Oh, Elke. Were you tangible, were you as real as the reader, as real as me who wrote you, I wonder what you’d say having read your unwarranted biography? Would you be satisfied with its ending? Would you keep going knowing what you must go through, what you must endure to reach the end? If our own life stories were available in local libraries to be read at our leisure, would we? Is life kept interesting by not knowing what comes next?
Don’t expect answers, because I don’t have any. Well, let’s see…
Honestly, horror is a pain to write. There’s a delicate balance to be struck between being grotesque for the sake of it and not being scary at all — somewhere between skin-crawlingly unsettling and Barney and Friends. I find it hard to try and maintain this balance and, as I can never read my own work for the first time, how can I possibly discern if my own story kept me on the edge of my seat? Wolf has plenty of gruesome bits, plenty of disturbing passages, plenty of baddies for my dogged hero to run away from and yet… I wish I could look inside the mind of a reader to see what they’ve imagined; better still, what made them squirm the most. I suppose every writer does.
Of course, horror has more sub-genres than The One Reborn can count on all of the fingers on all of the hands on all of its limbs (that’s a lot just to be clear). There’s Body Horror, Gothic Horror, Classic Horror, Spoof Horror, Horror Horror, Cosmic Horror, The Rocky Horror Picture Show… The list goes on ad nauseam and trying to fit more than a dismembered handful of those into one story could spell disaster for your efforts. As I’ve said previously, a tightly-woven, cohesive tale that sets out to do a few things really well is far better than trying to unload a corpse-cart full of different ideas and themes over 90k words (as I learned from the first book I’d ever written, which was a cringe-inducing mess).
This brings me nicely along to the crux; what comprises Wolf’s meat.
At its core, Elke’s story is Cosmic Horror standing on Body Horror’s blood-wet shoulders while wearing Gothic Horror’s claw-torn trench coat (à la trying to sneak into the cinema with one ticket). Put simply, Wolf is a Gothic Horror tale with elements of Body and Cosmic Horror. There’s a bit of Bloodborne in there, some Lovecraft, some Ito, some Carpenter; a right mish-mash of horrible inspiration through and through. What is clear to me is that horror has been done near-perfectly so many times in the past that you can’t help but look at the works of masters previous: Carpenter and The Thing, Scott and Alien, King and The Shining, Poe and The Cask, Lovecraft and his Mythos…
For all of Lovecraft’s faults, both personal and in his writing style (oh, the thing, it was indescribable), The Shadow Over Innsmouth contains a favourite scene of mine; someone or something attempts to assault the narrator at his room in Innsmouth’s hotel. Featuring one of only a few instances of H.P writing action, the scene itself is quick and foregoes his usual rambling, ellipse-filled cadence. Should you choose to hear rather than read I would suggest Wayne June’s excellent version, available on YouTube.
Before I let you go, you’ll find another curated selection from Wolf below. Let me know your thoughts (it’s still a work in progress after all). Just a brief warning: Reader discretion is advised.
My eyelids rocked back, though the familiar leaky roof of the caravan wasn’t there. No, it was the cold stone ceiling of my room in Drachenzahn. I was back, or was I? Had I left at all? Hilde, very much alive, was sat at the end of the bed playing with the edge of the duvet. Once she noticed that I had awoken she got up and curtsied. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to-” “No, you’re dead,” I muttered. “This is a dream, then.” “Elke?” she said, looking at me as if I’d come out with the stupidest thing anyone had ever said. “A dream? Eula must’ve slapped you fairly hard...” “Eula?” That’s right, she’d slapped me for returning so late to the castle. Jurgen... he visited me shortly after Hilde escorted me here. “Eula... What time is it?” She pondered my question. “Morning, early morning.” I sat forward and began searching beneath the mattress for my box, Walter’s box. It wasn’t there. “So why hasn’t Eula been in to scream at me?” I said after returning to my original position. “I told her you weren’t well,” she smiled. “Which is actually the truth, I guess?” “Well, no, not really. I’m fine... Did you move it?” “Your smoke box? No, why would I?” she shrugged. A grin and vague relief washed over me. It was a dream. “I’m clever, but not that clever it seems.” We all knew we kept forbidden items under our mattresses, but I’d never told Hilde what mine was. Only I would know. “Clever enough to sniff out your own ruse,” Hilde smiled, but it grew wider, and wider, and wider, until the corners of her lips split apart and kept splitting, right up to her earlobes. “But it’s not a dream, is it?” Blood spurted from her lips with her every word, showering me in droplets. The rest of her skin then melted from her bones, leaving only the muscle beneath and the sickening, jaw-splitting smile she’d been wearing. Then, in another instant, her skin returned, though it was no longer Hilde’s visage; it was mine, mine as it was now. “Do I scare you?” “No,” I whispered. A pang of pity swelled in my chest, then the sight in my left eye faded to black and I could feel the scars and bruises forming. When it had finished, I looked back to myself; still wearing my visage, though as it once was. “That’s better.” “Not for long,” she replied. Between blinks I had been robbed from my room and placed in the Castle’s courtyard. The wind blew foul and snow whipped at my legs though I felt no cold, no chill, nothing. She reappeared on the other side of the frozen fountain, but it wasn’t me any longer – it was the oaf, the oaf... A gun’s sights, pulled into existence by sheer force of will, bridged the gap between my eye and his head. The following shot was ear-piercing and right on the mark, landing somewhere betwixt the tip of his nose and the top of his sweaty forehead. But that wasn’t enough, not even enough to make him flinch and slowly, steadily, he continued making his way around the fountain towards me. I fired again, and again, landing my shots on his face and tearing chunks of flesh and globs of freezing blood from it, yet on he marched, drawing closer, and closer. With the gun empty and a steamy breath all that stood between us, I howled and lashed at his face with my nails, with my claws, with my fangs; tearing, and tearing, and tearing until there was no more meat left to tear. All-the-while he had been laughing, laughing at my seemingly foolish attempts to be rid of him. I lashed at his body then, ripping and ripping, and ripping until I’d exposed his ribs, lungs and the black heart behind all. Hard went my open hand into his chest and I gripped that sable organ as tight as I could, puncturing the skin of my own palm with my claws as I did. But budge it wouldn’t, so I took it with both hands and braced one foot on his groin and the other on the ribbons that remained of his neck. Pulling, pulling, pulling it from the arteries keeping it there. Cruel was the howl I let fly, finally, finally stealing the heart from its home and holding it high above for all to see. He laughed again, the eyes still in his skull burning bright. “The Wolf really is a wolf, even in a dream!” I blinked. Now I was in the function room where it happened. Blood dripped from my clothes, from my trembling paws, from the brows hanging heavy over my eyes like a pair of bodies from a gibbet. One half of the room, the half with the deer’s head mounted over its fireplace, appeared to be as it was before any blood was shed. The other side, the one with the wolf’s head, was the aftermath – piled bodies, lakes of gore and the still-wet tools used to carry it all out. Much to my surprise, both halves were devoid of life, save for Jurgen standing at the wolf’s fireplace, gazing deep into the flames cackling back at him. “There she is,” he turned and said, some world-weary smile keeping his lips from touching. “Are you having fun yet?” I pawed nearer to hover behind the couch at his back and waited; waiting to pounce. “I’m getting there.” He lifted the poker from the hearth and stoked the near-ashen logs. “The tables have turned, or so it would seem. When we first visited you, we could torment you for as long as we wanted. Now, now it appears that you are the one doing the tormenting.” “And every night I’ll be waiting for you,” I snarled. “And every night we will come,” he nodded happily.
Auf Wiedersehen.
AJ Carney 