Horowitz Horror
Encyclopedia
Horowitz Horror and More Horowitz Horror are two collections of short horror
stories written by Anthony Horowitz
, published in 1999 and 2000 respectively. A third set of stories is awaiting release.
and third-person narrative. Out of the nine stories, two ("Light Moves" and "The Man with the Yellow Face") are conveyed from the viewpoint of the leading character.
.
As with its forerunner, More Horowitz Horror is not confined to third-person narrative. "The Hitchhiker" and "Twist Cottage" are written in first-person
, while "Burnt" (renamed as Burned in the U.S. release) is expressed as a series of diary
entries. Meanwhile, "The Shortest Horror Story Ever Written" communicates directly with the reader through second-person narrative
.
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
stories written by Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Craig Horowitz is an English novelist and screenwriter. He has written many children's novels, including The Power of Five, Alex Rider and The Diamond Brothers series and has written over fifty books. He has also written extensively for television, adapting many of Agatha Christie's...
, published in 1999 and 2000 respectively. A third set of stories is awaiting release.
Horowitz Horror
Horowitz Horror was first published in 1999 and contained nine short stories. The stories in Horowitz Horror are written in a mixture of first-First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
and third-person narrative. Out of the nine stories, two ("Light Moves" and "The Man with the Yellow Face") are conveyed from the viewpoint of the leading character.
Synopses
- Bath Night — A newly-installed bath harbours the spirit of a Victorian eraVictorian eraThe Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
axe-murderer. The family's daughter, Isabel, has suspicions about the bath even before discovering this, and refuses to use it, eventually deciding to destroy it. Her parents catch her in the act and she is sent to an asylum. At the end of the story, the father decides to go on a killing spree whilst in the bath. - Killer Camera — A boy buys a camera as a birthday present, unaware that it has been imbued with dark magic - anything that is photographed is destroyed; he searches for his family, who have taken the camera with them on a trip to London. He manages to find them and is relieved to hear that they have not taken any pictures of each other - until he is told that his brother took a picture of the London skyline.
- Light Moves — A computerComputerA computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
formerly owned by now-deceased horse-racing journalist, Ethan Sly, has the power to give horse racingHorse racingHorse racing is an equestrian sport that has a long history. Archaeological records indicate that horse racing occurred in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Egypt. Both chariot and mounted horse racing were events in the ancient Greek Olympics by 648 BC...
tips. A schoolboy is given the computer as a present, and ends up being forced by the local bully to give him the names of the winners. However, one of the names it gives - "Light Moves" - is the name of a company whose van runs over the bully. - The Night Bus — On HalloweenHalloweenHallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...
night, two brothers returning home from a party, go on an unexpected bus tour of LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's cemeteries. - Harriet's Horrible Dream — A rich, spoiled girl's family no longer has enough money to support her and she is been sold to a restaurant owned by her uncle which serves human meat. Then she wakes up, realising that it was all a nightmare - until she looks at her surroundings.
- Scared — A school bully gets his comeuppance while walking through the countryside.
- A Career in Computer Games — A boy who has recently left school with no qualifications, due to his obsession with computer games, thinks he has found the job of a lifetime testing an upcoming video game, but finds himself trapped in a brutally realistic world where countless men in black suits shoot at him.
- The Man with the Yellow Face — A boy gets his photo taken at a train station, in a sinister photo boothPhoto boothA photo booth is a vending machine or modern kiosk that contains an automated, usually coin-operated, camera and film processor. Today the vast majority of photo booths are digital. Traditionally photo booths contain a seat or bench designed to seat the one or two patrons being photographed...
which produces pictures that foretell future events. The picture he gets shows a grown up wiith a horriby deformed yellow face. The train he boards crashes and injues him severely, leaving him with the same yellow face as the one in the photo. - The Monkey's Ear — A family purchases a monkey's ear able to grant wishes. Although there is one catch - it is partially deaf. But the father then shouts at his son to go to hell, and the monkey hears it perfectly well.
More Horowitz Horror
More Horowitz Horror was published as a sequel collection in 2000. The book is marketed as containing eight stories. However, the tales obviously written by Horowitz himself are supplemented by an allegedly unauthorised add-on, written satirically by a serial killerSerial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
.
As with its forerunner, More Horowitz Horror is not confined to third-person narrative. "The Hitchhiker" and "Twist Cottage" are written in first-person
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
, while "Burnt" (renamed as Burned in the U.S. release) is expressed as a series of diary
Diary
A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...
entries. Meanwhile, "The Shortest Horror Story Ever Written" communicates directly with the reader through second-person narrative
Second-person narrative
The second-person narrative is a narrative mode in which the protagonist or another main character is referred to by employment of second-person personal pronouns and other kinds of addressing forms, for example the English second-person pronoun "you"....
.
Synopses
- The Hitchhiker — A family is on their way home from a day at the seaside when they unwittingly allow a psychopath, supposedly from the nearby asylum, into their car (A clue to his real identity is the false name - "Mr. Rellik" - he gives them, which spelt backwards is Killer). Only the son works out the truth, but his parents do not believe him. He pushes the hitchhiker out of the car and he is killed. It is then revealed that the hitchhiker was actually a gardener for the lunatic asylum, and that his name is Mr. Renwick (not "Rellik" as the boy misheard.) We then learn that the boy himself is an inmate of the asylum, and was out on day release for the first time after being committed to the asylum for pushing his older brother in front of a train and killing him. He is returned to the asylum following the murder of Mr. Renwick.
- The Sound of Murder — A deafHearing impairment-Definition:Deafness is the inability for the ear to interpret certain or all frequencies of sound.-Environmental Situations:Deafness can be caused by environmental situations such as noise, trauma, or other ear defections...
schoolgirl learns the horrifying truth behind her new FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
teacher through her malfunctioning hearing aidHearing aidA hearing aid is an electroacoustic device which typically fits in or behind the wearer's ear, and is designed to amplify and modulate sound for the wearer. Earlier devices, known as "ear trumpets" or "ear horns", were passive funnel-like amplification cones designed to gather sound energy and...
, and then hears his plans to murder her, too. - Burnt — While on holiday, a boy called Timothy has concerns about his uncle, who is desperate to get a suntanSun tanningSun tanning or simply tanning is the process whereby skin color is darkened or tanned. The process is most often a result of exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun or from artificial sources, such as a tanning bed, but can also be a result of windburn or reflected light...
. Timothy's aunt, who no longer loves her husband, has replaced the sun tan lotion with cooking oil. - Flight 715 — A girl has a nightmare, in which she foresees that the airliner which is about to fly her family home from a vacation in VancouverVancouverVancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
is destined to crash. Since her family do not believe her, the girl takes matters into her own hands. She wanders off on her own – making it impossible for her family to travel – and only returns after the aircraft has taken off. What neither she nor her family find out is that the aircraft is damaged in flight, and that if their extra weight had been on board, it wouldn't have landed safely and the girl's nightmare would have come true. - Howard's End — A delinquent teenage boy is run over by a bus and finds himself in HeavenHeavenHeaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
- or so he thinks. He becomes bored with the idyllic existence, and wants to move to Hell- but it is revealed he was there all along (this story is very similar to The Twilight ZoneThe Twilight ZoneThe Twilight Zone is an American television anthology series created by Rod Serling. Each episode is a mixture of self-contained drama, psychological thriller, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, or horror, often concluding with a macabre or unexpected twist...
episode A Nice Place to VisitA Nice Place to Visit"A Nice Place to Visit" is an episode of the American Television anthology series The Twilight Zone first aired on CBS on April 15, 1960. The title comes from the saying, "A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."...
). - The Lift — A police detectiveDetectiveA detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
investigates the strange disappearance of a spoiled boy at Covent Garden tube stationCovent Garden tube stationCovent Garden is a London Underground station in Covent Garden. It is on the Piccadilly Line between Leicester Square and Holborn. The station is a Grade II listed building, on the corner of Long Acre and James Street...
. The boy got into a lift, but never came out. The inspector comes to the conclusion that the boy was cannibalised. - The Phone Goes Dead — A teenage boy discovers that his mobile phoneMobile phoneA mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
can receive calls from the dead, after its last owner died while using it. His parents later receive a phone call from him – after he has been killed in a vehicle accident on a school trip. - Twist Cottage — A man goes to sinister lengths to rid himself and his son of his dreadful second wife by moving to a cottage haunted by the ghost of a witch who kills any woman who enters.
- The Shortest Horror Story Ever Written - An add-on to the book purportedly written by a maniac, not Anthony Horowitz. He describes how his own horror story was refused publication, so he set out on a killing spree. If the first letter of each sentence is put together, then the phrase "I am going to murder you soon" is spelled out.
External links
- Anthony Horowitz.com
- More Horowitz Horror at fantasticfiction.co.uk