The Art of the Unseen

Last week, I featured an interview with horror writer Jack Kilborn (also known to his fans and his wife as JA Konrath). After the interview, I mentioned that Kilborn’s book AFRAID perfectly demonstrates one of the key concepts of horror writing: less (description) is more.

This week, I want to get a little deeper into that concept. Today I’ll show you a real-world example of it, and Thursday I’ll show you how to incorporate it into your writing to make your horror—and your descriptive fiction, altogether—stronger.

When I was about thirteen years old, on a trip to the county fair with my dad, I went through the most terrifying haunted house ever.

Nothing jumped out at me, nothing sprayed gore or strobed disorienting lights, or cackled or threatened to bite my neck. It was a single long hallway, just too wide to be able to put my arms out and feel the walls. It was pitch black. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. All I could see were the geometric patterns my eyes made to fill in the darkness. I’d entered during a quiet lull, so I was the only one inside. There were no voices, just the muffled sounds of the carnival outside, and there were no moments when a door would open to provide me with any hints of light.

All I had to do was walk the length of the room.

I didn’t see the challenge at first. Thinking about it now, I probably figured the thing was broken and I was the sucker (there’s one born every minute, you know!) who’d just been cheated out of six tickets, or that someone had accidentally shouldered the light switch. I started across, with the intention to make it to the other side and continue on to something more entertaining.

…and stepped right into something rubbery and squishy…and completely freaked out.

In the darkness, the only point of reference I had was the floor—and the floor, every time I would get used to it, would change. It was squishy. Then it was sticky. Then it was a series of wooden rollers (with handrails provided for that one). There was a stretch that vibrated. I was shaking like a leaf as I moved forward. Each step was hesitant, testing; not sure what I would encounter next. By that point I could see the faintly lit outline of the door at the end, but it seemed impossibly far away.

And then my toe bumped something solid. It was a step, and the faint light from the door showed me that there was a small flight of about five of them. Stairs weren’t a big deal after all those other things, and I was almost out, so I stepped forward with confidence. This would be the easy part.

But it wasn’t. The stairs were equipped with thick, flexible rubber projectiles that poked out from the walls. They brush my ankles stiffly from both sides and quivered against my skin.

I think I jumped straight up in panic. I know I jumped backwards, off the stairs. My head was racing with thoughts of insects, spiders, slimy things… My heart was pounding, and I actually backed up a few paces and crouched down, squinting into the darkness and tilting my head (I didn’t have a cell phone back then, so I didn’t have a horror-diffusing light source on me), trying desperately to see what those things were before I could let them touch me again.

Now, not only was I imagining being trapped in the dark by giant, infinitely patient spiders, I was also picturing being trapped there for hours. Overnight. Forever. How long would it take my father to figure out where I was and come in after me? Would the sun set? Would he be mad? Would he go home without me and let the spiders get me? Maybe they only came to life after dark.

Maybe they’d be…hungry.

Finally, after what felt like about five or ten minutes, someone else entered the room to start their own adventure, and I had enough light to see the projectiles for what they were. Then I could finally cross them—quickly, and sideways, with high steps that gave them as little contact as possible—and leave.

The experience impressed me and fascinated me. It had a profound effect on me and my perception of, well, perception. I was in awe of how something so simple had been able to make me so deeply afraid. It taught me a lot about the nature of fear, about how important it is to have the impression of control over one’s surroundings, and especially about how willing and eager my own imagination is to kick me in the butt when I give it half a chance.

I learned that the things unseen can sometimes be far more frightening than the things that are seen. The imagination, left to its own devices, can fill details more terrifying (and, details personalized to the very own fears of the person doing the experiencing, at that) than any fake blood or plastic skeleton or rubber mask, no matter how lifelike the special effects.

And I learned to what degree I take the floor beneath my feet for granted. We expect that when all else fails, when all else is uncertain, we’ll still have what’s beneath our feet as a frame of reference. As something sure, that we can count on. Cast someone’s most basic expectations into uncertainty, whether it’s the solidity of the literal floor or a metaphorical one, and you strip away all their control, leaving them with no frame of reference for expectations or assumptions. They will be left with nothing. Nothing will be sure.

And then, once all of that has been stripped away, the slightest nudge will give the imagination a wild, unapologetic field day.

Tagged as: haunted house, horror, writing