Rhi Axtell – Writer

When I get off the train, it’s dark. The flickering lights of the station are doing their best to illuminate my way. The cold autumn wind is biting, so I’m tucked up tight in my coat, hands thrust firmly in my pockets. I’ve got a walk of about thirty minutes ahead of me, from the station to my childhood home. There is a solitary voice following me as I leave. It is my only companion as I stroll down pavements, trying to avoid eye contact with anyone and look as don’t fuck with me as possible. I’ve only been mugged once in this city and I’m not particularly looking to repeat the experience.

The voice speaking to me is an audiobook. The first audiobook I’ve ever listened to, in fact. The reader, Campbell Scott, has a voice that is almost hypnotic, it weaves through the prose gently, building and slowing in pace like a dance along with the words.

The book is The Shining by Stephen King. I have never really read anything by him but a friend told me that this was the book to start with. A masterclass in horror. And that is why it is today’s spooky thing.

The Shining is a book that slowly unfolds, like a flower opening to sunlight, with occasionally flashes of horror to throw you off balance before the true terror of the ending.

At this point in the story, as I am walking through the dark on the way home, I haven’t been ‘scared’ as such yet. More intrigued. Curious.

Then I reach the park.

It’s not really a park – more of a field. One memory I have of this field is lying on the grass one summer evening next to my first girlfriend, trying to build up the courage to kiss her (spoiler alert: I wimped out). It’s a sweet memory. Cute.

But that memory was in warm summer daylight and it is now a cold autumn night. The field stretches out, longer than I remember. In an act of pure self-sabotage, I decide to cross the middle of the field – a shorter route, but a lot darker than sticking to the well lit edges.

And that’s when the audiobook kicks up a notch.

I’m about halfway across the field when I find myself freezing in place. Scott’s voice picks up in speed. He’s describing a little boy running from bushes that have come alive and are hunting him. The little boy runs to a park, crawling desperately into a pipe to get away from approaching horrors. They surround him. He can’t escape. They are getting closer.

And I can’t move. Like the little boy, I’m frozen in fear. My heart is racing. My fists and teeth are clenched.

When the scene comes to a close, I am fumbling in my pocket for my phone, trying to scroll with my finger, yanking off my gloves, and then slamming my thumb against the pause button to stop the voice, stop the story, before it builds any more.

This is the one and only time I have listened to a horror audiobook while walking in the dark. I think I ran the rest of the journey home after that.

I now only listen to audiobooks during the daytime.

See you tomorrow.