There are two things that, if you know them, explain a lot about how I came to be the person I am. One is my lifelong obsession with the Universal movie monsters. You may place the blame for this squarely on one Mr. Dick Dyzel. He was the jack of all trades at the local independent tv station in Washington DC. He put on Mr. Spock ears and a futuristic uniform and became Captain 20 every afternoon, playing cartoons for the afterschool crowd. More importantly, on Saturday nights he became Count Gore DeVol, the vampire host of Creature Feature. Though Channel 20 is long since gone from its old indie days, Count Gore has a website (countgore.com) where he streams horror movies weekly to this very day. It is due, in no small part to him, that my love of vampires, werewolves and other denizens of the shadows started at a very early age.
The other thing you should know is that in my late teens and early twenties, I was smitten, practically to the point of decapitation, with the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen. Our relationship was more toxic than you could imagine: we romanced and fought and broke up and made up more times than we could count. Once I was reading an article about Frank Sinatra and the line came up “at this point, he was still strung out over Ava Gardner” and I felt someone could finally relate to the situation I found myself in. If I could have boiled this girl in a spoon and injected her straight into my veins, I would have, no matter how bad I knew she was for me.
One day in the early ‘90s, I was spending a very pleasant evening in a (now late and very much lamented) Borders Books and I came across a volume I knew was coming home with me: The Mammoth Book of Vampires. Easily three inches thick and chock full of short stories by a wealth of different authors, but one story hit me where I lived: Shambleau by C.L. Moore.
(Fairly) long story made short, our hero is the chisel-jawed Northwest Smith, a charming, space-faring rogue. Think Han Solo well before he was a gleam in George Lucas’s eye. He saves a girl from a very dangerous looking crowd who are chasing her, shouting “Shambleau!” He takes her back to his place and tries to take care of her, but she refuses all food. She doesn’t speak his language very well, but she says she’s not hungry, that she’ll eat later. Her head is wrapped in a turban but he sees a wisp of red “hair” once beneath it. She finally unwraps the turban completely and her head is covered, Medusa-like, in red worm-like creatures. They grow and surround our hero, “feeding” on him. His buddy Yarol finally comes to check on him and kills the Shambleau in true Perseus fashion, shooting over his shoulder by aiming in a mirror. Yarol shakes Northwest out of a trance and berates him “Didn’t you know what that was?” Yarol explains what they are and Northwest dejectedly asks “Are they really so rare that I’ll probably never see another one?”
The last stanza is Yarol: “I’ve never asked your word on anything, but I’ve earned this. If you see another one of those things, you’ll pull out your gun and burn it down where it stands. Swear to me!”
Northwest Smith, in a trembling voice, replied “I’ll… try.”
If ever there was a literary character I had so completely identified with, it was Northwest Smith at that moment. I read and re-read that entire book many times, and no doubt I will read it again before I’m done. Every flavor of vampire imaginable dwells between those covers, but none so real as the literary incarnation of my own redheaded vampire. Because if my best friend in the world had made me swear to him that after our last breakup, I would never call her or see her or talk to her ever again… my most honest answer would have been “I’ll… try.”
And that is how I came to know and love C.L. Moore.
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