I had the pleasure this past weekend of attending the 2011 Stoker Weekend convention. One of the panels I sat on was one called Horror and Terror, Slashers and Stumps with Christopher Conlon, Lisa Morton and Norman Prentiss. Sound familiar? Yes, we were able to recreate to a degree the blog conversation the four of us had last year. Unfortunately, the original blog posts were virtually unseen. So, on the heels of the convention, Lisa Morton was nice enough–and tech-savvy enough–to place our original blog posts into one easy to read file on Scribd.com. For anyone interested in an in-depth discussion about the horror genre from the unique perspectives of four writers detailing their upbringing, their influences, and what “horror” means to them, here is the link: Horror and Terror, Slashers and Stumps
The Tree Farm
Just in time for holidays! This month’s free fiction first appeared in 2002 in an anthology magazine called Darkness Rising. Enjoy.
The Tree Farm
When the tractor stopped, Craig did not want to get off. December cold was bearing down. A chill wind blew and he had forgotten to wear a scarf. The hilltop tree farm could not have picked a colder, more desolate place, he thought.
His wife, Janey, and his two daughters, Jessica and Jillann, looked around excitedly with rosy cheeks and runny noses at the sea of Christmas trees that surrounded them.
“Okay, folks,” the tractor driver said. “I’ll swing back this way in a little while. Good luck.”
Several other brave souls occupied the trailer wagon, pruning saws in hand. They stood and stepped off one by one and dispersed into the rows of evergreens.
“Craig, c’mon,” Janey beckoned.
Jessica and Jillann, bundled with the care of an Arctic expedition, leaped off the trailer and ran off down the nearest row, their red wintery coats swishing in unison.
“Craig!”
“Sorry. I didn’t hear you. My ears are frozen.”
His wife frowned. “I told you to wear a hat.”
At last, Craig committed himself to this venture. He stepped off the trailer and gave the driver a wave. “You are coming back, right?” he asked the driver.
The driver smiled and revved the John Deere’s engine and pulled away in a puff of white exhaust.
With the tractor gone, Craig suddenly felt alone on this hilltop. He squinted his eyes. The sun was half an hour from setting and shone from an almost perpendicular angle. It provided no warmth at all. The breeze gusted and he zipped up his coat collar. The zipper grated against his chin, but it kept his hot breath close to his face.
“Craig?“
Craig followed his wife’s voice down between the stands of six-foot high spruce. The ground was spongy with trampled grass; it crackled beneath his feet. “What?”
“Oh, there you are. I almost didn’t see you with that coat of yours.”
“What’s wrong with my coat?”
“It’s green, silly.”
“And yours is red, so what?”
His wife just rolled her eyes in frustration. She turned her attention to the tree before them. “What do you think?”
Craig stumbled over a freshly cut stump. “God damn it!” Jillann giggled. “Yeah, that one looks nice. Want me to cut it?”
“Wait, I don’t like it,” said Janey. “It’s got a bare spot.”
“How about this one, Mommy?” called Jessica from two rows over.
“That one’s ugly!” said Jillann.
“I see some good ones over there,” Janey pointed and the two girls disappeared through the boughs. “Stay close!” she shouted.
“Janey, jeez, not so loud. I think they heard you from two valleys over.”
“What?” she said, agitated. And for the first time Craig could see himself through his wife’s eyes. Whatever he had to offer, it didn’t help. He was useless.
“Never mind,” he said, and his wife headed off in the direction of the children.
“I thought this one was just fine,” Craig voiced to no one in particular.
Another gust of wind rose. It made Craig’s eyes tear. The tree in front of him shook.
They couldn’t just pick a tree up outside the grocery store or at one of those roadside pull-offs where pickups parked and sold a dozen trees or so for cheap. No, that would be too easy.
Craig looked up and saw that one of the other families had already found their tree. They dragged it to the center tractor road that divided the field in half and huddled close round it like a prized marlin pulled from the sea. They stood in the sun and waited for the tractor to return.
Again, Craig heard his wife’s voice calling him. This time he deliberately aimed himself in the opposite direction.
The sun dimmed as he walked deeper into the rows. The downhill slope provided a welcome blind from the intermittent wind gusts. It actually felt warmer down here, Craig thought. Either that or hypothermia was setting in. He examined each and every tree he came upon. But with each stop, his wife’s voice echoed in his ear as if it were his own.
Too tall.
Too thin.
Too fat.
Too spindly.
Too yellow.
Too uneven.
Too ugly. And when he finally thought he had found perfection, invariably, the tree had been tagged for pick-up by someone else.
If only they had got an earlier start. But there was the outdoor decorating to do, the setting up of the nativity and the stringing of the lights around the house. The days were shorter now and the remaining weekends were growing scarce. Not to mention the shopping. Janey was always on the go, dragging him here and there. And the girls were Janeys-in-training. When was the last time they did something he wanted to do? And more importantly, when did he cease being the man of the house? He used to be the center of things, but now, with the children and the house and the bills and the responsibility, he was nothing more than a prop that provided appearances and a weekly paycheck.
“Craaaaig?“
The call made its way faintly through the trees and down the well of his coat collar into his ears. They were probably looking for him. Maybe they found a tree? Maybe they were ready to leave now?
He wasn’t. He would make them wait, abide by his time schedule for once.
He wove deeper into the thicket.
The trees seemed to swallow him. He listened as his footfalls became distant thumps beneath his legs. He covered his ears with his gloves and could hear his heartbeat pounding from some place deep inside his body. When he heard the rustling of footsteps he ducked between two trees, not wanting to be seen. I’ll show them, he thought. I’ll make them worry, make them miss me for once, see what it’s like not to have Ol’ Sad-Eyes Craig to drag around…
The trees held him firmly with their soft boughs. He closed his eyes as the footsteps neared then veered off in another direction. He was alone once again. But this self-imposed isolation only reminded him how invisible he had become. What he really wanted was to regain that position at the center, a position he once held back when he and Janey first started dating, back when she used to look at him as if was the only thing that mattered.
Just then, there came a soft humming like a children’s lullaby. It sounded so close. Craig turned and stared into the depths of the boughs beside him.
He saw movement.
At first he thought it just an animal lodged in the branches, a raccoon or wolverine. But as it uncurled from its fetal position, he realized it was a child. His presence must have awakened it. But this child was unlike any child Craig had ever seen, except in fairy tale books with stories about wood sprites and bugbears and other unseen creatures of the forest — creatures that grant nightmares instead of wishes. It had bark for skin and pine needles for hair, and it continued to sing — an hypnotic drone of a song — even as it wormed its way toward him. Its mouth yawned open and Craig saw that it had several rows of twig-like teeth. Craig was frozen, unable to call out or break free as the creature’s eyes lit up like two embers, pinning him in place as if he had grown roots. A strange mist enveloped him. And as the creature disappeared he realized that he had invaded its territory. Now it would invade his.
When footsteps returned to this part of the field they were all but lost by the time they reached his ears.
“Here’s one!”
“Oh, it’s perfect.”
The voices were familiar, yet something inside of him did not want to acknowledge it. All he could do was stand there invisible to their holiday blindness.
He heard cutting noises and felt a slight tingle down by his feet.
“Hurry, mom, it’s cold.”
“A little bit more…There!”
Craig felt the world turn sideways. A whumph greeted his ears as his head hit the frozen ground. The next thing he knew he was being dragged. One minute he was looking up at the cold blue sky, the next minute the frozen ground was scraping against his cheek.
Finally, the dragging stopped.
“Oh, what a beautiful tree,” someone said.
“Thank you,” replied a voice, a voice Craig recalled belonging to a woman named Janey.
“Where’s Daddy?” asked a smaller voice.
(Jillann?)
“I think I saw him walking back,” said another small voice.
(Jessica?)
“I’m sure he’ll meet us at the car. Now, bundle up, here comes our ride.”
As he lay there, the rumble of the tractor shook the ground. The cold and the painlessness seeped into his bones, making him feel almost wooden. Craig was saddened by this strange turn of events. Tears welled from his eyes and hardened like pine sap on his wind-burned cheeks. But a part of him was also glad. For, even though he would be just another holiday prop, he would finally be the center of attention.
At least for a little while.
~end~
The Neighborhood Watch
Episode #4: The Neighborhood Watch
I live in a small town in the northeast corner of Connecticut with my wife, my two daughters, my wife’s mother and the newest member of our extended family, my granddaughter Neveah. We live on a narrow country road in a house that sits about 700 feet back on a rise surrounded by tall pines. We have three neighbors up here on the hill, all whom I know by name. There’s Paul & Gretchen, Dan & Natalie, and Nate & Melissa. They’re good neighbors.
Paul & Gretchen are a younger couple. They have a toddler, a girl named Courtney-Lynn. Paul rides his riding lawnmower, even when it looks like their lawn doesn’t need mowing. He also plays fetch with their golden retriever, Bailey. Gretchen hangs up laundry in the backyard, while little Courtney-Lynn plays in the grass.
Dan & Natalie are an older couple. They can be seen in their garden together. Usually, Dan is not wearing a shirt, his tanned skin and white chest hair on display for all to see. His hand is usually not without a tall plastic tumbler. I’ve talked to Dan when he’s been “working” outside. His eyes have a tendency to roll and he teeters when he stands. Thank God I don’t smoke, or else he’d probably go up in flames.
Nate & Melissa have two boys, Eli and Evan. When it’s really hot, Eli and Evan come over and ask to use our swimming pool. Melissa is taking courses online toward becoming a nurse. Nate collects old lawn tractors. In the winter he snow blows the long common drive, driveways included. We never asked him to. He just did it one day and hasn’t stopped. We try to give him money for gas, but he always refuses.
We have good neighbors, quiet neighbors. We have the kind of neighbors that, if there was an emergency, we’re confident they would be there to help. And vice versa.
All of that was a comfortable illusion, however, an illusion that ended the day of Neveah’s baptism when screams came through my bedroom window. Little girl screams. Accompanied by a hysterical woman’s voice shouting, “Shoot it! Shoot it!”
It was Sunday morning. It was still dressed in what I sleep in: loose swimming trunks and a t-shirt. I ran downstairs and bolted out the door.
By the time I’d located where the screams had come from, it was all over. Gretchen stood on the deck clutching little Courtney-Lynn in her arms, while Paul stalked the edge of the woods holding a rifle. “Bailey! Here boy!” The barks of their golden retriever sounded from beyond the first layer of trees and thick underbrush.
“What happened?” I asked.
“A fox!” said Gretchen. “It walked right up to Courtney-Lynn and tried to bite her…and it would have if Bailey hadn’t chased the damned thing away. Paul ran into the house to get his gun. He used to be a police officer.” Gretchen rocked Courtney-Lynn. Courtney-Lynn’s cheeks were streaked with tears. “Bad fox,” she mumbled.
“A fox? In broad daylight?” I said. “That’s not normal. It didn’t bite your dog, did it?”
“We don’t know.”
Seconds later, Bailey broke through the woods and came running. Paul joined us, rifle pointed down at his side. “There’s blood on his leg, but it doesn’t appear to be a bite. I should probably take him to the vet just to be on the safe side.”
“I’m calling the police,” Gretchen said. She turned and went inside.
At about that time, Dan came wandering over from his yard. “Did you get it?”
Paul shook his head. “Bailey chased it into the woods.”
Dan looked at me, his eyes lolling, his fine grey hair like Medusa’s snakes crawling atop his bald, well-tanned pate. Surprisingly, the tumbler in his grip never spilled its contents. “I couldn’t believe it. I heard the little girl scream. That’s when I saw the fox. It just kept coming right toward her. Never seen anything like it.” He turned to Paul. “That dog of yours is some dog. He flipped that fox two or three times in the air. But each time it landed it went right for the little girl again. I couldn’t believe it. That’s when I went and got my pistol.” He pulled a pistol from his back pocket. Both Paul and I jumped back a little. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ve got a permit.”
Whether or not Dan had a permit was the least of my concerns. At this point I was hoping the fox didn’t come back for fear of something much deadlier: half-pickled Dan and his flying bullets.
“Is it gone!”
Dan’s wife, Natalie, stood by the front door of her house nervously eyeing the woods.
“Nope. It’s still out there. Get back inside.” Dan waved her back in. You would have thought a grizzly bear was marauding across the countryside.
So far, Nate and Melissa had yet to make an appearance. I almost expected Nate to drive up with a gas-powered Gatling gun.
It was good that little Courtney-Lynn hadn’t been bit, and I would have stood out there all morning shooting the bull, but I had my granddaughter’s baptism to get ready for. So I excused myself and headed back to the relative safety of my own home.
Later that morning there was a police cruiser parked in Paul and Gretchen’s driveway. After the cruiser left there came a knock at our door. It was Dan, still wearing no shirt. Perhaps he was unaware that he was half-naked.
“They got it,” he said, eyes bulging from their red-rimmed sockets. “They said they’d be back later to look for the den. There’s probably a whole family of them living out there.”
“That’s good to hear,” I said. I didn’t know if rabies could be passed from an infected mother fox to its kits, but I guess the police weren’t taking any chances. Either that or it was a slow day at the barracks. “Thanks,” I said.
“No problem. Now, you take care. Especially that little one,” said Dan. He then wove his way across our yard back home. We hadn’t had this much excitement up on the hill since cows got loose from a nearby farm and ate all of Natalie’s brussel sprouts.
#
Family and friends began arriving at noon, and as one o’clock approached we all headed over to the church.
I’m not a big churchgoer, and the few masses and ceremonies I’ve attended all seemed kind of foreign to me. I’d been to weddings where sometimes there’s a mass, sometimes not. Some christenings seemed to take longer than others. But of all the baptisms I’d been to, all have been multiple affairs, sometimes half a dozen babies at a time processed assembly line fashion. This time, however, it was just Neveah. Which was kind of nice.
Perhaps Father Ray (whom my mother-in-law works for as a housekeeper) did it as a special favor, considering Neveah had spent the first three weeks of her life in the childrens ICU. This baptism was an important milestone for her, and for the family, after all we’d been through.
Neveah was an angel throughout the ceremony. She sat in my daughter’s arms just gazing around at all the people. Father Ray’s low, monotone voice no doubt soothed her ears as it echoed inside the small stone cathedral. Neveah was still calm when her parents and godparents were called to the altar for the reading of the Rites of Baptism. She was only mildly alarmed when she was tilted back over the font and Father Ray applied the sign of the cross on her forehead with oil before pouring the holy water.
From where I sat, the light from a nearby votive candle must have reflected red, because instead of oil it looked as if blood had been smeared on my granddaughter’s forehead before the holy water washed it clean. It happened so fast, like a sleight-of-hand trick.
My mind backtracked to previous baptisms. I recalled that the application of the oil generally occurred after the dousing of holy water. Although sometimes there were two applications of oil, one before and one after, but there was always one after. I was confused.
I watched Father Ray’s fingers. He quickly wiped them on a cloth and set the cloth aside. He smiled as if nothing unusual had occurred.
I looked for the vile Father Ray had drawn the oil from, but it was missing. Another sleight-of-hand trick.
By now, family members and friends had gathered around Neveah, jockeying for pictures. My daughter thanked Father Ray. My wife thanked Father Ray and slipped him a donation. I shook Father Ray’s hand. I don’t normally go out of my way to shake a priest’s hand, but this time I needed to be sure.
There was a hint of red on the pad of his index finger. I looked up and he seemed to recognize that I had noticed. He broke contact then and announced he had another engagement to attend, and quickly left.
More pictures were taken. We moved outside to the parking lot. Neveah enjoyed the attention showered upon her. Several people remarked on how well she was behaving. “She’s not a fussy baby,” my wife said. I added, “She’s probably saving it all for her adolescence.” This brought a laugh. I couldn’t help but smile with grandfatherly pride.
That’s when I glanced across the parking lot and saw Father Ray standing near the rectory’s garage speaking to a grey-haired man. Dan? I thought. I’d never seen Dan fully dressed, and this man was wearing a golf cap on his head. I couldn’t see the man’s face, and they turned away out of sight before I could get a better look, so I couldn’t be sure.
My mother-in-law locked up the church, and the cars began filing out, heading back to our house for all the food my wife and mother-in-law had prepared the night before. But between the blood and Father Ray’s strange behavior, I just couldn’t let it go. There was creeping feeling in my gut that something wasn’t right.
“My cell phone — does anyone have it?”
To be honest, I had it, but I wanted to get back inside the church to look around.
After a quick search of pockets and pocketbooks, my mother-in-law gave me the key. “I’ll be right back,” I said.
Once inside the church, I went straight to the altar and searched for the vile. The vile was there, as was the cloth. I opened the vile. It contained only oil, a clear, viscous fluid. It smelled sweet. I examined the cloth. It was as white as new fallen snow. The life-size Christ that hovered behind me seemed to frown at my implication. At this point, I simply had to laugh. I let my imagination get the better of me. I wondered what Father Ray must have thought as I stared at him. I didn’t want to know. I felt foolish.
I locked up the church and headed for the car. The buzz of flies caught my ear.
A rusted metal trash barrel stood alongside the equipment shed. I walked over and peeked inside. The carcass of an animal lay at the bottom. Its body had been split open, gutted. It was the size of a large cat, only grey. It had a large bushy tail. My heart sank.
I wanted to drag my wife, my daughter, even my mother-in-law out of the car and show them what I had found, but I didn’t know for sure what it meant.
Was this the same fox the officer had killed this morning? I wondered. At least that’s what our neighbor Dan had claimed. None of us had heard gunshots.
“C’mon, let’s go…What are you doing? Did you find your cell phone?” The look on my wife’s face was one of frustration. I had held things up too long already. They wanted to get home to serve the guests.
I walked away from the trash barrel. The buzz of flies stayed in my ear as I drove home attempting to make sense of it all.
#
It’s now three months later. Neveah is still amazing us all with her development. Her physical therapist says she’s at or above the benchmarks for an infant her age. She’s begun to play piano. She sits in my lap and just pounds the keys, but she seems to show an actual interest in the mechanics of how it works. Her large blue eyes are constantly looking, searching, and, dare I say, analyzing her surroundings. Every noise, every movement, she takes it all in as if collecting the information for use one day. She seldom blinks.
The incident with the fox is just a memory. Our neighbors behave like they always have. Little Courtney-Lynn is growing by leaps and bounds. Paul still cuts his lawn even when it doesn’t need it. Dan and Natalie are harvesting the garden they worked on all summer long. Even Dan’s tumbler has grown in size to Big Gulp dimensions. In the evenings I can hear Nate tinkering in his shed, preparing the snow blower for winter, no doubt. Nothing has changed. But I look at them differently. My eyes no longer deceive me.
Lately, at night, I’ve witness things, shadows moving where shadows shouldn’t be. Now and then our dogs bark at nothing. They say dogs have acute hearing. They can recognize the sound of their owner’s car long before it appears in the driveway. I bet they can even hear shadows as they slide from one place to another through the night.
I want to run outside and cast light on these shadows, these watchers who stand sentry outside our home, but what would be the point? Neveah is still my granddaughter, even if she has the mark of blood on her forehead. A mark only I can see.
Perhaps it is something only I am meant to know.
Perhaps I, too, am watching.
#
Originally published in the Delirium Insider, February 2007.
The Four Horsemen of the Parking Lot
Episode #2: The Four Horsemen of the Parking Lot
The four young men standing in the parking lot didn’t look cold. In fact, none of the four wore winter coats even though it was eleven o’clock at night and below freezing outside.
The four stood in a clot in front of a parked car. At the center stood a young man with blond hair. His eyes were closed, his head tilted up toward the night sky. The three other young men surrounded him, one on each side and one standing in front. The young man on the left had his hands placed firmly on the blond man’s shoulder and forehead. The young man on the right had his hands holding the back of the blond man’s neck and cupping his chin. The third, who crouched slightly in front, his head turned toward the pavement, had both hands placed against the blond man’s chest. He appeared to be feeling for a heartbeat.
My first thought was the blond man had been skateboarding in the parking lot and had fallen. I don’t know why I thought this because the young men, though young, were too old and too well dressed to be skaters. Besides, the small parking lot was gated and private. Only guests of the House were allowed inside.
I kept expecting the blond man to open his eyes, but then I realized all four of the men had their eyes shut. Their lips were also moving, subtly, repetitively. It was then that it occurred to me that the four were in the midst of some kind of prayer. So I turned away.
Maybe they were friends or relatives praying for someone inside the House. After all, the house I was staying in was the Ronald McDonald House in New Haven, Connecticut. No, I wasn’t there to get a bite to eat. I was there because my newly born granddaughter was at the hospital nearby, close to death.
#
Two days earlier, the birth of my daughter’s baby filled me with pride, dread, and relief. Pride that my daughter hadn’t chosen the path of least resistance and opted instead to accept a responsibility that for most teenagers would be a horror. Dread that now there would be a baby in our house, the first in fifteen years, and the normal course of our lives would be disrupted. Relief that the baby was at last here and I would not have that daily reminder of a pregnant, unmarried, teenage daughter walking around the house, and the parental guilt that goes along with that. Maybe my wife and I were somehow bad parents for allowing something like this to happen. Maybe we were too strict. Maybe we weren’t strict enough. Maybe we didn’t tell our daughter the things she needed to know. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But all that ceased to matter when the baby was born and it was discovered that something wasn’t quite right.
Neveah Alicia Ann Newton weighed in at seven pounds three ounces. She looked exactly like my daughter when she was a newborn. Family and friends gathered and we took turns holding her. She wouldn’t open her eyes. She was shy, we thought. She also refused to nurse. She preferred instead to be wrapped up tight and to sleep. Instead of crying she cooed like a bird. As we held her, we thought the sounds she made were cute. We joked that because our daughter was so close to her cat, that perhaps Neveah was part feline.
I went home that night believing nothing could possibly be wrong. The hard part was over. My daughter had made it through and a new chapter of her life had begun. My wife stayed at the hospital for our daughter’s sake. Just before bedtime, the phone rang. It was my wife. She was in tears. Neveah was having seizures. A CAT scan revealed signs of bleeding on the brain. She might have spinal meningitis. She had been placed on oxygen. She might have brain damage. They were rushing her to Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital as we spoke. She might not survive the night.
Take a breath. Think positive. Helpless, helpless, helpless. For the first time in my life I actually asked God for a little favor. It was a simple request. “God,” I said, “please help Neveah. She deserves a shot.”
#
Next came the long drive. Bigger hospital, bigger waiting room. One by one we went in to see Neveah. Tubes, tape, monitors, so many machines for such a small person. There was a piece of gauze placed over her eyes. Apparently, the infection in her brain made her sensitive to light — even the light that bleeds through the eyelids. She was stable now. She had stopped seizing. They were able to determine from the spinal fluid that she had contracted strep-B, a common bacteria to us, but life-threatening to infant immune systems. They were treating her with penicillin. An MRI was scheduled for the morning to determine the extent of damage, if any.
That night my wife and I and our daughter went to the Ronald McDonald House to stay for the night, the first of many to come. That night, while getting a late night snack, I saw the four young men outside the kitchen window.
The following morning I woke up early, grabbed my pad, went downstairs, and in the early morning quiet of the House’s large sunroom, I began writing this down. The original ending went something like this:
I want this to have a happy ending. I want this to just be a story my daughter will tell Neveah when she’s older.
Later that day, I asked the volunteer at the House about the four men in the parking lot. I hadn’t seen any of them inside the House. She looked at me and smiled and said, “A lot of strange and miraculous things happen around here. This is truly the house love built.”
I smiled back, but at the same time a chill ran up my spine.
Well, that’s a lie. It’s funny the things we cling to, the stories we tell ourselves when we don’t want to face the truth, when we want to avoid that feeling of helplessness. My granddaughter’s life was in the balance and here I was writing some kind of sappy spiritual ending to a story not yet finished.
Maybe I wanted the four men to be an apparition, four angels sent by God to help Neveah get the shot she deserves. The shot I petitioned for. It would be cool and kind of scary to believe the universe actually operated that way.
But I’m too much of a skeptic to believe that to be true.
The truth is I did ask the volunteer in the House about the four young men I had seen. I was told that sometimes Yale divinity students stay at the House. I guess that explained what I saw.
The truth is sometimes prayers are answered, sometimes not. The truth is helpless comes with the territory. As do tears. As does death.
And now for the happy ending…
It’s been ten days since Neveah entered the children’s ICU. Every day she gets better. Subsequent tests have revealed no permanent damage. She must be a fighter. She must be lucky. She must have an angel looking over her shoulder. Pick whichever belief you’re most comfortable with.
As I write this she is still at Yale-New Haven. She has another week to go before they release her. She is now breathing and eating on her own. She opens her eyes often and even cries now and then.
Welcome to the world.
#
Originally published in the Delirium Insider, February 2007.
Last Flight Out to the Wormhole in my Mind
Back in 2006, Delirium Books publisher Shane Ryan Staley created a subscriber-based newsletter called the Delirium Insider. It offered exclusive information on upcoming Delirium releases. It also offered original flash fiction and several non-fiction columns. I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to write a regular column about my real-life experiences, twisting them into something unnatural (and entertaining), of course. My column was called Disturbances: Surreal Thoughts on Real Events. I wrote four essays in the short time the Delirium Insider was available. I will reprint three of the four here over the next three weeks.
Episode #1: Last Flight Out to the Wormhole in my Mind
They cut me open.
It’s okay, I let them.
Actually, they cut me open, played with my intestine a bit, pushed it back where it belonged, installed a little synthetic mesh, and sewed everything back up tight.
I had a hernia. I don’t know how or when it happened. It could have been caused by coughing up phlegm during a bout with a chest cold. It could have happened when I was down on my knees, lifting the couch in anger to look for the TV remote. Or it could have happened at work. All I know is I was in the shower one morning soaping up my groin at the same time I coughed, and I felt this egg blossom beneath my fingertips. I looked, I inspected. I coughed again. It’s the scientific process, you know. I repeated steps A and B, and still got result C. Shit, I thought. Shit, shit, shit. I’ve got a hernia!
Next step: call a doctor? Hell no. Check it out on the Internet first. Maybe there’s something I can do to fix it myself. Maybe, with rest and lots of deep abdominal massage, I can push my intestine back where it came from. Ah, here’s a good site, www.hernia.org…
I jump to the FAQ section. You know that saying about once you see something you can’t unsee it? Well…on the second page of this FAQ there’s a picture of these African bushmen, about ten of them lined up in a row as if for a family portrait, each standing naked as the day they were born, each looking as if they’re carrying twin bowling balls between their legs. The caption reads: “Ignoring a hernia, once diagnosed, is like playing Russian roulette!”
Holy fuck! I’ve seen pictures of the aftermath of guys playing Russian roulette and they weren’t half as grotesque as the picture of these guys with their intestines spooled out into a sack between their legs.
Next step: family doctor. For real. “Drop your drawers. Yup, you’ve got a hernia.”
Another step: the surgeon. “Drop your drawers. Yup, you’ve got a hernia. It’s a good size one too.”
I guess he never saw that picture of the African bushmen.
So, long story short, I sign on the dreaded line to let them cut me open. In all my 40-plus years, I’ve never been “under the knife”. Never experienced anesthesia. This ought to be interesting, I thought.
They schedule me for surgery on January 2, 2007. I arrive at 9:00 a.m., get called at 9:15. I’m the last patient of the day. I strip off everything except for my socks and get into my gown. 9:30: the nurse comes in, takes my temp, checks my lungs, sticks an IV needle into my arm, and then shaves half my pubic hairs off. “It’s mainly for the tape,” she says.
10:00 to 10:30: my wife and daughter sit with me, and comfort me. My wife jokes about life insurance while my daughter looks bored, wanting Mom to hurry up and go shopping. I kiss my wife goodbye, tell them I’ll see them later as they leave.
10:45: I’m wheeled out into the hall and into the elevator. Scenes from the movie Jacob’s Ladder flash through my mind. Fortunately, we end up several floors up and not in the basement. I’m wheeled into a sterile-looking room and parked in a holding area. I feel like an airplane that has taxied out onto the runway and is waiting for take-off.
10:45-11:00: a variety of doctors and nurses visit me and tell me everything will be okay. One nurse tells me, “The IV might feel a little cold,” as she begins the drip that will “relax” me.
??:??: I don’t know what time it was when they come and get me, but I’m pretty relaxed. The airplane begins to taxi down the runway. It passes through a pair of doors and into an operating room where a stainless steel bed awaits. The nurse asks me to scoot over, so I scoot. I lay my head back and…
1:00 p.m.: I hear laughter. Two women talking. I open my eyes. There’s a clock across the room. I try to focus my eyes. I feel nauseous. I drift off.
1:05: More laughter. I open my eyes again. This time I try to lift my head. My mouth is dry. A nurse comes over. “How do you feel?” “Okay,” I tell her, “it’s just hard to focus my eyes.” “Do you feel nauseous?” “Yup,” I say. She floods my IV with anti-nausea meds. I close my eyes and lay my head back.
1:10: I open my eyes again. I’m determined to wake up this time. “How do you feel now?” The nurse is back again. She has dark hair. She’s a middle-aged woman. I don’t know her name. “Better,” I tell her. I keep my eyes open. She leaves for a minute but returns to tell me I’m ready to go. I close my eyes as they wheel me away.
1:20: I’m back in my hospital room. The plane has returned. It was a short flight, only there’s time missing. About two hours-worth. I must have flown through a wormhole. I call the stewardess to bring me some ginger ale. I’m thirsty as all hell.
That was three days ago. I’m good as new now. Only my pubic area looks like a half-shorn sheep. The left side of my groin is missing most of its sensation. My left testicle looks like it was used as a punching bag for Mike Tyson, it’s bruised red, and the skin on the underside of my scrotum is nearly black. I called the doctor’s office and the nurse tells me everything’s normal. Needless to say, there’s still some residual pain.
That’s what the oxycodone is for.
I’m home, in my room, sitting at my computer. I hear the plane taxiing in the driveway as I write this. The stewardess is knocking on my window. Every night she promises me she’ll show me where my two hours went.
I have to go now. I’m off to find that wormhole. Don’t wait up.
#
Originally published in the Delirium Insider, January 2007.
HORROR AND TERROR, SLASHERS AND STUMPS
Part Two of a Four-Part Conversation About Horror Fiction With Christopher Conlon, Lisa Morton, Kurt Newton, and Norman Prentiss
For Part One of this discussion, please visit Christopher Conlon’s blog at http://chrisconlon.livejournal.com/12355.html.
CONLON: One thing I find puzzling about the genre in general—and I’m speaking as an immigrant to this field, mind you, having spent twenty years largely in poetry and literary fiction—is the pervasive attitude I see among horror writers regarding style. Again and again I’ve observed, in people’s articles and on message boards, a kind of suspicion of the whole notion of style. Whenever someone asks, “Which is more important, story or style?” everyone jumps in with, “It’s all about the story, the story, the story!” Maybe it’s my background in poetry talking here, but I have no idea how anyone thinks they can meaningfully separate story and style—as if “story” is the Christmas tree and “style” merely some sort of ornamentation you throw on top of it that looks pretty but isn’t really necessary. One of the reasons people like Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams were such a revelation to me when I was young was because they taught me what style was, and what it did for a piece of writing—in their cases it was a kind of rich, baroque style, but Hemingway’s stark, stripped-down approach is just as good an example. Or, within this field, take Ray Bradbury—particularly the early Bradbury. Everyone raves about his stories and his wonderful lyrical way with words, but these will be the same people who claim that style is somehow secondary. Yet imagine those early Bradbury stories written in the flat, pulp-fiction language of the time. They would die on the page. Bradbury is his style.
MORTON: Style is, I think, incredibly important to a good horror work, because so much of what we do is dependent on creating mood.
My partner Ricky reads more than anyone I know, and even reads a lot of literary criticism, so we ended up discussing this question. Ricky thinks that Americans in general tend to be dismissive of style because they see it as interfering with the naturalism that pervades American art. I think that’s probably somewhat true. So I’m going to say that I think that attitude you’re noting, Chris, has less to do with these people being horror writers, and more to do with prevailing contemporary attitudes across the board.
On a personal level, style is something I’ve thought a great deal about, partly because I often feel uncertain about it in my own work. I’m not sure artists are always aware of their style, and that’s probably a good thing. I’ve had friends tell me that my work has a distinctive style, but I can’t completely see it. Would I be a better writer if I could recognize and hone that style more? Or would I start to sound like self-parody? I truthfully don’t know the answer, and I’m somewhat envious of writers in this genre (like Thomas Ligotti or Dennis Etchison) who have a clear style that they wield like a weapon.
PRENTISS: A distinctive, literary writing style won’t necessarily save something that lacks a compelling plot; on the other hand, if the plot’s really original and compelling, that energy could compel readers to forgive some pretty bland, uninteresting prose. We’ve all grown up hearing crappy dialogue on TV, and in the days before they invented graphic novels, a lot of comic books featured terrible, short boxes of narration (and every sentence ended with an exclamation point, too!). If we liked the story or the characters, we didn’t mind. That said, I suspect that plot/story often steals some of the “credit” from prose style. When the style produces an effective atmosphere, many readers say “That’s good storytelling” rather than “That’s a good writing style.” Some people only notice a style when it’s bad.
CONLON: I think you’re right, Norman. Sometimes the most effective style can be basically invisible.
PRENTISS: And when style is bad, it’s really bad. One of the worst things for me is when writers strive for a literate, complex style, and they don’t have the chops to pull it off—instead, they write long sentences without elegance or coherent syntax. I’d rather read generic, serviceable prose than something that tries too hard and fails. When I got slush from beginning writers who tried to emulate the style of Poe or Lovecraft, I didn’t tend to read very far.
NEWTON: Style is the flesh to good storytelling’s bones. You can have one without the other, but one will be very soft while the other will be very hard. Together they form a more complete reading experience. Aside from Bradbury, one of my favorite horror stylists was Charles Grant. His prose had a dark, rich rhythm that stood apart. Nowadays, it’s difficult to tell who’s writing what. I bet if you took a major horror anthology and stripped away the names, readers would be hard-pressed to recognize the contributors.
Speaking of style, allow me to ask everybody: What influence, if any, have horror movies/television had on your own writing? What influence have horror movies had on the genre as a whole?
MORTON: First question: Probably more than I’d like to admit! In my case especially this might be a pretty skewed question, since I even majored in Screenwriting in college. I grew up loving all kinds of movies (and I still do), but it took a horror movie to completely rearrange my life: Up until I was 15, I thought I wanted to go into anthropology (and was encouraged to do so by all of my teachers, school counselors, and parents), but then I saw The Exorcist in a crowded theater and my life altered its course in two hours. It’s hard to get young people to believe it now, but the effect of that film on a packed audience during its initial release was absolutely astonishing: People screamed, fled, vomited, fainted, lost sleep, saw priests, and talked about it for weeks. I saw the film eleven times that year, and most of those times I studied the audiences. I’d never imagined that a mere piece of art could have that impact on people (and I can’t imagine now that it’ll ever happen again), and I knew that I wanted to try to create that effect. My counselors and parents were horrified (for the wrong reasons!), but there was no stopping me. Although I think my fiction was finally influenced far more by other works of prose I’d read than by movies, there’s no question that it was movies—or at least one particular movie—that made me want to write in the first place. (Side note of trivia here: A few years ago I was fortunate enough to meet William Peter Blatty, and I had him sign an original lobby card from The Exorcist for me. That card was immediately framed and placed over my desk, where it remains to this day as a reminder of my commitment to my craft.)
As to what influence horror cinema has had on the written end of the genre…wow, that’s a huge question. I think the relationship between horror cinema and horror literature is probably closer than it is with any other genre (with the possible exception of science fiction, and science fiction movies are a lot more expensive to produce, so there just aren’t as many of them!). For the first six decades of movie history, literature drove the movies, with adaptations of Dracula and Frankenstein and (later) Psycho and Rosemary’s Baby leading the way. But then in the late ’70s things started to switch around. Horror cinema seemed to lead the way this time, with several things happening: Big-budget studio movies like Alien and Jaws set new highs for the level of gore in major films; Halloween made the masked (and possibly supernatural) killer into a trope; and some guy in Pittsburgh created an entirely new kind of monster in the cannibalistic zombie. And horror authors in the ’80s jumped all over that stuff, with higher levels of sex and violence in their books, a huge cycle of psycho killer novels, and of course zombie fiction (which, amazingly, is even more ubiquitous in 2010 than it was in 1980). Stephen King also exploded in the late ’70s, and he became his own cottage industry—the novels and the movies just sort of seemed to feed off each other. Now it’s not surprising when a hit movie or a trend in film spawns imitator novels—which, in the case of something like Twilight, can turn around and give birth to a new cycle of films, and etc. etc.
CONLON: Kurt, I’ll leave it to Lisa and you and Norman to discuss the effect of movies and TV on the genre. I really don’t know, because I read relatively few horror books and see relatively few horror movies. But in terms of the effects of those media on my own writing, well, like Lisa, I had a Rosetta Stone experience of my own with a movie when I was young—in my case Psycho, which I saw uncut, or very nearly, on late-night television when I was about twelve. Emily Dickinson said that she knew something was poetry if it made her feel as if the top of her head had been taken off—that’s a good description of the effect of Psycho’s poetry on me. I never saw it as just a “scary movie.” For me it was, and still is, a deeply emotional experience. I grew up with two alcoholic parents—my mother died of cirrhosis when I was a teenager—and so what that film has to say about loneliness and alienation and fear was profound and personal to me. I knew what it was to live in a home which presented one face to the world in the daytime, but which had a very different one late at night when the doors were locked. The movie spoke to me in ways that I think have reverberated throughout my life and writing. I sense in Reed Waters, the co-protagonist of my novel Midnight on Mourn Street, the distant shade of Norman Bates.
PRENTISS: The biggest influences on me were the creature-feature movies on television, and the Twilight Zone reruns. It’s funny that you mention an uncut version of Psycho, Chris, because the fact that most of the movies I saw were edited/sanitized, or were fairly mild to begin with, had a big effect on how far I thought horror fiction should go.
CONLON: I don’t know if it was literally uncut, but any censoring must have been slight, because the shower scene was there and it went on for quite a while. It was something to see.
PRENTISS: I always wanted to see the monster, but my expectation growing up was that all the violence would be offscreen or would occur during the commercial break. My earliest visions of blood were in black and white, with the biggest extreme being the chocolate syrup that swirled in Janet Leigh’s shower drain at the Bates motel. Later, there was a Saturday matinee series at the Aspen Hill twin theaters, and they showed reissue prints of Hammer films: Dracula Has Risen from the Grave was the first of these I saw, when I was about twelve years old, and it really startled me. I loved the movie, and Christopher Lee will always be my favorite Dracula, but I’m still emotionally attracted to the black-and-white or edited-for-TV depictions of horror. The red gore is an extra effect which I’ll use sparingly in my writing, when called for, but I’ll leave a lot of the gross stuff offscreen or offstage. I’d like to say the influence is Greek tragedy, but it’s really the TV editing of the ’70s.
As for the influence of horror movies on the fiction, I really admire Lisa’s analysis. The one thing I’ll add is that the perception of horror by the general public is shaped mostly by movies. Those people who look down their noses at horror, like the guy in Chris’s opening question, are reacting mostly to the slasher movies of the ’70s and the modern-day remakes and Saw or Hostel films. They haven’t read anything with “horror” on the spine, and base their judgments on the movies. Now, there are books like those movies—I’ve read quite a few of them, and even enjoyed a good number—but they’re not the only thing the genre has to offer.
NEWTON: Where I grew up there were two drive-in theaters. There was also an old movie theater called the Capital Theater on Main Street in the next town over. Funny Norman should mention Dracula Has Risen From the Grave because my father took my mother and I to the Capital Theater one night to see it. It was a disaster. My father was in rare public form—loud, belligerent, and quite possibly drunk (I remember the usher saying “I’m sorry” about a dozen times just to pacify him and get him to quiet down). If that wasn’t bad enough, I wanted to go home five minutes into the movie! After the opening sequence when the priest stumbles down the cliff and hits his head, cracking the ice where Dracula is frozen beneath, and Dracula tastes the priest’s blood and comes back to life—I was turned around in my seat, groaning and wanting to leave. It wasn’t the blood; it was Christopher Lee’s eyes that scared the crap out of me. There were these extreme close-ups of Christopher Lee’s eyes and they were more bloodshot than a three-day awake meth-addict! I don’t know how they made his eyes so bloodshot, but it looked real as hell, and that night, as I tried to sleep in my own bed, all I saw were those eyes when I closed mine. It was the last time I had to sleep with my parents. I was nine.
My father also took my brother and I to see Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch at the drive-in. Another movie that left a startling impression. From the burning of the scorpions by the children in the opening sequence to the graphic, slow-mo, blood-bag explosions of the gunfights throughout, I had never seen anything like it.
But the movie that really touched me was The Incredible Shrinking Man, based on the Matheson novel The Shrinking Man. I snuck down from bed one night and sat on the stairs and watched this through the railing while my parents watched it. I remember not moving until the end when the shrinking man had shrunk so small he could fit through a single square in a screen window. I remember crying and knowing why. He didn’t die. He simply grew so small he no longer mattered. It was the saddest thing I’d ever seen.
Lastly, at the age of fourteen my mother took me to see The Exorcist at the Capital Theater. Like Lisa said, that movie wasn’t just a horror movie; it was an experience, one that I can honestly say hasn’t been duplicated since, and probably never will be. Not only was The Exorcist the most intense horror movie ever, it was one of the most intense movies ever. The acting was so good. The storyline simple and emotionally true. It definitely transcended the screen. I remember halfway through the movie, after the first 360-degree head spin, I kept expecting the people in the rows in front of us to begin turning their heads around. It was so real. I had a hard time sleeping that night too, but I was able to tough it out.
I also never missed a Twilight Zone, Outer Limits or Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
As for the connection between horror movies and horror fiction? I agree with what each has mentioned so far. And I’ll add that it is my belief that the movie industry is what now drives the publishing industry. Novels that tend to have a more cinematic approach are the ones major publishing houses appear more inclined to publish. I don’t think when an agent/editor receives a manuscript he/she’s thinking National Book Award. I’m sure the first thing on their checklist is “Can this be made into a movie?” Which automatically puts the less graphic, less sensational styles of writing at a disadvantage.
For Part Three of this discussion, please visit Norman Prentiss’ blog at http://nprentiss.livejournal.com/5907.html.
A Pocketful of Fears
Ten days ago, when I committed myself to this blog, I had reservations. Excitement turned to anxiety, which quickly turned to hesitancy, then alarm! Holy crap! You mean I have to dip into my creative well and ladle out a short but entertaining piece on a regular basis?
I glanced sidelong.
The Gallery of Eyes waited for my next move. Will he take up the challenge? spoke their collective glare. Will he sacrifice a part of himself to serve the greater good? Will he, at last, answer the call to duty?
I’ve never been a big fan of The Gallery of Eyes. They speak in riddles and sometimes it’s best to just ignore their inferences than to try and puzzle them out. But, this time, the heat of their gaze was particularly searing and I thought, Okay, if not now, then when? Later? How much later? Until later becomes too late? Until too late becomes never?
Jump back twenty years…
My father played piano, taught himself off old records when he was a kid. His large, calloused hands danced across the keyboard as light and as graceful as a magician performing tricks. He was faking it, of course. He was born with a natural ear for music (something handed down to me, which I thank him for). He was also born with a natural inclination toward alcohol and, later in life, he was well known in a lot of the area drinking holes. Some of these drinking holes had a piano sitting off in the corner that he would play when the mood struck and he was feeling particularly good. One evening, I was told, the owner of one of these establishments offered him a job, a couple nights a week to come in and play and entertain the folks. Not only did my father refuse the offer, it scared him so much he never went back to that particular place.
Now, my father loved to play piano; it was one of his gifts. He entered a world of his own when he played. And when he was “on” it was something special to hear. So why wouldn’t he want to share that with everyone?
The writer in me understood where he was coming from. Creativity cannot be commanded at will. Creativity is spontaneous and organic. It needs to exist when it wants to exist. To try and bottle it and package it and control its distribution is to destroy its very essence!
Jump back to the present…
Bullshit.
I realize now it wasn’t any overwhelming sense of moral outrage or artistic purism that kept my father from sharing his gift. It was fear. Fear of performing. Fear of being judged. Fear of not living up to the expectations others had for him.
One of my father’s pet expressions was to say, “At least when I die, I’ll die with a pocketful of principles.” My father also died with a pocketful of fears, and a pocketful of talent he never allowed himself to share.
Most of all, it was fear of being seen by all those eyes that watch and wait for others to do what they either cannot do, for lack of talent, or are afraid to do, for lack of courage. I’ll grant my father that one. Putting oneself on public display is not the same as performing in front of the relative safety of family and friends. It takes courage to step into the spotlight. What’s the worst that could happen? You fail. And if you fail, then what? You quit?
No, you simply try again.
The Gallery of Eyes is whispering. I’ve never heard them speak before. It must be their eyelashes beating together in anticipation.
To be honest, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this. It’s just that I’ve never been that honest with myself. It’s time I start.
When I die, I want my pockets to be empty.
Be Mysterious: Writers in Masks
Mercedes M. Yardley was kind enough to add me to her Be Mysterious: Writers in Masks series over at her A Broken Laptop blog. See the photos and read the essay here. Thanks Mercedes!
Intermittent Essays and Random Writings
Hello again.
Okay, this time it’s for real. I have come to the realization that a journal is not a website and a website is not a journal. So I’ve created a shiny new, separate website and dismantled my old, aging, dusty LiveJournal, bringing some of the more notable past entries here to WordPress.
Out of the sixty+ entries I posted on LiveJournal since 2006, there were only a handful that were actual “essays & writings.” (See below.) They will give you an idea what this new (and, hopefully, final) incarnation is all about.
As the title suggests, I’ll be posting more essays and writings in the future… and more often. I’ve got some real surprises in store.
So kick back, read an entry or two, and please comment if you can. Let me know what you think.
See you soon.
The Wizard of Odd
| Date: | 2009-12-28 22:20 |
| Subject: | The Wizard of Odd |
| Source: | LiveJournal post |
If I had to pick an Oz character that best represents my writing career to this point, I’d say it’s the Scarecrow. You know, the one who’s directionally-challenged. The one who hasn’t got a brain but seems to be able to figure things out when he needs to. That’s my career.
I’ve been in Oz for a little over fifteen years now. I started out fresh and young and full of myself, sending out stories to the only magazines sold at my local specialty bookstore that catered to the kind of fiction I liked: Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. These were the magazines that led to a great and beautiful city that all writers of my kind wanted to visit. But I got rejected. I wrote more stories, submitted them, and got rejected again. And again.
And then something magical happened. Suddenly the field I was in was strewn with small, unique, independently-produced magazines: Not One Of Us, 2 AM, Weirdbook, Crossroads, Deathrealm, Terminal Fright, The Blue Lady, Thin Ice, Grue… the list was endless. It was the beginning of the age of desktop publishing and every niche in Oz was filled. From horror to fantasy to science fiction, to everything in between, there was suddenly a home for stories of nearly every size, shape and taste.
So, being the Scarecrow that I was, I submitted my stories to these smaller venues and found “success.” I was at last accepted. And, for a Scarecrow, acceptance is as good as fresh straw stuffed up under his shirt.
And, being the Scarecrow that I was, I continued to write and supply these magazines with story after story, year after year, unconcerned with the direction these “successes” were taking me. Forgotten were the big magazines that led to the great and beautiful city. But after a very long time, as these smaller magazines came and went like the seasons, I realized these “successes” were not taking me very far. In fact, with the help of a few passers-by, I realized I was merely traveling in circles.
So, very unlike the Scarecrow that I was, I set out once again, unafraid of rejection and the hard work that would be needed to reach that distant city I had once dreamed about but had forgotten. I’m still a Scarecrow at heart, but with the continued help and support of those passers-by, I am able to keep moving forward, inching closer and closer to my eventual destination.
Okay, so I take a detour every now and then. But I do it because I miss those old days when I was so enamored with the field itself I didn’t care what was beyond it. I also do it to remind myself how far I’ve come. And maybe I do it to be that passer-by, to help others by pointing the way; other Scarecrows unaware there is a great city just beyond the field, within their reach, if only they’re willing to do the work necessary to get there.
