Nightmare Fuel / Ghost Story

For the Dresden Files novel:

• During Harry's invasion of the Big Bad's fortress from the Nevernever side, he unleashes the ghosts of killers on the enemy forces. Harry Dresden describes the scene as fresh scenes for his nightmares. He only describes the least disturbing sequence from the resulting slaughter, and leaves the rest up to the reader's imagination. It's bad enough.
  • And when you consider everything that Harry's described in previous books, it's cringe-worthy to imagine what he didn't want to tell us.
• The entire flashback showcasing Harry's first fight with He Who Walks Behind. As it turns out it's a huge, incredibly strong and even more sadistic monstrosity that’s always behind you, no matter where you turn, so the only way you can see it is in a mirror or other reflective surface. Shortly afterward, it tore a person in three pieces with no effort at all. And no, you can't just stand with your back to the wall; Harry tried that, and it still came up behind him, lifted him by the neck with a tentacle, and threw him across the room. Think equal parts Shagnasty and Slender Man, and you'll have a bit of an idea.
  • Special mention should be given to when Harry first "sees" the Outsider come inside the gas station:
    I took two slow steps towards the video game console, staring at its screen. I didn't pay attention to the animated spaceship or the asteroids or the giant, disembodied skull flying around. I didn't care about the flickers of static that washed across the screen as I got closer, something inside its computer reacting to my presence. No. I paid attention to the glass screen and to the reflection of the store that shone dimly upon it.
    I identified my outline on it, long and thin. I could see the vague outlines of the store as more shadowy shapes - aisles and end caps, the counter and the door.
    And the Thing standing just inside the door.
    It was huge. I mean, it was taller and broader than the door was. It was more or less humanoid. The proportions were wrong. The shoulders too wide, the legs crooked and too thick. It was covered in fur or scales or some scabrous, fungal amalgamation of both. And its eyes were empty, angled pits of dim violent light.
    I felt my hands begin to shake. Tremble. Actually, they became absolutely spastic. The paper bag around my hands made a steady rattling sound. There was a creature from another world standing behind me. I could feel it, no more than seven or eight feet away from me, every bit as real as Stan the stoned cashier, to every sense but my sight. It took a real effort to move my head enough to cast a single, hurried glance over my shoulder.
    Nothing. Stan was shoveling various bills into a bag. The store was otherwise empty. The door hadn't opened since I had come through it. There was a bell on it. It would have rung had it opened. I looked back at the reflection of the store in the video game console in front of me.
    The Thing was two feet closer.
    And it was smiling.
  • Not to mention we know exactly why Harry had such a Brown Note reaction in Blood Rites when he found out that He Who Walks Behind was the one behind the entropy curse.
  • Harry asked for the creature's name. He got it.
• invoked In a mix of both this and Tear Jerker, what Molly pretended to become after the end of Changes, and what she actually becomes by the time of the book.
  • Easily the most chilling part of her talking to Harry about what she can do isn't seeing her in action so much as the way she describes it. That it was easy to set up small illusions that would end with people killing each other. The same way it was easy to help Rosie and Nelson way back during Proven Guilty.
  • And Will describing the results of the intervention.
    Will: I've got a picture in my head of being dragged off into the Nevernever by monsters that I still can't get rid of. When she gave it to me, all I could do was curl up into a ball and scream.
    • That one's even worse if you consider that she probably didn't make the picture up. It's exactly what happened to Molly herself in Proven Guilty, so it's most likely her own memory of the fetches that she "gave" Will, not an invented image.
• Harry's eventual fate if he failed to find his killer: to watch from the shadows as the people he cared about lived and died, and be powerless to do anything. That he's running around in his immortal soul during this only makes it worse.
• Harry accidentally makes Uriel mad. The only direct consequence is a scolding, but it also reminds Harry that this is someone with power far beyond anything Harry's capable of, and his dialogue implies that humans are constantly trying his patience.
• The Reveal that Harry was Driven to Suicide by a Fallen Angel, possibly Lasciel or even Lucifer himself, lying to him. It shows why such beings have proportionately restrictive rules to their power. They can bring about untold damage with just words and timing.