Brian Conn

I Had the Plague

June 30, 2008

or something like it. The really plague-like part lasted only a couple of days, during which I thought almost continuously of the solitary-death-by-fever scene in The Sheltering Sky, and hated Paul Bowles, with all my remaining strength, as though it were the existence of that scene that was somehow making me sick. Finally my fever went away, and now I just have this lingering cough, which I hardly mind except when it prevents me from sleeping.

Today I went to the doctor to see if the cough might be made to go away too. Probably a mistake, doctors’ offices being some of the most miserable places around — not as bad as the DMV, but close. I sat in one room for an hour, then another room for another hour, wondering whether I could just bolt, and then the doctor came in and prescribed me codeine. I took a walk in the cemetery across the street from his office and saw a hawk diving at a sparrow or whatnot over by all the Armenian graves. Right after the hawk, I saw a cardinal just for a second. I’m not sure what that means (but it obviously means something).

Here is my list of all the works of fiction that have actually frightened me:

That’s it. “Not After Midnight” is probably the weakest of the bunch, and maybe actually works only in conjunction with other Daphne du Maurier stories — like on its own it wouldn’t have frightened me, but coming on the heels of “Don’t Look Now,” and “The Birds,” and “The Blue Lenses,” it did.

2 Responses to “I Had the Plague”

  1. M. Pendleton Says:
    July 2nd, 2008 at 10:58 am

    what about children’s book for fear.
    -grinny, about an alien robotic grandmother
    -the “the three investigators” book about the “green ghost”
    -the Green Knowe books by Lucy M Boston

    Otherwise “The Space Eaters” by Frank Belknap Long, in some lovecraft inspired anthology

    Many horror books fail once you know the writing is bad.

    “The Soft Machine” is frightening during a hangover or an international flight. Likewise Jack Spicer poems.

    You beard is a good one

  2. Brian Says:
    July 2nd, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    Now that I think of it, The House with the Clock in its Walls, by John Bellairs, terrified me as a child and still does a little. That lady’s spectacles.

    I have shaved my beard. Was it a mistake? Perhaps, perhaps. Sometimes a man wants a beard and sometimes he doesn’t

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