Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

Sometimes a doll on the cover symbolizes possessiveness (Possession) or general creepiness (The Doll Castle, Dark Companions). But in The Surrogate, an actual doll gleefully strangles humans, and the ghost kid of Somebody Come and Play lures children to their doom with a playroom full of gendered toys: dollhouses and play kitchens for girls, action figures and toy cars for boys. And in Keeper of the Children, it’s not just a teddy bear with an axe, but also a witch marionette, a mannequin with a golf club, and a scarecrow that gleefully murder humans. Credit 52

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If all the knife-wielding kindergarten kids, psychic preschoolers, and homicidal high-school students from this chapter were in a school picture, The Voice of the Clown (1982) would be the snarling six-year-old standing slightly to the side, staring into the camera, clutching a clown doll. Her name is Laura, and she sees right through you. Whatever tricks you try to make her like you, she and her clown are ready.

Laura lives in Oklahoma with her daddy and his new family, and she’s had her clown doll ever since she was born. It’s one of those childhood security objects that just appears in the crib one day and sticks around. But there’s one problem: “Her clown hated her mother.”

Well, that isn’t very comforting. Laura’s mother killed herself long ago, and her father’s new wife fits right into the fairy-tale tradition of wicked stepmothers, although she doesn’t seem to have done anything bad enough to earn the ire of a clown. After Stepmom forces Laura to attend first grade (which ends badly), Laura and her clown declare full-scale war. They start with gaslighting, but when Stepmom gets pregnant and gives birth to what Laura describes as “the screaming mud-baby,” things go full psycho. You will have moments when you need to put this book down and walk away.

Later chapters involve some Native American woo-woo, but in the face of the carnage of the final pages, that’s a minor speed bump on the highway to hell. This book teaches us one thing about kids: you can’t live with ’em, you can’t kill ’em. But they sure can kill you.

Clown dolls (The Voice of the Clown) and ordinary dolls (The Kill) are the hardest working cover models in the horror paperback biz, along with skeletons. Credit 54