By Shea Stevenson
“Terrace Story” by Hillary Leichter is a new novel that’s largely about space. Not outer space (mostly) but the spaces we occupy, live in, travel through, etcetera. If you need a review of “Terrace Story,” here it is: you should try it. It’s my favorite book I’ve read in a long time. What makes it worth talking about here, outside the context of a review, is its subject matter: space. To be specific, an uneasy, unreal, and misshapen space.
Though not a horror story by my count, the book’s fixation with urban spaces that are too small, too large, or impossible yet resoundingly familiar lands it squarely in the company of horror (especially online horror). I don’t imagine that this is the passing of an idea between Hillary Leichter and the countless authors of internet horror stories, but rather that they are both responding to the same input, each communicating a similar feeling through an emerging language of urban/spatial anxiety. The slow growth of this particular idea seems only to be gaining traction as more and more people immigrate to cities, and experience its unique dehumanizing spatial horrors.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 film “Pulse,” a Japanese horror movie set in Tokyo, is the star progenitor of this type of spatial horror. In “Pulse,” the living spaces are cramped, isolated, and disconnected from one another. The early internet (on the surface, the main source of horror in “Pulse,” being haunted) serves as an extension and exacerbation of this urban loneliness. And when the characters can meet in public, the problem is reversed: the space is so vast and inhuman that it becomes too large to inhabit. “Pulse” is, like “Terrace Story,” also about extinction. By the end of the movie, the city is simply empty. Everyone is inside.
2001 was a long time ago, but these tensions have only grown more relevant. Its ideas about isolation, the internet, and the city feel prescient even now, as it looks even further into the future where these ideas have been more thoroughly connected in hindsight. According to the World Bank, 47% of people lived in cities in 2001 – a staggering number – but in 2022, it had risen to 57%. It shows no signs of decelerating.
Mark Danielewski’s “House of Leaves,” a book that I hate from the year 2000, is of singular importance to what has become a thriving subgenre of spatial horror on the internet. “House of Leaves” is mostly about a house that’s bigger on the inside than on the outside (eek!) and contains an impossible sprawling maze that the main character becomes obsessed with. The subgenre that owes its existence to this book is often called “liminal horror.” These tend to be monster stories that are set in impossible yet familiar liminal spaces, or spaces of transition, like a waiting room that goes on forever, or a big empty high school (ask your local hyper-online eighth grader about it).
Stories that could be considered liminal horror crop up everywhere lately if you know where to look for them. Just last semester I reviewed the movie “Skinamarink,” which is soundly in the domain of liminal horror and is indebted to “House of Leaves” in many ways. “House of Leaves” has become a lasting touchstone to this subgenre more than something like “Pulse” for many reasons, but chief among them is that most people don’t actually read “House of Leaves.” They hear its premise, and that sparks something in them. There is a kernel of truth and terror in the idea of the space that does not want you, that was not built for people, that is familiar but too large or too small or houses some secret. Haunted houses are just about the oldest scary stories there are. Dress it up differently and everything seems new.
This spatial unease is, I think, endemic to honest urban art (though its manifestations vary wildly). Just thirty years ago, these sorts of particularities in stories were novel; before the turn of the century, you can find spatial unease (of course), but this unique blend of images and tones is indicative of a cultural shift. A room that is larger on the inside is whimsical in “Doctor Who,” optimist that he is. Not so anymore. An enormous swath of the world now falls under that greater-metropolitan-area umbrella, and its failings (new and bold failings the likes of which society has not truly reckoned with in the past), come back to haunt us. I imagine that these sorts of stories will only get more popular and numerous, so pay attention! They’ll be worth something someday.