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Think of horror and you'll probably think of the jump scare; the killer coming out of hiding to grab the victim, or the monster appearing out of the darkness to make the viewer, sometimes quite literally, jump out of their chair with fear. The genre is full of this kind of scare.
While this has a value, when I write horror I'm much more likely to use inevitability. What do I mean? Using inevitability means you can see what is coming, and you have absolutely no way to stop it. This plays on, for me, one of the greatest fears of humanity (far more than that of someone jumping out on you with a scary mask): the fear of helplessness and loss of self determination. In these stories the protagonist is on a course of action where there is no way to stop the events which will occur.
Wicker Man (1973) is an excellent example of this. If you're familiar with my interest in folk horror, this might seem like an obvious example. The way Sgt. Howie's fate is inevitable once he decides to investigate Rowan Morrison's disappearance is what gives the film an enduring power. The film allows us to experience that powerlessness vicariously without suffering the consequences ourselves.
I used a similar device in Verwelktag; a story I wrote for Lackington's Gothics issue. Drawing on the German tradition of Schauerroman or "shudder novel," Verwelktag features secret societies, necromancy (of a type), and pessimism. While there are certain points in the story where you might feel there are opportunities for a different outcome, the story builds to an inevitable conclusion. As Howard David Ingham says in the introduction to We Don't Go Back: A Watcher's Guide to Folk Horror, "Inevitability is a theme that runs through folk horror. Protagonists find themselves trapped along deterministic paths; quite a few of these end with the protagonists realising that it was you they wanted from the beginning. It's not that there isn't any escape. It's more that escape is wholly irrelevant."
Not All That is Coal Warms the World, a story about the treatment of people on disability benefits by a punitive state, also builds toward a certain ending, and I wrote it so the reader knows the protagonist cannot escape what is coming. The story starts with the protagonist having to enter a benefits system where their body is exploited to justify their usefulness before they can access their benefits. As the story builds the inevitability of the ending becomes more certain.
Kazuo Ishiguro uses this to great effect in Never Let Me Go. From the moment Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are introduced there is an inevitability to their fate. They might search for alternatives, but the social world is constructed to not allow any alternatives. Slowly but surely their fate plays out. For me this is true horror.
This also happens in Laird Barron's short story Procession of the Black Sloth where the creeping certainty is what creates the horror. Similarly, in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson one of the main factors in building terror in the reader is the sense of events in progress that will not change course.
A film that perfectly captures the horror of inevitability is La Cabina, a Spanish short from 1972. At the beginning of the film some workmen install a phone booth in the middle of a plaza. Soon after a man enters to make a call, the door shuts behind him and he is unable to leave.
La Cabina manages to capture the helplessness of being trapped, and we as viewers are trapped too, with the creeping realisation that what happens next cannot be stopped or changed. La Cabina is supposedly a fable about living under fascism (Spain was still a fascist state in 1972), and aimed to capture the helplessness of citizens caught within that system. In a similar way The Lottery mentioned above happens in a community tied by knots of obligation and tradition that means there is no escaping the outcome.
For readers, stories are virtual machines where we can test our emotions without having to experience the long lasting consequences of actually living through the helplessness. This can work in two ways. The first is that it lets those who have experienced that lack of freedom process our feelings in a safe place. For me, I can always close the book and put it back on the shelf. For others it allows them to encounter these emotions in a walled off setting that helps to create empathy and understanding. The moment in Never Let Me Go when Tommy and Kathy discover that there is no way to defer Tommy's fourth donation it allows the reader to experience the true horror of losing self-determinism to a system beyond their control.
Out of all the different genres horror is about emotions, and stories that move toward an ending with a creeping realisation of inevitability can help us develop tools of empathy and humanity to bring into other settings.
Steve Toase was born in North Yorkshire, England, and now lives in Munich, Germany.
He writes regularly for Fortean Times and Folklore Thursday. His fiction has appeared in Shadows & Tall Trees 8, Nox Pareidolia Three Lobed Burning Eye, Shimmer, and Lackington’s. In 2014 Call Out (first published in Innsmouth Magazine) was reprinted in The Best Horror Of The Year 6, and two of his stories appeared in Best Horror of the Year 11.
His first short story collection 'To Drown In Dark Water' is due out from Undertow Publications in 2021.
He also likes old motorbikes and vintage cocktails.
You can keep up to date with his work via his Patreon, newsletter, facebook.com/stevetoase1, www.stevetoase.wordpress.com and @stevetoase
