In the dark recesses of the mind

If you know anything about me, you know that horror fiction and crime drama are a couple of faves when it comes to reading material. I grew up devouring Stephen King, reading ‘Salem’s Lot in the backyard as a feckless youth while the sun bronzed my skin in a day and age that no longer exists due to ozone depletion and global warming.

The shower scene in The Shining is one of the best ever penned to get those nape-of-the-neck hairs to prickle, and The Stand is as epic a tale as any pitting good against evil.

Dolores Claiborne is a masterful first-person narrative and offers insight into the hell of an abusive relationship from a woman’s point of view.

It had been a long time since I’ve read any of King’s stuff, but I came across his latest – Duma Key – a couple of weeks ago and it was interesting to experience his fiction again.

Granted, he uses familiar devices (ghosts and precognitive episodes) to engage the imagination, but his writing is so much more. He plumbs the psyche of the human condition, refining the detail of why we are what we are and what motivates us to behave rationally and then irrationally in the span of a heartbeat.

His characters bristle with fateful flaws and desperate emotion, heroic intent and misguided ambition. Some win and some lose and the shadows that terrify us don’t necessarily define the reason why. Funny, too, how a return to such familiar territory as a Stephen King novel can spur your own imagination and open your eyes to possibility.

I was in the woods the other evening, trying to get a run in before nightfall. Dusk was imminent. The sun had westered, but there was enough light to allow safe passage, or so I thought.

The descent was unremarkable; the tricky thing being the trail that had thawed and then frozen so parts of it were as slick as glacier while other parts where devoid of ice and manageable.

I did the clubhouse turn and rounded for home, thinking that I had better get a move on. Visibility was still good on the open stretches, but beneath the intermittent canopy of trees it had grayed like smoke.

There are a couple of uphills on the way back. The first one features a meadow that precedes the climb while the second runs beneath the branches right up until the finish.

I was on the verge of the latter when the thought skittered into my head, “If it was going to happen, it’d be here. Where the light fades and the night begins.”

I stopped for a second, ears intent on the woods around me, heart hammering. I was right, too. If a predatory animal (creature)

lay in wait, it wouldn’t waste its energy on an open attack. It would strike in the gloam, a blur bursting from the shadows to take down prey that had dared to brave twilight’s last gleaming. Feets don’t fail me now!

I was up that hill like stink, going harder than usual and believing that something was pacing my progress.

Nothing was, of course, and yours truly is here to tickle the keys as always. But that’s the beauty of well-crafted fiction, isn’t it? It coaxes our imaginations to life and stimulates thought.

It’s wonderful, especially since it feels lately that it’s time to start a new writing project, and that’s just totally cool. Thanks, Steve, and chalk one up for literacy!