Mark Danielewski is the author of The Fifty Year Sword.
When I was 12, the movie was forbidden. What my parents matter-of-factly declared too scary, friends confirmed with added notes of hysteria: "Nothing more terrifying!" "The most horrifying film ever made!" "People pass out!"
In Provo, Utah, where I grew up, Mormon children — and in my world that meant all of my friends — reported how just a glimpse resulted in actual, irreversible possession.
No one, though, had explicitly forbidden the book. And one day I found it — on one of those unvisited shelves that at some point cross over from being a place about reading to a plank consigned to storage — beside a copy of The Joy of Sex and something called Slaughterhouse-Five.
Still, I was careful not to let my parents know that I was now in possession of this Bantam edition with its glossy purple cover framing a curiously enigmatic image. It had hues of apricot, and was gauzy in a way that was vaguely feminine, even erotic. It was nothing like the movie poster — with that silhouette of Father Merrin, the Jesuit priest, about to enter the house of the possessed girl, brim hat on, valise in hand, caught in a hazy beam of light. In another context the illumination might have suggested something promising and welcoming rather than the dim dread that poster still evokes in me.
The book, however, felt warm and forgiving. And despite what the words within conveyed, those soft edges felt much different: safe, like a smoked glass through which to view dark suns.
Emman Montalvan
Mark Danielewski is also the author of House of Leaves.