When I was a teenager, I was a huge fan of Christopher Pike’s writing style – he never took himself too seriously in his teen thriller stuff, and I enjoyed that. One day I picked up one of his adult novels, The Listeners and I swear, to the best of my recollection, it was riveting. Riveting! I raved about it for days.
What was it about?
Basic plot spoiler:
Oh, a disillusioned cop. And how a race of superintelligent lizards once reigned the earth in prehistoric times–and built the pyramids just by thinking about them. And how they were trying to take the earth back. By channeling the energy from human twins.
On my honor, it was one of the scariest things I ever read.
So how about it? What absurdly-premised horror novel chilled you to the bone?
The Descent by Jeff Long – the premise is that Hades, or Hell, is real, and it’s under our feet, and something lives there. I had no problem suspending disbelief though. Hell, I was jittery in my basement for weeks.
The Rising by Brian Keene has zombified talking animals. I didn’t finish it, but many horror fans loved it.
I wonder if those were the same critters in a another novel he came out with, called Scavenger Hunt. This one was written for the juvenile audience. The baddies were a couple of dinosaurs, who posed as a teen-aged brother and sister, and who evidently required periodic human sacrifices to maintain their immortality. This they carried out by throwing their victims into an underground lake of sulfuric acid.
Having encountered Mr. Pike only in my adult years, I can’t really say I found him not taking himself seriously. It was difficult for me to take him seriously, but he didn’t seem to have any problem.
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs write absolutely absurd horror novels and thrillers that are a lot of fun. I liked The Relic, about a monster loose in a museum (One of them co-authored a book on the American Museum of Natural History, which they clearly had in mind. The movie, which was a LOT dumber, switched it to Chicago).It had a halfway decent sequel, Reliquary. I also kinda like their Riptide, which isn’t really horror, but a ludicrously over-the-top thriller clearly based on the Oak Island Treasure Pit-- what if it were real, and as advertised, with Spielberg-esque pitfalls and still-working stone traps, all built by a master architect, all holding a Treasure with a Deadly Secret?
Ooh, this sounds right up my alley! Thanks!
Okay, how’s this for a ridiculous plot that shouldn’t work but totally does? In the Hills, the Cities by Clive Barker! From Wikipedia: In an isolated rural area, there happens an astounding event: two entire cities, Popolac and Podujevo, create massive communal creatures by binding together the bodies of their citizens, many thousands of people walking as the body of a single giant, as tall as a skyscraper.
A stunningly beautiful short horror story.
[spoiler]the first-person story of a girl who died at a party and lingered on as a ghost. Everyone thinks the girl killed herself, and the girl herself isn’t so sure what happened, but eventually solves the mystery with the help of a also-dead classmate.
I had forgotten all about this book until I saw “Dogma” when Chris Rock says that the dead spend most of their time watching the living-- especially in the shower. There’s a scene in the book where the classmate mentions the same thing. [/spoiler]
Honestly, I don’t have the faintest idea how a buttload of used Christopher Pike books turned up in my possession. They while away an afternoon, though, when I don’t want any demands placed on my intellect.
A young friend recommended Pike’s THE LAST VAMPIRE series to me - FULL of weird stuff, including a running appearance by Krishna, and also a Holy Grail or Spear subplot about the magickal properties of Christ’s Blood, and an ending that pulls the most-hated cliche’d twist ever (hint- Bobby Ewing) AND STILL WORKS!
I found Phantoms by Dean Koontz to be quite an entertaining read-- travelers passing through a rural town discover that, like the crew of the Marie Celeste, all the inhabitants have very recently and unaccountably vanished. Meals are still cooking on stoves, cars have been left running at intersections, etc. The only letdown was the somewhat predictable solution to the mystery, in which it is revealed that the cause of the disappearances is:[spoiler]-- intelligent, murderous shapeshifting petroleum jelly that thinks it’s the Devil. I mean, as if there hadn’t been enough killer petroleum jelly novels already. Hasn’t the intelligent petroleum jelly horror well run dry yet? Until the vampire fiction glut of the late 1980’s, it seemed like every third horror novel featured some malign dermal lubricant.
Koontz at least departs slightly from the standard killer petroleum jelly cliche, in that his novel features an insane religious fanatic killer petroleum jelly. Yes, this petrolatum isn’t just killing people, it’s killing people because it’s crazy and thinks the Bible told it to. If you’ve ever paused to wonder what it would be like if David Berkowitz were made of Vaseline, then this is the story you’ve been waiting for, my friend.[/spoiler]
Strangely enough, I still own the first two books of that series in hardcover… and I LOVED them when I was a young 'tween. I hate to admit it, but I may reread them sometime if I need some bit of ridiculous fluff to pass the time.
I have a story that is sort of vaguely relevant to this topic.
I was once a member of a book club, and one month we read Seize the Night by Dean Koontz.
I don’t actually remember much about it, except that the main character had a super-duper highly intelligent “dog” masquerading as a normal dog. I remember towards the end of the book, the guy proves how intelligent the “dog” is by saying, “Go upstairs to my bedroom closet and bring me my left blue Converse shoe.” Or something like that. The “dog” proceeds to execute this command perfectly, because he’s not a normal dog and he can understand English.
And I remember this discussion from our book group:
Book Club Lady 1: “Just because the dog could understand English doesn’t mean that it would know the difference between left and right, would it? I mean, what use would it have for that knowledge?”
Book Club Lady 2: “Are you kidding? This dog understood references to Alice in Wonderland from having seen the Disney movie. This is a smart dog.”
I think the book to which you’re referring is Watchers. It’s the one where
the dog is named Einstein by the man who finds him. There’s a monster from the same genetic research lab which is trying to find and kill the dog. The man teaches the dog to read and they communicate using Scrabble tiles.
I have to say, Koontz’s generic horror titles make them hard to remember.
Last Act was my favorite, probably because I was in the drama club. I remember that by the time I was graduating from high school, Pike had taken a turn for the decidedly dreary. The last book I remember reading by him was called Die Softly, about a nerd who discovers the cheerleading squad is selling cocaine-laced cookies and then ends up getting himself killed when he confronts the head cheerleader. Or something like that. I recall Road to Nowhere, See You Later, and Witch having similarly depressing endings.
