Last week, while Master Liam slept peacefully in his cot, I sifted through YouTube on my TV for something not too noisy or intellectually thought-provoking to watch.
That usually means one of two things:
Football or wildlife clips.
Both are short(ish) in length and can be watched with the volume low. However, given my club, Manchester United, lost (yet again) to Grimsby Town in the Carabao Cup, I had no desire to indulge in those highlights nor share in the misery of fan channels.
So I searched for “Latest Sightings” (the most popular wildlife clip channel around) and, after a bit of scrolling, happened across a Great Migration clip that quite simply…
Horrified me.
Don’t worry, I won’t gore you out.
For those who don’t keep up with the Circle of Life beyond what happens inside our towns and cities, every year, zebra, wildebeest, and other big game herbivores move on to fresher pastures.
To do so almost always requires them to cross rivers, and you know what lives in those rivers?
No, not vampiric mermaids.
15-FOOT NILE CROCODILES.
These are some of the most aggressive crocodilians on earth, according to zoologists, which never fails to get a chuckle out of me for the very simple reason that ALL crocs are aggressive since they see everything as food.
Including us.
I mean, it doesn’t get more aggressive than that.
Anyway, this clip showed a zebra bravely leaping into a turbulent river when, halfway across, a huge croc lunged out of the water and grabbed its hindquarters. While pretty horrific, that wasn’t the part that made me back out of the video.
Oh no.
The part that had my blood freeze over was when 15-20 other big crocs — that I mistook for boulders — breached the murky surface and converged on this poor zebra from all directions.
I didn’t watch long enough to see how it ended, nor did I need to.
A lone croc might drown you if you’re lucky.
But a group of them?
I think you can guess what happens there.
This just goes to show that you need not rely on gore or split sinew to experience the horror of a given situation. The same is true in fiction. I’ve always been a big proponent of letting a reader’s imagination fill in the details of a scene in accordance with their own “thresholds.”
That’s not to say there aren’t gritty and, at times, gruesome scenes in my work.
There are.
(The Divided Region bears such scenes.)
However, in Sticks & Stones and Abbey Ruins, I did the opposite. I refrained from relying on acute, visceral details and instead gave my readers’ imagination room to paint the scenes for themselves.
This is almost more terrifying.
It’s also why I’ve always had a hard time calling this duology of novellas a Supernatural Horror.
For me, they are more akin to Supernatural Thrillers.
They thrill, chill, and yes, at times, horrify, but not due to the savage detail implanted in the pages — rather because of the details purposefully left out.
I’m not saying Stephen King’s publishers will lose sleep over this two-book series, but I do say that it offers a quick, chilling read for those who love stories involving a missing girl, a restless spirit, and an eerie woodland locals don’t like talking about.
For more info, go here:
https://djjwatsonstore.com/products/COAR
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