The therapy of horror during a pandemic

When we welcomed the new year, my family and I had no idea 2020 would turn out like this. The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is unlike any crisis we have ever faced. It's like something out of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, a 1954 post-apocalyptic horror novel, which was adapted into several films (including 2007's I Am Legend) and inspired numerous zombie films. 

The zombie genre—whether it's Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, World War Z, or The Walking Dead comics and TV show—all have some common elements. A deadly virus. Millions infected. Hundreds of thousands dead. Empty streets around the world. Mass graves being filled with dozens of coffins and bodies. Family members can't be near their loved ones when they die, lest they themselves get infected. People forced to lock down, only venturing out for essential supplies, in fear (of the infected, other survivors). 

No one thought they would experience such things outside of a horror novel or film. In Stephen King's 1978 novel The Stand, a flu pandemic kills almost the entire world. A group of American survivors bands together against a great evil like The Fellowship in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. In his 1989 rerelease of The Eyes of Darkness, Dean Koontz calls his fictional virus "Wuhan-400" (it was called "Gorki-400 in his 1981 first release). Though COVID-19 was first discovered in Wuhan, China, Koontz denies predicting this pandemic, as claimed by a widely shared tweet. His virus had a 100 percent mortality rate, a gestation period of only four hours, and it killed the host within 24 hours, unlike this one. 

In my horror novel, Demons (published by Daily Star Books in 2015), an unseen force spread, took over people's bodies, turned them into monsters, and made them kill almost everyone in a town. The survivors took shelter and only ventured out for supplies. But that was fiction. The reality of this pandemic is far worse. 

Roughly a thousand people in a small town died in my novel. This pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of people across the world, and the number of dead continues to rise. In the US where I live, more people have died than the total number of Americans killed during the Vietnam war. Hospitals and funeral homes were forced to store bodies in trucks because they have run out of space. In some parts of the world, bodies were stacked on top of each other or lain on the streets (which also happens in my novel). 

On top of that, billions of people around the world have been forced to lock down at home. Tens of millions have lost their jobs, their way of life. Children have stopped going to school. People are forced to wear masks and other protective equipment when they go out. The rich and middle class are able to stock up on food in their homes. Those who live hand to mouth are now facing starvation like the tenant farmers in Matheson's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath.

No other pandemic has had such a global impact in terms of lives lost, economic devastation, and impact to our way of life since the 1918 flu pandemic. I don't believe nature is consciously punishing us. It is blowback from our own actions. For decades we have been busy fighting wars, killing ourselves and other organisms needlessly, exploiting nature, exacerbating climate change. 

It reminds me of HG Well's 1897 classic The War of the Worlds. The technologically superior Martians invaded and destroyed us with ease. In the end, it was human germs—to which the Martians had no immunity—that destroyed them. To animals, we humans are the aliens, invading, exploiting, consuming, destroying. Just as in The War of the Worlds, the simplest of things—a virus—has shown us how vulnerable we are. We are lucky that the mortality rate of this coronavirus is not higher. 

Every day, when I switch on the news to find out what's going on (how many more infected, dead? when will things return to normal?), I end up feeling even more anxious. I have trouble sleeping. What if my family and I catch the virus? Will the lockdown affect my company, my livelihood? Sometimes it's all too much. 

Literature can help. It strengthens your mind, gives it a break from reality, helps you see things from a different perspective. It can take you to another time and place. You can learn from your protagonists. How, in spite of great odds, they are intelligent, resourceful, resilient, brave, and noble. Regardless of doubts, fears, and formidable antagonists, they persevere. They make sacrifices for the sake of others. When you return to reality, you can bring that strength and experience back and apply it to your own life.

I have a son (12) and daughter (nine). It is a stressful time for us, being a locked up in a concrete-and-brick apartment. No office for my wife and I. No more school, parks, going to the shopping mall, or their grandparents' house. The balcony was our only daily dose of sunlight and air. 

On one of these days, while cleaning my bookshelf, I took out my copy of Stephen King's 1986 novel IT and started to read it. I first read it in 1991, when I was 11. I called my kids, placed the book on a bed, and got them to read the part where Pennywise the Dancing Clown lures Georgie to the storm drain. My son would read a paragraph. My daughter would read another. 

It was the most wonderful experience. As great as the IT movies were, they can never capture the nostalgia, wonder of childhood, first love, and horror, like the novel. My children and I also read Jack London's classic 1906 novel White Fang, which I also read as a kid. I have digital copies of both books, but it was a unique, magical experience reading the printed books, seeing, feeling, and smelling the crisp ink on old, slightly yellowed paper. I am glad my children share my love of literature.

Nesar Nadim Talukdar is the author of Demons, a horror novel published by Daily Star Books in 2015. 

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