Literature / Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome

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"Now, we must fight the unleashed horrors of my own books. You and I must work together to try and find a way to defeat the horrors of the TerrorTome."

— Nick Steen

Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome is a Horror novel written by acclaimed author/dreamweaver/frighternerman/darkscribe/doomsage/man-shee Garth Marenghi, published in 2022. Marenghi began writing the book in the 1980s but, unable to secure a publisher, continued to work on it through the 1990s and into the late 2000s when he finally found someone daring enough to finally publish the tale.

One day, acclaimed horror writer Nick Steen happens upon typewriter inhabited with a dark intelligence that insists that he purchase it. After a year spent in the thrall of the typewriter, writing a series of incomprehensible Door Stopper novels while maintaining a sadomasochistic sexual relationship it, Nick tries to leave the typewriter. Instead, the typewriter drags Nick and his longtime female editor Rosalyn into a pocket dimension known as the Prolix and reveals itself as the Dimension Lord Typeface. Typeface plans to use Nick's immense writing talent to create a novel so powerful it will bring the Prolix into the real world, which he will subsequently rule. Nick and Roz escape the Prolix and seal the dimension behind them, but at the last second, Typeface reaches through and squeezes Steen's brain, unleashing all of Steen's dark and forbidden story ideas upon the town of Stalkford. It is up to Nick and Roz to defeat the nightmares unleashed from Nick's mind and save the world.

But really though.

Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome is the thematic sequel to Garth Marenghis Darkplace, written by Matthew Holness and published in 2022, along with an audiobook version narrated by Holness as Marenghi. Whereas Darkplace only showed a glimpse of the author's writing ability filtered through the needs of a television production, TerrorTome is pure, unfiltered Marenghi. As expected, the book is Stylistic Suck, demonstrating Marenghi is a half-baked Stephen King or Clive Barker, filled with pointless asides, Padding, Asspulls, obvious Reality Subtext, uninformed personal opinions, and plagiarized plots from films. The three sections of this book, which were probably the name of the individual books originally, are Typeface, Dark Lord of the Prolix; Bride of Bone; and The Dark Fractions.

A second book Garth Marenghi's Incarcerat was released on October 31 2023.

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This work uses or parodies the following tropes:

• Accidental Innuendo: In-Universe, Garth Marenghi as a writer seems to stumble into this. In "Bride of Bone," Nick says that he and Capello could "shoot each other's pistols off" all night. Later, the villain delivers an incredibly Freudian monologue about how his army of "Boners" will penetrate all opposition. Afterwards, Nick smugly notes the villain's unfortunate choice of words, but he's mocking the outdated slang term "pranny".
• The Alleged Car: Nick's driving is supposed to sound badass, but his Honda Civic apparently maxes out at 30 mph.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Subverted. Roz says that Nick's Badass Biker dark fraction is "hotter" than he is, but later she explains that she likes the dark fraction because he listens to and remembers what she says to him, unlike Nick.
• Author Avatar: Nick Steen is obviously an idealized one for Marenghi, being an incredibly accomplished horror author who's published dozens of books. Amusingly, "The Dark Fraction" reveals that Steen has his own author avatar named Gareth Marang.
• Author Tract: Garth Marenghi's various fixations and prejudices come out in his writing.
  • The middle book "Bride of Bone" in particular seems dedicated to Marenghi's annoyance with women wearing small impractical shoes.
  • The narration makes occasional derogatory references to tradesmen
  • Nick Steen's extended descriptions of his skin diseases and appreciation of high-grade hydrocortisone sound awfully personal.
  • The extended section of Typeface, Dark Lord of the Prolix dealing with whether Roz has the correct type of replacement batteries for her flashlight echoes a scene in Darkplace where Rick Dagless goes on an Author Filibuster about the importance of buying name-brand batteries. Marenghi sure seems to have a lot of opinions about batteries.
  • In "Bride of Bone," Marenghi's narrator goes on about how society would be better off if mental health patients were treated like dangerous lunatics and subjected to brutal treatments if not killed outright.
  • Nick rants against vegetarian health food as an existential threat to society.
  • Explicitly attempted after Roz gives a short empowering speech to herself, and a footnote has Marenghi submit this passage as proof that he's a feminist.
• Badass Biker: Nick's dark fraction takes the form of a badass biker.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Nick and Roz are supposed to be like this, but in reality Nick just comes off as abusive and Roz as frustrated.
• Body Horror: Lampshaded in Typeface, Dark Lord of the Prolix, where Nick's body is flayed and broken through torture, leaving him without skin, lips, and other important organs.
• Booze Flamethrower: Nick's dark fraction repeatedly swigs hard alcohol to breathe fire at Nick.
• Call-Back: In "Bride of Bone," Nick and Capello must arouse themselves to fend off a attack. Nick suggests thinking about an oiled-up typewriter, which confuses Capello. This is, of course, a call-back to Nick's sexual relationship with his evil typewriter in Typeface, Dark Lord of the Prolix.
• Character Shilling: The text really wants you to know how great the Author Avatar Nick Steen is. In "Bride of Bone," the narrator keeps noting that Nick is much more brave and heroic than Capello, who is simply a sidekick.
• *Click* Hello: Cliff Capello ambushes Nick this way.
• Content Warning: Typeface, Dark Lord of the Prolix includes three sections where Marenghi halts the narrative to claim that his editors insisted on providing a warning to readers of a more sensitive nature to skip the next section, mostly due to Body Horror or descriptions of sex. This might be a case of Marenghi lying to make his work seem edgier, or it might be true that his editors are really that disgusted with his work.
• Continuity Nod: One of Nick's dark fractions is "Dr. Nick Steen, M.D.," a doctor in a short-lived television show. This is a reference to Garth Marenghis Darkplace, with Marenghi's Author Avatar "Dr. Rick Dagless, M.D."
• Damsel in Distress: In all three books, Roz gets kidnapped by the villains and Nick has to rescue her.
• Dedication: In-Universe. In "The Dark Fraction," Nick Steen's book The Dark Fraction has the dedication, "For Myself."
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • Defied. When Nick says that he's being "forced," "compelled," and "ordered" to buy the typewriter, Marenghi breaks in to assert that this is not a tautology because there are subtle differences in the definitions of each word.
  • As a Running Gag, Type-Face will list multiple synonyms for whatever word he's using just to irritate Nick. He is the personification of prolix, after all.
  • In "Dark Fractions", Nick describes a tunnel as "eerie, otherworldly, creepy, plus other words meaning the same thing."
  • As with Garth Marenghis Darkplace, the doctor character "Dr. Nick Steen, M.D." is given both pre- and post-name credentials every time his name is stated. In reality, doctors use only one at a time.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The relationship between Nick and the typewriter is like someone in an abusive sexual relationship with The Muse and trying to break up with them. Knowing Marenghi, he probably was in a similar relationship.
• Door Stopper: In-Universe. Nick Steen's novels written on the evil typewriter are so massive and heavy that they require a step ladder to access and a lot of physical strength to even turn the pages. Steen notes that his novels are "literally groundbreaking." He writes them at such a fast rate that publishing them is an ecological threat to the world's forests.
• The End... Or Is It?: "Bride of Bone" ends with a description of the defeated villain reconstituting himself as a skeleton. A footnote then explains that this is what is happening.
• Evil Counterpart: Nick's "dark fraction" is an evil version of Nick who, as a reflection of Nick, has his own "dark fraction", who has his own "dark fraction", ad infinitum.
• Expy: Typeface is a lazy ripoff of Pinhead from Hellraiser, but with keycaps sticking out of his face instead of pins. Nick even mistakes the keys for pins at first before correcting himself.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Nick butts heads with Cliff Capello but anticipates that they will eventually form a friendship through shared adverisity.
• Grawlix: Referenced when Nick sees that his supposed latest book is mostly just meaningless symbols, including "that German-looking skull-thing you get in Asterix books when someone's swearing."
• Hand Cannon: Like Rick Dagless, Nick Steen carries an enormous revolver with an extra-long barrel.
• Hypocritical Humor: In Typeface, Dark Lord of the Prolix, Nick gets frustrated when Roz fumbles with the flashlight as she's putting batteries in it, so he snatches it from her to do himself. He then says that he got the batteries into the flashlight "within 10 minutes."
• Insistent Terminology: Whenever Nick mentions avascular necrosis, Capello exclaims, "Necrosis?", and Nick corrects him, "Avascular necrosis." Ultimately, Nick uses the abbreviated term, and Capello corrects him, prompting Nick to congratulate him.
• Kill It with Fire: "Bride of Bone" introduces Nick killing a bunch of peaceful insect people with a flamethrower.
• Major Injury Underreaction: When tortured by Typeface, Nick gets flayed alive and has his spine snapped among other things. For some reason his crippling injuries seem to cause Nick only mild annoyance afterwards.
• Mythology Gag: In "The Dark Fractions", one of Nick's Dark Fractions is him as a doctor whom he gets along with.
• Overcrank: Nick experiences the end of "The Dark Fraction" in slow motion. After a few paragraphs of repeated calculations of time and distance, Marenghi includes a note complaining that his publishers cut out all future references and recommends audiobook listeners slow down the recording to 1/5th speed to get the same effect.
• Stylistic Suck: The whole book is written in Garth Marenghi's hacky, overwrought and self-indulgent style.
• Supernatural Hotspot Town: Stalkford becomes this once all of Nick's stories come to life.
• Reality Subtext: In-Universe. Garth is clearly cribbing from his own life to fill out the plot. For example, Nick's constant fighting with his editor Roz and internal thoughts about the publishing industry are obviously a window into Marenghi's various professional frustrations.
• Riding into the Sunset: The final story ends with Nick and Roz riding into the sunset.
• Running Gag:
  • When Nick meets Cliff Capello, his internal monologue keeps referring to Capello by name, and the narrator will then clarify that Nick doesn't actually know Capello's name yet. This gets capped off when Capello finally states his name, and Nick says mysteriously, "I know."
  • In "Bride of Bone," after Capello hands his gun over to Nick, Nick's internal monologue keeps asserting in increasingly strong terms that the gun effectively belongs to Nick now.
• Said Bookism: Marenghi rarely passes up an opportunity to use a descriptive word for the way each character says a line, even when it's completely unnecessary.
  "I agree," Capello agreed.
• Strictly Formula: Roz points out that all three of their adventures, based on Nick's books, have followed the exact same formula.
• Vanity Is Feminine: Roz starts wearing nine-inch-heel shoes that are two sizes too small for her in "Bride of Bone." Nick tries to talk her out of it, but she gets ferociously defensive.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Awesome?: Marenghi's descriptions of Nick tearing down streets in his Honda Civic are supposed to sound badass, but he keeps referencing miles per hour that are sometimes as low as the single digits.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: At the beginning of "Bride of Bone," Nick is introduced flame-throwering a bunch of giant, intelligent insects that manifested from his writing. Roz reminds him that the characters he created are peaceful and harmless, but Nick is unmoved.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Let's be generous and say Garth "homages" a lot of movies.
  • "Typeface, Dark Lord of the Prolix" is very obviously Hellraiser.
  • "Bride of Bone" is a mish-mash of Halloween (1978), Psycho, and Re-Animator.

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