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Stephen King can pluck almost any topic out of the air and make it scary.
In his masterful hands, the mundanity of everyday life becomes not only extraordinary, but believably terrifying. Take, for instance, his 2008 novella, N., which ramps the concept of obsessive-compulsive disorder up to 11.
"Obsession and compulsion are almost always unindicted co-conspirators in the tale of horror," King wrote in his introduction to the novella. "Can you think of a single successful scary tale that doesn’t contain the idea of going back to what we hate and loathe? The best overt example of that might be 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. If you ever read it in college, you were probably taught that it’s a feminist story. That is true, but it’s also a story of a mind crumbling under the weight of its own obsessive thought. That element is also present in N."
Stephen King made OCD terrifying in one of his best (and scariest) novellas
Published in the Just After Sunset collection of stories and later adapted into comic form by Marvel, the novella takes the form of a semi-epistolary narrative about psychiatrist Dr. John Bonsaint, who takes on a troubled patient (simply named "N." so as not to breach doctor-patient confidentiality) suffering from acute OCD.
Through Dr. Bonsaint's recorded sessions with the patient, we learn N. truly believes that repetitive, habitual actions—counting, touching, placing—keep a parallel universe full of unspeakable monsters from spilling over into our reality "like vomit through the bottom of a wet paper bag." In particular, these OCD practices help strengthen the precariously thin barrier between the two realities—the nexus point of which can be found within a ring of ancient stones jutting out of a vacant field along the Androscoggin River.
Naturally, the rational minded psychiatrist believes N. is possessed of a vivi psychological delusion that can be remedied with regular counseling and medication. But when N. commits suicide from the strain of keeping the world safe, Dr. Bonsaint visits the field in the hopes of comparing delusion with reality, his plan being to write a scientific article on OCD.
Unfortunately, the doctor's blind trust in the firmness of reality crumbles like a week-old cookie when he glimpses that other place of pure evil. Not only was N. telling the truth, but his condition was contagious. Whether he likes it or not, Dr. Bonsaint is now the latest unwilling contestant in a macabre relay race that's been going on for untold centuries.
Despite its seemingly Lovecraftian overtones, N. was actually inspired by Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, which gets name-checked in the story itself as "the most terrifying story ever written" (Machen, of course, was a forerunner of and influence on H.P. Lovecraft).
"I think Pan is as close as the horror genre comes to a great white whale, and that sooner or later every writer who takes the form seriously must try to tackle its theme: that reality is thin, and the true reality beyond is a limitless abyss filled with monsters," King wrote in the story's aforementioned introduction. "My idea was to try and wed Machen’s theme to the idea of obsessive-compulsive disorder."
