Today, I'm pleased to bring my readers a guest post from author Alex Kimmell. He's talking about what makes a good horror story by today's standards. Be sure to check outhis new fantasy horror release, The Key to Everything.
*~*~*
What makes a good horror story now days? There's the crazed,
virtually immortal serial killer wearing a creepy mask or sports helmet chasing
a half-naked sorority girl through the abandoned wilderness with his
chainsaw/axe/machete. Then we have the all too common exorcism story involving
an innocent and pretty young girl with her single mother/ultra religious cult
family proving to the one lone unbeliever that all of their superstitious
rituals are in fact deathly real. Another big draw these days of course is the
teenage vampire stories fighting with all their might to cash in on the
tremendous financial success of Twilight and Sookie Sookie Sookie. Not really
horror, but just tantalizingly scary enough to tease the tween crowd and
showing enough hunks without shirts to suck Mom in too.
Predictable? Yes. Popular? We eat that shit up. Scary? Not
one bit. We keep going because we want to be scared in familiar, safe ways.
It's the same reason we go on roller coasters. We throw our arms up in the air
five stories above the ground at forty or fifty miles an hour. We scream and
holler knowing deep in the recesses of our minds that we aren't going to crash
into the ground splattering like a bug on a windshield. We know we're safe. The
familiar characters and story lines provide us with a few gross out moments and
bad guy jumping out from behind the closet door BOO's, but they don't really
/scare/us.
So what? So I'm difficult to frighten. Yeah, I guess I am.
What really scares me? Real life scares me. Little every day things can be
terrifying if removed from their usual context. What if the familiar world fell
from order? What if the face you look at in the mirror every single day turned
out to not be you? What if the hands typing on the keyboard in front of you
right now we're suddenly acting on the will of someone or something else? An
/other/malevolence that does not feel anything about you one way or another. Doesn't
think any more of you than you a single cell amoeba. That thought frightens me.
Keeps me awake at night sweating through my sheets, pinching my side to make
sure I'm still myself.
These are the concepts of horror that inspired my book
"the Key to everything". Not being able to trust in the reality of
the every day world around you. Finding that everything you once knew,
everything that grounded you without even thinking about it for your entire
life has been usurped and convoluted into a world beyond understanding. That is
where real fear lives. That is where nothing can be held to any faith. Not even
what your eyes see or your fingers touch.
Take something simple and innocuous. Something you use every
day that barely crosses your mind. Take for example, a key. The key to your
front door or your car. Maybe even the key to your kids bike lock. Keys open
things. They let us in and keep the bad guys out. But what if there were
something more? What if there were certain keys, special keys that were made to
tilt the world on its axis and allow us into rooms like nothing ever seen
before? A white room with no doors or windows and a strange vacant frame on the
wall. An impossibly tall space covered in all directions with clanking
chattering brass entry passes. A world where everything turns against you, even
your favored family photos.
Find solace in that it’s
only a book…for now.
*~*~*
Title: The Key to Everything
Author: Alex M.
Kimmell
Genre: Fantasy
Horror
Cracked and weathered binding, hiding mysteries on pages tied
closed by a bloodstained string. A happy young family enchanted by dreams and
possibilities. A barren, empty room.A boy with no friends obsessively drawing
angles, edges and diagrams. In his debut novel, Alex Kimmell captures a vivid
and startling tale of fear. Auden's journey begins when he discovers a curious
leather-bound book whose contents will soon endanger his entire family. The
pages of this book draw him into a prison that cannot be breached, a place that
can only be unlocked with a very special key. In The Key to Everything, fear is
explored and heightened through jarring imagery and a terrifying, unique
menace, ratcheting up the tension until the novel's gripping climax.
Author Bio:
Alex Kimmell (the squirrel whisperer/twodoggarage/daddy
not-so-much-bucks) is an accidental novelist, anti-rhyme-ologist, oxygen
inhaler, carbon dioxide exhaler who often generates harmonious sounds with
various instruments of different historical importance. his work has appeared
on cool places around the 1’s and 0’s like Black Lantern Press, Front Row Lit,
Dumb White Husband and The Wordcount Podcast. His novel “the Key to everything”
and collection of short, horrific tales “A Chorus of Wolves” were released by
Booktrope Publishing. come and join the neurosis at alexkimmell.com.
Links:
Website: http://alexkimmell.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alex.kimmell
Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexkimmellauth
Purchase the book: http://www.amazon.com/Key-Everything-Alex-Kimmell-ebook/dp/B008BW98WA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397495502&sr=8-1&keywords=the+key+to+everything
Book
Excerpt:
You toss and turn for what seems like forever. Finally all
the noise and static in your head silences down and you fade into sleep. Everything
is black. No sound, sight or scent. Floating.
Full complete nothing… a pregnant emptiness. The deepest relaxation ever. You
know you are flying, but there is no wind or sense of gravity’s pull to let you
know direction. Not up or down. Not front or back. Slowly and gently there are
brief caresses. First one brushes across your cheek. Another one moves softly
along the nape of your neck. Your palms feel as if they are being kissed. A
wetness slides across the backs of your knees. Hours later you feel a pressure
right between your eyes. Sharp and unfriendly. Pushing harder, you struggle against
the pressureholding you down. Skin cracks and the lock breaks open between your
eyes. You realize now that what crushes into your head is the key. It stabs in
like a drill bit, not spinning. It doesn’t stop. It will not stop. You scream
and struggle but nothing moves when you tell it to. Your body is not responding
to your commands. Trapped, a prisoner to the pain. There is nothing you can do
but endure. The key rams further in, all the way to the wave-engraved hilt and
stops. It turnscounterclockwise spinning
around slowly. One revolution…two revolutions…three revolutions…you feel your
brain being twisted and mulched…four revolutions…you can’tscream anymore, the
agony is so sharp…five revolutions…everything goes dark…six revolutions…you try
to think of your family…
“Seven, Daddy, seven.” Jason’s voice jolts you awake. You
leap out of bed fighting to slow your heart and catch your breath. The sheets
and your nightclothes are completely soaked with sweat.“Seven, Daddy, seven.”
Jason’s voice sounds far away.He stands in the doorway holding his hand out in
the dark.
“Jason?Hey buddy, are you ok?” You shake your head to get
out of the dream and start walking to your son. The clock on the night table
reads 12:07.
“Seven, Daddy, seven.” Still reaching out in the darkness,
he begins to back up into the hallway.
Emily stirs and sits up, “Auden? What’s going on?”
You keep walking towards Jason as he backs further away.“I
don’t know. Jason’s sleepwalking, I think.”
“Seven, Daddy, seven.” Arm stretched out to nothing, he
moves strangely backwards, floating.The image of the boy blurs in the light
shining up from the bottom of the stairs.
“Hey Jason.” You clap your hands. “Wake up, pal.” Following
him down the hallway, you notice he is getting closer to the stairs.
“What did he say?”Emily follows you into the hall.
“I think he’s saying ‘seven.’”
“What?”
“I have no idea. But he won’t wake up.”
“Seven, Daddy, seven.” Jason turns just before the stairs
and begins backing into his room. Your heartbeat slows down a little in relief.
“At least he won’t fall down the stairs,” you say as Emily
runs past you into Jason’s room.
“Jason.” She grabs his arms and shakes him hard. “Wake up,
honey.”
“Seven, Daddy, seven.” His eyes stare blankly with black
unfocused pupils completely dilated.
Jason sits down on his bed with his eyes stretched open.
Stiff as a board he lays back and pulls the covers up to his chin. Emily stands
above him crying. Putting your arms around her from behind you can feel her
shaking. You can’t blame her. You’re scared out of your shit too. You don’t
even bother trying to comfort her.
“I’m going to throw up.” Emily pulls away and runs to the
bathroom.
You head down the hall to help her and glance back at Jason.
His head snaps hard to the right and he stares directly into your eyes.
“Seven, Daddy, seven.SEVEN DADDY SEVEN.SEVEN SEVEN
SEVNSEVENSEVENSEVENSEVEN…”
You launchyourself at him, cradling him in your arms.
“Jason. Wake up please. I’m right here.” You rock him back and forth. He feels
cold. A stone.
“SEVENSEVENSEVENSEVENSEVENSEVEN…”
You don’t want to.
The very idea of doing it brings a stabbing pain in your stomach. Your hand reaches out, swings through the air
and slaps him hard across the cheek. Immediate silence. Jason looks at you,
stunned. He starts to sob, tears pouring down his face.
“Why did you hit me, Daddy?” He pushes you and recoils into
the headboard. “Why did you hit me?”
Emily runs in the doorway and jumps over you to get to her
child. “Shhhh, baby.” She reaches back to you with one hand and grabs your
wrist. “You were having a really bad nightmare and Daddy was trying to help
you.” She puts her hands on his face and looks right into his eyes. “Daddy and
Mommy would never hurt you. You know that, right?”
“But he hit me in the face. I was asleep and he hit me in
the face.” Bursting into uncontrollable sobs, Jason buries his face into his mother’s
embrace. Feeling fear and shame beyond words, you get up from the bed. Rubbing
your hands on the top of your head, you pace around the room.
“Fuck!” You slam your hand down on the top of the bookshelf,
knocking the soccer-ball lamp and all of the books on the top shelf to the
floor. “Just great.” You kneel down and start picking up the mess.
Jason’s words are muffled by Emily’s arms. “That’s another
quarter for the swear jar, Daddy.” First a moment of quiet and then the three
of you start laughing. It starts quietly and Jason looks from you to Emily and
back again. When it lets loose,it’s breath-stealing, foot-stomping,
rolling-around-on-the-bed, tension-relieving hysterics.
You sit on the floor as tears roll from your eyes. Eventually
you catch enough breath to say, “How about a dollar for this one, big guy?” Which
just starts Jason and Emily laughing all over again. You stand up and resume
putting the books back on the shelf. You leave “1,001 Fairy Tales” for last
just like Jason would.
When you finally put it on the shelf, it doesn’t hit the
back and stop. It keeps going into the wall.
Through the wall like it wasn’t there anymore. You pull the book back
out and grab the soccer-ball lamp. Aiming it down closer, you try to take a
better look. You see a dark crack where the back of the bookshelf should be.
You turn to make sure Emily and Jason aren’t watching, and slowly reach your
hand into the darkness. It feels moist and scratches your fingers like brittle
branches on a dead tree after a cold snow thaw. It opens slightly,welcoming you
inside. You feel it pulling you in deeper. Confused and frightened you’re
screaming inside to stop and back away. Roaring to pull your hand back from the
dark. Still, your hand slides deeper into the black. Farther than it should be
able to. Your shoulder is pressed against the spines of the children’s books
lining the top shelf. How can your hand still be moving further in? The
branches dig deeper into your skin. Warm blood begins to flow down your
forearm. Your panic finally takes hold and you are about to retract your hand
when you feel it.
It’s cold and soft. It must be old, very old. You can feel
the dust and something squishy like mold. You move your fingers a little to the
side to get a good hold. There are no more brittle branches stabbing and
scratching. You pull what looks like an ancient, dust-covered book off the
shelf as if it were resting there next to “Goodnight Moon” the entire time. The
blackened cover was probably expensive leather at one time. The faded string is
still tied around the book keeping secrets locked inside. If you were to pull
the knot out, the entire thing would disintegrate. You reach down for “1,001
Fairy Tales” to put it back on the shelf but it’s not on the floor. You look around
for it and it’s already tucked away on the shelf exactly where Jason likes it.
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