My parents used to take me to a lot of yard sales when I was a kid, and I usually had them buy me books (although it was at a yard sale that I found my first bowling ball, which I still own today). When I was in the first or second grade, my parents bought me used copies of two oversized hardcover books about the history of comic books in general. One was called COMIX, and the other was by Jules Fiefer, and was called THE GREAT AMERICAN COMIC BOOK HEROES. I was obsessed with both books, but COMIX introduced me to the concept of Horror Comics, namely E.C. Horror Comics from the 1950's, but also Horror Comic magazines like CREEPY and EERIE, which were clearly patterned after the old E.C. comics.
CREEPY and EERIE, like their predecessors, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, VAULT OF HORROR, and THE HAUNT OF FEAR, were all anthology magazines with different stories each issue, and each magazine had its own particular host character. CREEPY had Uncle Creepy, who looked like a gone-to-seed Undertaker. EERIE had Uncle Eerie, who looked like the inbred brother of Peter Lorie. The E.C. titles were all jointly hosted by The Crypt-Keeper (who, originally, looked nothing like the ghoulish corpse thing that hosted the HBO series that was based on the comic), the Old Witch, and the Vault-Keeper. Of the lot, my favorite is probably Uncle Creepy, mainly because just thinking about him brings back happy memories from my youth.
My father worked as Manager of several shoe stores throughout his life, and in the 1970's he spent a great deal of time working at a shoe store that wasn't all that far from our house. Sometimes he'd let me go to work with him on the weekends, and I'd wander around the little strip mall where the store was located. There was a nearby grocery store back then, and they always stocked the latest comic books and magazines that tickled my fancy, and there was a drug store, Eckerd's, that had a little diner in it, and we'd eat there every now and then before such a concept went the way of the dodo bird, as Eckerd's eventually did - long after my father's death.
One of my father's employees was a young man who loved reading EERIE and CREEPY. He'd bring them into the store, and read them when business was slow, and of course I eventually stumbled onto them. When I expressed my interest in them, this young man was nice enough to let me read them, and I was always enthralled. I don't recall every actually buying my own copy of an EERIE or a CREEPY, though, because my dad didn't approve of them. He was the associate pastor and song director of our little Independent Baptist Church, and we weren't even allowed to go to the movies when I was younger, despite the fact that he would watch whatever he wanted. And my dad and I would often stay up late on the weekends watching old HAMMER Horror movies from England, sometimes into the wee hours, on Friday, Saturday, and especially Sunday nights. WRAL in Raleigh showed a lot of old horror movies on the weekends back then, and so did TBS, who ran a weekend horror show called CREATURE FEATURE.
My favorite Saturday afternoon program was a kitschy thing called COMMANDER USA AND HIS GROOVIE MOVIES, which showcased the lamest and crappiest B-movies imaginably, with wrap-arounds featuring a fellow in a superhero costume sporting a painted-on face mask, smoking a cigar, and sporting gray streaked side burns like Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four. "The Commander" had occasional guests in his little segments, but he was always talking to his right hand, which he called "Lefty," which had a smiley face painted onto the palm. Those were the days.
WGN Chicago and WOR in New York also showed old horror movies, and as much as I enjoyed them, I preferred old Horror Comics to them, particularly EERIE, CREEPY, and E.C. titles, which I only ever got to borrow from friends. I didn't own a single E.C. title until nearly a decade after my father's death, when they were reprinted and released on a monthly basis - I bought every one I could get my hands on. Another decade later, I bought a few copies of EERIE and CREEPY, usually because I liked whatever was on the cover. I did, however, own a copy of a paperback featuring some older work in EERIE, but the only titles I was ever allowed to buy from their publishing company was FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILM-LAND, and the black-and-white adventure comic, THE ROOK, because the hero of the title was a cowboy, and my dad loved cowboys, particularly the Lone Ranger, his lifelong favorite character.
As an adult, I acquired every issue of THE ROOK ever released, and I own them to this day. Recently, I talked myself into believing that I never had the last two issues of that series, and bartered with a dealer for them, only to realize I already had them once they arrived in the mail. I probably need to sell them so they won't take up too much space in the already cramped suitcase that houses all the ROOK magazines, along with a few stray copies of EERIE, CREEPY, FAMOUS MONSTERS, PLANET OF THE APES, and a few other obscure titles from my childhood.
The young man who worked for my dad and let me read his old CREEPY and EERIE magazines was a dear friend to me, although we never interacted with one another outside the shoe store. His letting me read his comics kept me from having to sneak-read them in the grocery store while my parents shopped. Some of the covers were horrifying to me, and I'm sure they sometimes led me to have strange dreams. It was a sad day when my dad got the call that his employee had killed himself with a single bullet to the head. Dad went to his funeral, but he wouldn't let me go, and he never explained to me what happened. I don't even know if he ever really found out, to be honest. My memories of that young man are pleasant, but are now twinged with sadness at the thought of his ultimate demise.
Uncle Creepy, for some reason, must have had a particular resonance with me that I wasn't aware of, because - a few months ago - I had a dream in which he was featured, although I didn't recognize it was him until I saw some images of him while sorting through my old ROOK magazines recently (THE ROOK took my mind off my dad's suffering when he was ill with cancer, and will always hold a special place in my heart).
I was on a floating object in the swamp behind my mother's house, and Uncle Creepy was pushing us along by way of a large stick, like it was a gondola in Italy. He spoke not a word in this dream, nor did I. The water beneath us was beautiful, but the swampy smell was still there, as were all the sights and sounds from my childhood: the Spanish moss, the white sand beneath the water, and the mounds of dirt, which surrounded us as we floated along. Uncle Creepy was dressed as he always was, in black, with an ascot around his neck, and he slowly moved us along as if we had all the time in the world. I was merely along for the ride, although I knew we were headed to someplace specific but unknown to me.
Finally, we arrived at the spot where he wanted to take me, and he climbed off of our floating deck (I'm still not sure what it was), and he began to dig on the bank on which he'd climbed, pushing dirt and sand away as he uncovered something large, and black, and metallic. Water kept seeping into whatever it was that he was digging into - it looked somewhat like a safe to me - and then he came upon what looked like a door that was below water level, yet was planted on the sand bar on which he'd stopped our craft.
As is usually the case for me in my dreams, I moved something like a movie camera does, silently, and with no explanation. One moment I was on the floating vessel, and the next moment I was looking over Uncle Creepy's shoulder, down into the vault he'd uncovered. Suddenly, I realized it was a tomb, and I wholly expected to see a corpse inside the door he was opening. Instead, he pulled out aged flowers from a past graveside service or funeral, and tossed them over his shoulder, because he was looking for something else. And then he found what he was looking for, and he pocketed these treasured items, shut the vault door, and sat down upon the sand bar. When I got settled on the same sand bar, opposite him, he reached into his pocket, and tossed one of the objects he'd collected to me, and I saw that it was a piece of overly ripe fruit, orange and red in color.
I was hesitant to bite into the fruit, but because I trusted Uncle Creepy, I did it, and the taste was adequate, though not flavorful. It was juicy, but it tasted a little old, though not quite rotten yet. If it had been in the vault any longer, I assumed it would have been inedible, but it wasn't, and so we sat there and we ate the fruit from the vault. I have no idea in the world what it all means, if anything at all.
I dream often of my childhood home but, usually, I uncover secret rooms within its walls, where old treasures from my childhood are hidden. Strangely, though, these treasures are almost always items I was never allowed to have, or are collectible things that I wanted when I was a child, or are things that were never invented back then, but should have been.
My dreams are usually extremely vivid, but I could probably count on one hand the dreams I've had that dealt with the swamp behind my childhood home. After my father's death, I dreamed my father's coffin floated up from the swamp, and it opened, and he crawled out of it, a shambling and horrifying corpse, clearly the undead.
After my mother's stepfather died, I dreamed I'd murdered him and buried him in the swamp, and his arm was seen in the muck when the swamp waters receded. I knew the cops were coming, too, to investigate, and I can still recall the feeling of panic that followed when I awoke, my heart pounding with the anxiety engendered by all I'd fantasized in my sleep...
MORE TO COME!
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