It would be possible to cut between the man's running legs and another set of legs, between his wide blue eyes and a pair of yellow eyes. Depending on the subsequent portrait of the Werewolf we mean to paint, we might dip into his consciousness at the outset, an effort also more easily realized in prose than on film. We might describe the copper blood on his tongue and lips, the sharp tang of the man's fear in his nostrils, the joyful surge of his muscles as he runs smoothly and well across the forest floor. Yet such details seem to give away too much too soon, as overly heavy-handed soundtrack music, rather than heightening tension, tends to relieve it. For the moment, then, let us keep the Werewolf off stage; for now, let him be that clash of leaves that draws ever-closer.
Perhaps the man is talking as he runs, a half-sobbing chain of sound that includes numerous Please Gods, and a few Oh Jesuses and a number of indistinguishable words. Perhaps he says something like, “My kids, God, please, my kids,” perhaps, “Blood, oh Jesus, blood.” If we want, we can flash back to the scene of carnage from which he is fleeing, to a ribcage laid open and scarlet wet, trees splashed with viscera, but again, there will be time for that later, and most likely, the man is trying very hard not to think of that, because if he did, he might find himself too afraid to run. Instead, he is trying to think of the red pickup truck that he drove out here four hours ago and that cannot be much farther. In fact, there it is, at the foot of the hill he has crested.
Now comes the cruel part of the story—the first cruel part, anyway—and that is that the man is going to be killed, at last, within sight of escape and freedom. At this point, we do not know if such cruelty is deliberate on the part of the Werewolf, or an accident of fate, simply the point at which the predator brings down the prey. It is what you are expecting, your heart pounding despite yourself: you know the man is going to be caught and killed by what is racing up behind him; the only real question is, How exactly is it going to happen? Will he fumble open the door to the truck, throw himself inside, slam the door behind him, thumb the lock, and collapse across the front seat, panting furiously, only to have the windshield crash in on him? Or will he even make it that far?
In this case, he will not make it inside the truck, because as he is running down the hill toward it—half-falling would be more accurate, his boots kicking up great scuffs of dirt and leaves—he is jamming his hand in the right front pocket of his pants, attempting to locate his keys, which do not seem to be there. His effort continues as he sprints the space between the foot of the hill and the truck, his cap, which has been ever-more perilously perched atop his head, finally flying free, revealing a head of dark brown hair. He does not stop at the truck so much as slam into it, the loud thud jarring. He continues to shove his hand into his right, then his left pants pocket, his breath coming faster, his lips releasing a steady stream of, “Oh come on,” and, “Oh God, come on,” while in the background, the sound of the Werewolf's pursuit, as it tops the hill, bounds down it, and surges toward the truck, is steadily louder.
You will not see the Werewolf leap on the man and in one fluid motion tear out his throat. You will listen to it. What you will see is shot from underneath the truck. You watch the man's boots, faced toward the truck at first then turning as something you cannot distinguish rushes closer. You hear the man's scream, and a growl that becomes a roar, and the sharp sound of teeth ripping out a large chunk of meat. The scream halts. The boots wobble, then sway to the left as the man, already a corpse, topples to the ground.
This is the beginning. Should we mention that the man's keys were in the left breast pocket of his bright orange hunting vest, tucked there by him because it had a button flap and so would keep them secure? This is just the kind of ironic detail that horror narratives love, isn't it? No doubt the irony has its effect, but no doubt, too, such occurrences validate the secret sense we have—perhaps it is more a secret fear—that such little things as what pocket you put your keys in are what make the difference between life and death, and not such big things as your faith in God or your lack thereof. The narrative to come will embrace this savage irony, take it to its breast, to the extent that it will be tempting to read the Werewolf as the incarnation of this trope. But it isn't, is it?
* * * *
2. The Setting (A): The Village
Here we are with the Chief of Police as he's driving along Main Street on his way to work. Slideshow, in rapid succession: shopping plazas, traffic light, animal hospital, traffic light, Indian restaurant, insurance agent, houses, churches (Episcopal and Methodist), gas station, bus station, florist, Chinese restaurant, bank, bars, barber, deli, boutiques, bookstores, Greek restaurant, record store, traffic light, bar, bank, police station, bridge (across the Svartkill), Frenchman's Mountain (a long ridge stubbled with bare trees that walls the near horizon).
Of course the village he's driving through is based on a real place, so much so that it might be more honest to call it the name that marks it on the map of upstate New York. You have wondered—who hasn't?—to what extent the places you meet in stories and novels are tied to real locations. The answer is: more closely than you think. (The same is true of the people in them.) Nonetheless, we wish to preserve some freedom of movement, so that should we need the police station to be on the western edge of the village, as opposed to the center of downtown, we will be able to have it there. Let's call this place Huguenot, which should be an obvious enough clue to anyone who lives in or around the actual village to its true identity—but please, hold it loosely in mind.
Interesting, isn't it? how it has to be a village. It does seem as if much of horror fiction takes place in small communities, doesn't it? Of course there are exceptions: you can name one or two or ten narratives that contradict such an assertion, but consider the vast tide that fulfills it. Horror thrives in community, and what embodies community better than a village? Large enough to contain a number and variety of people, yet small enough for the majority of them to know one another, the village is the place where the threat to one can be felt by all. Perhaps there's a certain amount of nostalgia, too, in horror's love for the village, a longing for a kind of ideal community we don't experience anymore. Or perhaps not.
* * * *
3. The Setting (B): The Forest
Imagine tall trees stretching back into gloom on every side of you. It is not important that you have much arboreal expertise: if you do, picture oak, maple, the occasional birch; if not, picture your generic tree. The majority of trees in this area are deciduous, and thus autumn-bare, but a few evergreens jostle for elbow room. The ground is a jigsaw of yellow, brown, red, and orange leaves. Huguenot, like so many other American settlements, was built within the great forest that once blanketed the North American continent, a blanket whose edges have steadily been pushed back, even as more houses, more buildings, have been constructed within the forest, in quest of the privacy that is supposed to be a mark of personal wealth and success. But the forest has not gone so far away as we might suppose. There are still groups of trees scattered throughout the village, and you do not have to drive very far—ten minutes, fifteen depending on the direction you choose—before you find one of the forest's fingers.
It may be that you think of the forest as little more than an abstraction; it may be that you are one of the people who believe in the forest as a pristine natural paradise, Robert Frost's woods so lovely, dark, and deep. If either of these is the case, take your car on one of those ten- or fifteen-minute drives, until you arrive at one of the digits the forest pokes into the world. Park your car. Leave your cell phone, your BlackBerry, your iPod in the glove compartment. Lock the car. Be sure you put your keys someplace safe—someplace you can get to them quickly should the need arise—and walk out into the trees.
Don't stop after ten or fifteen minutes: keep going for an hour, two, until you are deep in a place you have not seen before. Feel free, should you like, to lean against a tree, sit on a log—mind it isn't rotten, though. Now, here, feel how far away you are
from everyone and everything you know, feel to what distance your life—which is to say, the routines you inhabit—has receded. Look at the trees around you. They almost seem to form a maze, don't they? Feel how exposed you are. Something could be watching you, couldn't it? It sounds silly to say, yes, but something out behind one of these trees could be watching you. Try not to jump when you hear that crashing in the undergrowth. Most likely, it's a pair of squirrels chasing one another, or a fawn still clumsy. Do you think you can find your way back to your car? You did walk in a straight line, didn't you? What direction was that from? Something could be watching you, couldn't it? Can you feel the hairs on the back of your neck prickling? They really do that, you know.
What would you do if a tall, pale man in a soiled black suit stepped from behind one of the trees? What would you do when you saw that his eyes were yellow? Would you bolt? No one would blame you if you did. You would find, though, that an hour is a long time to walk, and the woods are perhaps not so friendly as you had thought. Branches tug at your feet as you run over them; tree limbs whip your face and arms. You might find that everything looks the same, that you cannot find the route that brought you here. A look behind—do you dare risk a look behind? You know what you hear: growling (which makes you think of that dog you were so afraid of as a child), tree limbs snapping as something large barrels through them. It does not matter where you put your car keys, does it? because like our friend at the beginning of this story, you aren't going to have the chance to use them; you will not come close to finding your car. As you feel your pursuer closing in on you, you might as well scream, vent your rage and fear and frustration, empty your lungs. There is a deep laugh, the kind of laugh a big dog or a bear might make if such things could laugh, and then a lightning bolt of pain scores your neck as a massive paw strikes it open, almost separating your head from your body, which falls dead on the leaf-strewn ground. Your vision bursts white, and that is all you know. What remains of you will be found the following day, when the police chief is realizing that something very bad, an unprecedented bad, is on his hands.
The woods are dark and deep. Lovely?
* * * *
4. The Characters (A): The Police Chief
Tall, six foot three, but more than height, he gives the impression of size, as his weight pushes the red needle on his bathroom scale ever-further from two hundred and fifty pounds and ever-closer to three hundred. His doctor has told him to slim down, which he fully intends, but he can still bench as much as he could in the Navy, experiences no shortness of breath or chest pains, and finds it difficult to accept that his health has been or in any way might be impaired by what he estimates is a few extra pounds. His hands and feet are almost abnormally large, so much so that it is difficult for him to find shoes that fit in any of the local stores, and his face is similarly large. His eyes are blue and liquid, his cheeks crisscrossed by red nets of capillaries, his nose narrow and close to his face. He wears his hair crew-cut short. If he does not look particularly friendly, neither does he look particularly hostile; the principle impression he gives is of wariness.
He has held his position for the last half-dozen years, and he prides himself on knowing all of Main Street's merchants, and all of the town's clergy, by name. It is true that he knows not a few of them from various infractions of the law, ranging from Bill Getz—owner of Pete's Corner Pub—passing out in the middle of Main Street at four on a Saturday morning after sampling a bit too much of the thirty-year-old Armagnac a friend brought him from the south of France, to Judy Lavalle—former manager of the White Orchid boutique—stabbing her husband in the leg with a packing knife after she uncovered his affair with her assistant manager.
The Police Chief has an almost surprisingly forgiving attitude toward such faults. This is because he believes that, at root, human beings are hopelessly corrupt, depraved, every one of us always ready to cross some law or code of behavior should the opportunity present itself. The Police Chief does not understand why humanity is this way; he just knows it is. He is rarely surprised by any of the crimes, small or large, to which he is called on to respond. That is about to change.
Is it necessary to say, the Police Chief is the narrative's representative of order? In a horror narrative, it is rare for there not to be such a figure, either institutionally sanctioned or self-appointed. Such a character embodies the social structure(s) under assault from the monster. Close to the center of the story's events, s/he has access to all manner of information, as a result of which, s/he serves as a kind of guide through the narrative's winding corridors. (This figure may also have ready access to all manner of weaponry, the benefits of which are not to be underestimated.)
Nowadays, it is common enough to show this character flawed—perhaps to express our continuing unease with the powers that regulate our lives, our suspicion that the institutions attacked by the monster were already rotting; or perhaps in the interest of heightening narrative tension. In case the Police Chief's sour view of humanity is not sufficient instance of this, it may help to know that, two years ago, in his official capacity, he systematically harassed Harold Stonger, former bartender at Dionysus bar and grill, over the course of three months, to the point that Stonger attempted suicide by opening his wrists with a box cutter. The Police Chief's reason for doing so was a car accident involving his then-eighteen-year-old daughter, Chloe, who had used a fake ID to consume four margaritas before sliding behind the wheel of her 1990 Volvo. It was not the first time Chloe had used this ID, which was of almost professional quality; while the accident her drinking led to consisted in her driving her car off the road and into a small tree at a relatively slow speed; although the consequences at home were severe, Chloe walked away from her car unharmed. Nonetheless, the Police Chief made it his personal mission to allow Harry Stonger no peace. Persistent and involved traffic stops, several raids on Dionysus leading to one sizable fine, a handful of visits to Stonger's apartment, left the man no doubt that the Police Chief wanted him gone from Huguenot. In all fairness to the Police Chief, he in no way encouraged Stonger to open his wrists, though when he learned of it, he could only express his disappointment that the EMTs had not arrived at Stonger's apartment a little later.
* * * *
5. The Characters (B): Barbara Dinasha
Proprietor of the Dippie Hippie mostly used clothing store on Main Street, she is mid-forties, her long hair more gray than blond. Currently she lives in the small apartment over her store, where she sits at a black table next to the bay window that overlooks Main Street. She wears a white terrycloth robe over a peach cotton nightdress. There is a mug of coffee on the table, beside a yellow legal pad on which Barbara draws the man whose face has filled her dreams every night for the past two weeks. She uses a blue ballpoint pen whose scratch on the paper is the only sound aside from Barbara's breathing.
Barbara has resided in the apartment since last winter, when she moved there after having left her husband of fourteen years and their eight-year-old son, for reasons of which no one was sure but everyone had an opinion. Her husband—as yet, they remain legally separated, and when he has been drinking too much at Pete's Corner Pub, Tom Dinasha still expresses hope of an eventual reconciliation—is a carpenter and handyman and well-liked, as is her precocious son, Brian, who is a star pitcher in the local Little League, but since Barbara draws most of her clientele from the SUNY college, her consequent dip in popularity with the village's permanent residents has not appreciably decreased her store's business.
Barbara likes the college students: she herself attended the State University twenty-five years before, which was how she came to Huguenot from Northport, Long Island. She majored in Studio Art before dropping out to spend the next seven years of her life on the Grateful Dead tour, which was not inconsistent with the reasons that had brought her upstate in the first place, namely, a desire to be at the school whose reputation was for maintaining the spirit and behavior of the Sixties, in which Barbara was just old enough
to regret not having been able to participate.
At a diner in Carbondale, Illinois, she met her future husband, who, as it happened, was a lifelong resident of Huguenot who was hitchhiking cross-country to see the Dead in St. Louis. They spent six months on the Dead tour, then returned to Huguenot, where Tom learned carpentry from his father and they lived together in an old barn that he gradually rebuilt into a house. Tom Dinasha became a fixture in Huguenot, first as the guy you could call on when your regular guy couldn't make it, then as your regular guy. Barbara remained his elusive and somewhat aloof companion, observed taking the occasional art course at the college, but otherwise keeping to herself until a modest inheritance arrived after her father's death and she decided to open the Dippie Hippie. By that time, a year had passed since she had found herself pregnant and she and Tom had married because, as each said to her and his close friends and relations, neither of them was brave enough not to. At the wedding, Barbara's father had been well enough to give his daughter away; in six months, the cancer that had eaten one lung would have finished the rest of him. (Barbara's mother left the house when Barbara was fourteen, and she has not heard from or about her since.)
She doesn't care for the Chief of Police, who, from her interactions with him over the years, especially since opening the store, she has come to view as slow-moving, dull-witted, provincial, and bigoted. She knows he sees her as little more than an aging, would-be hippie who likely burned out what little there was of her mind to begin with years ago. (She does not know, but would not be surprised to learn, that he also suspects her of moving some kind of drug, probably pot but possibly something harder, through her store. While he has only entered the Dippie Hippie once, when it opened, to wish Barbara well in her enterprise, he and his officers make it a point both to watch it and to make Barbara aware that they are watching it.)
FSF, July-August 2010 Page 9
