I’m not that interested in werewolves but I keep writing about them. I sit down to write something about being a child and listening to adults having a party. Then there’s someone outside the bedroom door, changing. I write about zombies and the punchline is that they’re not werewolves. Someone can’t sleep but when she does, well, she runs in a pack. Where does it all come from?
Yesterday, I remembered.
When I was little, I was afraid of werewovles. Really afraid. I would cry in the night and cower from images of grizzly bears. The fear stayed with me for years. When I was seven, maybe eight, I bought a comic book with a full-page advert of Pez dispensers on the back cover. One of the dispensers was the wolf man. It scared me. A picture of a werewolf Pez dispenser scared me so much that I had to throw the comic away. And throw it away just right so that I couldn’t see the ad in the waste paper basket.
Over the years, the fear went away, but a certain fascination remained. My DVD collection contains American Werewolf in London, Cursed, Wilderness, Ginger Snaps and Dog Soldiers. I watch Being Human and miss George. (George was lovely.) In dusty corners of my bookshelf you’ll find Cycle of the Werewolf, The Werewolf of Paris, Sharp Teeth and so on. Yes. I’ve seen the films and I’ve read the books. Still, if you asked me, I would tell you that I was not interested in shapeshifters.
My conscious mind had forgotten, but the storyteller in me remembered.
Which of them should call the exorsist?