V.M. Zito's Blog

I wonder if Charles Darwin was a zombie fan.

Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, and you’re probably aware of the resulting, yet-to-be-settled battle between Evolutionists and Creationists. But there’s also another great Darwinian debate, affecting not just zoologists but zombologists, too:

What actually is a species?

In science, this is known as the ‘species problem,’ and it arises when bickering biologists attempt to classify two nearly identical species of animal. Take the Baltimore Oriole, for example, that beloved black-and-orange bird of baseball mascot fame. The truth is, it’s really the Northern Oriole. Or wait — no, it isn’t. Fifty years ago it was the Northern Oriole, but after lots of nasty debate and name-calling, scientists finally decided that there’s no such thing. They split the species into two: the Baltimore Oriole and the Bullock’s Oriole.

So, you ask, what does all this have to do with zombies?

I don’t know if you’ve ever braved a visit into an online zombie fan forum. (If not, what are you waiting for?) In those discussion boards, you might notice that while biologists haggle over birds, many zombie fans are divided over what constitutes a ‘real’ zombie. Is the zombie slow or fast? Alive or dead? Mute, or able to talk your ear off, right before it bites your ear off?

Or… can a zombie be all those things?

As a fan myself, I’ve resisted that last hypothesis for years now. Oh, how I’ve resisted. But perhaps the time has come; at last I should channel my inner Darwin and admit to zombie evolution. My favorite monster, once classified solely as Zombi Zombus, has gone the way of the Northern Oriole, split apart into separate unique species.

Presenting the new taxonomy of living dead:

• Zombi Voodooicus. 19th century ancestor, believed extinct. Victims of dark Haitian sorcery, summoned from the grave to work as slaves in sugar cane plantations. A bit like Oompa Loompas in Willa Wonka’s chocolate factory, but without the singing and awkward cartwheels.

• Zombi Romeros. George’s breed — dead, slow, and mindless. Purely carnivorous, with a diet of fresh human meat. (Note: subspecies Zombi Fulci may eat sharks.) Territory includes suburban America, urban sprawls, and even Arizona deserts in my novel THE RETURN MAN.

• Zombi Sprintus. Built for velocity, reaching land speeds up to 10 mph, but lacking the cardio to outrun Jesse Eisenberg in Zombieland.

• Zombi Speechifysis. Specially adapted vocal chords allow this species to talk; common vocalizations include a wish for brains and requests for more paramedics.

• Zombi Twentyeightus. Not technically dead, but close enough; disease-carriers infected by viruses that cause wild, murderous rage and shaky-cam violence across the UK.

• Zombi Supersmartus. A rarely occurring but very functional species, able to use reason, tools, even drive motorcycles. Highly evolved, but can’t kick the cannibalism habit.

• Zombi What-the-effus. The most questionable of zombie specimens — imbued with powers that often make fans think WTF?, including the ability to climb walls, spit acid, use ESP, take flight or travel between dimensions.

So there you have it. Zombies sorted and tagged for easy identification, ushering in a harmonious new future for zombie lovers. Hold it… what’s that you say? The species overlap? The original Romero zombie uses a rock as a tool in Night of the Living Dead? Running zombies can talk in Return of the Living Dead, and rage zombies can run in 28 Days Later?

Crap. You’re right. This is harder than I thought.

Screw it then — arguing is half the fun, anyway. So go ahead, scream and yell about the species problem. I’ll be outside, watching birds in the yard. I think I hear a Northern Oriole singing.

Many nights as I sat down to write THE RETURN MAN, I was joined by a little imaginary kid in my head; he wore pajamas and wanted a bedtime tale. Tell that story, Dad — you know the one! Yeah, my favourite, with the dead people tryin’ to eat the good guys, and everybody hides in this one building, and they all fight and argue until finally the zombies break in…

As a zombie fan, I’ve been hooked on that nightmare for 30 years. Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead… perfect renditions of the archetypal zombie plot.

But inevitably, even for a traditionalist like me, a desire arises for something… different. That same bedtime story is putting us to sleep too fast. So we try to change it up, add new ideas, make the zombies run, or drive trucks, or use ESP, or have laser beams shoot from their eyes–

Laser beams!?? ESP?? Dad, you’re tellin’ it wrong! Zombies don’t shoot lasers!

And that, right there, is the challenge for today’s horror writers. We’re locked in a nightly battle with that unwavering, detail-obsessed little purist. The story has to be told right. Don’t change the zombies. Gotta have a motley bunch of survivors, banding together. A hideout. Some cool zombie deaths. And promise that the bad guy will get his guts eaten at the end.

The truth is, we’re all craving new stuff — but in a horrible paradox, we prefer the same old stuff, and that’s because the original formula worked so damn well. George Romero (channeling Richard Matheson) pretty much nailed it. Zombie fiction is like pizza. You can mess a bit with the toppings, but tinker too much, take away the bread or the cheese, and it’s no longer pizza.

But Dad, I wanted pizza–

Enough, kid, we get it.

So what can a writer do to be original? Exasperated, I turned to that imaginary fanboy inside my skull and exclaimed: “Fine! What else do you like?”

Huh?

“What other kinds of stories? Zombies, I know. You’ve said so a hundred times. But what else?” I frowned. “Mysteries?”

His eyes flashed.

“Ah, I thought so,” I said. “How about action? Indiana Jones?”

Yeah!

“James Bond? Impossible missions? Crazy stunts?”

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

And that’s how THE RETURN MAN found its inspiration. It’s a zombie novel, no doubt. The zombies aren’t reinvented — far from it, still slow and mouldering, awful-smelling and mindless — but the story infuses the subgenre (infects it?) with blood from other cherished favourites. The formula is not forgotten, but recalculated to feel new and invigorating, like an old married couple given the chance to relive their first ecstatic, heart-pounding kiss.

Of course, THE RETURN MAN is just one possible solution. Other authors will prevail in their own unique, exciting ways. So fear not, fans of the dead. Zombies will continue to rot for our entertainment. It’s up to the writers to keep them fresh.

As a genre, horror has often tapped into the Zeitgeist (the spirit of the times, appropriately), resonating with each era’s societal fears. In the 50s, with potential nuclear war hanging over our heads like a mushroom cloud, radioactive monsters like Godzilla terrorized the populace. In that same decade, McCarthyism in America inspired alien invasions and pod people in disguise. In the 70s, as younger generations challenged conventions of religion and sexuality, horror assured us that devils existed and that promiscuity was punishable by large slashing knives.

And in 1968, a year notorious for civil turmoil and race riots in major American cities, we watched civilization collapse in one night — that event known as Night of the Living Dead.

So here we are, over forty years later, enjoying another resurgence of the zombie apocalypse. Zombies are the rage now — but the appeal feels different this time, less driven by fear, more attributable to something else. Something quite opposite, actually…

Desire.

We live in an age of perceived powerlessness, in which 99% of us feel paralyzed by our ordinary lives, enslaved by the 1% running the government and the economy. Short of a winning lottery ticket, nothing will change for us. We’ll keep punching the clocks at our insipid jobs, following orders. We’ll keep depositing our pennies into insufficient retirement funds. We’ll keep losing our jobs, while our homes lose value and gas prices climb higher and higher.

Unless the zombies come and save us.

Then it’s a chance to start over. Then money and politics and government regulations mean nothing. Then it’s survival of the fittest. Heroes will rise; we imagine ourselves as kings of the zombie world, ruling over the new undead lower class. Sure, there will be bloodshed. Yes, you might lose a friend or two. But just think of all those abandoned shopping malls — free stuff!

Today, it’s easy to sit back and watch Night of the Living Dead for its scares, without appreciating the film’s societal context, but remember… 1968, race riots, etc. Now consider the hero in Night: a black man named Ben. (The first black hero ever in a horror movie.) Romero anticipated the empowerment that a zombie upheaval could bring to the under-represented amongst us, after the power structure is turned on its head. And modern zombie comedies like Shaun of the Dead often feature bumbling idiots-turned-badasses in the face of Armageddon.

What am I saying? That we, as a society, want a zombie apocalypse? Well, yes. At least in the way that every kid sometimes wishes his parents would disappear, leaving him full run of the house, no rules, no responsibility. Of course it would end badly, with filthy dishes piled in the sink, unpaid bills, empty cupboards, no electricity or heat. And yet it’s tempting… very tempting.

Just remember how it worked out for poor Ben. When the zombies come, you might be a hero for the night. But in the morning, you’re just another one for the fire.

Do you remember your first encounter with a zombie?

Mine was Return of the Living Dead — and wow, I haven’t been the same since.

It happened on a dismal, rainy night in New Jersey, the summer after seventh grade; the movie theater was small and squalid, a two-screener wedged into a strip mall between a Chinese restaurant and a dollar store. My friend and I slinked self-consciously inside. Did the usher who collected our tickets care that two 12-year-old boys were entering an R-Rated movie? If so, he said nothing, staring with glassy eyes into the remaining abyss of his eight-hour shift.

The movie began. Hunkered down in my seat, I was both transfixed and terrified. In possibly the single most transformational 90 minutes of my life, I had absorbed my first-ever viewing of tar-faced zombies munching human brains… and on top of that, full-frontal female nudity!!! (Although many years later I learned that Linnea Quigley, the actress playing Trash, had been wearing a latex pubic cover-up. Childhood memories are never what they seem.)

Shaken, I emerged from the theater to find the rain hammering down on the parking lot, the pavement glistening yellow from reflected streetlights. It was as if the movie had followed me outside — the steamy summer night air loaded with Trioxin 245, seeping into the ground, summoning rotten corpses to eat my brain. My friend and I scooted back to his house, scared out of our minds, legs ready to bolt if we saw zombies charging down the street.

We made it home alive. But 25 years later, I still have nightmares about that damn movie. About zombies. And sometimes about full-frontal female nudity, but I’m working on that in therapy.

Now, probably like you, I’ve seen a hundred zombie films since that night — some great, some awful. The zombie subgenre has long been established, following in George Romero’s (and Richard Matheson’s) honourable footsteps. So as a writer, why keep going? Because zombie fiction will always need an influx of new material, recruiting new fans from the dark corners of New Jersey and everywhere else in the world. I’m here to support the cause.

In today’s extreme wealth of movies, books, graphic novels and video games, zombies might seem like a runaway train — but it’s a train that we all join at different points along the track, and there’s no telling where first-time riders might climb aboard. If you’re lucky like me, it’s Return of the Living Dead. If you’re not so lucky, it’s Redneck Zombies. You never know whether the movie you make or the book you write will be somebody’s first zombie experience, good or bad. Maybe somebody reads THE RETURN MAN and thinks it’s cool, and as a result they want more; so they dig in and discover my favourites, the true canon of the subgenre — the Romero trilogy and World War Z and Shaun of the Dead. Now that would be awesome.

So whether THE RETURN MAN is your first zombie novel, or whether you’ve read more than you can count, welcome aboard the zombie train. I’ve saved you a seat.

I love comic books. And to love comic books, sometimes you have to throw real-world logic out the window. A megadose of gamma rays turns Bruce Banner into the Hulk? A cosmic space storm transforms four astronauts into the Fantastic Four? A radioactive spider-bite mutates Peter Parker into Spider-Man? Err… umm… sure, why not. In reality, they’d all die of horrible cancers and radiation poisoning. But on the comic page, we just accept it and move on. Don’t ask too many questions, or else the entire concept crumbles. And what fun is that?

It’s a lot like ‘suspension of disbelief’ — the mental state necessary to enjoy fiction as a reader — except it goes further, asking us to jump even wider gaps in believability.

I call this ‘Comic Book Logic.’ And I think it applies to zombies, too.

I realize this might be hard to accept. We live in an era of vast knowledge, constantly expanding our understanding of life, technology and the universe; even last week, scientists came closer to pinpointing the ever-elusive ‘God particle’ in subatomic physics. We crave answers. We want to take it all apart and see how shit works, because we’re certain it’s better to know.

In college, I was a biology major (although I never finished the degree); even today I’m still fascinated by the cogs and wheels that make life function. So you might think I’d be pretty eager to know exactly how a zombie works. I mean, we’re talking about a dead body that gets up and walks around and tries to kill us. For that to be possible, a few things have to happen…

For example, which biological systems are still ticking below the clammy grey skin? Does the heart beat? If not, how do the muscles get energy without a steady blood supply? Does a zombie digest the people it eats? Does it poop? I have never seen a pile of zombie poop.

See what I mean? The more questions you ask, the more that follow, to the point of distraction. The trend today in zombie entertainment is to offer answers — pseudo-scientific explanations that sound plausible enough, at least until you ask the next question — but be careful. Comic books went through a similar stage in the 80s, when writers like Alan Moore and Frank Miller enforced ‘reality rules’ on their superhero characters and in the process almost killed them. Comic artist David Mazzuchelli said it this way: ‘Once a depiction veers toward realism, each new detail releases a torrent of questions that expose the absurdity at the heart of the genre. The more “realistic” superheroes become, the less believable they are. It’s a delicate balance…’

George Romero’s 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, launched the zombie apocalypse with Comic Book Logic, hinting that radiation (the Silver Age comic’s greatest plot device!) from an exploding space probe may have caused the dead to rise. But even George realized that no explanation could possibly withstand the scrutiny of science, and in his follow-up Dawn of the Dead, he transcends logic entirely by issuing my favorite proclamation of all time:

‘When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth.’

Shazam! Theology trumps science. The zombie apocalypse is God’s plan. Zombies can walk because God freakin’ wants them to, okay? And to make sure we get the point, in Day of the Dead Romero explains that maybe God ‘just wanted to show us he’s still the Boss Man.’

In my novel THE RETURN MAN, I tip-toe to the edge of the ‘scientific answer.’ I couldn’t resist; my inner biology student was curious, and the main character Henry Marco is a neurologist who would naturally be interested, too. But I also took George’s advice to heart and backed off before taking a full flying leap to a conclusion. Ultimately, the only explanation for our beloved flesh-eating zombies is either an inscrutable God… or good old Comic Book Logic.

Which do you believe in?

A few readers have asked if I’ve written anything besides THE RETURN MAN. The answer is “yes,” and just for fun, I thought I’d post some of my short horror fiction here on this blog for anyone who might be interested in weird, spooky stories.

The story below (or you can download it as a PDF) is unpublished. I wrote it about ten years ago but never submitted it anywhere; around that time, I happened to read an interview with a literary editor who said that writing stories in second-person point-of-view was amateurish. Red-faced, I banished this story to a remote folder on my computer. But, funny thing, every few years I pull it out and read it again, and ya know what? Each time, I still like it.

(Besides, it’s only sort of a variation on second person, sort of a meta-fiction piece written in the form of an instruction manual. Okay, whew, I’ve rationalized its existence.)

So… amateurish or not, here it is!

———————–

by

V. M. ZITO

Turn the crystal knob on your kitchen faucet, and shut off the water. Step back. Wave the air in front of you, cough, snort, pinch your nose, do whatever you must to clear the repulsive stench clogging your nostrils as if you had inhaled rotten meat. Think of the dead crab you found when you were ten, its body washed to shore in Rhode Island, and you brought it home and kept it in an empty pickle jar all summer long, the crab’s shell turning dark and grey, crawling with ugly pink mites that scavenged the flesh, until one day in August you opened the jar. Compare that stink — choking, miserable, terrifying — to the odor here now, the same, coming from the water in your house.

Try the knob for the hot water. Repeat above.

Sniff your hands, flinch, wipe them on a dishtowel until they hurt. Wonder how long the stench will stick to your skin. Check the bathroom down the hall, and the one upstairs, open those faucets, now wring them closed, barricading yourself against the fumes rolling like invisible poison from the water. Run the bath, and discover the same.

Stop and think.

Consider the toilet. Push the handle so that the bowl empties, the water shrinks away, the water replenishes. Cringe at the odor filling the bowl, the room, your lungs again as you stifle the urge to vomit, the toilet waiting under you. Get out before this happens. Return to the kitchen, take the last clean glass from the cabinet, and fill it with a shot from the faucet. Hold the water to the light, and wonder how it can look so clear, so pure, when Christ it smells rancid. Pour it out, throw the glass in the garbage pail.

Notice how the rankness persists even when the faucets are off, as though once released it has permission to stay. Open windows. Spray cologne around the house like a rite of exorcism. Hold a cloth over your nose, hoping to filter out whatever impurity has invaded the air you breathe. Speculate why this makes you afraid.

Dig around your workbench in the basement until you find the book Margaret bought you for Christmas, The Owner’s Guide to Home Repair. Refer to Page 238 in the “Plumbing” chapter, which contains three paragraphs pertaining to water odor.

Follow these suggestions:

Call on your nearest neighbor, a retired old widower named Ellis who shares your public water supply and takes in your mail when you visit upstate New York every year. Ask him if he’s noticed any trouble with his water. Thank him when he checks and says No. Pretend to be interested in dinner some night, you, him and Margaret.

Remove the panels in your ceilings, room by room, and examine the pipes, spend hours hunting for old iron that may be a source of bacteria, the kind that stinks like death. Crinkle your nose at the stench in these crawl spaces, but find nothing that matches the descriptions and illustrations in your book, just smooth black PVC tubes slithering through walls and floors like huge headless snakes.

Decide you will not call a plumber to snoop around your house. Return the ineffective Owner’s Guide to Home Repair to its drawer in the basement.

Go without washing, so that your hands smudge, your fingernails darken, your body turns sticky and unpleasant.

Conclude that something is dead, that, somewhere in the belly of those PVC snakes winding through your house, a small animal has fallen prey, crawled through a drain or a corroded hole to die and decompose. Imagine a rat like this, twisted and slick and gooey like some awful melting candy, souring the water as the current runs through the clogged pipe and discharges like pus into your sinks and tubs and toilets. Take apart the panels in the ceiling again, begin a second sweep of the piping, this time examining every surface, every joint, every connection so closely it takes hours to satisfy yourself that there are no holes in the pipes. Make trip after trip to the hardware store, buying new pipes to replace any that warrant concern, any that appear weakened or crusty, any that you can possibly suspect as the source of decay. Replace them all, but find nothing unusual once you’ve taken them apart and peered inside.

Try the faucets again. Surrender finally to the nausea that has haunted you for days. Pour your sickness into the sink, the reeking water urging you on.

Call the public water authority. Tell them about the smell. Tell them you cannot live like this. Realize that the man on the phone is indifferent, that there is nothing he will do to help you, not when two thousand homes in your district share the same water source, and you are the only complaint.

Realize what this means.

Feel your heart strike, the abrupt spasm in your chest, your breath faster now.

Interrupt the man’s suggestions, the same useless ones you read in The Owner’s Guide to Home Repair, and ask for the exact source of your water, though of course you know the answer before he tells you, before the words bash your skull like a blow from the 18-inch cast iron wrench in your toolbox: Timber Lake Reservoir.

Think of Margaret. Think of her that night last month at the lake, in the blackness, splayed on the shore like the crab you found in Rhode Island.

Hang up on the man repeating Sir? Sir? and recall the drive in the darkness to Timber Lake, Margaret on the floor in your backseat, the trees black like prison bars as you pulled off the road and picked a path through the elms down to the water, Margaret in your arms, and the suitcase, the one you set down at the shore and filled with rocks, then Margaret. Remember how cold the water felt as you waded into the lake, towing the suitcase until you could go no farther without being pulled under, out where it was deep enough to push Margaret off inside her submarine coffin, sending her sinking and sliding down the slope of the lake floor to an untold resting place. Wish Margaret goodbye.

Imagine her now at the bottom of that reservoir, in the black muck and vile reeds, the suitcase water-logged and fallen apart, her corpse fat and half-devoured by fish, fizzing with decay — particles of death peeling away from her, set free into the water, into the supply, into the pipes, a funeral procession of stink and foulness, Margaret’s body coming home speck by speck in the currents.

Moan as the stench intensifies, burning your throat.

Moan in fear.

Lie in bed at night and listen to the pipes in your house moaning, too, the pressure mounting from god-knows-what, making them tremble and rattle and bang from inside the walls, the ceiling, the floor, above you, below you, next to you. Cover your ears, try to ignore it, now cover your nose and shake your head to dispel that unforgivable odor, the fury of the pipes, the memory. Detect a whisper, coming from your bathroom, what could be a trickle of water or could be her voice: Darling.

Deny it, deny it, you can’t.

Slip out of bed, stumbling, every footstep a bare white scream, force yourself to the bathroom. Flip on the light, look around you. Listen to the pipes tearing at the walls, the porcelain tiles wild with echo, the odor fiercer and fiercer, like a hand around your neck, dragging you to the shower stall.

Whimper, you pathetic thing. Throw open the curtain and step inside. Vomit, the odor so intense. Raise your dirtied face to the showerhead knocking and quaking above you, scream No no no but you must. Accept it all, the memory, the monstrous pounding of the pipes, the stench of slaughterhouses, reach out a hand and turn the water on.

Let her rush over you, hot and angry.

Almost every night when I was twelve, I was attacked — by zombie nightmares. I’d seen my first zombie movie that year, Return of the Living Dead, and it terrorized my dream-world; in this alternate reality, my home sat atop a hill surrounded by an endless cemetery, and I cowered in my attic as a wicked rainstorm battered the roof outside, and legions of mud-soaked, ravenous dead creatures rose from their graves and assaulted the house. They pounded the walls, calling for me. I’d hear splintering wood. They were inside. Charging up the stairs…

Some nights the dream would end there, jarring me awake as an act of mercy. Other nights weren’t so kind, and I’d feel the crunch of zombie teeth on my skull.

The nightmares continued for months, the angst steadily supplied by more and yet more zombie movies — Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead — as if George Romero had vowed that I should never sleep well again. But with repetition came familiarity… until finally one night in the midst of my nightmare, I gazed out the attic window at the corpses coming to eat me, and I blinked, oddly unperturbed, and suddenly understood.

I’m dreaming.

Psychologists call this ‘lucid dreaming.’ The sleeper knows he is asleep, recognizes that the entire world around him is a figment. Empowered, a dreamer may actually take control and manipulate the imaginary events, like the God of their own subconscious. Or maybe more like Leonardo DiCaprio in your own personal Inception, given free roam of your dreamscape.

And that’s when it gets fun.

From that point on, I developed into an epic zombie ass-kicker when I slept. No more trembling in the attic, awaiting my doom. Now, enlightened, immune from death and consequences, I tore through graveyards and took the war to the streets. If anyone was having nightmares, it wasn’t me; it was the poor dead bastards upon which I unleashed bloody decapitations with shovels, brutal kung-fu spine-breakers, broken skulls and bullets shot perfectly between the eyes. Occasionally I would rescue a pretty girl. And, like, totally make out with her.

From midnight to dawn, it was clobberin’ time. I loved every minute of it.

Thirty years later, in my novel THE RETURN MAN, I enjoyed redirecting the wild, brazen action sequences of my young imagination — casting my beleaguered hero Henry Marco into reckless battles against the dead from Arizona to California. Now it’s your turn to share.

Tell us your last zombie dream. Was it a nightmare… or action movie?

Some horror stories don’t just scare you; they scar you. You read them, let them into your head, and they wreck up the place; with sharp claws they scratch awful images into your cerebral cortex, like primitive drawings in some dark, ghastly cave. Sure, you might put the book away, and years of forgetful bliss might pass — but then one day, somehow, something reminds you, and instantly you’re right back in that cave, shivering madly, scared all over again.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved short horror fiction. And I’ve got the scars to show it. Wanna see? Go ahead, open me up, peer into the fear center of my brain. Notice all those slashes and slice marks? I’ll tell you exactly how they got there. People often ask me, ‘What’s your favorite horror story?’ I never know how to answer that question fairly, because there are just too many that I love — but I can easily name the stories that have disfigured me.

So here they are, 6 tales in chronological order of injury:

1. Sweets to the Sweet by Robert Bloch. When I was ten, I found a book of horror stories in my parent’s basement, and I made the error of reading this one down there alone. For months afterward, I’d break into a cold sweat at bedtime, dreading another night with the horrible, horrible, horrible image conjured by Bloch’s last sentence leering at me in the darkness.

2. The Lonesome Place by August Derleth. Another scar on my vulnerable ten-year-old psyche. Remember that one old-looking house in your neighborhood that always creeped you out as a kid? This story confirms everything you ever feared.

3. The October Game by Ray Bradbury. Take note, writers. This piece is the absolute perfect example of where to end your story for maximum impact. If Bradbury had gone just a single sentence further, it wouldn’t have cut the same way it does now. In fact, thanks to Bradbury’s mastery, the wounds in my mind are all self-inflicted.

4. Extenuating Circumstances by Joyce Carol Oates. Holy shit, this story is the most upsetting on the list. I can’t even think about it without getting chills. In fact, my eyes just watered as I typed the title. If you haven’t read it, please, please do so. Right now. I’ll wait.

5. The Summer People by Shirley Jackson. This actually might be my favorite horror story (yes, favorite). The horror I like best is shapeless, undefined; we fear what we don’t understand, and nobody owes us an explanation. In this story, I’m caught waiting for something terrible to happen, and I’m not even sure what. As an adult, I often have this same feeling…

6. The Inner Room by Robert Aickman. And here he is, Aickman, the master of unexplained horror in which the monster hides just beyond our perception, ready to grab us. Do I really understand this story? No. Can I tell you exactly what happens in it? Not quite. Did I feel unsettled, disturbed, somehow altered forever when I’d finished reading it? Hell yes.

So there you have it. My horror scars. Six pale lashes on my soul, defining me today as a reader and as a horror writer, too. Now I’d like to know… What are your scars?

Return Man 2.

No, it’s not a sequel to my novel, The Return Man. It’s the online ESPN sports game you’ve probably noticed if you’ve ever Googled your way to this site by searching “return man.”

http://espn.go.com/free-online-games/sports/returnman2

In football — that’s American football, for international readers — the “return man” refers to the lone player who waits at one end of the field for the opposing team to kick the ball to him. He catches it and then runs as far, as fast as he can toward the opponent’s end zone before being tackled. His goal (and yours if you play the game) is to carry the ball to the promised land — a touchdown!

I figured I’d post it here for fun on this great Sunday, in celebration of a big win by my favorite football team, the New York Giants, over their arch-rivals the Philadelphia Eagles, 29-16.

Here’s a little fact about me: I’m a rabid football fan. Every Sunday, the NFL (National Football League) crazes my blood like a zombie virus. My eyes glaze. My muscles atrophy on the couch in the television room. I lose all higher brain function, my mind reduced to its most basic instincts, such as rage, and fear, and hunger for pizza bagels. Occasionally I drool. If the Giants are losing, I gnash my teeth at family members who pass through the room. At least I have not bitten anyone. Yet.

Now, before I go any further, I’d better make one thing clear. I did not name The Return Man after football, nor is the book any sort of metaphor for the game. The title refers to the main character Henry Marco, who returns corpses to the grave while at the same time undergoing an emotional “return” to the past via his own memories as he searches for his dead wife Danielle.

But…

… as a sports fan, I certainly knew the football term. And to tell the truth, I enjoy the added bit of meaning. Marco, too, is a solitary figure, standing in the empty backfield of America, alone in the Western end zone as he awaits the kick, the ball, the chance to run his way back to the East, to a normal life in the Safe States where everybody else is waiting. All while dodging zombie tackles!

Am I talking crazy? Maybe. The NFL virus doesn’t completely clear my bloodstream for at least another 48 hours, usually around Wednesday.

29-16, Giants!

Congratulations, Cassandra Pearson! Cassandra has won her name in The Return Man!

Thank you deeply to everyone who entered — it was so much fun reading your entries. When I have a little more time, I’ll post a bunch (without any personal details) here on the site, so we can all have some fun seeing each other’s ideas. In total, there were 165 entries.

The winner was chosen at random. Rest assured, this did not involve throwing darts at a dartboard, any verses of “eenie meenie minie mo,” or smearing every winner’s name with peanut butter and seeing which one my dog licked. Instead, the following “double random” methodology was used:

1. Using the generators at Random.org, the list of entries was fed into a list randomizer and each entry received a random number from 1 to 165 (the total number of entries).

2. A random number generator then spit out another random number from 1 to 165.

3. The entry that matched the chosen random number won. In this case, Cassandra Pearson!

For anyone especially curious, the winning random number was the number 23 — which, if you’ve seen the Jim Carrey movie of the same name, should make us all very, very afraid.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone for your support as The Return Man draws closer to bookstores!

— Vincent