Eventually I settled on a passage from Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, about 250 pages into the novel. Early in the novel we’re introduced to Rachel, an infant only a few weeks old. When her father eventually tells her story, it begins with her as an archaeologist in her mid-twenties, so you know something horrible must have happened. It’s when he’s telling her story that we reach this passage, with Rachel sleeping inside one of the tremendous stone Sphinxes in order to study the effects of the time-tides:

Rachel was almost dozing herself when – at 0215 — her comlog chirped, the detectors screamed, and she jumped to her feet. According to the sensors, the Sphinx had suddenly grown a dozen new chambers, some larger than the total structure. Rachel keyed displays and the air misted with models that changed as she watched. Corridor schematics twisted back on themselves like rotating Mobius strips. The external sensors indicated the upper structure twisting and bending like polyflex in the wind—or like wings.

            Rachel knew it was some type of multiple malfunction, but even as she tried to recalibrate she called data and impressions into her comlog. Then several things happened at once.

            She heard the drag of feet in the corridor above her.

            All of the displays went dead simultaneously.

            Somewhere in the maze of corridors a time-tide alarm began to blare.

            All of the lights went off.

There follows a description of why the lights shouldn’t have gone off, the effect of which is to take our minds out of that primal terror-state and be analytical, something we’ve all done when we’re scared. But at the same time he’s doing this, Simmons is also subtly reinforcing that yes, she’s deep inside a structure created by tons of stone and with only narrow passages to get out again.

What I find most compelling here is how Simmons leverages so many human fears at the same time: the fear of being trapped, the fear of being alone, the fear of the dark, and the monster in the house. There’s the risk of dismemberment and the certitude of being crushed. And yet in the next scene, we find her physically whole, safe on a space station med center, and no one notices anything unusual about the readings on her devices. Did it happen at all? Which in and of itself adds to the horror of this scene. But yes, it did happen, and we come to find the permanent effect of this encounter over the next pages of the novel.

Another way Simmons is ingenious in this passage is where it takes place in the story. By the time we reach this point, we’ve already been exposed to the power of the Shrike and we know the Shrike is merciless. There is nothing the Shrike will not do. If it had occurred earlier in the story, we might not have believed Rachel was in as much danger as we do after being exposed to the true nature of the Shrike (and, I admit, excerpting it in this post is effectively undoing all that tension-building) but contrast that to the early introduction of Rachel as a weeks-old infant. Innocent. We have this being which feasts on pain set against someone we first met as innocent and later meet as naive and inexperienced. It’s not a fair fight, and we know it. We want to root for her, but she’s got nothing going on, and we know from the start of the encounter that she’s going to lose the battle.

The formula is nearly perfect, and I’ve remembered this scene for almost ten years.

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Jane Lebak’s first novel The Guardian will be re-released as The Wrong Enemy this September by MuseItUp Publishing! She is also the author of Seven Archangels: Annihilation (Double-Edged Publishing, 2008) and The Boys Upstairs (MuseItUp, 2010). She is one of the bloggers at QueryTracker.net, a resource for writers trying to find an agent. At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four children. 

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Other posts in this series:

“Liberty Speidle: My Favorite Terrifying Passage“

“It was Terrifying!“