Category Archives: Horror

Stephen King Short Story Project, #1: “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band”

Admit it. This is a little scary.

Story: “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band,” collected in Nightmares and Dreamscapes. Written in 1992. Wikipedia entry here. Read my introduction to this blog series.

Spoiler-filled synopsis: Two hapless travelers get lost in the woods and come across a creepy 1950s-styled small town, where the ghosts of dead rock ‘n’ roll musicians endlessly relive their glory days… much to the dismay of innocent passersby who are forced to listen to them. Forever.

My thoughts: Stephen King loves his rock ‘n’ roll. Read more than 100 pages of King’s writing and you’re certain to run into a tribute to the music of his youth—as the introductory quote to a novel, in the form of lyrics stuck in a protagonist’s head, or playing in the background of a memorable scene. Classic rock clearly means a lot to King, and in “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band,” where King imagines a magical reunion of rock legends as a nightmare, you know he’s having fun with his own obsessions.

Music is a theme in this story from the start; although protagonist Mary and her husband Clark don’t encounter the Rock ‘n’ Roll Reunion from Hell until midway through the story, King repeatedly calls attention to the music they’re listening to (Lou Reed) as they get more and more lost in the Oregon wilderness.

And they do spend quite a while getting lost. Other writers might breeze through this obligatory set-up sequence, but King takes his time, and it works to the story’s benefit. We spend this time getting to know Clark and Mary through their banter and increasing irritation with each other. There are certain types of character interactions that King depicts very convincingly, and this is one of them: spouses who sincerely love each other but who are long past the honeymoon stage of marriage and have since discovered their partner’s quirks to be both endearing and maddening (sometimes both simultaneously), depending on the context. I’m sure King’s long, successful marriage to his wife Tabitha is a large part of what makes these depictions believable and even charming. After just 10 pages of this, I find myself liking Clark and Mary quite a bit.

allmanbrothers2 But moving along: after wandering lost a while (this story takes place before cellphones and GPS devices were commonplace or even imaginable), the two stumble across a picturesque, nostalgic little all-American town with the cutesy name of “Rock and Roll Heaven,” planted inexplicably in the middle of a huge creepy forest wilderness. King often allows his protagonists a certain meta-awareness of their horror-story plights; Mary immediately recognizes that the too-perfect town is creepy as heck, and even mentions its evocation of Twilight Zone episodes and Ray Bradbury stories.

Digging up the horror lurking behind friendly facades is another classic King trope, and it’s not long at all before Mary and Clark come face to face with the true masters of this too-good-to-be-true Norman Rockwell village: zombie rock musicians. Janis Joplin, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Jimi Hendrix, and of course Elvis are not exactly alive, but they are well here. The story ends on a rather delightfully chilling note, as Mary and Clark find themselves trapped—a literal captive audience for a rock concert that, it is suggested, may just go on forever.

The idea of an afterlife reunion of tragically deceased rock stars has the potential to be sweetly melancholic rather than horrifying. King addresses this by adding a characteristically gruesome touch: the dead rock stars aren’t mournful ghosts, but disgusting, decaying zombie corpses obsessed with reliving their glory days. (If King had written this story a few years later, he might have made Gen-Xers squirm by adding Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley to the roster.) It works, and produces some memorable imagery: the mental picture of a jukebox filled with blood and gore has stuck with me over the nearly 20 years since I first read this story, and it’s still as disgusting as ever.

Speaking of characteristic King themes, we get a thumbnail version of King’s Job-like take on the theological Problem of Evil, developed more heavily in other King books but not elaborated upon here:

This had not happened because they were evil people; it had not happened because the old gods were punishing them; it had happened because they had gotten lost in the woods, that was all, and getting lost in the woods was a thing that could happen to anybody.

All in all, this is a great story, mixing familiar horror tropes (lost in the woods! small town with a dark secret!), better-than-average characters and dialogue, and a comically sick premise. King’s sense of humor runs through it as well, and I suspect he was grinning as he typed this one up. (At one point, deceased rockers Ronnie Van Zant and Duane Allman look to Mary like “the sort of fellows who dropped out of high school the third time through the tenth grade in order to spend more time meditating on the joys of drive-train linkages and date-rape.”) Highly recommended, and a good start to my October Stephen King reading.

Next up: “Jerusalem’s Lot,” from Night Shift.

The Devil’s Voice is Sweet to Hear: My October Stephen King Short Story Project

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nightshift Every year when Halloween looms on the horizon, I find myself in the mood for scary stuff. In past Octobers, I’ve made a point of watching horror movies, playing horror-themed boardgames, or reading spooky books.

This year, I find myself in a nostalgic mood, so I’m going to spend some of my October reading and reflecting on short stories by Stephen King. I spent a lot of time in college reading King, and although I loved many of his novels, I have always felt that his short stories represent his most interesting and entertaining work. I would go so far as to say that King’s short stories are some of the most memorable tales I read in all of my youth. I’ll be putting those fond memories to the test as I make my way through some of his stories, chosen semi-randomly and in no particular order (but with a bias toward his 1990s-and-earlier stories).

I’m no Stephen King expert, and I claim no special insight or exhaustive knowledge of his writings. I’m just a guy reading some stories and talking about them.

I’ll try to give you some advance notice of the story I’m reading next just in case you want to read it with me. If there are tattered copies of Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, or other King short story collections gathering dust on your bookshelf, dig ’em out and let’s pay them a visit!

First up (tomorrow) is “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band,” from the 1993 short story collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes. Read it with me!

Update: Here’s a list of what I’ve covered so far:

[Image from this nice blog post about King’s short story collection Night Shift.]

“Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!”

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Earlier this week, I was decluttering the basement, a task made more challenging by the fact that my five-year-old daughter had chosen to spread Adorable Kid Art™ all over the floor. It was going just fine, and the world made perfect sense, until I came across this page, apparently torn out of the most demented children’s coloring book in the Known Universe:

aaaaahhhhh

What the… who the… where I have seen this before? Oh, right:

Masons_baphomet

The similarities are pretty clear. I don’t know who Baphomet is calling on that telephone there, but you know it’s not going to end well for the free world.

scared

So apparently my daughter is a Templar. Or maybe a Freemason. (Jack Chick has a really great¹ tract about the Freemasons and Baphomet, but I can’t bring myself to link to his website.)

Footnotes:

^[1] crazy

F.E.A.R. of a flashlight

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Been a while, eh? I bet you’re interested in what video games I’ve been playing. Well, you’ve talked me into it.

In my spare time, I’ve been playing through an old—and it pains me to use that adjective to describe a game released in 2005, which seems like it was just yesterday—first-person shooter called F.E.A.R. (with the periods; it’s an abbreviation for something). F.E.A.R. combines the venerable first-person shooter genre with the J-horror “scary long-haired girl” genre. So it’s like The Grudge, if Sarah Michelle Gellar had an AR-15 and was being constantly attacked by evil clone troopers.

It could be worse. You could be working for N.E.R.V.O.U.S.

It’s a neat game; it’s kinda scary, and the gun battles are fun in a way that I hope real-life gun battles are not. But one thing really stands out as meriting comment: the Flashlight.

You see, much of the game takes place in creepy, poorly-lit environments from which scary stuff is frequently jumping out at you. In some areas the lighting is so dim (or non-existent) that you cannot see at all. Fortunately, the game has a solution: you have been equipped with a Flashlight.

But not just any flashlight. You see, your flashlight has 20 seconds of battery life before it switches off and must be recharged, a process that takes about 5 seconds. So travelling through dark areas is a matter of racing forward while your flashlight battery drains, then standing still for a few seconds while it recharges; at which point you switch it back on and move forward for 20 more seconds.

One understands the design motive behind this gameplay device. To make sure you spend at least some of the game in the scary dark, illumination is treated as a somewhat limited resource. Doom 3, which came out a few years before F.E.A.R. and relied on a similarly shadowy environment to creep you out, did something similar and was roundly mocked for its solution: you can have your flashlight out, or you could have a weapon out, but not both at the same time. I didn’t mind this tradeoff too much as it forced some tough choices every now and then (and really, I’m OK with not being able to wield a plasma cannon in one hand a flashlight in the other); but it’s hard to argue against the typical gamer complaints: if you’re such a bad-ass space marine, why don’t you just duct-tape the flashlight to the barrel of your gun? Or hold it in your teeth like they do in Hollywood movies? Or tie it to your helmet?

Why, indeed. F.E.A.R.‘s attempt to make turning on your flashlight a tactical dilemma is even worse, though. You’re a high-tech commando employed by some awesome secret agency, and you can’t get a flashlight that lasts more than 20 seconds? That is the worst flashlight ever. Let’s be honest: my 4-year-old daughter has a plastic flashlight shaped like a bee that diffuses its quickening ray from the “bee’s” rump, and it’s a more practical flashlight than the one they give you in F.E.A.R.

Pre-order F.E.A.R. 4 from Gamestop and get the limited edition KR-31 "Killer Bee" flashlight with which you can illuminate all your foes.

It’s an interesting game design problem, though. Like most FPS games, F.E.A.R. proudly boasts an extremely detailed and realistic environment. Buildings look and are laid out like real-life buildings. Your guns behave in a way that your typical basement-dwelling game nerd would consider realistic. Bullets knock nicely detailed chunks of concrete out of walls and shatter windows; rooms fill with blinding gunsmoke after lengthy gun battles. All of the graphics and combat mechanics work overtime to be as life-like and immersive as possible.

Yet it’s also fun to force the player travel through scary areas without reliable illumination. And so in the specific case of your flashlight, the game chucks immersion to the wind and gives you a wonky lightstick that has to be “recharged” every few seconds, because that’s more fun.

You can have realistic and immersive, or you can have gamey and fun; but when both are present in the same game, it’s a big distraction.

I’m reminded of an excellent essay on the lasting appeal of the original Doom, which had infinitely less believable environments but which turned that into a virtue:

While some of Doom’s levels have a very thin fiction via their title (eg “Hangar”) and general texturing theme, if you actually explore them you find they only resemble real locations in the loosest sense possible. This is precisely what allowed Doom’s level design to present a wide variety of interesting tactical setups. Level designers didn’t have to worry about whether a change made something look less like a hangar or a barracks, just whether it was better for gameplay. This was especially critical for a style of game that was just finding its feet in 1993.

As the march of technology has allowed ever-higher graphical fidelity, virtually every FPS since Doom has attempted greater and greater representationalism with its environments. While games like System Shock began to show that a real sense of place can be a huge draw in itself, designers of such games will always have to manage the tension between compelling fiction and optimal function, unless you are willing to go all out and have the kind of weird, abstract spaces Doom has. I would love to see more modern games break with this conventional wisdom and see where it leads, if only in an indie or experimental context.

F.E.A.R. is fun and elaborately crafted. But so was Doom, and Doom didn’t feel obliged to painstakingly recreate entire office blocks. Doom threw together a minotaur maze, slapped blinking lights on the walls, and called the level “Nuclear Plant.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, my flashlight is fully recharged and I’ve got to get back to the shooting.

The coolest RPG sourcebook I can't bring myself to buy

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One of my previous jobs exposed me to a lot of different religious websites. Most of these were perfectly respectable websites by perfectly respectful people, but there were a few I came across that were… well, a good ways down the road to crazyland.

One of the websites I came across—and I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to discern whether this falls into the Reasonable or Crazy category—is that of Texe Marrs, an end-times preacher who talks a lot about the Illumati, the JFK assassination, the Mark of the Beast, and the many ways those topics all supposedly tie together.

Why do I bring this up on a blog dedicated to gaming, you ask? Well, because Marrs’ latest ~~insane manifesto~~ book , Mysterious Monuments: Encyclopedia of Secret Illuminati Designs, Masonic Architecture, and Occult Places, might as well be a sourcebook for Unknown Armies. Here’s the back-cover blurb:

A sinister and curious Architectural Colossus is exploding across planet earth. Are mysterious monuments part of a Grand Design? Are the Illuminati elite using satanic architecture and magic to seduce men’s minds and catapult humanity into a New Order of the Ages?

Gee, I hope so, because that sounds awesome.

Take a look at its list of contents and tell me this doesn’t sound like a list of adventure seed locations from a typical horror/investigation/conspiracy RPG. Among the topics covered:

The Georgia Guidestones, whose mysterious builders left frightening messages in granite demanding that some six billion inhabitants of planet earth be eliminated to achieve “perpetual balance with nature.” (page 21)
The Great American Pyramid, newly erected in Memphis, Tennessee—was it dedicated to the Devil by the Illuminati millionaire who oversaw its construction? (pages 28 and 29)
The odd “Stonehenge” structure in California which serves as the entrance to an Apple Computer Corp. facility. Questions: Why is Apple’s logo an image of an apple with a bite taken out of it? And why did the company’s founders price their first product, the Apple 1 computer, at exactly $666? (Page 56)
Astana, Kazakhstan, gleaming new occult City of the Illuminati. Is this city slated to become the antichrist’s futuristic, new capital and global headquarters? (pages 64-67)
Sandusky, Ohio, a city laid out in the form of a Masonic square and compass, home to the company that operates “The Beast,” the world’s largest wooden rollercoaster, which boasts three 6-car trains, numerologically 666. (page 124)

(Sandusky, Ohio, eh? Who knew?)

Honestly, that would work just great as a list of plot seeds for a game of World of Darkness (any of them), Call of Cthulhu, Conspiracy X or anything written by Ken Hite.

Unfortunately, there are at least two things keeping me from picking it up, as much as I love this stuff:

It’s $35 plus shipping and handling (hey, Marrs is even using RPG rulebook pricing!).
That $35 plus shipping and handling would be funding a lot of Crazy, and I don’t think I want that on my conscience.

I’m willing to bet that this particular book doesn’t come with the “hey kids, remember this isn’t real” disclaimer that a lot of horror RPGs did (and some still do). So I think for now I’ll stick to buying my occult-conspiracy RPG books from people who don’t actually believe their contents to be true….

Now we know where Stephen King really gets all his ideas

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It’s always exciting to learn about celebrities with RPG skeletons in their closets, and here’s a particularly fun one: the NYT is running an article about Joe Hill, an author recently outed as the son of Stephen King. It’s a nice piece about the challenge of carving out your own career in the shadow of a famous parent. But the really interesting item is way back at the top of page 3, where we learn that a certain roleplaying game factored into life in the King household.

What roleplaying game, you ask? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count:

The King boys grew up riffing on each other’s fantasies; in what they called the Writing Game, a literary version of tag, one brother would write for a few minutes and pass the story to the other. “We used to play Call of Cthulhu,” Owen told me, referring to the role-playing game based on the H. P. Lovecraft story. “Joe was always dungeon master. You had sanity points, and it was like, if you encountered Yog-Sothoth one too many times, you were crazy. You could only have so many adventures, and then you had to have a new character, and I thought that was brilliant.”

Truly, a finer summation of the Call of Cthulhu experience has never been uttered. It all makes perfect sense now. The Dark Tower series always struck me as awfully RPGish, in a very good way…

(Thanks to the M-Pire for the link.)

Not quite beyond the Mountains of Madness

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I confess: I chickened out a bit on my weekend pledge to start Beyond the Mountains of Madness. Upon digging out the BtMoM book, I was reminded of that campaign’s sanity-shattering complexity and extremely large cast of NPCs, and so I decided to lead into it gradually. I ran the first part of The Trail of Tsathoggua instead (Tsathoggua being one of the better Cthulhu mythos names, in my opinion). It features a hazardous journey across glacier-covered wastes in search of a long-lost city (in other words, it shares much of BtMoM‘s plot, but in much more compact form). The plan is to give my wife’s investigator characters a chance to acquire some glacier-exploring skills, then toss them to the wolves of BtMoM.

I will say this: I don’t think I’ve ever played in an RPG scenario where the Climb skill was the most critical one on the character sheet. So far, there’s an awful lot of “if the investigators fail their Climb skill check while on the glacier, they die”–not a lot of room for the GM to step in and handwave away something like that. I assume this will only get worse once we get to BtMoM. Usually, it’s the combat and weapon skills that get maxed out upon character creation. Part of the charm of Call of Cthulhu, I suppose.

Cold of Cthulhu

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I woke up this morning and looked out the window to see this:

Blizzard

It’s really cold and snowy here today–there’s a blizzard warning in effect, and just about every church and school event in the state is cancelled. Heck, even the mall is closed today. You know it’s serious when that happens.

So how to while away the hours? My wife and I were originally planning to play the Call of Cthulhu RPG this evening (we’re romantic like that). The plan was to start the famous Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign. But with the wind howling outside, and the snow blowing so fiercely that you can hardly see anything out the window, and our apartment heater struggling to counter the deathly chill… I can’t think of anything more appropriate than breaking out the Antarctic Lovecraftian horror epic Beyond the Mountains of Madness.

I’m finally doing it–I’m actually going to run this monster of a campaign. I’ll post again… if I make it through the weekend with my sanity intact.

Resurrecting the Mountains of Madness

Drawing moral lines in wargaming

The Staging Point

a microscopic cog in the catastrophic plan

Category Archives: Horror

Stephen King Short Story Project, #1: “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band”

The Devil’s Voice is Sweet to Hear: My October Stephen King Short Story Project

“Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!”

F.E.A.R. of a flashlight

The coolest RPG sourcebook I can't bring myself to buy

Now we know where Stephen King really gets all his ideas

Not quite beyond the Mountains of Madness

Cold of Cthulhu

Resurrecting the Mountains of Madness

Drawing moral lines in wargaming