring to mind:

 

1.     Watching the Japanese version of The Ring, with a bunch of friends including a girl I was keen on. This is probably the scariest movie of all time. Rather than spoil it for you, I’d say – just don’t watch it. It might kill you. I would have run out the room crying in fear after five minutes if I hadn’t been trying to pretend to be brave. I was honestly scared witless for seven days and nights.

2.     Watching The Blair Witch Project – again, with friends. I really don’t understand why people watch stuff like this. I’d rather spend an hour at the dentist’s.

3.     Watching The Hand That Rocks the Cradle – This was at the cinema, on a date. Again, not my choice, but it wasn’t that bad until one particular scene where something happens (I can’t even remember what it was now), where I basically screamed in terror and all but jumped into my date’s lap. There was no second date.

 

And that was it. In subsequent years, I realised how to be comfortable in myself and learned that I was impressing no one by watching such films. I learned to embrace happiness and my cowardly side and have managed to get through the rest of life without my heart rate rising above 70 while sitting down.

 

That all changed last week though, when I had to read a new book by Norwegian rockstar author, Jo Nesbø called The Night House, as I was chairing him at a book event. I had expected it to be crime fiction. He’s a crime fiction author after all. Nope. It was horror. And the truth was, I rather enjoyed the book. Maybe I’m braver now, or maybe it’s that my fears these days revolve around mortgage payments and the electricity bill coming through my door. Either way, maybe I’ll give horror another go? Maybe I just needed to experience more of the horrors of real life to realise that the horrors of fiction can just be a pleasant thrill.

 

I’m still never watching The Ring again though. I’m not mental.