Book Review: "Nightmare at 20'000 Feet: The Horror Stories" by Richard Matheson

Richard Matheson is perhaps one of the best horror writers that has been in modern times. I find he very rarely gets mentioned and yet, he is one of the people at the centre of contemporary thriller and shows like The Twilight Zone. I think many of us who read him later in our lives probably remember his Nightmare at 20'000 Feet being parodied by The Simpsons when Bart sees a creature on the side of the school bus. Currently, I am sitting here drinking a cup of Costa Coffee and wondering how to tell you about some of my favourite stories within this killer anthology - introduced of course, by Stephen King. Horror really is the rock and roll of the literary world - as he states.

I don't think I could start anywhere else apart from at Nightmare at 20'000 Feet. I remember this in the William Shatner episode of The Twilight Zone and of course, from The Simpsons. A monster on the wing of a plane is one thing, but losing your mind over the fact that nobody else can see it is a whole other thing. The fact that the language is so contemporary and has almost a conversational quality to it makes it sound even more maddening. Richard Matheson might be known for his literary output, but the way he uses language to single out these characters from the rest of humanity is one of his greatest abilities. It is probably best displayed in this story.

A plane is a very claustrophobic setting yes, but what about being trapped in your home with a doll? In Prey, a woman is terrorised by a doll that has come to life - it seems like the walls are really closing in on her. Again, one of Matheson's greatest strengths is the way he can write these spaces where lots of 'maddening' things take place but the character cannot physically move. There's a lot of focus on fear, probably even more so than Nightmare at 20'000 Feet as that story focuses more on madness. The ending of this story is something that always makes me smile because it's quite clever, though I won't be telling you exactly what it is. My only advice is that if you're not really looking, you won't see it coming.

Blood Son seems to be one of those stories where we deal with two ideas: one of the social isolation of a boy (Jules) and the other of what is usually referred to as the 'devouring mother' type. This is usually discussed when looking at serial killers and their relationships with their mothers. It's very odd and scares me a bit but Blood Son is about this very relationship when a boy becomes obsessed with becoming a vampire. Instead of his mother questioning his obsession and trying to see the other side of things, she seems to indulge him and his delusions. The mother then introduces him to her new boyfriend and well, it all goes down so damn fast. Probably one of Matheson's more psychologically horrifying stories, there is something about this moment in time that is deeply unsettling. It feels plausible in a terrifying way and even more so now that we have so many young men who are not involved in society in a meaningful way.

Dress of White Silk is also quite a concerning story - it again deals with ideas of madness and isolation, feeling as though there is something 'off' about your life even though you can't put your finger on what it is exactly. Matheson creates a great sense of ambiguity through the isolation of a child in which her grandmother has locked her up for being "bad" though, it will take us some time to see what exactly she has done to be in this situation. Even the reader doesn't know what's happening for the majority of the story and so, it becomes more and more difficult to read whether the narrator has actually done anything wrong or "bad". The question of where the child's mother is also pops up here and there, why has the grandmother locked her away and what has happened to the mother? Again, I'm not going to answer these questions for you, but there is a clear reason why Dress of White Silk is a huge favourite amongst Richard Matheson fans.

I thoroughly enjoyed this anthology and if you want to get it even cheaper than I did, I am pretty sure the audiobook is available for free on Audible if you have an account (though I could be wrong - I have just heard about this). It was an incredible experience which gives a new meaning to the entirety of The Twilight Zone. Perhaps we are all living in our own Richard Matheson nightmare.