I
Influence
I don’t think I’ve ever gone
through my life as a sober person. That
doesn’t mean I’m always intoxicated, or that I’m always ingesting some sort of
chemical or another to alter my perception of reality, or to just get fucked up
– in fact it’s very far from that. I
walk through life under the influence of some very creative people whose works
have opened my eyes on a level that no drug (which I don’t do) or alcohol
(which I do do) could ever replicate.
Some of them are filmmakers, some of them are comic book writers and
artists, some of them are video game developers, and some of them (a lot of
them) are authors.
One such author is Richard
Matheson, and I’ve been under the influence of Richard Matheson for a very long
time. I was under his influence before I
even knew who Richard Matheson was.
A long time ago, the Twilight
Zone used to be a staple of my family’s entertainment diet. I used to avoid it because I’m not a fan of
things filmed in black and white and because most of my family enjoyed it, and
I tend to not be a fan of the things my family enjoys. I watched a few episodes here and there but
never committed them to memory. It wasn’t
until the filmed version, the one in the vein of a Tales From the Crypt comic
book issue with John Lithgow that it got my attention. Particularly, the segment about a passenger
on a commercial flight seeing a creature on the wing destroying it. I learned later that this was a full episode
of the Twilight Zone that starred William Shatner and eventually became one of
my favorite jokes from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective with Jim Carey quoting Shatner’s
classic line, “There’s… someone on the wing!
Some… thing!”
Years and years later, a bunch of
people I knew at the time were telling me that I needed to read a book called I
AM LEGEND and in an odd case of synchronicity, I read a quote from Stephen King
saying it was the best vampire book ever written. I went out and bought it and
travelled along with Robert Neville as the last human on Earth trying to avoid
the vampiric population, figure out what happened, and killing as many as he
could. I think, it’s been a while since
I read it. It reminded me a lot of a
movie I had seen a few years earlier called Night of the Living Dead – a remake
by horror effects master Tom Savini, starring Tony fucking Todd, and kicking
all sorts of ass. After viewing the
movie once, which really took effect on me because I have a phobia of dead
people dating back to the mid 1980s, I had become obsessed with the zombie film
(which is like a hundred years before the rest of you became obsessed with
it). I had gone well out of my way in
the next several years to find all of George Romero’s films, just as I would do
later with Richard Matheson’s books. I
AM LEGEND was, indeed, the best vampire book I had ever read. It didn’t flutter the vamps out and make them
foppy, whiney little shits, it didn’t try to get you to sympathize with them
(like a lot of other vampire fiction does, well, until the end anyway) and it
kept them monsters, and it kept them scary.
I come from this old school world of vampire fiction where they’re
bastard, predatory monsters, not pretty pedophiliac, obsessive wieners. Anyways, these two obsessions of mine, George
Romero and Richard Matheson, came to a head when I found out that George Romero
basically lifted the entire idea for Night of the Living Dead (the original
from 1960something) from Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND.
And then, again, while diving in
head first to the fictions of Mr. Matheson with books like What Dreams May Come
and A Stir of Echoes, and hordes and hordes of short stories, I discovered this
little gem called Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.
This is the original short story that Richard Matheson adapted for the
Twilight Zone that episode that starred William Shatner and would become that
segment in the movie starring John Lithgow.
It continued from there, but not
through Matheson himself, but his son, Richard Christian Matheson, whose work I
found long before Matheson the Elder’s.
A movie that I enjoyed a lot when I was younger was a film that was actually
shot in Ogden, Utah called 3 O’Clock High.
It was a movie about a nerdy kid that makes the mistake of touching a
new kid who has touch issues and violent tendencies and the new kid declares
that at three in the afternoon, after school is out, they’re gonna fight! It was filmed at Ogden, High, and it’s
unmistakable if you lived around that building for any amount of time. The film is hilarious as the nerdy kid, who
I, of course, undoubtedly identified with greatly, did everything he could from
trying to buy the guy off and get other folks to beat this new kid up to get
out of the fight at three. Great
times. A long time later I found a book
called SPLATTERPUNKS: EXTREME HORROR – one of the most influential books I’ve
ever read in terms of what I, myself, do as a writer – and read a short story
called RED by Richard Christian Matheson.
Immediately I was taken by this guy’s work, and have read a bunch of his
stuff since then. It was about ten years
ago or so, maybe longer, that I learned that Richard Christian Matheson also
wrote the screenplay for 3 O’Clock High.
These little moments have
decorated my life since I was a kid, but none more profound than that of Clan
Matheson.
As an artists under the influence
of Richard Matheson, the good sir was one of the most brilliant minds anyone
can look to for inspiration, education, and pure horror excellence. Matheson was the guy that taught me, more so
than any other author, that horror is everywhere. Horror isn’t a genre of literary fiction that’s
to be swept under the carpet when the adults come around as it has been treated
forever, no. Horror is EVERYWHERE. It’s in life, it’s in every piece of fiction
you read, watch, listen to or play through.
In every romantic comedy, there’s horror. In every piece of children’s fiction, there’s
horror. In every place that there is a
human being and there are human emotion, or the lack of human emotion, there is
horror. Horror is a complex series of
human emotions that almost explode out of anywhere and nowhere at the same time
that cannot be explained away by a simple, single word. It’s not just fear. It’s not scary. It’s not just sadness or some other
placeholder emotion, but ALL of them at the same time. He taught me this with a single short story
that’s collected into my copy of I AM LEGEND that I cannot remember the name
of, nor can I recall the title! But it’s
in there.
There’s no gore in this
story. There are no scares, there’s no
ghosts or goblins or ghouls. There’s no
vampires, no monsters of any sort fluttering around to blow out the candle of
life on some unsuspecting victim. There’s
not tits or genitals anywhere to be found; there’s no extreme to be found anywhere.
There’s no demonic possessions or any other religious nonsense. This simple, fascinating and terrifying short
story has none of the basic tropes that anyone always assumes comes with the “genre”
of horror.
What is present in the story is
an elderly man discussing the funeral arrangements of his wife. That’s all.
That’s all this short story is.
An old man talking about how he wants to respect the death of his wife.
And then there’s the ending.
When I read this short story for
the first time – and nothing really scares me at all – I felt that sense of
urgency that comes with fear sometimes.
Like when you’re watching those stupid don’t text while driving
commercials and they push the limits and show a car about to hit the person
texting from an inside-of-the-vehicle POV (I told you horror is everywhere,
even in propaganda advertisements) and you cringe up a little. Yeah, this short story had that effect on me
and I said out loud at an elated decibel, “Oh, fuck!”
But it was over.
Short. Simple.
Sweet.
Horrific.
To me, Richard Matheson was a
fucking rockstar. He was an idol,
someone I looked up to more than most people I know in the real world, and I
never got to meet the guy. He was a
teacher in the best sense of the word.
He was, simply put, amazing.
