In my new book, The Other People, Alice is a little girl with a rather strange ability. She’s not alone. Literature is full of fictional children with freaky powers that can sometimes help and sometimes terrify the adults. Here’s my pick of seven of the best!
The Shining by Stephen King
Five-year-old Danny has a unique gift and an ‘imaginary’ friend who tells him about stuff that hasn’t happened yet.
When his dad, Jack Torrance, becomes winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel, moving his whole family with him. Danny soon becomes plagued by premonitions and ghostly visions.
Turns out The Overlook has plans for Danny and his ‘gift’, which Dick Halloran—the friendly ex-cook of the Overlook—calls ‘the shining’.
A chilling classic, The Shining is a great lesson in the slow burn. Don’t rush horror—let it come play with you!
The Girl with all the Gifts by M. R. Carey
Melanie is one of a group of strange children kept confined and shackled in an underground facility.
Turns out that these children are infected by—yet partly resistant to—a zombiefying plague that has ravaged the world.
Dr Caroline Caldwell sees them as specimens to be cultivated and cut up – the key to a possible cure. Psychologist/teacher Helen Justineau believes in their essential humanity and wants to save them.
When their rural army base is besieged, the group embark upon a road trip towards London, during which Melanie’s true nature is gradually revealed. A clever take on the much done ‘zombie apocalypse’ story.
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Autumn 1981. Twelve-year-old Oskar lives a lovely existence in a small Swedish suburb, longing for revenge against the bullies at school. Then, the body of a teenage boy is found, drained of blood.
At the same time, a mysterious new girl, Eli, has moved in next door. Oskar and Eli soon form a bond. But why is she so pale and why does she only come out at night?
Although the truth about the enigmatic and strange Eli is ultimately terrifying, the tender relationship between her and Oskar is at the heart of the book. Creepy yet touching.
A Cosmology of Monsters by Sean Hamill
Noah Turner sees monsters.
So did his dad. In fact, he built a shrine to them, The Wandering Dark, a horror experience that the whole family operates every Halloween.
His mother denies her own glimpses of terror to keep the family from falling apart. But terrible things keep happening, including the death of Noah’s dad, the sudden disappearance of his oldest sister, Sydney, and his sister Eunice’s mental illness, not to mention the missing children from the town.
Then a huge supernatural creature that turns up on Noah’s doorstep one night . . . and Noah lets his monster in.
Firestarter by Stephen King.
Charlie McGee inherited pyrokinetic powers from her parents, who had been given a low-grade hallucinogen called “Lot Six” while at college as part of a clandestine go government experiment.
Now, the Department of Scientific Intelligence (‘The Shop’) want to capture young Charlie and harness her powerful fire-starting skills as a weapon.
Of course, they do! This is a Stephen King novel. And obviously they unleash all manner of incendiary mayhem as a result.
Mr X by Peter Straub
When he was a child, every year on his birthday, Ned Dunstan would be seized by terrifying visions of slaughter perpetrated by a figure in black whom he called Mr X.
Now, with his 35th birthday fast approaching, Ned is compelled to return to his childhood home by a premonition that his mother is dying.
On her deathbed, she imparts to him the name of his long-absent father and warns him that he is in danger.
Almost immediately, inexplicable things begin to happen: the dream that has troubled Ned since he was a boy edges ever closer to reality; and when he becomes the main suspect in three violent deaths, he realizes that he is not the only one who has come home…
The Passage by Justin Cronin
A sprawling apocalyptic epic about a world overrun by humans infected with a virus that gives then immortality, makes them hunger for blood and vulnerable to light. They are called . . . Virals. Of course!
Amy Harper Bellafonte is a very special child who has been infected with a form of the virus and acquired some of the traits of the other infected such as immortality but not their bloodlust or their morphology.
The plot spans centuries and several stories—and the insistence on never mentioning the other ‘V’ word is a bit of a pretension – but at the heart of it is Amy and her unique abilities.
From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz
When Bartholomew Lampion is born all agree that his has the most unusual eyes. On the same day, a girl called Angel is born from a brutal rape, and a thousand miles away, a ruthless killer learns that he has a mortal enemy.
Unsurprisingly, the destinies of all three will become entwined.
At the age of three, surgeons remove Bart’s eyes to save him from a fast-spreading cancer. As he copes with his blindness, he proves to be a prodigy with unique abilities. At thirteen, Bartholomew regains his sight. Oh, and discovers he also has the ability to step between dimensions.
There is a lot going on in this book but in the hands of Mr Koontz it is never less than entertaining. Serial killers, the supernatural and quantum physics all in one hefty tome!
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