I’ve got a new horror play debuting next week at Pleasance Islington, so I thought I’d write about my favourite thing in the whole wide world.
When I was 7 years old I partially watched Salem’s Lot. I believe that “partially watched Salem’s Lot” is a legitimate version of the film that should have its own IMDB, because I’m certain I’m not the only person who was unable to finish it. Specific to my case, I suppose, was the presence of Mark Mimnagh’s older brother, who jumped up from behind the couch and caused me to run out of the sitting room, out the front door, down the street, into my house, into my room, under my covers and into my imagination — where, of course, the vampires were waiting for me.
What I’m trying to say is: I’d like to see Moonlight do THAT.
Horror is where a lot of kids end up. There are probably many reasons for this to do with society and over-active imaginations and forbidden things and the possibility of bouncing boobies and toned, shaved, camp counsellor buttocks — but for my money I’d say it’s just that horror is simple and immediate.
If your partner is in the next room and calls out to you, and you respond by dropping a shoe on the floor — there’s fear. If you whisper in someone’s ear as you both walk down a dark corridor — there’s fear. If you wonder if while you’re reading this sentence someone at the window is watching the back of your neck — well, you see…
Horror is like sugar. It gives you an immediate rush. Which doesn’t make it cheap or childish or nothingy, it just makes it efficient.
So when I was growing up, horror — like sugar — was where I wanted to live.
Apart from Salem’s Lot and Nightmare On Elm Street and Halloween and all the other video nasties you get exposed to when you have an older brother, my first proper introduction to horror was Goosebumps. I have almost all of them, lined up on a shelf at home, missing a few in the 30’s but otherwise not a bad collection. Those slightly embossed covers, where you could run your hands over a haunted mask, a wisecracking dummy, a can of monster blood. Where chapters ended with being attacked by a vicious monster that would inevitably turn out to be the protagonist’s German Shepherd. I inhaled all sorts of books as a child but those are the ones I loved.
Then I graduated to Point Horror, which was like Goosebumps but the wisecracking dummy was your boyfriend Chud or your best friend Mondy who were going to string you from the rafters just in time for prom. This is where you would tip into genuine fear, where reading by nightlight didn’t seem so fun because so was Braquel and she’d just heard a noise outside and Mom and Dad weren’t meant to be back for hours. But I read on anyway — the slash of a knife combining with vivid descriptions of Chud’s breath on Braquel’s neck to make for a queasy cocktail in the mind of a ten-year-old. I loved them too.
And then, as primary school started to give way to secondary school, I strayed into the adult section of the library and saw the name “Stephen King” glistening on the front cover of a book called The Dark Half. And I knew I was going to be lost in the woods for a very, very long time.
The first thing I ever wrote — a proper thing, not an essay for school or the Community Games — was a screenplay called ‘VENGEANCE’ (capital letters model’s own). It was a feature, a sorority slasher whose body count was only out-spooked by its formatting. It was wondrously terrible, like a fever dream (containing actual fever dreams, of course) about every slasher film I’d ever seen. It had women being chased down alleys and over balconies while other women with cool names like Karen and Miranda emerged triumphant as killers or survivors. It was abysmal, and I keep a framed copy of the title page on my mantlepiece.
I wrote a sequel to ‘VENGEANCE’, which I have around here somewhere. The second in a trilogy, of course, because give the people what they want.
I wrote those films because I wanted to be there, being chased through a labyrinthine sorority house by a deranged killer. I was terrified, but I wanted to be there because I wanted to be terrified.
I think there are many reasons why people write — some write to exorcise their inner demons, some write to change the world, some write to make money (the poor deluded fools). I write because I like to go to places and I’m inherently lazy. Writing is a way of going somewhere without standing up or putting your underwear on. And if you’re going to go somewhere without your underwear on, it might as well be a haunted house or a mannequin factory at sundown — in other words, somewhere you were only going to ruin that underwear anyway.
About eight years ago my career was changed, changed utterly, when I got the opportunity to work on an audio drama called Dark Shadows. I didn’t know this at the time, but Dark Shadows was very old, and these radio plays were a continuation of a TV show that had scared the bejaysus out of kids and bored housewives in the late 60s and early 70s. It was as much a part of the horror DNA of American culture as Freddie Krueger or Laurie Strode, but at the time all I knew was that it seemed spectacular fun.
It was, and it is. I worked dilligently on that show and now I co-produce it and it is probably the most work I’ve put into anything — over 100 episodes of utter, utter horror madness. It taught me a lot of things about writing and even more about managing a coherent Dropbox, but what it changed in me was that I went from being a person who looks at the book or the video in the adult section to the person who writes it.
And a lot of time, in writing, this can be A Not Nice Thing. It may seem contradictory, or stupid, or spoiled, but once you start writing for production the whole thing gets a lot trickier, in your head and in your heart. You start to worry about what other people think, you start to worry about writing towards other people’s desires, you start to worry about being good enough when for a very long time the only person you had to be good enough for was yourself.
I write because I want to go to places and I go to those places on my own.
But for some strange reason the A Not Nice Thing didn’t happen. I wasn’t afraid, or self-critical, or second-guessing.
Because horror is too scary to get scared by, and too fun to not have fun. Wherever I was going, even if I was going there with dozens of other writers over the years, I was still going there alone. To the sorority house. The abandoned asylum. The summer camp with the grisly reputation.
I talk about horror professionally a lot more now. I have to. I pitch things, stupid ridiculous things, to television companies — and I bolster them by saying how relevant they are, how horror is a metaphor for mental illness or gay history or the struggle for pay parity. I mean these things, but I don’t mean these things.
I know that horror is a wonderful vehicle to communicate to us about society — it’s why the genre is in such rude health. Your Get Outs, your Hereditarys, your A Quiet Places, your Useseseses. In horror, you’re incapable of shooting the messenger because he’s wielding an axe and you’re all out of bullets.
I’ve this new horror — a play, of all things — debuting next week. It’s concerned with a million different meanings — about Ireland and farming and the border and being gay and being a woman and processing grief.
But these meanings aren’t what I mean when I say I want to write horror.
I want to write horror because I still want to go to those places. Where I’m scared and fascinated and overawed and shaking, where I’m running and screaming like I’m 7 years old and bolting to my house and knowing in my heart that I’ll never watch the end of Salem’s Lot.
Being a kid and seeking out horror is about going into the adult section, because you’re not meant to be there.
But being an adult and seeking out horror is about the exact opposite — it’s about becoming a kid again, being openly afraid of things, being terrified by other people and other creatures you can’t imagine, being willing to scream, out loud, in front of a hundred other people in a crowded cinema.
I write horror for the same reason I watch horror, or read horror, or listen to horror, or seek it out anywhere I can find it: because it feels good to be scared.
And that’s that.
Now, where did you say you wanted these organs?
If you liked the above or like horror or like anything really, you might like my new show ‘EYES. TEETH. SOIL.’ at Pleasance Islington in London, this August 3rd-7th. Tickets here.
alfla
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