Introduction to What We Talk About When We Talk About Horror and Other Stories

What I’m about to write won’t sound like your usual introduction to a collection of short stories, especially not someone’s first collection. For one thing, I’ve decided to write it myself instead of asking someone like Clive Barker, Stephen King (like either of them would say yes), or Hal Archibald. Don’t know that last name? Not many people have, not even the people who voted to give the Stoker Award to the title story of this collection a couple of years ago.

I guess I shouldn’t say anything else without first thanking all of you who helped make “What We Talk About When We Talk About Horror” the winner that year. I feel tempted to call you all dumbasses, but I remember how warmly you applauded when you saw me climb onto the stage, a shy girl with greasy hair hanging over her eyes, probably looking disheveled, like she just crawled out of a well or a forgotten grave in a lonely field somewhere, probably with bugs crawling all over her skin. Walking onto stage and accepting an award doesn’t come easy for someone like me, so I hope you all can understand why I didn’t give a speech or say anything after shaking hands with Mr. Arnzen. I stumbled away as fast as possible, leaving Mr. Arnzen with the awkward task of filling in the silence that followed. As for what Mr. Arnzen said, I have no idea. Maybe something like, “There she goes, ladies and gentlemen, Anabelle Claude.” Clap, clap, clap.

Not long after that, I started getting letters with questions about that story, as well as the others in this collection. Not the usual thing, like where do your ideas come from. More like: Are you the girl in the story?

Okay. Since you either bought this book or checked it out (support your local libraries, people!), you deserve to know.

Yes. I am the girl who shows up to the meeting in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Horror.” By the time I accepted the Stoker Award for that story a few years after that, I changed very little from the girl who walked into that tiny conference room in the public library hoping to hear a scary story, only to find out that she walked into a pack of actual werewolves in the act of preparing a ritual that would turn them into gnarly monsters right in front of her eyes.

Oops, spoiler alert in case you haven’t read the story. But seriously, fuck you, because if you don’t know how the title story ends, you definitely don’t know the important facts about Hal Archibald.

Nor should you necessarily. When I saw his flier in the library, I didn’t know him, either. By that time, he’d published a couple short stories, solely in non-paying markets. Still, he tried to pass himself off as some kind of accomplished literary type, the sort that warranted holding a talk at the public library—All About Writing Horror, promised his flier. That sounded like something special to my ghoulish little brain. Hear Local Horror Author Talk Shop, it went on to say. I interpreted these words as a promise that someone would tell me a scary story. Who can resist that? Like the girl in the story, I’d just reached the age of fourteen, but I read well above my grade level, though I faked having much poorer skills in schools, hoping that would help me better fit in, or at least not get picked on so much. Plus, I had real taste for the weird and macabre, and the skull graphic on the flier called to me, telling me I needed to show up to that conference room on the scheduled afternoon (free and open to public), thinking I would experience something truly inspiring, and do it within my nonexistent budget. I wanted to hear stories that made me feel something for a change.

But one look at Hal Archibald told me I made a mistake. Yes, I based the author in my story on him, and perhaps I described him in an unkind way. The character in the story appears short and portly, but actually, Hal Archibald stood at medium height and had a decent build. Not fat at all. Plus, he had all his hair.

In any case, I didn’t make up the words on his sign: What We Talk About When We Talk About Horror. Later, I would learn that these words riffed on a title by Raymond Carver, a much more renowned writer than Hal Archibald. I liked that title. Obviously, since I used it for the title of the story and eventually this book.

Take note, future literary historians!

Naturally, no one turned into a werewolf. I made up that part. Nor did I think of myself as an innocent “Little Red Riding Hood” in a room full of hungry. I’m sure as fuck not innocent, which you will soon find out.

Besides Hal Archibald, only two other people occupied the room, the conversation already cooking. One of them, a male college student, fawned all over Archibald, pretending to know his work in order to curry favor. Later, I would come to know that virtually no one had ever read a single word by Archibald. The other person was a woman in her forties, apparently someone who hoped to escape the rut of her life by starting a writing career, and she wanted to pick Hal Archibald’s brain to find out how to do that exactly. Unlike the college fanboy, she made no secret of the fact that she’d never heard of Archibald’s work.

“Where can I find your writing?” she asked him. “Can I check it out here?”

Of course, she couldn’t. I doubt any libraries carried any of the two publications that contained Hal Archibald’s name in the table of contents.

My grand entrance occurred right before this stage of the conversation. Unlike the girl in my story, no one made me go inside that room, no grandmother with an armful of books, impatient for alone time and thus eager to pass off her recalcitrant charge onto a group of adults gathered for their own special purpose. Abandoned to the wolves, you might say.

Nothing like that. No one even drove me to the library. I walked there on my own two feet. I entered the room at my own free will.

But something felt wrong, almost from the start. No, not felt. Smelled. I could sense it like an animal can smell fear or the threat of violence.

Maybe I was the real werewolf.

It didn’t help that Hal Archibald noticed a trace of hesitation in me as I entered the room. Maybe he smelled something, too. The three of them sat at a conference table in a room with one glass wall, and he gestured to the empty seat next to him, his demeanor like that of a friendly uncle who carries broken glass in his pocket instead of candy.

I maintained the posture that kept me alive until that point, the one I practiced to perfection: my shoulders slightly slumped so that my hair covered my eyes and no one could ever see me.

(I overheard Mr. Arnzen say that he felt “creeped out” while giving me the Stoker because he couldn’t see my eyes. He also didn’t see me standing behind him when he made that remark. He did, however, hear me when I leaned forward in his direction and whispered boo! That caused him to spill his red wine all over his nice tie. I hope you can forgive that little joke, Mr. Arnzen.)

Hal Archibald continued talking while I took a seat next to him, but both people in his audience regarded me uneasily. Looking back, I wonder if they suspected something staged, like Hal Archibald and I planned my entrance together. Not to sound too overdramatic, I must have looked like something out of a horror story myself, this girl with oily skin and uncontrollable acne, not all prettied up like a princess.

I abhorred pretty princesses then. I still mostly do.

If they expected my head to turn completely around, I couldn’t have accommodated, but I could at least look sullen. I certainly didn’t want to appear eager to sit in their presence and bathe in the glow of Hal Archibald’s presence. Did I, on the other hand, want to hear stories of glorious murder and knife wounds glistening red under a harvest moon? Of course.

But I couldn’t bring myself to say such things. Not even when a natural pause occurred in the conversation and Hal Archibald turned to me so he could ask, “What about you? What do you like to talk about when you talk about horror?”

What did I like to talk about? He was the author, after all, not me.

But what things I could talk about now! I have a whole list. Mostly names of pretty princesses, which you’ll learn about shortly.

But back then my tongue froze. With my eyes cast down, hidden behind my own hair, I simply nodded. On the table sat a leather-bound notebook that belonged to Archibald. I stared at that, waiting out the silence, which Archibald finally broke by giving them advice on where to find markets for short stories, how to write a good cover letter, and so on. I listened, even absorbing a few things, but ever aware of the tension created by my mere presence. Keeping my gaze on that notebook kept me centered, the way school counselors taught me when they tried to keep me out of trouble. I wonder if Archibald noticed where my eyes landed because he started referencing his notebook, talking about how he scribbled outlines and sketches on its pages, later typing them up and sending them out for publication.

Each time he tapped its cover with the tips of his fingers, it seemed to glow, taking on a special aura. It held secrets, I sensed, the kind of stories I hungered to hear, the whole point of me coming to this gathering in the first place, the reason I walked all those blocks with cars whizzing past me, waiting for yet another driver to toss an empty bottle of beer at me (that happened a few times, I’m sad to report).

But it turned out that I withstood that hardship just to hear him prattle on, trying to impress a lonely woman and a stupid college kid. What a monumental waste of time.

Finally, the woman asked a question, and Hal Archibald said, “Why, I can show you a resource for that. They keep the latest edition of The Writer’s Market Guide right here in the reference section.”

His two-person audience expressed excitement over such a profound revelation. Quite suddenly, everyone got up from their seats, eager to follow their fearless leader to the stacks to find this remarkable tome of information.

Everyone but me.

And he left his notebook behind. Just sitting there within reach.

So I took it.

I’d never stolen anything before, aside from things I needed—a few dollars out of my mom’s purse, a carton of milk from the school cafeteria (only I think the lunch lady let me do that). Nothing like this notebook, though. I imagined that it might even burst into flame the moment I touched it, as if it were a sentient thing and sensed fingerprints belonging to someone other than its rightful owner. I stood frozen momentarily with it in my hand, wondering if I could go through with doing what I really wanted to do.

I could see Hal Archibald and his acolytes through the glass, their backs to me, all looking down at the golden object in this hand.

At any moment, they would return.

So I pressed the notebook to my flat chest and ran. I ran past the shelves, past the circulation desk and the twitchy librarian who sat there, watching me with jittery eyes as I headed toward the parking lot and the litter-choked county road and the long walk back to my bedroom. Only when I made it there safely did I dare open the cover of the notebook and look inside.

Reader, you probably know that my stories began appearing a short time later. Not right away. It took some work to decipher the scrawl I found inside those pages. Only then did I realize what he meant by “outlines and sketches.” Any thought I had about simply reading them for pleasure went out the window. They needed a lot of work. I almost didn’t notice the names, but when I did, they stopped me cold.

Julia Martin

Mary Augustin

Briana Buckley

Three pretty princesses. You can tell just from the names. But I knew one of them, Julia Martin, because she went to my school, just one grade above me, though that didn’t stop her from acting cruelly toward me. One time, she saw me steal a carton of milk from the cafeteria, and she ratted me out before I could get even so much as a sip out of it. At the time, I figured that Julia could have pretty much anything she wanted at home and never had to steal anything out of necessity. I resented her a great deal for what she did, especially when detention resulted from her squealing. Even worse, afterward, she made fun of me relentlessly. Not everyone could have clothes as fancy as those worn by Julia Martin, or clear skin or silky hair too shiny to hide behind.

But I’ve let go of any grudges or resentment after Julia Martin disappeared. Fliers appeared with her name and picture, including in the library.

At first, I considered the possibility that Hal Archibald came across Julia’s name when he came in to do one of his talks for college students and bored adults. Maybe he liked the name and planned to use it for a character in a story. Maybe he wanted to write a story about her disappearance.

I thought of all those things, but what about the other names?

Well, that called for some research, so I braved the county road again, hoping no one would throw anything at me this time. I also worried about running into Hal Archibald himself. No doubt he wanted that notebook returned to him. Imagine the fury and confusion he must have felt when he returned to the meeting room, his ego blazing with the adoration of his followers, only to have it all deflate when he found his notebook gone, along with me. What if that happened to you? Wouldn’t you question everyone in the library? Wouldn’t you interrogate the librarian at the circulation desk, threaten to slide a white-hot poker up one of her tender orifices until she divulged information about the weird kid with stringy hair who ran out of there like her life depended upon it? No doubt he got into his car and drove up and down the roadways, on the watch for my scrawny ass. Only a miracle accounted for the fact that he didn’t find me.