The Horror Few See

Horror is all around us, yet much of it is not seen that way. This is not a new conceit, not even for me to speak of it per se. The example that prompted me to write about this topic today was the young girl from M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. If you have not seen the movie all of the way through you want to stop reading now. I am going to spoil the ending.

Everyone knows the immediately scary bits in Signs. There is the alien skulking around the farm, the one caught in Reddy's house, the video from Brazil, and of course when the aliens try to get into the house culminating in the attack by one of the aliens. The demise of this alien is set in motion long before it's arrival in the house, long before its likely arrival in proximity to Earth even. For whatever reason, miracle, born with a hypnotic suggestion from her mother, or psychic precognition ability of her own, Bo Hess set all of those glasses of water everywhere in the house. I've never seen mention of the pure creepiness of this methodical, instinctive--or we are left to assume it wasn't thought out--process. Think about it. For years this little girl has been finicky about her water. Things start getting weird at the farm and around the world, and she begins obsessively leaving the water in glasses everywhere.

Somewhere between the unblinking irrational quality of the obsession and the inevitability with which it was perpetrated and then exonerated lies the real horror to this situation. It's easy to sit back and consider that the whole scenario is, well, almost heart warming. For starters it saves Merrill and Morgan--though Morgan also has his own deal going--and it's just a part of the overall miracle. Bo is cute, though on the odd side of cute given her I saw a monster can I have a glass of water in the middle of the night attitude. Back to Morgan for a moment. His asthma is a saving grace finally, but it lacks all of the qualities that make Bo's hand in the events so outré, so unnatural. It's like comparing luck to brilliant forethought ten steps ahead of the crucial event.

Here's a final thought to ponder, would it be creepier yet to discover Bo knew the importance of having that water there at that time and hid it all those years behind an intricate web of what essentially are lies and misdirection?

Mood: thoughtful.

Music: Gonna Buy Me A Dog by The Monkees and Breathless by Quiet Riot.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #17: Like an Open Book

People put on airs, hide behind facades and are a mix of layers that have varying amounts of transparency, even when "viewed" from the inside. What happens when all of the obfuscation is ripped away? What happens when a complete stranger knows more about a person than the person knows about themselves? There's a quintessential quote that says roughly if we knew what everyone around us was thinking would we go crazy or would we be driven to kill each other. Sort of sounds like go crazy or go crazy. Of course such a simplification doesn't indicate when this obviously involuntary sharing of thoughts occurs and seems to be predicated on this situation's sudden appearance. Even then it's hard to justify the results suggested.

There is fertile horror fodder here to be sure though. Looking back to the previous two articles about breaking the horror with too great a body of evidence and too much information there is something of an inverse situation that is possible without harming the mood and theme of the "story" being told. This inversion does though hinge on its own kind of limitation despite that it is breaking out of the mould of the previous limitations. Not just any character can be allowed the wealth of details. This free reign of facts is best left to a singular antagonist in the setting, a sole villain. Horror beyond the obvious frightening images and the moods of unease, gloom, and darkness is about being overwhelmed, outpaced, desperate, and being on the losing side of the odds.

Enter the villain that knows more about the hero than what the hero will ever know about the villain. The element of surprise is the best weapon in any encounter, but is even more pivotal for turning the tide of an uneven encounter. Beyond knowing the hero's past, what kind of person they are, whom they associate with, and other details of the present, what happens when the villain knows the hero's future, what they will do, when they will do it, and even a hint of the result? This must have a limit too, but it can be pretty open ended. The future is always fluid and no sense of it could ever be infallible. Subtlety is an absolute requirement here, but such a scenario could be plenty horrific. It's another possible important if limited proposition in a psychic versus psychic tale.

Mood: level.
Music: The Reckoning by Iced Earth and Archetype by Fear Factory.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #6: Body of Evidence

Learning important crime fighting, terrorist thwarting, and life saving information by the use of psychic powers is great if it can be done. It could be a vital and vibrant part of the criminal incarceration process. It would put the right people in the right position to best defuse situations, and prevent loss of life at many levels of scale. Once the bad guys are stopped then comes the next stage. That stage is putting the villains away in jail for a long time, or depending on what almost happened a well deserved death sentence. Here is where the powers of psychics may come up incredibly short. It is not necessary that they fail, but that determination can be hard even if good sets of procedures and laws are put in place to accommodate for this new information stream.

In some cases the use of a psychic power, like for instance precognition, will lead to the discovery of hard, easily understood and established, evidence. Such an example could be explosive devices and building schematics. Is that evidence admissible in a court of law though? When does a psychic have the right to invade the privacy of another individual? That question should be answered in the world that has verifiable psychics that are recognised by the powers that be. However, what happens in a world where the psychics aren't recognised, and/or are in hiding? Right here the distinction should be made, that for a horror setting, that the psychics in question indeed are hiding, and therefore their knowledge is of no value to a court or a jury, directly.

How then does a psychic go about putting their information to use? The answer to that is that there are many different options. There is of course the eponymous anonymous tip. The psychic could be a police informant, having proven themselves to, likely, an individual officer, or a prosecutor. What happens though when there is no physical evidence? How then does a psychic go about preventing a disaster? Let's say the psychic has a vision that a neighbour is going to snap and kill his wife with a baseball bat. Until the neighbour is about to commit the crime there is no crime as far as the law is concerned. Even if the neighbour is a wife beater the police can't do anything until they catch him being violent, which will generally be too late. This is especially true if the psychic cannot nail down a time for the event.

Mood: stressed.
Music: My Global Mind by Queensryche and Picture Elvis by Moist.

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