Of all the rooms at Bernon Heights Elementary School, my favorite by far was the library. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the library was located in the northeast corner of the long hall that ran along the front of the school, not far from the doors that led into the cafeteria. The library was a long and narrow room, shaped like a horizontal rectangle, with the door leading into it located on the south corner of the room’s west wall. To an adult such a room might feel cramped, but when I was a child the place seemed as airy to me as the Library of Alexandria. Upon entering the library, I would usually head straight to the western corner of the north wall, for there, on one of the lower shelves, was the library’s collection of the Crestwood House Monsters book series (always easy to spot thanks to their distinctive Halloween-orange spines).
I suppose I should talk a bit about the Crestwood House Monsters series. This was a series of hardback books released in the late 1970’s (and later reprinted in 1982) that revolved around classic movie monsters. The books had a very striking design: a black and white cover that featured the monster in question and their name in bold orange colors, with a deep orange spine and an orange back cover (with the text on the spine and back cover being in black). On the back cover one could find the word MONSTERS in big black all-caps letters, and beneath that was the publisher’s logo and a list of all of the titles in the series (beneath this list was a black and white King Kong with outstretched arms). These books were credited to Ian Thorne, which was a pseudonym for the science fiction writer Julian Clare May, but their actual authorship is, as far as I know, unknown. Each of the books in the series was around 50 pages long, and full of information on the monster and their various film appearances, all illustrated with striking black and white photographs. The titles in the series were The Invisible Man, The Deadly Mantis, It Came From Outer Space, The Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein Meets Wolfman, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Wolfman, The Mummy, Godzilla, The Blob, Mad Scientists, Frankenstein, King Kong, and Dracula. I forget if the Bernon Heights library had the complete set… I don’t believe so as I don’t recall ever reading ones like The Deadly Mantis. Of the many books in the library, these monster books were my favorite, and I was always taking them out to read at home. Godzilla, obviously, was my favorite of the bunch, but I also quite enjoyed The Blob and Dracula as well. This year I finally purchased for my own collection a used copy of the Godzilla book.
Those interested in reading more details on the Crestwood House Monster Series should check out the following link: http://sickopsychotic.blogspot.com/2013/04/crestwood-house-monsters-series.html
As for Dracula (a book I consulted when doing research for the role of a vampire that I was to act out in a school play), the Crestwood book had a very atmospheric photograph of Bela Lugosi posing as the Count on the cover (from the 1931 American Dracula movie), and though I enjoyed reading this book as well, I would not actually see the Lugosi version of the film until the year 1999, during my second year of college, when I became involved in the Goth subculture. But to get back to the Dracula book. It began with a lengthy description of the 1931 Dracula film, followed by some information on Bram Stoker and how he wrote the original novel, biographical details on Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Bathory, a map of Transylvania, a photograph of a real-life vampire bat, and briefer descriptions of some of the other Dracula spin-offs and remake films, including Nosferatu, the Christopher Lee Hammer Horror movies, even Blacula. This book also gave some details on what vampires actually were: undead monsters that rose from their coffins to feast on human blood, fanged reflection-less creatures capable of turning into bats, that could be repelled by both garlic or a cross and which could only be killed either by exposure to daylight or driving a stake through their heart.
Another book I consulted for research purposes was Gary Jennings’ Black Magic, White Magic (The Dial Press, 1964), an introduction to occultism written for younger readers (what my school library was doing with a copy of this book I have no idea). This book also had some information on vampires. Here’s a direct quote: “The vampire was thought to be a corpse who refused to stay dead, continuing to roam the earth. To sustain this unnatural animation, it had to have human blood, which it drew from unsuspecting sleepers. In some versions of the legend, the bite of a vampire could turn the bitten one into a vampire, too.” It went on to say that Transylvania wasn’t the only location on Earth that had vampire legends, but that many other countries had vampire legends of their own (for example, the ancient Babylonians feared a vampire-like creature known as the Akhkharu). Interestingly enough, on page 51 of this book there was an illustration of a pentagram, and an explanation about how, when the pentagram was right-side up, it was a powerful protection against the forces of evil, but when it was pointed downward, the symbol represented Satan and was used to invoke evil spirits. My friend J was also a big admirer of this book, and it’s no doubt that it was within its pages that he came up with the idea to draw pentagrams on the palm of my hands to protect me from his lupine ambitions: though evidently he had read the book wrong, what with him drawing upside-down pentagrams on my hands instead (unless his intentions were more malicious than I’m giving him credit for… and with J, who knows? But that's a tale for another day...)
Despite my many happy memories of hours spent at the Bernon Heights Elementary School library, I do have some bad memories as well. Towards the back of the library, near the south corner of the east wall, were a number of magazines and periodicals, and some days when I was bored I would flip through these. Boy’s Life was one that I especially seemed to enjoy. In September 1990, the month I began the 5th grade, I was flipping through the August 1990 issue of that magazine. I’m not sure what the magazine’s like now but back then each issue had a one page comic chronicling the real-life exploits of Boy Scouts whose heroic actions saved the life of another: “A True Story of Scouts in Action” was the name of this feature. In the August 1990 entry, the story depicted in the comic is set in Utah and revolves around a 49 year-old man named Ted Phillips. On August 17th, 1988, Ted was awoken by a sound at 4:30 AM. Thinking it was one of his children, he went downstairs to investigate the noise. Upon reaching the first floor of his house, an intruder suddenly appeared, swinging a big hunting knife. As Ted was stabbed, he yelled out to his wife to “get the gun!” The intruder then dropped the hunting knife and ran away from the house. While the mother called the police, Ted’s 14 year-old son, Scott, administered first-aid to his father, who was bleeding. Luckily, he wasn’t hurt too badly and survived the encounter.
I’m not sure why, but something terrified me about this story as a kid. Partly it’s due to the scenario of the story, which is itself an contrivance of horror (in that someone’s reality is invaded by an agent of irrationality, violence, chaos and unreality): it was a situation I could easily visualize happening to myself, and the fact that the ‘Intruder’ is never named, has no speaking lines or any established motive for why he’s breaking into someone’s house and stabbing strangers in the dark (and by the end of the comic still remains at large) doesn’t help matters. But I think what I found especially unnerving about this comic (which, when I looked back on it in January of 2016, seemed somewhat tame) is how the ‘Intruder’ was drawn: shadowy, seemingly bleached of most colors, with weird lines running vertically not only down his clothes but also his face (perhaps drawn by the illustrator to suggest shadows). And what was that thing atop his head supposed to be: hair, some kind of hat, maybe a ski-mask he had forgotten to cover his face with?
Anyway, it’s funny how this image, which I saw for only a few minutes on one day of my life as a child, haunted my mind for years. It was even more interesting for me to see it again (over 25 or so years later) and see what I both remembered (and misremembered) about the scene. In my memory of the comic, the scenario went like this: late at night, the father hears a knock at the door. He goes to answer it, and on the other side of the screen door is the ‘Intruder,’ who stabs him with a knife before vanishing into the night. Obviously I got some of the key details right (a father being stabbed with a knife in his house late at night by a stranger) but some of the other details wrong (the stranger never knocked at the door, and it wasn’t a screen door, but a sliding one). I see also that I totally misremembered how the Intruder looked: I thought we saw his visage from his front profile, not his side. But one thing I did remember correctly was how he appeared to look somewhat gray and had lines running all along his body. That I remembered accurately.
While on the subject, now might be a good time to talk about some of the other books I enjoyed reading as a kid. Unsurprisingly I was a fan of some of the standards, such as the Berenstain Bears, Babar the Elephant (especially Babar and Zephir; I loved the horned monster Polomoche and his fellow beasts the Gogottes. Also worth checking out is Babar and Father Christmas, which has a stunning two-page illustration of Father Christmas’ sprawling and cozy underground home/workshops), Dr. Seuss’ work, and Roger Hargreave’s Mr. Men series (if I remember correctly, my two favorite characters from that latter series were Mr. Bump and Mr. Daydream… maybe Mr. Dizzy as well). There was also the Wayside School books written by Louis Sacher, James Howe’s Bunnicula series (Chester the Cat being my favorite character from those), Nancy McArthur’s The Mystery of the Plant That Ate Dirty Socks, Daniel Pinkwater’s Lizard Music, Gary Poole’s Movie Monsters (Modern Publishers, 1986), Richard Meyer’s The Great Science Fiction Films (Citadel Press, 1984), Christopher Finch’s The Making of the Dark Crystal (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1983), The Star Wars Storybook (Random House, 1978), Ten Great Mysteries of Edgar Allan Poe (Scholastic Books, 1989… though I must confess I was a little creeped out by the sinister illustration of Poe’s face on the front cover), and so on and so forth. The Johnny Dixon horror mysteries by John Bellairs were also books I loved, though I didn’t start to read those until around the 5th grade, the first of which was The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull. And who could forget Bruce Carter’s 1977 novel Buzzbugs, with its striking cover art featuring two people, a man and a woman, running up a hill and trying to escape from a mosquito the size of a whale?
One of my favorite books from that era was Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. I discovered that book when one of my grade school teachers read it to our class, a few chapters every day. I forget if that was the 2nd grade or the 3rd grade… most likely the 3rd grade, so probably around 1987-1988. After she had finished reading the book to us I managed to get a copy of my own, with beautiful illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. Something about that book just captivated my imagination, and like the little boy in the book I too wanted to live inside that giant peach, surrounded by those big fantastic talking bugs (the Centipede being my favorite).
However, by far my most beloved books when I was a child were the two Alice books written by Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The edition I owned (put out by Watermill Press in 1983) collected both volumes, though many of the illustrations by John Tenniel were not included (I believe they only had one per chapter). I first read the book in 1986, the same year that the aforementioned Commodore 64 game was released, though I can’t remember if I played the game first or read the book first… no matter what, one of them inspired me to investigate the other. To this date I still enjoy re-reading the Alice books every few years. My two favorite characters from the first Alice book were the Cheshire Cat (big surprise there) and the Gryphon. It’s perhaps no surprise that since reading that book the griffin remains one of my favorite mythological hybrid creatures. But seeing as I hope to do a whole separate post on the Alice books at some future point, for now I will say no more on this topic.
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