By the time you reach the end of a horror novel, all suspense has often been lost. Answers to the puzzle have been provided, and all that remains is the resolution. A good example of this is It, which rumbles along for 1,300 pages of increasing tension and drama, until the end, which resolves loose threads and gives us an ending that, as much as anything, reassures.
I say this not to lambast It - it has become one of my favourite novels, with memorable characters, pulse-pounding drama, a plot that wends this way and that - but to provide a contrast.
Dan Simmons has been someone I've held up as a master of horror for quite some time. If King's books shock and provoke occasional terror, Simmons' books linger and haunt. Song of Kali is like that, and it's like that because, unlike It, it doesn't give us the reassuring conclusion. It speaks to our fears that no, it won't be all right. King does that from time to time: Pet Sematary is just one example of him flipping the expectation that things will be all right on its head. But more often than not the survivors find themselves in a better place. The Stand. It. Even, to an extent, 'Salem's Lot and Misery. Simmons, however, gives us lingering doubt.
Take The Terror. Despite what seems, for a time, to be a cut and dried ending, there's the coda which throws doubt on so much, and lends to the horror from before. The sailors could have been all right. Francis Crozier saved himself, but did he betray his men into the bargain? And as for the Tuunbaq: is it ever really not a threat? Was it real, or spiritual? That uncertainty is as horrifying as any of the violence that went before.
And this is where Summer of Night is so successful. While perhaps not as accomplished or engrossing as It or The Terror - for one thing it's only 600 pages rather than 1,300 or 900 - it still fills the reader with a sense of doubt at the conclusion. This is after the constant dread in the build-up. There is a constant sense of danger. It's a book you can't let your guard down with; after all, if you're alone and you let your guard down, terrible things will happen.
Summer of Night bears comparison with It on a deeper level than 'it's a horror novel'. Like It, Summer of Night follows a group of children in a small American town as they battle a horror through a summer holiday. In this regard, it is arguably the weaker book: there's a bond between the characters in It that never quite seems present in Summer of Night, and the characters, unusually for Simmons, can be a little two-dimensional. On the other hand, the bond that is forged never quite feels safe, and this insecurity just adds to the horror.
Where Summer of Night excels, though, is in the uncertainty. The writing is superb, but at times it is somewhat vague. It sows doubt in the reader's mind. Is this really happening? Where King leaves the reader in little doubt - yes, this is scary, you're right to feel fear - Simmons always has that lingering sense that you could be wrong. Maybe there's nothing to fear. But then again, if there is... Unlike King, there's rarely a sense of catharsis when a threat has disappeared, simply another building tension. There can be no doubt at all that Simmons is a modern master of horror. He makes you feel uncomfortable.
I can highly recommend Summer of Night. Anyone with an interest in horror should read it for its small town America vibes and fears. It is a study in how to write horror, and how to leave the reader in fear and wanting more, even at the end.
One final thing before I depart: If you have not read The Hyperion Cantos by the same author, what are you doing? Your life will be better for it, particularly Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion.
