A book for the beach: Duma Key by Stephen King

A deeply spooky story of a man falling apart, this is perfect terror in the sunshine but watch out once night has fallen

On holiday with my family in Portugal, aged around 11 or 12, I found a stash of deserted books left behind by former residents of the place we were staying (and isn't that one of the nicest things about holiday reading, picking up someone else's unexpected leftovers?). I ventured into The Silence of the Lambs, probably much too young, and was disturbed by the dark imaginings of Thomas Harris. I also, furtively, picked up a creased old paperback of Different Seasons by Stephen King, read Apt Pupil, and discovered for the first time the delights of being thoroughly terrified. So began a love of horror, and particularly of King, which lasts to this day. For me, holiday reading, and particularly beach reading, is best when it's scary, because there's little to compare to the thrill of a proper chill in hot sunlight.

Duma Key, one of King's more recent novels (it was published in 2008) more than accomplishes this. I first read it of course I did, I'm an addict on publication, and have a clear memory of being about halfway through, drying my hair, and having to repeatedly stop and turn the hairdryer off, it had made me so ridiculously jumpy. I've reread it over the past few weeks, and it's had just as strong an effect on me.

"What I was doing didn't work just because it played on the nerve-endings; it worked because people knew on some level they really did know that what they were looking at had come from a place beyond talent. The feeling those Duma pictures conveyed was horror barely held in check. Horror waiting to happen. Inbound on rotted sails."

"Imagine a little girl, hardly more than a baby. She fell from a carriage almost ninety years ago, struck her head on a stone, and forgot everything. Not just her name; everything! And then one day she recalled just enough to pick up a pencil and make that first hesitant mark across the white. A horizon-line, sure. But also a slot for blackness to pour through."

Continue reading...