Hey wonderful Read-a-thon people! Missed you guys so much. I think it’s my 3rd or 4th Dewey’s and this is my 2nd time co-hosting; I couldn’t be happier to do it! I have to say that I’m loving Dewey’s in October. This time of year is made for reading.
You’ve made it to HOUR 11! Woo-hoo! Do you know how awesome that is?! Take a moment to pat yourself on the back and dust off those cookie or Doritos crumbs😉. Many of us are reading in various spooky genres (horror/suspense/mystery) because Halloween is just a week away. I’ve got an unofficial Hour 11 challenge for you all!
Choose your own nightmare and leave one of the spookiest passages you’re reading or have read during the ‘thon in the comments! Please include title and author of book because we all want to know which book you’re reading.
ARE YOU SCARED YET?! 😉 See you in a few for HOUR 12! You’re doing great!
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Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon 
“I need to use my mind in a way that slows the out-of-control beating in my chest. The darkness around us could be anywhere, anytime. I could be alive or dead. Okay, I choose alive. While I’m at it, I choose the darkness to be a gentle blanket on a moonless night, where I rest a few feet from a boy who’s warm and sweet. When he holds me, his heart beats strong with what I tell myself is passion, not fear.” From Nerve by Jeanne Ryan
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“I am not a fool. I am wise. I will run from my fear, I will outdistance my fear, then I will hide from my fear, I will wait for my fear, I will let my fear run past me, then I will follow my fear, I will track my fear until I can approach my fear in complete silence, then I will strike at my fear, I will charge my fear, I will grab hold of my fear, I will sink my fingers into my fear, then I will bite my fear, I will tear the throat of my fear, I will break the neck of my fear, I will drink the blood of my fear, I will gulp the flesh of my fear, I will crush the bones of my fear, and I will savor my fear, I will swallow my fear, all of it, and then I will digest my fear until I can do nothing else but shit out my fear. In this way I will be made stronger.”
Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
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Wow. Just wow.
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I’m currently reading Give And Take by Emily Cyr and listening to How I Fall by Anne Eliot.
A good spooky/nightmarish read would be The Cellar by Natasha Preston!
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“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
From: Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
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I want to read this book!
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The creepiest passage in my current read, asking for it, would need a trigger warning.
bit wary of posting it as the book deals with a gang rape and the aftermath. It’s brilliant writing but very brutal.
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“As a boy he’d understood he was different. What he was, was not something that developed over the years, a result of abuse or an inferiority complex or bullying. He was born that way. A “psychopath” his own terrified mother had called him when he had given her one of those dead-eye looks that he knew inspired fear. He was only five years old at the time, but he knew. He learned the power of fear early; knew it was an emotion he could inspire simply with a look. Because behind that glance was a killer.” From Please Don’t Tell by Elizabeth Adler
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‘Warren wasn’t sure but it looked like a large shadow was rising from behind the boiler. He stepped back until he was flat against the door. “It’s just the shadows,” he whispered. “A trick of the light.”
But this trick of the light was growing wider and taller, taking clearer shape against the wall. Warren watched as two long gray tentacles reached out toward him. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if somehow that might make them disappear.’ – Warren the 13th and the All Seeing Eye by Tania del Rio
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I can’t choose, so I have two from the same book. Both are from Blindness by José Saramago. The first is existentially frightening, the second is terrifying in the everyday truth of it:
1. “That we’re going to die is something we know from the moment we are born, That’s why, in some ways, it’s as if we were born dead.”
2. “Confidential matters are not dealt with over the telephone, you’d better come here in person.
I cannot leave the house,
Do you mean you’re ill?
Yes, I’m ill, the blind man said after a pause.
In that case you ought to call a doctor, a real doctor, quipped the functionary, and, delighted with his own wit, he rang off…
This is the stuff we’re made of, half indifference and half malice.”
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Hill House has stood for 90 years and might stand for 90 more. Within, walls continue upright, bricks meet, floors are firm, and doors are sensibly shut. Silence lies steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House. And we who walk here… walk alone. From The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. (one of my favorite books EVER)
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Another Hill House post. Awesome!
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“But Abner Marsh, standing alone up on the texas deck, had eyes only for the river. No other steamers were in sight. The water ahead of them was calm; here the wind sent up a series of ripples, and there the current flowed around the wicked black limbs of a fallen tree jutting out from the shore, but mostly the old devil was placid. And as the sun went down, the muddy water took on a reddish tinge, a tinge that grew and spread and darkened until it seemed as if the Fevre Dream moved upon a flowing river of blood. Then the sun vanished behind the trees and the clouds, and slowly the blood darkened, going brown as blood does when it dries, and finally black, dead black, black as the grave. Marsh watched the last crimson eddies vanish. No stars came out that night. He went down to supper with blood on his mind.” Fevre Dream by George RR Martin
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He did not like the cellar, and he did not like going down the cellar stairs, because he always imagined there was something down there in the dark. That was silly, of course, his father said so and his mother said so, and even more important, Bill said so, but still–
He did not even like opening the door to flick on the light because he always had the idea–this was so exquisitely stupid he didn’t dare tell anyone–that while he was feeling for the light switch, some horrible clawed paw would settle lightly over his wrist…and then jerk him into the darkness that smelled of dirt and wet and dim rotted vegetables.
It by Stephen King
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I’m reading Emily Carroll’s graphic novel “Through the Woods.” The whole story collection is pretty creep-tastic so far. The creepiest passage so far in the 2nd story: “Inside the wall was a pair of hands. They were cold and felt so fragile. She made a cradle of her skirts, and placed the hands within. She found a leg in the hallway floor, and two arms linked at the elbows, beneath a portrait. One foot was lost under a chest of drawers, and its opposite was discovered within a closet. A torso, wrapped in a stained gray gown, lined the bottom of the stairs, and after much digging, another leg was discovered between two dusty columns. The last thing she found…was a head. It had white eyes and gray hair, and lips as thin as paper…which sang: “I MARRIED MY LOVE IN THE SPRING-TIME, BUT BY SUMMER HE’D LOCKED ME AWAY. HE’D MURDERED ME DEAD BY THE AUTUMN, AND BY WINTER I WAS NAUGHT BUT DECAY. IT’S COLD WHERE I AM AND SO LONELY, BUT IN LONELINESS I WILL REMAIN, UNLOVED, UNAVENGED, AND FORGOTTEN, UNTIL I AM WHOLE ONCE AGAIN.”
Pretty spooky, right?! Now I’m off to finish the story! Thanks for commenting and participating in the mini-challenge! 😉 Happy reading!
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My scariest passage so far: https://twitter.com/pugsy_malone/status/789957613811302400
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[Not quite spooky, but more horror/terror-related.)
(Kinda Spoilers. TW: Paranoia.) “It’s likely Aranchan’s mother computer sees all that we do. It can crush us whenever it pleases…..” – “Andromeda Stories, Vol. 3″ by Keiko Takemiya & Ryu Mitsuse (‘Tis the dangers of technology.)
(Kinda Spoilers. TW: Violence, Death.) “Wood splintered as the door was torn from its’ hinges. The first changling poured through, thrown backwards by a fireball from Os. Undeterred, several pushed through. Kon drove his blade up the throat of one beast, raised his other knife to defend himself at another. Steel clashed with claws, screams mingled with monstrous shrieks. Kon saw one man go down, clutching at his torn throat, another being raked to death several feet from him. He couldn’t help, let alone save anyone else, but everyone there knew what they had signed up for.”- “Last Regrets” by Angelique Voisen
(Spoilers. TW: Pyrophobia, Murder.) “He could just barely see Pax through the gap in the flames. The peacemaker was thrashing and screaming as his skin was scalded, falling to ash before his eyes. Aedan stood helpless against his own strength, sickened as he witnessed the consequences of his attack, yet unable to stop himself. He saw the man who had once nurtured him, an innocent, murdered in the most brutal way by his own hand.”- “The Dragon Tamer” by Ann Bosch.
(Spoilers. TW: Attempted Murder, Aquaphobia, Drowning, Pnigophobia.) “”You can have your pride,” Destan said, “but I’ll have your life.”
I felt his right hand sliding up to my face, pressing down over my nose and mouth. Water gushed forth, penetrating my air passages.I let out a choked groan, thrashing against his grip. He mashed his hand down against me, letting the water pulse from his palm, and down into my lungs.
“Do you feel that?” Destan whispered in my ear. “The burning in your lungs? The fear? The panic?” He brought forth a heavy jet that left me reeling.” – “The Dragon Tamer” by Ann Bosch.
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By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.
The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid :
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.
A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did.
— The Hanging Man,
from Ariel, by Sylvia Plath
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Maybe not your average horror scene but:
I was very cowardly. I positively dared not go home, but at length I was obliged to. I had done all I could to console Mr Morgan, but he refused to be comforted. I went at last. I rang at the bell. I don’t know who opened the boor, but I think it was Mrs Rose. I kept my handkerchief to my face, and muttering something about having a toothache, I flew up to my room and bolted the door. I had no candle; but what did that signify. I was safe. I could not sleep, and when I did fall into a sort of doze, it was ten times worse wakening up. I could not remember wheter I was engaged or not. If I was engaged, who was the lady? […] He had deserted me. He – with only one report [of an alleged marriage] – had left me to stand my ground with three.
Mr Harrison’s confessions by Elizabeth Gaskell
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From “The Girl on the Train” by Paula Hawkins
“The memory doesn’t fit with the reality, because I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear.” (25.62)
I read this book awhile back but just saw the movie in the theater. As we get close to Halloween, I like Rachel’s quote about fear.
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