by queenv (guest)
3/19/2010, 10:27 AM
I have rarely read anything termed "horror", whether a novel or a short story, which truly scared me. There is one exception. I read a short story once. I can't remember the title of the anthology in which I read it nor can I recall the name of the author. But it was about a man who was a serial killer. But, you see, the man himself was not really the killer. The man lived with the constant presence of a demon whom only he could hear, though even he couldn't see the demon. The demon prompted him to kill. The demon, being a disembodied being, could tell him of potential victims, where they were even though miles away, what they were doing, where they would be in the near future, so that the man could arrange to be where they were going to be in order to put the murder into place. The man himself didn't want to murder the people. The demon drove him to it. If he didn't do it, the demon would torture and eventually kill HIM.
Well, the man was finally arrested for one of the murders. He told the authorities about the demon and of course, was not believed. The DA came to visit the man while he was in jail. The DA brought up the demon, humored the man while pretending to believe him, and asked him to just send the demon along to him and let him take him off his hands for a while. The man asked the demon to go, and to his surprise, the demon did. A few hours later the DA came screaming into the jail, screaming about how the demon was trying to force him to go kill, and no, he wasn't going to do it, make him go away, make him go away, and then the demon killed the DA right in front of the serial murderer's eyes.
That was was the only story I've ever read that really scared me. The name of the demon and the title of the story, was Enoch. That's why this to me is one of the most horrid names ever. I canNOT get the image out of my mind.