The Greatest Line

Peter Straub, image from sff.com

Jesus she moved she can't she's dead.

In my opinion, the above sentence is the single most chilling and artfully used line in all of contemporary literary horror. It's from Peter Straub's Ghost Story, and it's  one of the things that make the book unique.  

In italics, deliberately bereft of punctuation, and placed out of context in the narrative, the line works both as a chilling reference to a past event and as ambiguous foreshadowing. Oddly placed in the text as it is, it almost presents as an editorial error. It is uniquely effective because it jars you out of the narrative at a point at which explanations are just beginning to be hinted at. The first time I read the novel, I felt a visceral thrill at the sudden intrusion of the strange line. I knew I absolutely had to know what it was referencing. As just about anyone who's read the book will tell you, monstrous horrors both past and future are its subject.

An ingenious stroke of artistry from the master of contemporary literary horror!

Cheers,

WKF