Good Monsters

by Michael Channing

Chapter One: "Now was the time"

One weekend, when I was a kid, way back before the bad times, my dad and I rented a bunch of tapes, microwaved two bags of popcorn, poured them into a big plastic bowl, and sat down to watch us a monster movie marathon. Which was something we'd done before but always with older black-and-whites. On this particular weekend I guess my dad figured I was ready for the hard stuff.

But Freddy, Jason, Pinhead, Michael Myers, and Rawhead Rex were perhaps a bit too intense for an eight-year-old.

I sunk so far back into the couch, it looked like I'd been folded in with the hide-a-bed. When my dad noticed, he tried to school me in the language of movies, tried to show how the special effects were done. If I knew how the tricks were accomplished, I could say to myself, "It's just a movie." Then they'd have no power over me. I admire my dad for trying, I really do. But this is what he did:

He paused the shot in mid hatchet-to-the-face. And said, "Look real hard. See if you can figure out how they did that." Then he went to the kitchen to make a sandwich.

As I stared at the frozen image of that woman, axe blade sunk into her skull, one crimson line of blood running down her cheek, I did, indeed, realize how the film makers achieved this tableau.

They fucking killed somebody.

When my dad came back from the kitchen, sandwich oozing tomato juice, he asked if I'd figured out the trick. Having stared at flash-frozen death for the last ten minutes, the squiggly white lines of a dirty VCR head doing nothing to reduce the impact, I was unable to fully express my dismay. I shook my head and leaked a few tears. My dad put down his plate and knelt beside the TV.

"It's not a real hatchet," he said. "They cut a big curved notch out of the blade and placed it against the chick's head. See?" He traced his finger along the the curve of the girl's skull from the top of her head to the bridge of her nose. "Then they yanked that pretend blade away from her face. And played the film backwards. Isn't that cool?"

To give my dad credit, it was pretty cool. But back then I wasn't sophisticated enough to enjoy the techniques of slasher film production. What a stupid kid I was.

But you know what? Despite my dad's knowledge of how to stage a realistic axe killing, I was still a scared eight-year-old barely in control of his bladder.

He let the movie play on till Jason was bludgeoned seemingly to death, and stopped the tape right before the camera zoomed in on his face and his eyes snapped open. Then he put me to bed.

I didn't sleep so good. I imagined all manner of monster and madman beneath my bed. Or in the closet. Or outside my window. Or coming down the hall.

"Goodnight, son," Jason said. Only it wasn't Jason Voorhees. My dad stood in the doorway for a moment, concealed by shadow, watching me.

I had the covers pulled up to my eyes.

"Are you scared?" he asked me. My dad, master detective.

"No," I said.

"You know those were just movies, right? There's no such thing as monsters."

"Uh-huh."

He sighed, rolled my desk chair over beside the bed, and sat down. "Jason and Freddy and everybody were just actors in makeup and masks. At the end of the day, when the directors said cut, they washed all that off and went home to their families. I bet they had kids just like you."

They had kids, alright. For breakfast.

My father's face tightened as he tried to figure a new angle of attack. "Let me tell you a secret about monsters. They always work in patterns. These guys are so predictable. It's silly, really, when you spell it out. They only kill people who fit a certain pattern."

I kept waiting for the silly part.

"Pinhead only comes after people who open the puzzle box. Don't touch the box, you got nothing to worry about. Jason only goes after teenagers who have sex at camp. Are you a teenager? Are you at camp? There's nothing to worry about. Because you don't fit the pattern."

I noticed he didn't say anything about Freddy Krueger, whose pattern was to kill you in your sleep. I noticed something else, too.

"What about the hitchhiker?"

"We didn't rent that one, buddy. You been watching flicks without me?"

"The hitchhiker in Friday the 13th. In the beginning of the movie. She wasn't at camp. She didn't have sex. But she got killed."

My dad struggled with that one. What were you going to say, Dad? That Jason's mom changed her pattern up just for that one chick? That it wasn't even Jason's mom who did that one? It was some random murderer who happened by and slit her throat open because it was something to pass the time? I don't know what you could have said, Dad. But what you did say was the greatest bit of knowledge you ever passed on to me.

"Not all monsters are bad, you do know that, right? What about Godzilla? What about the Swamp Thing? And what about good old Frankie here?" He reached to the bookshelf for my plastic model of Frankenstein's monster. I can forgive my dad for calling the creature by its creator's name. To this day, I call him Frankie, myself.

Dad and I put that model together. He did most of the gluing. I did all the painting, but when my inept little hands were finished, Frankie looked like a three-dollar whore. Albeit a dead one.

My dad placed the model on the floor. "Frankie's gonna watch under the bed for you." Then he flipped through my pile of comic books till he found an issue of Swamp Thing. "And Swampy's gonna keep an eye on the window for you." Dad put the comic between the blinds and the glass. "Now we need somebody to guard the closet. Who's it gonna be?"

I didn't have to ponder too long before volunteering Grover for guard duty. He normally slept on his own pillow beside me at night. But now was the time for all good monsters to come to the aid of their boy.

"Are you sure?" my dad said.

I wasn't. But I nodded anyway.

My dad carried my long-legged, stuffed pal to the closet, opened the door, sat Grover on the floor among the scattering of shoes. "I'll leave the door open so he can keep an eye on you, too. Okay?"

I swallowed hard.

"You're gonna be all right, kiddo. Believe me. These guys are gonna keep you safe from the bad monsters out there. I promise."

I think that's what did it. Dad didn't try to fool me into believing there were no monsters at all. He just helped me categorize them properly.

He turned off the light and left me alone, surrounded by good monsters. Monsters I could trust. I found more to protect me as time went on. Ray Harryhausen made a few. Jim Henson made a few more. They watched over me at night, protected me from the beasts and boogeymen. And eventually, when the bad times set in, they kept me safe from my family.

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