This was actually entitled “The Revelations of Becka Paulson”, which was published in an anthology of horror/erotic short stories I read called “I Shiver at Your Touch”.
The eyebrow pencil in the bullet hole? ::shudder::
This isn’t from one of his books, but it is about one of his books.
The scariest moment I ever had reading King was when I chose to read *The Shining *the weekend my college roommate went out of town (along with most of the dorm).
Perhaps I should explain that I read it in Baker Hall, an old rambling dorm, on the campus of U of Colorado, Boulder. :eek:
I was terrified to leave Baker and go to Libby where the dining hall was. I ate goldfish crackers and flat pop for 2 days.
Another part: The Stand, walking through the tunnel, with all those cars and people all around you…I kept thinking I’d hear a car door slam, then some slow footsteps…
You might like the short story, “Children of the Corn”. (Not the movie–don’t see it and let it ruin the story for you!)
Not SK, but did you find the movie Signs to be creepy for that reason as well?
This takes it for me too. I’m actually very surprised it wasn’t mentioned in here before you mentioned it. Has to be the scariest two or three pages in a book, ever. Walking through the Lincoln Tunnel in the dark with all those cars and bodies around…
It was, just not specifically - it, and the ‘survivors meeting tragic ends anyway’ bit mentioned upthread, are part of the extended sequence I mentioned.
Thanks for all the recommendations! Off to Amazon forthwith…
Just on the ‘most touching’ King stuff, there’s a story in Everything’s Eventual - can’t remember the name as I’ve lent my copy out - about a travelling salesman deciding whether to commit suicide or not. Beautiful story that almost made me cry. The parts in Pet Sematary after Gage dies are also so well done - I don’t know how anyone copes with losing a child (hope that wasn’t a spoiler for anyone who hasn’t read the book - judging on the comments above those who haven’t, won’t!).
Oh, and just remembered the bit in The Stand, in the desert, when Flagg impregnates Nadine - described from her perspective and truly chilling.
Ah, I love that bit. “When she saw what he had for her”… what? What? :eek:
All That You Love Will Be Carried Away.
Very good story, though with a somewhat misleading title.
The “Nadine/Larry” arc really stuck in my head; the missed opportunities, and when she wanted him to save her, he couldn’t because he was trying to be a better person, and it was just all quite tragic.
So many of the stories that King writes effect my on a very deep level, because they usually deal with real people and entirely possible scenerios. Or, they depict real people in impossible situations and makes me feel what they would feel. And, he’s a damn fine writer…
So, I’ll just list some of my yuckiest moments:
- In The Long Walk, the very end…he found the strength to run
- In Rage, the scene where the dad describes the Cherokee Nose Job
- In Needful Things - the scene where Wilma (?) and Nettie kill each other
- An illustration in The Drawing of the Three of Susanne - it was when she was still split personality, tied to the chair, a crazy, crazy look on her face. I still can’t really look at that picture.
And for crying out loud - when is he going to write the story about “the club that isn’t a club?”
I’ll add “Grey Matter” but only because of a performance I heard. Some friends and I used to perform in ‘forensics’ (speech and drama) competitions in high school, and a friend of mine did an interpretive reading of that story. In it, a man gets affected by something alien, and he starts to get very flabby, heading towards even gelatinous. My friend did the most amazingly disgusting voice for that character; it was very well done and sounded like he was speaking through a mouthful of gravy. Apparently he made a number of spectators visibly blanch and some even look a little green. Now I can’t think of that story without remembering the voice he did, and it makes it even more horrifying.
Similarly, the first time I read It I lived across the street from a Holiday gas station, with a big cartoon clown on their sign. The sign had fluorescent lights inside it, and one of the tubes was on it’s way out and it flickered off & on occasionally. IIRC, This was in 1987, only a few years after John Wayne Gacy killed all those young men and his photos in clown costume were published. I was a thin young man at the time. Also, I read the book during one of my amphetemine, marijuana & alcohol binges of the 80’s, so I wasn’t sleeping much either. So I was under the influence of a drug that prevents sleep, and after a few days without sleep you begin to hallucinate.
When I read the part about the guy seeing the clown in the storm drain, my shoulders were tight and I shivered, but I couldn’t stop reading. I had to avoid storm drains for a few weeks after that because, even though I knew it couldn’t happen, I was afraid to see the Holiday gas clown down there, promising me that We all float down here…
AAAAAHHH! That’s the one! I couldn’t remember the title.
Also, the ending of THE JAUNT! I can just barely imagine what kind of pain that kid had in his head!
::I need a hug::
Deeeeeeeellllllllloooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiisssssssss shiver
I will agree with THE JAUNT, creeped me out to know end when the kid said, “It’s eternity in there,” but another story, not as scary is harder for me to read.
Also from Skeleton Crew: Ballad of the Flexible Bullet. The reason that story gets me so is that it is comedy mixed with horror. And King tells you in the start that this is how it is going to be. I would find myself laughing about the guy putting powdered sugar in his typewriter and then look to see if anyone saw me laughing. His description of insanity made perfect sense to me at the time.
I will give King credit for his ability to take meaningless details and make them seem so believable. Anybody remember the cite in The Stand about how full air crafts never crash? Sticks with me to this day.
SSG Schwartz
OMG, that part is terrifying. I’ve tried to describe it to people who’ve only seen the movie, but I don’t do it justice. I remember turning the light on in my bedroom several times that night because I swore I heard something calling to me. Gah!
A lot of my scary moments are already mentioned. In the book Black House I was scared to death of the part where the killer was stalking the blind guy in his house. ::Shudder::
When I was a kid: reading about the topiary animals inThe Shining.
As an adult, there have only been two reading experiences where I had to skip parts in order to keep reading to the end (which is different from skipping parts and then just stopping reading, you’ll understand). One was a torture scene in American Psycho, and the other was (with more than one skipping incident in the reading) 1408. That is an effective piece of work, what I could bring myself to look at of it. Just typing about reading it makes my breath come a little shallower.
The only scene that I’ve never forgotten over the years is the description of the woman in the bathtub in The Shining. It was years, YEARS I tell you, before I could walk into any bathroom without a quick, anxious glance at the tub to make sure nothing was … floating, bloated there.
Of course I was an impressionable teenager when I read it. Throughout the course of reading it, I often had to get up and leave my room and sit in the living room full of my family (which was probably a whole 20 feet away from my bedroom) with the TV blaring in order for me to not be terrified out of my mind.
Similarly, while for some reason I don’t remember the details of It clearly (have I repressed them to protect my psyche? :D), I also had to get my little self into more populated areas in order to read it comfortably. In this case, I was a little older, in my 20s, and my then-husband worked later in the afternoon that I did. I remember sitting outside in my yard in broad daylight with car whizzing back and forth, still terrified out of my mind. Good times. 
When he “acted” in CreepShow! sorry…