Middle Earth Challenge, Day 20

Scariest Moment

First of all.... I can hardly believe that it is the twentieth day of the challenge. It has gone by very quickly, and I have enjoyed it immensely. Of course, now I am in ridiculously epic mood, completely over-indulging on mythology, and all things Tolkien... 

Anyway, back to business. Scariest moment... Well, there was one time, when I was re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring for um-teenth time. I had started the book quite late in the evening, and by the time Frodo and Sam were hiking across the Shire on their way to Crickhollow, where they would pick up Merry and Pippin, everyone else in the house had gone to bed. So when the Black Rider made its first appearance, there was just myself, up far, far too late, reading in the light of a very inferiour bulb. The Black Rider got off his horse and sniffed.... and then... there was a suggestion of movement in the shadows around me, a susurrus, and a sound remarkably like a sniff. I froze, my hands gripping the book in alarm. I no longer saw the words on the page, but the image of the Black Rider was vivid before my eyes.... I cautiously peeked over the top of the pages and looked into a pair of glittering eyes in a dark, grey face.....

It is fortunate that the cat made and lonesome, please-pet-me cat-noise at this junction, because I quite nearly pictched The Fellowship of the Ring into the space between those terrible eyes. I was in no condition to be petting cats at that moment so I shooed the beastie away, and got back to my book.

The point of this story? Tolkien did a fantastic job when he created the Black Riders. They are all vague and shadowy, so that the imagination fills in what it doesn't see, which is worse than a straight-forward look at the things. Just about every scene in which the Riders come into the story gives me the willies - especially in the first part, The Fellowship, when the Hobbits first see them, and before we know too much about them. They are terrifying in the books. They are terrifying in the movies. They tap into that primal fear of the dark that I do not believe anyone truly ever gets over completely. So... I shall go with the very first glimpse of the Black Riders as the scariest scene.

If you are interested in finding out more about the Middle Earth Challenge, click here.