Anatomy of a Horror Setting #2-19: Spelling Horror

Let’s talk about some actual spells now. Rather than retread the usual ones how about something a little more original? First up, what villain hasn’t wanted to flay someone alive? It needs to be little more interesting though. Some ancient, angry, master of the arcane decided that it would be better instead to have a spell that caused his enemy’s skin to pull away from their muscles and stretch but not to tear open anywhere. The result was beyond painful and continuous. It led to a long agonising death due to internal bleeding. It had two added benefits dealing with the increased fear it caused. No ordinary man could achieve such a bizarre thing; it had to be the work of dark magic. It also looked really terrible, especially as the space between skin and flesh filled with blood.

Curses are popular. There’s endless itching, having no reflection, and permanent bad luck. A vengeful Mayombe (evil voodoo priest) decided to make an enemy’s life an actual living nightmare. He set upon this man a powerful curse to make him forever see everything as if it were dead and rotting. This extended to the man’s senses of touch, smell, and taste. Things that don’t exist capered and leered threateningly from nowhere and circled around in the man’s peripheral vision. Voices whispered constantly, saying terrible things and inviting the man to do terrible acts. The last bit was the worst. It constantly ate at the edges of the man’s sanity and tried to drive him to visit evil upon others. It caused the man great guilt long before he gave in to the voices.

Here is a twist on an old stand by. There is a powerful spell used to turn people into slavering, violent, monsters. However, a great and powerful being from another realm of existence, who was capable of great guile and viciousness, had a better idea. This nameless being came up with an alternative. It cast the spell upon some random man, who upon touching his beloved wife changed her. That night the man was awakened to see his wife change into a monster and run off into the night. He went after her, but the local villagers caught her slaughtering the neighbours. The husband found his wife just as the villagers moved to destroy the monster. The man had to chose to die with his beloved or to fight his friends and neighbours, even as true to the spell’s form she attacked them.

Mood: excitable.
Music: Losfer Words (Big 'Orra) by Iron Maiden and Silver Wings by Bruce Dickinson.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #2-4: Deadly Conjurations, Dark Summons

For the purpose of this setting Conjuration is the creation of something out of the essence of magic, or even by translocation it via magic. On the other side of what seems to be the same coin is Summoning, the translocation of living beings, whether they hail from across the country to across the divides of realities. This is not to say that creatures cannot be fashioned, or drawn entirely from imagination and given form by magic. In fact such a thing could fall under the purview of Conjuration, however such a power might be too strong for a horror setting, despite the obvious perks that would be possible because of it. To digress a moment, a grittier approach would be to modify existing creatures to create monstrosities and other grotesqueries, though that would not be conjuring either.

What sort of things might a Conjurer conjure? Without requiring too much forethought on the part of the Conjurer the first class of things would be items such as weapons. A person conjuring such things might be some kind of assassin, making their tools appear and disappear at will. Such tools need not be processed. A knife may be nothing more than a wedge of some material with a sharp edge along part of its length. Where Conjuration might prove more advantageous in the (figurative) realms of magic is in the hands of a more technical and modernised caster. A strong understanding of chemistry and an ability to 'summon' materials is a deadly combination. Anything from acids, to toxins and poisons, to flammable and explosive compounds would be possible.

A Summoner needs to summon living things and also be able to exert some measure of control over them, at least the unintelligent ones such as insects, and animals. Summoning creatures of this world is easy, because it is easy to know the desired species, or to research them to find the right kinds of traits. To summon a person involves more effort, starting with their true name. While not as difficult to learn as in medieval times the Summoner still needs to know the person's full birth name. The level of difficulty rises again when summoning things from the great beyond. Learning the true names of devils and otherworldly beings can be difficult. Summoning random beings is always a risky business due to their otherworldly powers and--as with humans--unpredictable natures.

Mood: relyriced.
Music: South of Heaven by Quiet Riot and Cryin' by Aerosmith.

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Suspense from the Known

R.G. Male ©2007 Excerpted from "Unnamed Psychic Horror Game"

Every good scary story, and this includes novels, movies, and games, needs suspense. An obvious thing. Often times as much as there is a need to be mysterious, even aside from leaving things to the imagination, some things do work better when they are obvious after a fashion.

The idea that needs to be approached here is that there are a few select times where revealing the horror doesn't lessen it, but instead increases it. A lot of these revelations are in scenes usually not involving the main characters. This is useful in a gaming context as well. For example, there is the type of scene where a monster stalks its victim. It is seen through the victim's eyes as much as from an outside point. While it does not give everything away, maybe even not a lot, it does make some things clear. For instance, the monster chases its victim, but yet on occasion, sometimes, somehow, gets ahead of the victim and they run right smack into it. This adds suspense in the fashion that the monster could pop up anywhere at any time.

R.G. Male ©2007 Excerpted from "Unnamed Psychic Horror Game"

There are mode insidious methods of ratcheting up the horror. The monster corners its prey. As it begins to do whatever it does to them, there is a flash of green light, and the scene goes to black. Now later, the audience, in this case the players, knows about this little tidbit out of character. Then the characters are somewhere, and they see a flash of green light, say in an alleyway, or behind an only partially closed door. Now the players start to sweat buckets, just like the movie audience does, because they know what is going on. At the same time there is nothing they can do about it, just as the movie character that is ignorant of what is happening cannot do anything.

Another example could go something like this... "Hey, what's this ash here?" It's one of the missing people being sought out for a clue, or they need to verify is indeed missing, and not just out of town. The players know this and they are biting their nails bloody, the characters have no idea as of yet. There are a number of different ways to express similar ideas, and beyond that there is a myriad of different concepts making use of this same principle of revealing things but not spoiling the suspense with a "look it's a werewolf" sort of let down.

R.G. Male ©2007 Excerpted from "Unnamed Psychic Horror Game"

Mood: melty.
Music: All I Want Is Everything by Def Leppard and Riders Of The Storm by Hammerfall.

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Monsters!

What is horror without its monsters? Nothing! Nothing I tell you! They are the things that go bump in the night (poltergeists aside). They are the manifestation of the unknown. Teeth, claws, strange abilities, oftentimes stranger origins. While there is much focus on the one's that are animalistic and simple predators looking to feast on parts of us, those are just the tip of the horrific iceberg.

There comes a point where one has differentiate between what is a monster and what is a demon, for instance. Some might argue that if it goes beyond that primal predator that perhaps it isn't a monster but some kind of higher being, whether it is an inter-dimensional traveller, an alien, or a demon. Each of those is kind of their own thing. All of them can be simply called monsters anyway, except where certain overtones of the demonic would be concerned.

So what of the monsters that lurk in the shadows and do their evil things from there? This brings up it's own point, that pretty much a monster must be evil to be a monster. Certainly the Fantasy genre has "races" that are considered monsters because of their appearance. While this idea of a species of something being a monster does carry over to horror on the other hand as Disney and its ilk would have us believe what makes a monster is its intent. I have to concur.

I am all for the eating, and the cat and mouse games of the hungry monsters, but I definitely prefer the thinking man's monster. They can have plans, and there can be manipulation and seduction—in this case of a power or results kind, though certainly Incubi and Succubi represent the sexual kind aptly—and there can be head games. The possibilities are legion and their terror bone chilling. So bump on, monsters!

Mood: smooth.
Music: Rock & Roll Saviours by Twisted Sister and Plastic Money by Twisted Sister.

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The Closet Monster

It would be of great interest to know when the idea first came about that some "thing", some monster, or some other malevolent force took up residence in the closet. First there would have to be closets in use across a number of homes. Or would there have to be? Perhaps the phenomena—the idea as the phenomena not there actually being evil beings in closets—dates further back with the existences of wardrobes and armoires. Either way as horror fan and writer it is a historically important point in time, undefined as it is.

What is a closet if not a modern form of the cave? That something hideous should live in there seems only natural. Ever wonder why it is that the most famous of the creatures attributed to live in the closet is always hideous? There has always been that connection between ugly on the outside, ugly on the inside. That would have to be the reasoning. Of course who has nightmares about beautiful things trying to eat you, or steal your soul, or any of the other tonne of terrible things the inhuman do.

The love affair with the closet monster is a long-standing one in the horror medium, though often, like the beast, it is kept in the closet. It doesn't get a lot of play, sadly. Sometimes in film when it has the results have been pretty spectacular cheese-wise. The king of those that comes to mind is the classic, "The Monster in the Closet". Camp... check. Cheese... check. Clichés out to there... check. Hilarity... check.

On the more serious fronts we have "The Boogeyman" from Ghost House Pictures. There are even movies where the closet itself is the centre of terror without anything living in it such as Poltergeist. One short film that shouldn't be missed is the adaptation of Stephen King's short story "The Boogeyman". This short film was paired on VHS with King's "The Woman in the Room". Shamefully sad is that neither of these gems is available on DVD. The short film is pretty spectacular given it couldn't have any budget whatsoever.

Any way you slice it, it doesn't get any more iconic than horrors in the closet. Whether it be on film, or in books—a notable shout out to, once again, Stephen King for the closet scenes in Cujo—it is a fascinating bit of fear.

Mood: energized.
Music: Show Some Emotion by Paul Di'Anno and Hell on High Heels by Motley Crue.

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