Good Minds Suggest—Joe Hill's Favorite Horror Villains

Mr. Dark in Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
"One source of Christmasland was Pleasure Island from Pinocchio, a place where bad little boys indulge their worst habits until they are magically transformed into braying donkeys. But the other inspiration was, of course, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show, the terrifying traveling carnival at the heart of Ray Bradbury's seduction of the innocent, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Mr. Dark promises pleasure, escape, and amusement, but the cost is high: your freedom, your childhood, your sanity, perhaps your soul. No one buys a ticket to Mr. Dark's carnival and comes back undamaged."

Anton Chigur in No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
"Chigur is the rangy, clear-eyed hit man who lopes through Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men using a captive bolt pistol—a kind of pneumatic nail gun designed to punch in a cow's skull—to settle up with everyone who crosses him (as well as a few folks who just have the bad luck to be in his way). Chigur's unusual gun was what convinced me that Charlie Manx needed an iconic weapon of his own...hence Charlie's shiny silver autopsy mallet. McCarthy's relentless assassin-for-hire views himself less as a man, more as a kind of cosmic roulette wheel; if the ball settles on black, he has to kill you, even if your death will serve no logical purpose. Chigur feels there's a principle to uphold and that principle is simply this: The universe can't be bargained with. When your fate is decided, you have no more choice than a heifer in the chute being led to the abattoir."

Abbot Enomoto in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
"Like Moriarty, Abbot Enomoto is the spider at the center of a vast web of power and influence and crime; like Dracula, the holy abbot of Mount Shiranui is (maybe) an immortal who has survived for centuries by feeding on the blood (and spirits) of the weak. Abbot Enomoto casts his long, cold shadow over the entirety of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, the tale of a young Dutchman swimming in the unfamiliar seas of Edo-era Japan and finding himself vastly overmatched by an evil beyond comprehension. I confess that Thousand Autumns is my favorite novel of all time—I've read it over and over since I first discovered it—and I keep finding new layers to the unsettling and ageless abbot. Here he is killing a snake with a touch. There he is speaking in archaic Spanish, half-remembered from when the Spaniards visited Japan an age before. With some bad guys—think Hannibal Lecter or Darth Vader—familiarity ruins their power. Lecter was terrifying when we first encountered him in Red Dragon (where he appears for just a few chapters) but has become steadily less dreadful the more we've learned about him; and as for Vader, his backstory transformed him from the baddest dude in the galaxy to a whiny, pathetic teenager with mommy issues. But with Enomoto, the more you find out, the more afraid you become. This guy would eat Hannibal Lecter for breakfast, sans fava beans, and use Vader's helmet as his chamber pot."

Amazing Amy Dunne in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Goodreads Author)
"Give it up for the relentlessly chippy star of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, Amy Dunne, who is like the charming, preppy, wickedly smart heroine of Clueless...if the Clueless gal was a laughing psychopath. Control freak Amy has ice water for blood, the soul of a maniacal wedding planner, and the heart of a crocodile. Most of all, though, Amy has STANDARDS. She has certain expectations of (a) her parents, (b) her home, (c) the world, (d) that no-good slob, her husband. Did you ever read the fairy tale about the innkeeper with just one bed? If you're too long to fit, she lops off your feet. If you're too short, she buckles you into her rack and gives your spine a nice little streee-e-e-e-etch. Amy is that innkeeper; the bed is her life, the last damn place you would ever want to rest your head."

Ursula Monkton in The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (Goodreads Author)
"OK, so this last one is a bit of a mean tease, because at the time of this writing, Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane is still unreleased. So you can't read yet about Lettie Hempstock and the boy who goes with her into a country just beyond her farmstead, where reality has a habit of sliding away underfoot like so much soaked earth. And you can't read about the thing that follows them back into our world, a thing that only wants to help people, to make them happy, to give them money and feed them well and offer them sex if that's what they want, a thing that looks like a woman sometimes, and other times resembles a monster made of rotting canvas and shadow. In Ursula Monkton, Neil Gaiman has created a kind of anti-Mary Poppins, a monster with manners. She's poison in a spoonful of sugar (I understand it helps the medicine go down)."