I read "The Ledge" fairly rapidly last night, and I was reminded why I think that Stephen King is considered the master of fear - a notion that many people increasingly discount with the plethora of titles he has released that fall well outside the genre for which he is known. No doubt, the man is a master storyteller. He writes natural characters well, and he manages to put them into wholly believable, albeit outlandish, situations. As a writer, he has a knack for reeling me in; however, there is something that he does as an author that I've not found in many other women or men creating fantasy, horror, thrillers, or sci-fi (Peter Straub and the one title of his oeuvre that I've read, Ghost Story, being the profoundly explicit exception). Stephen King knows what scares me.
I cannot definitively write that he is fully aware of everything that scares everybody, but he is definitely in touch with and well versed in the subjects that make me uneasy, uncertain, worried, nervous, and disquieted. Carrie is a remarkable first outing, but it's not necessarily scary; however, the one scene in Carrie that stands out the most as being one that made me most likely to look over my shoulder was the description of the rain of stones that fell over the White house following the eponymous character's first exposure to the idea of human sexuality. It's not that the scene was particularly frightening, only that it invoked imagery and ideologies from the Bible. Anything having to do with religious-inspired fear gives me immediate cause for concern. His second novel, 'Salem's Lot, is also not particularly frightening (so much as it is interesting and engrossing, in spite of what the other members of my Stephen King book club thought), but the long interior monologues of Father Callahan really resonated with, especially those having to do with the duality of good and evil and the many different forms that the latter can take.
Where Stephen King really hit his stride was in The Shining, the first book that is really filled with everything that is most likely to scare a child when the child's mind wanders after the lights go out in a storm. In that novel, the most frightening images were of the hedge animals coming to life and the thing that Danny found in the concrete tunnel on the playground. The Shining is where one realizes that Stephen King is really capable of having his readers tap into the memories of everything that scared us as children. He exploits these and, adding a sense of paranoia and mixing in common adult phobias for good measure, pushes his readers to rip through the pages of his work to try to get through the most difficult parts just to find out where he's going to take you next.
While I was reading "The Ledge" last night, I was right there on the ledge with Stan Norris, shivering in the brisk, cold wind, hoping I'd make it around the corners of the building, kicking at the pigeons, and aching to make it back to the balcony to save my relationship and my freedom (and my life). I'm already terrified of heights, so it may take less imagery for me than it would for others for me to have a sense of terror build in my body, but I was literally sweating while I raced through the short story. Even having read it before, even knowing that the narrator is not going to fall forty-odd stories to his death, even knowing that the character will come out on top, I still read with feet that literally turned damp with the dread imbued by reading the work. Stephen King knows how to scare me, and -luckily- he knows right when and where to hit me where it hurts the most.
"The Ledge" is not the best short story in the bunch, but it's very, very good. If I'm not mistaken, though, I believe the next, "The Lawnmower Man," is not a favorite, but it's been so long since I read it, I'm going to leave my mind open until I've finished it later tonight.
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