1959: THE YEAR OF THE LEECH

by Mark McLaughlin

 

 

The little bell above the door tinkled as merrily as a drunken pixie as I entered PROFESSOR LaGUNGO’S EXOTIC ARTIFACTS & ASSORTED MYSTIC COLLECTIBLES.

 

“Good morning, Mark!” the Professor cried, grinding the butt of a cigarette into an ashtray made from the top half of a human skull.

 

“Professor, I didn’t know you smoked!” I had three reasons for being surprised to see him with a cigarette in hand.

 

Reason No. 1: He was incredibly old, and while smoking is unhealthy for anyone of any age, it must be especially bad for someone who’s been around for more than a century.

 

Reason No. 2: The shoppe was full of valuable antiques, all old and dry, so smoking presented a fire hazard.

 

Reason No. 3: I’d known the Professor for quite some time and had never seen him smoke before.

 

“You must be quite surprised to see me smoking,” the Professor said. “After all, I’m well over a hundred years old — it can’t be good for me! And, the shoppe is full of dry old things — a fire hazard if ever there was one! And of course, you’ve never seen me smoke before.”

 

Sometimes, it’s like he can read my mind.

 

“Right on all three counts,” I said. “So what’s up with the cigarette?”

 

“I only smoke one of these a year,” he said. “They come from my private collection of curios: cigarettes handcrafted by the occultist Aleister Crowley, made from leaves he’d picked from the Tree of Knowledge.”

 

“They must be all stale and moldy by now,” I said.

 

“Oh no, they shall remain fresh forever,” the Professor said. “They’re quite refreshing, but I only dare smoke one per year.”

 

I looked down at the charred stub in the ashtray. “What would happen if you smoked a second one right now?”

“Smoking one a year gives me the knowledge one needs to live an extremely long time,” the Professor said matter-of-factly. “Smoking two in one year would teach me why death is actually preferable to life.” The old man shrugged. “I’d rather not take that lesson.”

 

I decided to change the subject to something less depressing. “Professor, I’m really enjoying that ancient Lemurian time machine you sold me!”

 

“Oh, I’m so glad!” the Professor said. “I really am sorry it can only visit the dimension of old movies and television shows. It was broken when it came into the shoppe, and apparently the replacement parts I used from a film projector, a VCR and a couple old TV sets limited its capabilities.”

 

“No need to apologize — or to supply exposition,” I said. “You told me all that when I bought it.”

 

The Professor grinned. “Well, I know you’re a writer, so I said all that in case you put this conversation word-for-word in a story, or perhaps one of those Internet blogs I’ve been hearing about. So have you visited 1959?”

“Not yet!” I said. “Why? Do you think I should?”

 

“Certainly, yes! American was in an intriguing transitional stage in 1959,” he said, his eyes glittering with knowledge. But then, he’d just smoked that Crowley cigarette. “The traditional ways of the Fifties were soon to give way to the new permissiveness of the Sixties. Even in the counter-culture, beatniks were soon to be replaced by hippies.”

 

“And how is that transition reflected in the movies of 1959?” I asked.

 

“Excellent question! I could tell you the answer, but that would only spoil your fun.” The Professor absent-mindedly stroked a stuffed lizard on the counter. “I will tell you this: 1959 was the Year of the Leech! Now, let me show you some items that came into the shoppe earlier this week…”

 

Later that day, I did indeed visit 1959 — but before we get to that, let’s take a look at what happened in the world that year….

 

On January 3, Alaska was admitted as the forty-ninth American state.

 

On January 12, Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Motown Records.

 

On February 3, musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper died when their chartered plane crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa.

 

On February 16, Fidel Castro became the Premier of Cuba.

 

On March 9, the Barbie doll made her debut.

 

On April 9, NASA announced the selection of seven military pilots to become the first American astronauts.

 

On May 28, two monkeys, Able and Miss Baker, were the first living creatures to return from space, via the Jupiter AM-18.

 

On June 9, the USS George Washington — the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles — was launched.

 

On, July 8, Dale R. Buis and Charles Ovnand were the first Americans killed in action in Vietnam.

 

On July 17, an Australopithecus skull was discovered by Louis and Mary Leakey in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge.

 

On August 8, a flood in Taiwan killed 2,000.

 

On August 21, Hawaii was admitted as the fiftieth American state.

 

On September 14, Luna 2 crashed on the Moon — the first man-made object to do so.

 

On October 2, Rod Serling’s THE TWILIGHT ZONE premiered on CBS.

 

On November 18, MGM released BEN-HUR in Technicolor. It went on to win eleven Academy Awards, a world record until 1998, when TITANIC equaled the record.

 

On December 1, the Antarctic Treaty declared Antarctica to be a scientific preserve, free of military activity.

 

1959 was also the birth year of chanteuses Sade, Sheena Easton, Irene Cara and Marie Osmond; actors Kyle MacLachlan, Tom Arnold and Hugh Laurie; rapper Flavor Flav; gender-bending pop star Pete Burns; basketball player Magic Johnson; rock star Bryan Adams; comic musician “Weird Al” Yankovic; Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson; and murder victim Nicole Brown Simpson.

 

As I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries, the Time Machine of Terror!, or TMOT! resembles a giant, old-fashioned brass alarm clock with bat wings, and is invisible to anyone outside of the machine (it came with a tracking device in case I forget where I’ve parked it).

 

When I arrived in 1959, I decided to check out the Professor’s “Year of the Leech” reference by visiting THE LEECH WOMAN. This black-and-white potboiler concerns an amoral doctor who wants to learn how to make elderly women young and beautiful again. An incredibly old African woman offers him the information he’s looking for, provided he’ll help her to return to her tribe.

 

The sleazy doctor zips off to Africa with his aging, alcoholic wife in tow as a human guinea pig. He learns that older women can become young again if they drink a mixture of rare orchid pollen and male pineal-gland juice. Unfortunately for the doc, he soon becomes the pineal colada that restores his wife’s beauty.

 

Her newly restored loveliness, however, doesn’t last long, and so she has to kill and kill again to keep the glandular cocktails coming.

 

THE LEECH WOMAN didn’t feature any actual leeches, so I decided to hop over to ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES, which really does live up to its title. Man-sized leeches abscond with various citizens of a bayou town and hide them in a secret cave, so they have something to slurp on whenever they feel a little puckish … or suckish, as the case may be.

 

I continued to hop from movie to movie, hoping to discover the secret behind the Professor’s comment….

 

BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE features a storyline similar to that of ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES. An enormous, horrific, tentacled, thoroughly Lovecraftian spider-creature seizes local yokels and plasters them to the walls of its cave with webbing, so it can suck out some of their blood every now and then.

 

THE KILLER SHREWS takes place on a remote island where a science experiment has gone haywire, creating enormous, ravenous shrews that need to eat several times their bodyweight in food every day just to stay alive.

 

THE BAT is named after a masked killer who slays anyone standing between him and a fortune hidden in a mysterious mansion. THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL also presents us with a greedy fortune-hunter hatching a dastardly plot in an evil edifice.

 

In HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, an insane author kills a series of innocent victims so he can write best-selling books about the mysterious murders.

 

In THE BLOODY BROOD, wicked beatniks also kill the innocent for kicks … in BLOODLUST, a mad millionaire hunts down humans for his twisted amusement … and in A BUCKET OF BLOOD, a deranged beatnik artist murders folks and turns them into valuable works of art. Dig that crazy cadaver, daddy-o!

 

How right the Professor was! 1959 was indeed the Year of the Leech. In movie after movie, predatory creatures and maniacs slaughtered victims for nourishment, profit or sport. The conservative world of the Fifties was trying to convey a message, and that message was “HELP!” Traditional values were being sucked dry by an advancing wave of vampiric hedonism.

 

Happily-ever-after just wasn’t part of the picture in 1959 horror movies. In THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE, a lovely, starry-eyed young woman meets and marries a handsome, successful young man, only to discover that he is in fact … an alligator person. Goodness, what will the neighbors think? At least she found out before they had kids!

 

Even the wholesome concept of following in daddy’s footsteps was shot in the head in 1959. In RETURN OF THE FLY, a young scientist decides to pick up where his pappy left off — and becomes a ghastly insect-headed freak, just like the old man.

 

There was no one a person could turn to for solace or security in 1959. You couldn’t even trust the medical profession — just look at that despicable doctor in THE LEECH WOMAN. He wasn’t the only fiendish physician to grace the silver screen that year. You’d think a pathologist would want to keep people alive, but in THE TINGLER, the medic in question gleefully allows a helpless mute woman to die so that a centipede-like monstrosity can spring into being. Nice bedside manner, doc!

 

The movies of 1959 clearly depict the tail-end of an era in crisis. No more dads smoking pipes as they read the daily paper by the fireplace. No more moms in aprons baking apple pies. No more sons and daughters studying in libraries and sipping malts through bendy straws. Kiss those sweet images goodbye, because the Sixties soon ushered in an era of free love, long hair, and recreational drugs that conservative types found as frightening as any giant leech.

 

When I returned to the present day, I visited Professor LaGungo’s shoppe and told him of what I’d learned during my trip to 1959. He listened to what I had to tell him and then said, “Actually, my comment had nothing to do with any of that. By ‘leech’ I was referring to the 1959 movie, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, because everybody says it sucks … you know, like, um … a leech … my little joke….”

 

He paused, his cheeks pink with embarrassment. Finally he said, “Anyway! Let me show you some goodies that came into the shoppe about an hour ago…”

– End –

 

 

MARK McLAUGHLIN is part Greek, part Irish, part French, all terror. He is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of numerous story collections, including MOTIVATIONAL SHRIEKER, PICKMAN’S MOTEL, and TWISTED TALES FOR SICK PUPPIES, and co-author (with Michael McCarty) of the novel, MONSTER BEHIND THE WHEEL, the poetry collection, ATTACK OF THE TWO-HEADED POETRY MONSTER, and the Darkside Digital e-book, PROFESSOR LaGUNGO’S DELIRIOUS DOWNLOAD OF DIGITAL DEVILTRY AND DOOM.

 

To find out more about Mark’s work, visit www.myspace.com/monsterbook, www.skullvines.com, and/or enter McLaughlin into the search engine at www.horror-mall.com.

You know them from the office. See them at movie theaters, at restaurants and shopping malls. But when the sun goes down and the moon gets high in the sky, watch out, because the pizza delivery boy may be bringing something besides a large cheese and pepperoni. You might get the door closed, but grab your wolfs’ bane and silver trinkets.

This anthology is the follow up to Graveside Tales’ 2008 anthology The Beast Within. 2010 will see The Beast Unleashed.

We’re looking for stories that bring a new “twist” to the lycanthrope tale. The traditional lycanthrope stories are fine, but how many Romanian cursed, moor-bitten were-wolves can there be? Give us something original, Lycanthrope Steampunk, Lycanthrope Cyberpunk, Lycanthrope Gaslight. And remember there are more things that prowl by the light of the full moon. Don’t let wolves be the only outlet, not saying we won’t read them, but the more original the story the more likely it is to get more attention. Were-koalas, Were-ostriches, Were-seamonkies, nothing is out of bounds; just keep the ideas original and creative. Most importantly make sure The Beast is Unleashed.

What about new and unexplored realms of the beast. A world where they roam the land, day and night except during the cycle of the full moon when they’re vulnerable? Or an underwater realm where lycanthropes are only sea-beasts, the things legends are made of. Or alternate realities where lycanthropes are the predominate race Get your paws off you damn dirty wolf. Make it new, make it unique give it a new vantage point of the beast. Wolves may be traditional, think outside those boundaries.

What we’re not looking for, gore-porn, necrophilia, cruelty to animals or children, unless the stories demand it. And no hard-core porn please. Trapezes are fun in the circus, but not needed in a sex ritual between lycanthropes.

Stories should be in the 2,000 to 5,000 word range. Query for longer or shorter works. We’re not looking for novellas or for flash fiction.
Stories by electronic submission only. Files should be attached, not pasted into the body of the emails, in RTF or DOC format. Put your contact info in the email and on the first page of the story. Please also include bio and publishing history in the initial submission. Response time will be 2-3 weeks. New and original stories only, no reprints please. No simultaneous submissions please. If your story is chosen we’d buy FNAR in print and possibly e-book format. Reading period is from September 1st to December 31st or until filled. Publication is set for third quarter 2010.

Payment is $.01 per word and upon publication plus one copy of the
anthology. Additional copies can be purchased from Graveside Tales at a discounted rate.

Email submissions to: anthology@gravesidetales.com. Put TBW2 along with submissions title and word count in the subject line.

Want to get a good idea what we’re looking for pick up a copy of 2008’s The Beast Within available at Graveside Books, Amazon

New Ramoth. A city covered in scar tissue, where survival of the fittest decides who’s on top and crime is the only promotion system. Enter Eddie “Dog Boy” Gnash, ex-carnival freak turned private investigator. Now the bodies are piling up, and the fate of New Ramoth rests in the hands of this fur-covered freak— Eddie Gnash, Sideshow P.I.

“A tsunami of pulp-fiction violence, bodily fluids, and perverted sex. SIDESHOW P.I. is a weird but impressive twist on the private eye subgenre with a unique anti-hero that you won’t soon forget. This book will mess with your head in the best way possible. You can consider it horror fiction for gore-starved carnies. A true freak show.”

- Jordan Krall, author of SQUID PULP BLUES

“Nathaniel Lambert and Kevin Sweeney have worked seamlessly to create a page-turning powerhouse of a book. Vivid and brilliant, SIDESHOW P.I. is a must-have for any horror/bizarro collection.”

- Rio Youers, author of EVERDEAD and END TIMES

Available August 17th at http://gravesidebooks.com and other online and fine retailers.

Waaaaazzzzzuuuuuuppp!!! Welcome back to the Time Machine of Terror! (TMOT! for short).

A little exposition to set the stage for you: As I’ve mentioned in previous installments of this blog. I purchased the TMOT! at a groovy little emporium of second-hand horrors known as PROFESSOR LAGUNGO’S EXOTIC ARTIFACTS & ASSORTED MYSTIC COLLECTIBLES.

The TMOT! bears more than a passing resemblance to a giant, batwinged alarm clock. It can only visit the movies and TV shows of other time periods, for you see, it was broken when shopkeeper Professor Artemis LaGungo acquired it. The prof’s attempts to repair it with spare parts from VCRs, TVs and film projectors only partially fixed it.

Today we’re going to visit 1984, the year my favorite song was released — YOU SPIN ME ROUND (LIKE A RECORD) by Dead or Alive.

YOU SPIN ME ROUND came out in England on Nov. 4, 1984. It reached No. 1 in England in March 1985, and in the United States, peaked at No. 11 in September 1985.

English author George Orwell once wrote a bleak novel called NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, published in 1949, in which he predicted that the future would be ruled by a harsh, totalitarian regime. Well, ya know what? George was wrong. As wrong as 2 + 2 = 73.

You see, George hadn’t figured YOU SPIN ME ROUND into the equation. Really, how could the world ever become a repressive dystopia with that high-energy dance hit rockin’ the house with a strong song? All I can say to George is: You’re a fine writer, but leave the predictions to Nostradamus.

Let’s spin the hands of time round (like a record) back to 1984 and see what else was happening:

On January 24, the Apple Macintosh was introduced to the world.

On February 8, the 1984 Winter Olympics opened in Sarajevo, and closed on February 19.

On March 22, teachers in Manhattan Beach, California, were charged with ritualistic abuse of preschool students. The charges turned out to be unfounded and were dropped.

On April 4, U.S. President Ronald Reagan called for an international ban on chemical weapons.

On April 6, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

On May 23, a methane gas explosion killed sixteen at the Abbeystead water treatment works in Lancashire, England.

On June 8, a tornado ripped apart Barneveld, Wisconsin, injuring almost two-hundred people and killing nine.

On July 18, James Oliver Huberty went on a shooting spree at a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, California, killing twenty-one people before he was eventually shot and killed.

On July 23, Vanessa Williams resigned as Miss America after nude photos of her appeared in PENTHOUSE. Happily, her career recovered and she’s now known as the mean fashion queen on UGLY BETTY.

On August 30, the space shuttle Discovery blasted off on its maiden voyage. It came back on September 5.

On October 5, Marc Garneau, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, became the first Canadian in space. On October 11, also aboard the Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to perform a space walk.

On October 31, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh security guards. In the riots that followed in New Delhi, 2,700 Sikhs died.

On November 6, Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale in the presidential election with 59 percent of the popular vote, the highest since Richard Nixon’s 61 percent victory in 1972.

On November 25, the group Band Aid, composed of thirty-six U.K. musicians, recorded “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia.

On December 3, a chemical leak from a pesticide plant in India killed an initial 2,000-plus people and injured up to 22,000 more. In time, 6,000 of the injured victims died as a result of the incident.

During the year, the Transformers, cartoon-stars-turned-toys, made their debut and spread quickly across America. Here are some more outstanding 1984 debuts:

Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook, was born May 14. America Ferrera, star of UGLY BETTY, was surely a super-cute baby when she was born April 18. Actress Scarlett Johansson arrived pink as a bunny’s nose on November 22.

Singer Ashlee Simpson was born October 3. Her older sister Jessica, born July 10, 1980, recorded a super-lame version of YOU SPIN ME ROUND before she turned her talents toward country music. See? It all comes back to that song.

What else was spinning in 1984? Well, it was a great year for big hair, with little fans in millions of hair-dryers spinning furiously as nightclub studs and hotties blow-dried their moussed-up coiffures. Now let’s take a look at some of year’s horror movies–

What the–? The TMOT! is spinning out of control! It wants to stop at 1989 instead of 1984. But why?

The TMOT!’s chronometer indicates that we’re being pulled into the wrong year because of some other Eighties’ influence with a ‘4′ in it … a ‘4′ which is exerting a very strong suction….

Of course! AMITYVILLE 4: THE EVIL ESCAPES was made in 1989, and it sucks with the inescapable power of an intergalactic black hole!

Patty Duke stars as a widow with three children who moves back in with her mother. Unfortunately, her mother has just received a huge clunky lamp as a surprise gift. The lamp had been obtained at a yard sale — and in what yard had that sale been held? The accursed front yard of the haunted Amityville house!

It turns out that the evil of the Amityville house had fled into that lamp during an exorcism, and now that very evil has been transferred, via the lamp, into the same house as Patty and the gang. And since the evil has lived in a lamp, it has gained the power to tinker with the mechanical world, and soon an electric tea-kettle, a chainsaw, a garbage disposal, and even the house’s plumbing are out of control.

In the end, the evil transfers into the family cat, Pepper — and now Pepper and AMITYVILLE 4 are trying to take control of the TMOT!

Fortunately, I have a few occult tricks up my sleeve. I shall tap into the ancient powers of the 1974 made-for-TV movie, THE CAT CREATURE, starring Gale Sondergaard and Meredith Baxter. Meredith plays a seemingly meek clerk at an occult goods store who turns out to be a reanimated mummy. Meredith looks a bit more Irish than Egyptian, so I guess reanimated mummies are masters and mistresses of disguise.

I shall now call upon Bast, the Egyptian cat deity worshipped by Meredith Baxter in THE CAT CREATURE. “Hey, mighty Bast, it is I — Mark McLaughlin, your favorite minion and a true Bast-ard. Please tell Pepper and AMITYVILLE 4 to stop screwing with the TMOT! Thanks, love ya! Call me, we’ll do lunch!”

Okay, now let’s take another look at the controls. Ah! Back on track! 1984, here we come! First stop: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.

Like the original HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY THE 13TH, and MY BLOODY VALENTINE (all of which have since been remade), A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is one of those movies where young people seem to get hacked up by boogeymen whenever they party, have sex, or basically do something naughty.

Of all those horrific coming-of-age tales, NIGHTMARE stands out from the pack because a.) It isn’t centered around a holiday, b.) Freddy’s victims include innocent children, and c.) It was the first of the bunch to have a clearly supernatural villain.

More clarification on c.): The pick-axe-swinging miner in MY BLOODY VALENTINE was a mere mortal. Michael from HALLOWEEN started out as just an extremely resilient psychopath: later, the sequels made him supernatural. The same with Jason, who wasn’t even the killer in the very first FRIDAY THE 13TH.

But NIGHTMARE’s Freddy–! He was psychotic before he died, and supernatural, powerful and exponentially MORE psychotic after his death.

Plus, he doesn’t just kill his victims, like the others. Freddy claims and imprisons their souls to give himself more power. Basically, he has made himself into a localized and self-contained version of Satan and Hell, rolled into one. That makes the coming-of-age aspect of NIGHTMARE even more tragic: the victims are on the verge of becoming adults, but they’re chopped down by Freddy before they ever get the chance. Their future is Freddy’s fuel.

PHENOMENA, also known as CREEPERS, is a coming-of-age story about a teenage girl coping with all the changes that come with growing up. Aaaww, just like the girls on the old TV show, THE FACTS OF LIFE. But unlike those sitcom girls, she’s also coping with the following unusual concerns:

1.) Her rich actor-dad has sent her to a foreign boarding school.

2.) All her schoolmates have the hots for her dad, because he’s a handsome leading man.

3.) A crazed killer is brutally murdering area residents, including students at the school.

4.) She can telepathically communicate with and control insects — especially those of the winged variety.

The FACTS OF LIFE gang never had to fight vicious psychopaths or summon clouds of flying things with their minds!

The director of CREEPERS, Dario Argento, really likes to mix things up, and in this one, he succeeds in creating one of the most unpredictable movies you could ever hope to watch. He even throws in Donald Pleasance with a Scottish accent — and a chimp!

In CHILDREN OF THE CORN, based on a Stephen King story, the kids in a small, secluded rural town start their own cult, and in this religion, coming of age means it’s time to die. All adults are killed off, unless the kids have some practical use for them.

So what kind of religion requires children to slaughter their parents, you ask? Basically, these apple-cheeked young zealots pray to an amorphous demon called He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Kids! You never know what they’ll worship next!

The best coming-of-age horror movie of 1984 has to be THE COMPANY OF WOLVES, a stylish fantasy-horror film, directed by Neil Jordan and based on the werewolf stories in Angela Carter’s story collection, THE BLOODY CHAMBER.

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES concerns the old-world dreams of a contemporary young lady. No one in her family understands her, so she dreams up a Gothic fairy-tale realm where storybook adventures come alive — usually with a horrific, often erotic twist. Little Red Riding Hood finds herself mighty attracted to a mysterious, well-dressed but somewhat hairy nobleman — a wolf in chic clothing if ever there was one.

Like I said, 1984 was a great year for big hair, and you’ll find hair to spare in this strangely beautiful, beautifully strange movie. Long after you’ve watched it, you’ll remember its haunting images. For example, there’s one scene where a peasant lad in the woods suddenly encounters a Rolls Royce with a wicked but elegant passenger….

Hey, what’s that noise? Sounds like something’s scratching at the TMOT! Let me just take a look in the rear-view mirror–

Will ya look at that! It’s that darned Pepper, clawing at the door. Why, he’s been hanging onto the TMOT! since 1989. He must be sick of AMITYVILLE 4. Can’t say that I blame him!

Well, he’s been hanging on for so long, I’d hate to send him spinning round (like a record) into the time/space vortex. And now that I think of it, my cat would probably enjoy some companion while I’m at work. I guess I’ll keep him!

Until next time!

#  #  #

MARK McLAUGHLIN is mostly Greek but also part-Irish and part-French. But please, stop talking about his parts … you’re making him blush. He is the author of the story collection, TWISTED TALES FOR SICK PUPPIES, and co-author (with Michael McCarty) of the novel, MONSTER BEHIND THE WHEEL, the poetry collection, ATTACK OF THE TWO-HEADED POETRY MONSTER, and the Darkside Digital e-book, PROFESSOR LaGUNGO’S DELIRIOUS DOWNLOAD OF DIGITAL DEVILTRY AND DOOM.

McLaughlin has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award many times and has won once. The award can be found in his closet next to a vanilla-scented air-freshener. To find out more about Mark’s work, visit www.myspace.com/monsterbook, www.skullvines.com, and/or enter McLaughlin into the search engine at www.horror-mall.com. Peace out!