Confessions of a Scaredy Cat: A Guest Post by Paul Tremblay
A profound, haunting novel, Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay (The Cabin at the End of the World) is an ode to the fears of his childhood and the things that scare us all — even if we don’t want to admit it. In the exclusive essay below, Tremblay writes of how fears change throughout life and what he hopes we can all learn from them, and each other.
Hardcover $30.00
Horror Movie: A Novel
Horror Movie: A Novel
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Hardcover $30.00
You don’t have to wait until October to get your thrills and chills — discover the horror (and magic) of the movies from the author of The Cabin at the End of the World. (P.S. fans of Silver Nitrate, we have your new obsession.)
You don’t have to wait until October to get your thrills and chills — discover the horror (and magic) of the movies from the author of The Cabin at the End of the World. (P.S. fans of Silver Nitrate, we have your new obsession.)
I wanted to use the following as a cover blurb for my novel Horror Movie. Alas.
“Whoever thought that my little boy—who was afraid of the dark—would write this disturbing book.” –Mom.
The description of me being afraid of the dark is a catch all phrase for my scaredy-cat-ness. During the same phone call in which Mom gave me her verdict on my new book, she regaled me with stories about the kid-me’s nightly battle against monsters under the bed and in the closet, how I positioned stuffed animals around my head in the form of a sleep fortress. She didn’t have to regale. I still remember how I positioned my handmade, stuffed Triceratops; his large arched back pressed against the left side of my face. In addition to a lanky Pink Panther and a squat Garfield, there were more dinosaurs, including stalwart Bronty and felt-toothed T Rex. The irony of monsters from earth’s deep geologic history there to protect me from the imagined monsters was lost on the child-me.
I’d like to write that I was a precocious child, an empath in tune with the ancestral, instinctual fear of the dark so I overcame the fear easily and didn’t have (ongoing) years of (monsters and sharks) nightmares. But I can’t write that. However, I think it all distilled down to a fear of being alone. As a child (and a teen, and um, an adult), you never feel more alone than you do in bed and even if your little brother (whom you’d tried to sacrifice to the monsters earlier in the evening by sending him into your bedroom first) was in a bed across the room from you, it was still you there alone and blinking and thinking in the dark. So many of the scary scenes (if they are scary to the reader at all, I have no idea, but they scare me) I write feature a character alone in a dark room, or going into a dark room. And yes, of course, it’s a metaphor for being afraid of what happens when we die. Ultimately, to borrow a title of a book from the great Laird Barron, it’s the beautiful thing that waits us all. As ominously terrifying as that sounds, I find a measure of comfort in it. More on that in a bit.
Eventually, I stopped using the stuffed animal fortress. My boogeyman and monster fears evolved to include nuclear war nightmares and other ‘adult’ scenarios. There are many types of fear, of course, including the ugliest kinds rooted in avarice, ignorance, and hate. Those are the fears States and politicians and corporations and media weaponize, wielding them like a cudgel in the monstrous barter for perceived safety and comfort in exchange for money, privilege, and power. History has repeatedly demonstrated that rational thought and empathy are too often overwhelmed by a near constant onslaught of the ugliest fears.
Now in fully blossomed middle age, I still move quicker up darkened basement stairs than I do regular stairs, and if I’m home alone at night, I might turn on another light or two. But now I welcome what sometimes (usually the next morning) feels like the quaint fear of being alone in the dark. Maybe if more people remained in touch with that common childhood fear, and by proxy the fear of being alone in that ultimate moment waiting at the end of our days, that would help to build stronger connections between each other, even something as simple and humane as Oh, you feel that way, too? That’s surely too far a reach, too facile an extrapolation, but maybe one can find hope in being that kind of scaredy cat.