A history book that described, in some detail, the purges Stalin carried out on the KGB & Military Intelligence before the Second World War in the USSR.
How even the little old cafeteria ladies & the old men who worked in the stables got executed.
Or worse.
Ah, yes, the prophecy was fulfilled. Now, did Toranaga fulfill the prophecy, or did he arrange it so Ishido’s death fit the prophecy? Hmmm…
Ivylad was in the Navy, serving on a submarine. Ivyboy and Ivygirl were just wee tots, and I was missing their father greatly. So, of course, I figure a Tom Clancy novel would take my mind off things. :smack:
I forget the title, but when there was a long, detailed passage of a sinking of a Russian submarine, with the sailors gasping for breath as they drowned…well, that book went flying across the room, I cried myself to sleep, and have not picked up another Clancy novel since.
A friend of mine read Call of Cthulhu for the first time at the beach. Enough said.
(She’s actually a big fan of Lovecraft, though).
For me it has to be King’s Pet Sematary. Maybe it was because I saw the movie first, but oh my GOD! That super emaciated Zelda chick scared the SHIT out of me.
That’s the exact one I came in to talk about. Good God, I don’t know when I first read it, but it’s been years and I STILL think about it. My tub has a drainhole in it with no cover over it and it’s about everything I can do to close my eyes when I wash my hair. Gah, what a disturbing story. Of course, I’ve re-read it over and over, so it’s my own fault for freaking out.
Speaking of King, how about “Rainy Season” with the huge killer toads raining down from the sky? Gah!
I have only been able to read Cujo once. Unlike the movie, in the book the little boy dies of dehydration.
The Keep by F. Paul Wilson. I read it when I was around 14 or so. I was reading it late one night after everyone else was asleep. The scene where
the corpses come back to life and begin attaking the germans
messed with me pretty bad. Honestly, that’s the most creeped-out I think I’ve ever been by a book.
I don’t get freaked out too easily. I read Stephen King all the time at night, turn off the lights, and go right to sleep. I’m pretty used to horror. Yet there was this scene in a book called Vitals by Greg Bear that really squicked me out. It’s not even a horror book. It’s been four years since I’ve read it so the details are sketchy, but I remember it involved a Soviet plot to develop mind control technology. Maybe halfway through the book, a character finds a film reel about one of the mind control experiments conducted on a small town in Russia and watches it.
The title card of the film reads “City of Dog Mothers,” and then it cuts to a scene of dozens of women walking around naked, suckling puppies at their breasts. One of the women smiles and talks to the cameraman, holding two puppies and smiling, totally unaware of what’s going on. I don’t do the scene justice by describing it, but it’s truly disturbing.
I shut the book right there, put it down, and never picked it up again. No other scene has made me do that. I still don’t know why that affected me the way it did, but it makes me feel icky thinking about it even now.
Gah.
Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz.
The stories themselves are only so-so (this urban legend is part of the collection) but the illustrations are creepy as hell.
I picked up the book once–exactly once–leafed through the pages, and promptly flung it across the room and screamed. Worst moment of reading ever.
Poe’s short story, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, in which the protagonist (?) hypnotizes Valdemar in articulo mortis (at the brink of death), keeps him in that state for months, then removes the trance… resulting inValdemar’s body immediately experiencing all the rot and putrefaction it would have gone through in the period of time he would have been dead. Urg.
But I didn’t interpret the OP’s question as being restricted to horror stuff…
The scene in Portnoy’s Complaint in which the protagonist lays under his glass coffee table while a woman takes a shit on it :wally certainly qualifies.
The true story of Ed Kemper, as told by criminal profiler John Douglas in Mindhunter, I think, although he mentions Kemper in his other books. Douglas calls Kemper the friendliest, nicest guy on Death Row. I don’t know if he has been executed, but oh, God! Kemper’s story had me sleeping with the lights on for weeks.
The only real target of Kemper’s homocidal rage was his mother, but he worked up the courage to kill her by murdering her parents and then six young women at UC-Santa Cruz. Then when it came time to do in his mother, well. . . overkill just doesn’t begin to describe it. I can’t even type it out in a spoiler box. :shudder:
The kind of thing where if you knew it was coming you could just put down the book, but next thing you know you’ve read too much.
My GLUB you people are such weenies…
Although to be honest the only thing I can think of that really FREAKED ME THE HELL OUT was one of the stories in Orson Scott Card’s The Hanged Man about the flipper-baby-thing. I’ll go through life happy if I can avoid that story again.
I came in here to talk about the dead woman in the tub in The Shining, although I am no fan of the topiary animals either. Even today as an adult, when I go into a bathroom in somebody’s house and the shower curtain is closed, I open it before I lock the door behind me. Sure, I feel silly, and of course I don’t really think there’s a dead lady in there… it just makes me feel better.
I read it when I was 11 or so, and it must have been just the right age or something - I slept with the light on for about a month. Then again I am famous for being a big pussy.
When I was a kid, I hda a pathological fear of Bloody Mary; I wouldn’t even look at mirrors most of the time in the daylight, and after dark it was completely out of the question. Then I made the mistake of reading Stephen King’s short story The Reaper’s Image in Skeleton Crew while at school.
OK … let’s give it a try. And BTW, reading through Amazon, apparently my reaction was pretty standard.
It’s a short story by James Hurst (probably read it about the same time as “The Necklace”, another mindjob kinda story)
The basic story revolves around a boy (the protagonist) and his younger, physically ill younger brother (Doodle, I believe). As I recall, the protagonist pushes Doodle to walk …
The disturbing part is the end:
Doodle is trying to keep up with the protagonist, who runs hard and fast. He no longer hears him - he goes back, and finds Doodle dead, bleeding from the mouth.
:eek:
Oh my gosh, that is so cute and so funny. And, you know, terrible for poor 11 year old AmericanMaid. I might never think of O. Henry in the same way again.
Freudian_Slip, I also read that Scarlet Ibis story, I agree it was very disturbing.
For some reason, William Wharton’s Birdy was one of those books that got passed around my group of friends in high school, and everyone seemed to love it and thought it was the best book ever. On the bn.com site, it’s described as “Wharton crafts an unforgettable tale—one that suggests another notion of sanity in a world that is manifestly insane.” Um, no. It’s JUST INSANE. I found it extremely creepy and was a little tweaked that so many people seemed to think it was an inspiring story. It’s been over 20 years since I read it, and I can still remember some scenes with great clarity and horror.
And the classic scarred for life moment – the Ginger scene in Black Beauty. I can’t believe people give this book to children! I very nearly choked to death on my own snot, I was crying so hard.
Less Than Zero (is that the right title?) creeped me out too.
Gary Jenning’s Raptor
The Hun is trying to rape the Roman soldiers, but he keeps wiggling, so the Hun takes a knife, cuts a hole in his belly, and rapes him through the hole. :eek:
Garth Ennis’ Preacher
The Meat Woman oh god the Meat Woman
I was probably 8 when I read Beautiful Joe and although I’ve read quite a bit of horror and depravity in the years since, this is still what I thought of when I read the OP.
Horrifying. I would have been happy enough not to be reminded of that one.
Harlan Ellison’s novella “A Boy and His Dog”. Discovered in a 7th grade school library sci-fi anthology. Eye-opening, to say the least. Definitely shouldn’t have been there.
The movie doesn’t really do the book justice, as usual. If you’ve only seen the movie, and you enjoyed it at all, I heartily recommend the book. Unless you’re still a kid, in which case I’d recommend waiting until you grow up some.
Don’t get me wrong – It’s a great story, and well worth reading for it’s dark depiction of the human potential, if nothing else. But I can’t recommend it to a sexually immature 7th grader. Not the type of kinks one needs to think about at that age.