One Horror Novel That Haunts Me Still

I read a lot of horror books each year. While I find many of them thrilling, I’ve never ruminated on a book months after its completion. But all that changed last year when I read Stephen Peck’s “A Short Stay in Hell.”

Peck’s novel is an exploration of existential despair and apeirophobia, the fear of eternity. His short book tells the story of the death of a Mormon academic, who is condemned to Hell and must wander an endless library, searching for the one single book which depicts his life’s story. The novel’s brilliance lies in its depiction of Hell as a torment of endless consciousness. This is not a book about cruel demons with metal hooks. It’s a reflection on what it means to exist forever and to lose all relative connection with one’s prior life.

Imagine being trapped in a large box for all eternity. There is nothing to do: no hope of death, no path forward. You can only reflect on the past until your mind unravels and your sanity slips away.

This is horror.

From my own investigations, Peck did not set out to write a “horror” novel explicitly. His writing is typically well-humored, and the book has a feeling of absurdist adventurism. But Peck’s prose captures a sense of eternity in mathematical, mind-boggling terms that I find chilling. He describes endless books filled with gibberish. He details endless years of wandering in these stacks. The sheer scope of Hell’s library is breath-taking and terrifying—where one’s body can free-fall for years without reaching the bottom floor.

As the book unravels, Peck’s protagonist slowly forgets everything about his prior life. His family, his home, and everything that once mattered to him—that once defined him—becomes an insignificant speck of dust, lost in time.  

Here, too, is horror worthy of reflection. 

I think about this book still, sometimes late at night.

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Interestingly, Peck himself is not a “horror” writer in any conventional sense. I’m almost certain he would never have predicted that he would have such avid following in the horror community. From my own brief research, Peck is an active member of the Mormon Community and a leading literary voice and theologian in the Church of Latter Day Saints. He has advanced degrees in biomathematics and entomology. No doubt, some of his teachings and writings may have been influenced by a turbulent period of illness and mental hallucinations, when he was hospitalized with a bacterial brain infection. Check out his own fascinating diary entry on this experience here: https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V41N02_73.pdf