Halloween Haunts: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year by Jim Pyre

I’ve loved Halloween. It seems passé I should, but before I read my first bit of Lovecraft. I was crazy for the holiday. It was different, not the same tick-tock ritual as the others.  Thanksgiving, I sat at the same table until I was sixteen.  Christmas, sure it was the mother load, but how long can you pretend Uncle Fred is the jolly old fat man.  Halloween was always different. Always on my terms.

I wanted to be a pirate. Bam, I was a pirate. Same goes for a mad scientist, or even a Ghostbuster. I also picked where I wanted to go.  If the bungalows to the left were stingy in years past, I would push for the uncharted territory to my right.  In the time before razors and strychnine, I even ate the treasure before home.

One Halloween was different.

I still see it. Our family car blue and sharp because the air was so cold. I remember the fog, because London and Chicago aren’t all that different.  I was upset, I was chauffeured due to the weather, cut off from the field and my freedom. I sunk down into faux leather backseat and then a story changed my life.

My father turned the radio to a Halloween play. It simply grabbed me, I was there, a passenger till the grisly end.  I still don’t know the story’s title.

Looking back, the story was silly and dated, or maybe one of my emotion is caring for another.

It took place in a hospital or maybe an asylum. There were three actors one woman and three men. It was first person perspective. The final victim passing the horror to me. It was a simple story.

A black muck oozed from a lab and if it touched.

You’d turn inside out!

Absolutely silly and absolutely terrifying.

Later, when I picked it apart I had an epiphany. A person wrote the story and just the simple sound of human voices affected me tremendously.  I wanted to do that.  I wanted put images, emotions, and intensity into others’ minds.  I wanted to be a writer!

Years pasted, the idea of an artsy career was crushed by a suddenly working class family. But, like the creatures I began to create, my dream survived in the shadows.  By day, I drafted complaints and demand letters. By night, my monsters came from the shadows.  I was too timid to present my work, but I loved being in the company of those who had.  Finally, with a “little” prodding from my wife I submitted my work to a contest.

I won.

My brain couldn’t grasp the notion of success. I had to email Rocky more times than I care to admit just to solidify my success. I owe the HWA. I owe it a great deal. It brought my critters out of the shadows and on to the page.

JIM PYRE, is a husband, counselor, Kolchak expert, blogger, HWA member, eventual author, and terrible selfie taker. If you like this small peek into reality let the editors know by stating something nice. Also, Mr. Pyre can be found here and at www.jimpyre.com, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or possibly in his basement drafting articles you shouldn’t ask about.