Having lived through a horror story recently, I now must work more on mine. I have a werewolf story that I have been writing since the 1970’s. I have been calling it The Baby Werewolf for forty-two years. And that may have to change. It is a story of a boy with hypertrichosis (werewolf excessive hair disease, a genetic disorder) and the family that is ashamed of him and tries to hide him forever in the attic. Of course, if you know anything about me, you probably realize I am going to clown it up one side and down the other, because writing serious stuff is not my style… at least not without a “hefty helping of our hospitality”. I am doing serious research now, which translated from ManicMickian means, “I am watching old werewolf movies on YouTube.”
I know you don’t believe I can pull off a YA novel that is a comedy about murder, wolves, and lycanthropes, with naked girls thrown in for good measure. But watch me. I am nothing if not willing to do practically anything to be creative.
The Baby Werewolf
A Gothic Novel by Michael Beyer
Opus One – Of Wolves and Men
Canto One : “Homo Homini Lupus”
Dad doesn’t like it when I watch horror movies. He says they will give me nightmares. They will keep me from getting a good night’s sleep. And a farm kid needs his sleep because he has to get up early in the morning to check on the pigs, give them feed, and milk the cows. We only have five cows. Just enough to give the Niland family the milk it needs. We can process it ourselves because we once had a lot of milk cows. Not so much anymore. Things are changing in the 1970’s. But there I was that night watching The Wolfman on Grave’s End Manor the horror movie show that comes on CBS every week on Saturday… midnight.
I don’t always do exactly what Dad says. Fathers don’t really know everything. Well, not… everything, everything. So, I have this story now to tell you, and it’s a… well, horror story. It’s about werewolves. Little ones. And naked girls. And me being almost fourteen already, I have to get this story told while I can still remember every little detail. I just won’t show it to Dad. And if they make it into a movie, I will tell him not to go.
I was all by myself that night. The farmhouse was dark. Mom and Dad had taken my little brother Nathaniel to Grandma’s house and they were in Rochester, Minnesota for some medical thing. I was supposed to look after the farm and the pigs and the cows. Our big thirty-six-inch TV was capable of doing full color, but the horror movie on Saturday nights was almost always a black and white movie anyway. I was almost naked while watching it. I only had on my Fruit of the Looms and an old silver crucifix on a chain around my neck. It was something Great Aunt Hannah Foxworth had given Mom when she died. Hey, it was a werewolf movie after all.
Lon Chaney Jr. was the star of the movie, and he looked more like old Elmer Dawes from Norwall, Iowa than your usual movie star. But he was great in monster movies.
I have given you a picture Paffooney today of the tapestry created by the town of Rowan, Iowa for its centennial in 2002. I consider Rowan my home town. I was not born there, but it is the scene of most of my childhood. It shaped most of who I am and how I am and what I am. It is the scene of most of my fiction because that’s where the most valuable treasures of Truth are hidden, near the wishing wells of our youth. I keep it on my bedroom wall because, not only do Pooh and Fozzie like it to be there, it is a beautiful thing to look at and reflect upon. It keeps what is most important in my life in focus. I have a lot of physical pain from my six incurable diseases, and pain makes the focus blur at times. But pain is also the source of what wit and wisdom I have to offer. I will continue to contemplate and write and think and create… and draw. I will continue to post at least a portion of the results here. I do desire to make some money with my writing, but that is only a secondary concern. I am not really writing for the people who know me in real life. They already know me and made up their minds about me long ago. They might read this and that and recognize something of themselves, but they are not the ones I am speaking to at this moment. I am talking in prose to those who see my ideas for the very first time with new eyes, no preconceived notions about me. It is for them, the readers I do not personally know, that my magic spells are cast in words.
