17
I had a bad dream about the green spaceman. It was nighttime and I was outside Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I was all alone and I was trying to get back in and I kept walking around and around the house only there were no doors or windows anymore just rows of shingles. And the house was in a strange place where there were no trees or other houses around. Just the house and the ground and the dark sky with a few stars. I was getting scared and I called out for Mom or Dad, Grandma or Grandpa but no one answered. It was like they were all inside and they didn’t care about me. Then I turned around and the green spaceman was following me. He was full size now like a real person and green all over like green metal. That’s when I realized he was the same spaceman from Monster Rally. Monster Rally is a record album my parents have. It’s my favorite record but I’m not allowed to play records myself. The cover shows all the monsters playing music. Dracula is the conductor. The purple people eater is there too. He really only has one eye. One monster is so scary that all you can see is the end of his trombone poking out through a little window in a locked door. And the green spaceman is there! He’s in the back behind Dracula, playing a horn. That’s all I remember until I wake up screaming and Mom is there holding me. She says if I keep having nightmares she’s going to take away all my Viewmaster reels with monsters. That’s not fair!
18
The next time I go over Grandma and Grandpa’s house Stacy is already there. But Uncle Conrad is not in Grandpa’s chair anymore. Yay, yay! I’m glad because I don’t really like him. I know that sounds mean but he’s creepy. Stacy says he’s in the darkroom. Only then she still wants to play downstairs! I don’t want to play in the basement if Uncle Conrad is down there but she says he won’t bother us. She says Grandma already told her to leave him alone. He’s developing pictures from the camera Grandpa gave him to take to Vietnam. Everyone is happy he has a hobby again. I don’t care.
Uncle Conrad is real quiet in the darkroom. Maybe he’s not even in there. Stacy and I play ping pong until I miss the ball and it rolls under the furnace. We both look underneath but there are flames coming down and the ball is too far to reach. While we watch the ball it changes shape. It turns into an egg. Finally Stacy scoops it out with an old chair leg she found. We can’t play with it anymore though because it’s all crooked and egg shaped. It just goes all over when we try to hit it. And it’s the only ball. I ask what we should do now and Stacy says we should go spy on Uncle Conrad. I’m afraid but I don’t want to get left alone on this side of the basement with all the spider webs so I sneak around to the darkroom door with her. We hold hands and walk on tiptoes.
The darkroom is in the back of the basement which is the front of the house. Its walls are black tarpaper. It doesn’t have any windows. Obviously. For a door it has two sheets of tarpaper hanging you have to slip in between. I’ve never gone inside.
Outside the darkroom is an old peach basket that counts as a trashcan. There are some empty brown chemical bottles in it and negatives and crumpled pieces of paper with smeared photos. But on top of that stuff are some cut up Viewmaster reels and little cut out slides from the reels. Like someone is practicing how to make one. Stacy picks up one of the slides and holds it up to the violet lights but the lights aren’t bright enough for her to see what’s in the picture.
Just then we hear someone moving in the darkroom so we run upstairs. When we get upstairs we fall on the floor and look at each other laughing and out of breath but we’re kind of scared too. After that we play outside. Grandpa is working in the garden but he seems grumpy so we stay away. We try to play monster tag but it’s just the two of us chasing each other around the house so that gets boring.
19
My other favorite Viewmaster reels are about Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. This is another neat show that I watch on TV but it’s not a cartoon. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is about a submarine called the Seaview and the show has lots of monsters but not all the time. When it has monsters it’s my favorite. Even better than Jonny Quest. The best episode was the seaweed monster and that’s on my Viewmaster. First the seaweed monster tries to attack the diving bell while Admiral Nelson is inside. Then it attacks the flying sub with two bad guys in it. Finally it attacks the whole Seaview. The seaweed monster is all covered in seaweed or long green hair. You can’t see its real shape. It has two big red eyes like great big glowing balls. The eyes are the scariest part. No one knows where the monster came from or what makes it so angry. It holds the Seaview and shakes it so the men inside go back and forth. The Seaview only escapes after Admiral Nelson shoots a missile at the monster. You can’t really tell if he killed it though. It might come back. I hope it will. It’s a neat monster.
20
I don’t get to go to Grandma and Grandpa’s for a while. Later when I do Stacy tells me they found Uncle Conrad hanging in the attic. At first I thought she meant he got caught in the spider webs, but then I hear my mom say he passed away. That’s how she says it when someone dies. Passed away. They had a funeral but I wasn’t allowed to go. Stacy went. She says a bunch of Army guys showed up in their Army suits and put a flag on his coffin when they buried him. I wonder if he still has his radium watch. I hope not. It’s neat. I wish I could get it. I’m more scared of the dark since my dream about the green spaceman so maybe it would help me sleep. But then maybe the green numbers would be scary now too.
The next time I’m at Grandma and Grandpa’s everyone just leaves me alone. It’s a good thing Stacy comes over. That’s when she tells me about Uncle Conrad and his funeral and how the whole thing went.
We play in the playroom because the basement feels too scary now. Plus there’s no more ping pong ball, just the egg. I don’t want to play with the dinosaurs or the spacemen and Stacy doesn’t want to play with the dolls so we get out the Viewmaster and the box of reels.
Right away she tells me Look at this and holds up a reel from the box. There’s something wrong with it. All the writing on one side is crossed out with a pencil but there are new letters on the other side. Also the little slides are taped on with pieces of Scotch tape. We look at each other because we both know this has to be the reel Uncle Conrad was making in the darkroom.
What’s it say? I ask her. She says CONRIT. Conrad? I ask, but she says No. ConRIT. It’s different. That’s all that’s there. Just one word.
Look at it I say and she puts it in the Viewmaster and presses the switch because the first slide is always upside down. I ask her what she sees.
21
She says There’s a big pointy rock sticking out of the water by a beach. And some army men are standing around it.
What are they doing?
They’re standing in the water with their guns out. They look scared. Some more army men are next to the rock and they’re holding four people in black clothes. One of them is a lady.
Stacy presses down the switch on the Viewmaster to see the next slide. Now the army men are tying the people in black clothes to the rock. There are chains like handcuffs connected to the rock. Everyone looks scared. I think the tied up people are Chinese but it’s hard to tell.
The people in black clothes must be the Cong. Does it look like Lake Hopatcong?
I don’t think so. I can see palm trees behind them. There aren’t any palm trees at Lake Hopatcong. I think it’s the ocean somewhere. She presses the switch again.
Now the army men are running out of the water. The Chinese people are all chained up. She presses the switch.
Something is coming out of the water.
What? What’s coming out?
It looks like a monster.
I try to grab the Viewmaster but Stacy pushes my arm away. Wait your turn!
She says it real loud. I don’t want her to make Grandma or Grandpa come. Grandpa might take the reel away before I can see the monster. I sit back. My mom taught me to wait my turn.
Stacy presses the switch.
It is a monster! I start to reach for the Viewm
aster again but I stop.
What’s it look like? Tell me!
It’s real long and it’s got way lots of short flat legs.
Is it green?
No, it’s kind of brown and shiny. It’s wrapping all around the rock and the people on it.
She presses the switch.
I can’t wait. What’s the monster doing now? She doesn’t answer. She just keeps looking in the Viewmaster. Come on, tell me!
She still doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move. Now she’s just being mean. That’s not like her. She knows how much I like monsters and she’s teasing me.
Give it! I look around but Grandma and Grandpa are both out of sight. Maybe they’re working outside in their garden. I reach over and grab the Viewmaster. Stacy doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything either. She just sits there. Her hands are still up like she’s holding something. She is teasing really bad now, pretending to ignore me.
You’re mean I say. She keeps on pretending.
I point the Viewmaster at the front window so I can get the most sunlight behind it. There’s a small open patch above the cactuses there. I want to see this monster good. I look inside.
The monster is wrapped all around the rock, all around the Cong. It is looking right at me now. It has such green eyes. Green like metal. Green like the green spaceman. Green green green…
Dogme 2011 for Weird Fiction
I swear to submit to the following set of rules:
The tale must contain no stock anthropomorphic monsters: no vampires, no zombies, no werewolves, no mummies, no ghouls.
Although the tale may contain noir elements, it must not contain stock figures from crime fiction such as serial killers or hard-boiled detectives.
The tale must not involve a post-apocalyptic scenario, zombie or otherwise.
The tale must not contain any buzzwords from Robert Chambers, Lovecraft, Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long or any other earlier authors of weird fiction. This means no Cthulhu, Arkham, Miskatonic, Necronomicon, Tsathoggua, Carcosa, King in Yellow, Hounds of Tindalos, etc. Distinctive vocabulary associated with the Lovecraft circle, such as cyclopean, eldritch, etc., is also forbidden.
The tale must not contain elements of Judeo-Christian mythology as operational tropes, e.g. a crucifix warding off evil, conventional demons and/or demonic possession, Satan, angels, etc. It is acceptable, however, for characters in the tale to embrace these concepts as part of their own belief systems.
Steampunk and all its tropes are forbidden.
Place is essential. Setting must be as well-developed as any other element of the tale. Scout and employ real locations whenever possible.
Atmosphere must be as well-developed as any other element of the tale.
Leave bright lighting and CGI to the cinema: the tale must suggest more than it describes.
The tale must follow Caitlin R. Kiernan’s dictum: “dark fiction dealing with the inexplicable should, itself, present to the reader a certain inexplicability.”
Furthermore I swear as a writer that my supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings; out of the universe itself. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations. Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY.
Originally published 21.Nov.2011
http://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/11/dogme-2011-for-weird-fiction-by-scott-nicolay/
Do You Like to Look at Monsters?
was written by Scott Nicolay
eBook published by Word Horde
By arrangement with Fedogan & Bremer,
3918 Chicago St, Nampa, Idaho, 83686.
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Do You Like to Look at Monsters?
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Vermilion
a novel by Molly Tanzer
Giallo Fantastique
an anthology edited by Ross E. Lockhart
Mr. Suicide (July 2015)
a novel by Nicole Cushing
Cthulhu Fhtagn! (August 2015)
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Painted Monsters (October 2015)
a collection by Orrin Grey
Furnace (February 2016)
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About the author
Over half a century back a child was born amidst the toxic waste dumps and devil haunted swamps of New Jersey…26 years later that child packed all he could fit in a ’72 Dodge Challenger and lit out for the high desert of northwest New Mexico and the Navajo Nation, where if the dogs bark at night it is only the skinwalkers. Along the way he had three children and held jobs including dishwasher, restaurant and hotel cook, factory worker, camera salesman, DJ, security guard, teacher, and sheepherder…as a teacher he and his students co-founded the New Mexico Youth Poetry Slam and the National Youth Poetry Slam. As a caver and archaeologist he studied and explored the caves and lava tubes of Belize, Easter Island, and the southwestern U.S. Several years ago he tailed Jack Spicer’s Martian to the uncertain boundary between our reality and the cobbly worlds. Now he spends his nights there peering through a grimy window and reports what he sees. Fedogan & Bremer published Ana Kai Tangata, his first book of weird horror tales in 2014.
Do You Like to Look at Monsters? Page 2
