MARILYN AND THE WEREWOLF
It was my mom that got me into horror movies and all things scary. Whether she knew it or not, her interest in the macabre and the dark drew me to it and set me on the path that lead me to where I am and who I am. My mom was a voracious reader and loved reading the likes of STEPHEN KING, JOHN SAUL, and DEAN KOONTZ to name a few. I think it’s safe to say that she inspired my love of similarly dark fiction. The same can be said for my love of horror films. I still remember watching John Carpenter’s THE THING for the first time and having to sleep on the floor of my parent’s room that night, scared to death of what I had watched. So scared that I woke in the middle of the night to look up at my mother and see her transform into something horrible. I have loved that movie ever since.
Mom was a shy artist. She drew beautifully, could paint, could sew, could decorate, and the last art she had fallen in love with and really pursued was carving fruits and vegetables into shapes. Why she stopped pursuing art I’ll never know. It makes me sad that she did though, because it seemed to give her joy. We tried to encourage her and towards the end of her life she started to try drawing again but wasn’t happy with the results and didn’t pursue it further.
I said it before, in another post, but it’s worth repeating that I am the child of two parents and as such I have both of them in me in different ways. If I step back I can see what I got from both though people don’t usually work that way. We’re a mix of our parents and everyone that has an impact on us. A mix of the good and the bad and there’s places where it’s hard to know which is which and what came from where.
I can see in myself the eyes of my mother.
In my chest I can feel the heart of my mother.
In my ears I can hear the voice of my mother.
But she is still gone.
And there’s no changing that.
At the end I could offer no comfort she could hear. Could offer no solace she could feel. And could not ease the pain that she had to go through to find her peace.
Knowing all of that I didn’t know what to do with this chest of sorrow that I was suddenly saddled with. I had no idea where to put it or what to do with it. This book is the best I could come up with. My small way to say goodbye to boy my mother and to the dog my wife and I had adopted just four months before she died. This book is my way to honor mom and Banshee and a lot of other people who touched my life or the life of someone else I love. This is a book of ghosts, but these are ghosts that just want to tell you a story, not to scare you. And I suppose that is what life is, full of ghosts, speaking to us, whispering into our ears as we sleep and telling us their stories in the hopes that we won’t forget them.
This is my way of keeping mom, and Banshee, and some other people that mean a lot to me.
It’s my hope that in some small way I captured a bit of the light of mom and Banshee and I can pass on something of the magic that made them who they were. This is my way to whisper their names into the ears of everyone who will lend them and I hope that the story finds the people that need it.
MARILYN AND THE WEREWOLF
(Kindle available now, physical book available in a few days)
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 