Today I'd like to welcome Mark Matthews to Now is Gone. Mark has recently released his first horror novel, On the Lips of Children. Previous releases have included Stray (I edited this book, but did not review it as it isn't my sort of book, but it's very well-written) and Jade Rabbit. Without further ado, here's Mark.
“The oldest and strongest emotion of
mankind is fear.”
China Mieville is perhaps the coolest cat to ever write a
sentence, and his goal is to write a novel in every genre. Not sure if this means horror is on the way, or
if he has counted one of his many novels which already include plenty of horror.
Horror appears in so many great pieces of literature, yet it
still seems that calling a novel a piece of horror cheapens it in some reader’s
eyes. The more I swim in writer’s
circles, I’m discovering some writers embrace the term Horror writer, some
prefer ‘dark fiction’, others coin their own terms. All of this with the hope
that their work is properly understood.
Well, whatever the term, it is my belief that horror provides perhaps the most powerful, visceral, and deeply
moving ways to experience art. Not only
that, but the darkest of horror writers have the finest hearts around
Yes, in Horror, people are threatened. People get hurt.
People are killed. There’s evil. There’s blood. You feel threatened by dark
forces. Well, I would argue that
something gets cut open in any novel, each story has something that bleeds, (even
if it’s just Holden Caulfield’s innocence, for example) and the hinge upon
which all fiction swings is escalating conflict and the fear that the protagonist
won’t get what they want.
Fiction is the drama of life with the heat turned up, and
when done right, it boils out the insides of characters and reveals who they
are, and better yet, transforms them into something stronger, like metal into
fire. Or perhaps when the novel ends in tragedy, they aren’t strong enough to
handle the flames. Horror does this
wonderfully.
In this way, I think of horror as much as a literary device
as a genre. The term horror is just a marketing tool. Put a different cover on the novel American
Psycho, and it would no longer be read as an illustration of our society of
privilege, financial cannibalism and materialism gone mad. Instead, it’d be
slasher and torture porn.
Let me set the premise for an epic horror story. One which
will be the tome upon which civilizations are built, wars are fought, children
are baptized, and bodies are buried:
Imagine a story where the dead are raised, where babies are
slaughtered, where plaques destroy cities, and where the main character has
spiritual powers but is shunned, eventually betrayed, until the day comes he
has to carry the device of his own torture. A crown of thorns bloodies his head, his flesh
is punctured by nails, and his body hangs until he dies. But wait, it’s not
over, because then his very soul will have to harrow hell for 3 days, gathering
the ravaged souls of those before him, until he finally ascends to a higher
plane.
To commemorate this event, we all kneel in front of the same
ancient torture device. Then we perform a cannibalistic ritual to honor his
sacrifice in Holy Communion as solemn music plays in the background.
Yep, you got it (don’t throw stones, please) put a different
cover on it, and you can market the Bible as horror.
The iconic horror writer Stephen King rewrote this story,
only it was much more tame, and it stared Jon Coffee, instead of Jesus Christ,
both spiritual superior beings put to death, just texts written at different
times. Scour great horror and dark fiction, you’ll find great literature.
What makes Stephen King shine is his characters, not just the
horror, and when his work is at its best, the macabre highlights the internal
strife of the character. Horror works best when it is a metaphor for the dark
places the character is already traveling through. It isn’t easy to draw a
picture of our dark psychological recesses, so you pull the insides out, put
different faces on them, and give them a name. Like It, or Cujo.
The story of Cujo serves as a model for me. The huge, killer rabid St. Bernard who has
trapped a woman and her young child in the tiny pinto of a car. But it’s not about a dog; it’s about alienation,
isolation. I am alone, everybody has
abandoned me, and here I am suffocating in this car, alone, trapped, with the
jaws of the world trying to kill my most precious child.
This is why I think horror writers have the finest hearts
around. The only way a writer can scare
you is to first prove they understand you.
A writer must first be ultra-sensitive to the human predicament, and show
they can get into the hearts and heads of humans. Otherwise, it all falls flat. I would love my
daughter to marry a man with the heart of a Stephen King.
To take a step further, it is by destroying your
protagonists, after giving him hopes and dreams and struggles, that can make you
fully empathize with him. None of our physical lives come to happy endings. No
one here gets out alive.
Of course, there are works that exist simply for sake of a
bombardment of the senses. This still
takes art, I would argue, even if it is horror just for horror sake. I love the
Evil Dead, but I’m not going to say it has the same psychological layers, but
it is incredible campfire storytelling.
Horror is seeing resurgence in TV, and not just because it
scares us, but because it helps us relate. In Season one of American Horror Story,
the real horror was dealing with infidelity, trust, anger, (perpetual anger)
and all the shattered lives caused by the ripples of hurt. The horror of all
this inner-psyche drama sticks around like ghosts in your basement in a house
you can never leave. You can't just kill the past, you have to deal with it,
otherwise, the ghosts in your basement remain. They haunt your psychological
dark spots, always ready to fragment your spirit, destroy your dreams, and yes
hurt your children.
Horror works best when you are watching it and realize that,
“hey, that’s me; I’m living a life of fear. A live of quiet desperation -
screaming in terror on the inside yet quiet on the outside”. Horror reminds us that
We are all infected. Yes, the secret
of season 1 and 2 of The Walking Dead, that we
are all infected is what makes
horror as a genre thrive. We are all infected with this human experience. It's
a virus that lasts approximately 70 years, give or take a few decades, and
during that time we look for meaning. And when done right, horror offers us a
great peek into this unique affliction, but if not, it at least gives us some
riveting drama to enjoy and makes our predicament a little more tolerable. At least for a few hundred pages or more.
Mark Matthews is the
author of STRAY and The Jade Rabbit, and his third
novel, ‘On the Lips of Children’, a piece of dark fiction, horror, nihilistic inspirational absurdity, and any
other label that fits, is coming soon from Books of the Dead Press. He blogs at
Running, Writing, and Chasing the Dragon.
