Fear of Monsters Makes Monsters

Stephen Dobyns’s Church Of Dead Girls is not a novel I’ve heard of.  And after being forced to read it, I realize it’s not a novel I would’ve read of my own volition.  Other than the first few pages, the novel lacks any real scenes until well over three fourths of the book.  But after finishing the novel, I'm so glad I did.  

The story is told through the “tellings” (and I mean “tellings.”  Dobyns is proof that the idiom “show, don’t tell” is a flimsy rule at best.  And it’s a rule that’s meant to be broken) of a high school biology teacher who we know very little about.  Instead, the narrator informs us of everyone else in the town at great detail.  Most chapters, especially the first hundred or so pages, are character bios.  We learn character histories, friendships, courtships, all of which fleshes out Aurelius, NY to be a living, breathing place.  The town’s description is given briefly in the opening pages but through each exploration of the various residents, Dobyns is really fleshing out the small town of Aurelius until the town itself becomes a character of its own. 

The story, while told through gossip the biology teacher has picked up, focuses on the disappearance and murders of three teenage girls.  The murders are committed by an individual, a “monster,” who preys on young females.  But what Dobyns sets up is a dynamic in which the town itself is nearly just as bad as the monster that it bred.  The town is small, sheltered.  To Aurelius, the problems and issues of the outside world are just that: outside.  Outsiders aren’t trusted.  The people are, to use Chihani’s word, “ignorant.”  And it could be due to this ignorance, this “group thinking” a sheltered environment breeds, that create a monster as real as the one in flesh and blood. 

The first murder of the book (Janice) occurs years before the disappearance of the three girls.  But after this murder goes unsolved, the town turns their back on it.  They are so comfortable in their ways, they almost refuse to acknowledge that it occurred after a time.  It’s only when a young girl disappears, and then two more, that the town is forced to recognize what is happening.  And like mob-rule, they turn to outsiders first.  This is really when Aurelius, the character, shows her fangs.  This is demonstrated in the persecution, and eventual death, of Chihani.  Ironically, it is the town’s ignorance that kills Chihani.  The person of Aurelius is born, with each resident acting as a single synapse in the cognitive network.  The same goes for Paul Leimbach.  The police, while against mob-rule, are few in number and essentially powerless to stop the riotous Aurelius from lashing out in anger.  The Friends go on a witch-hunt in which any they claim are guilty, are guilty until proven innocent.  Even when the killer is discovered to be Donald Malloy, the town still defends the men who attacked and destroyed Leimbach’s house – a man who was wrongfully accused and attacked.  The narrator states that they claimed, “they were in the right.”  Aurelius had deemed him guilty, even for a few short moments, and therefore he will always remain guilty in her eyes.

But Dobyns doesn’t end it with the death of the killer.  That would be logical.  That would be easy.  Instead, he takes it a step further.  He goes on about how the mistrustful, riotous Aurelius character will always remain inside its residents, its synapses, even after the “monster” is dead.  Or even after they leave.  We discover that the monster is never truly dead to those that lived through it.  The town has experienced and done things it can’t undo.  The residents will forever remain distrustful of each other.  Their sense of oneness is shattered.  Their own, someone they trusted, had turned out to be a monster.  And in the closing lines, our nice biology teacher of a narrator exposes himself to be a bit on the monstrous side as well.  Donald Malloy had taken the left hands of every victim, including himself.  The narrator confesses that he took Malloy’s hand from the funeral home and places it among his own specimens.  And in this confession, Dobyns leaves us with a chilling notion that in perhaps destroying monsters, its not a far leap to become one yourself:  

“For me it’s a reminder of what is always there, of the longings that lie within people, the longings we hide within ourselves…I think of it as my private teacher…I try to think what those fingers felt and I scare myself: the necks of the tree girls, their tenderness” (Dobyns 388).  

No Gumption: On Robert Bloch's Psycho

I will start this by prefacing that I’m not a huge reader of horror.  In fact, some of the “horror” I have read, I wouldn’t even consider horror at all.  I think of them more along the lines of dark fantasy.  I’m talking about Stephen King’s Carrie and The Shining.  And I feel same way about Robert Bloch’s Psycho.  Now I don’t think of it as dark fantasy, but I do feel like it misses the mark to be constituted as “horror.”

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the novel.  I thought Bloch’s prose, and the fact that he put us in the shoes of the villain who didn’t know he was the villain for much of the novel, was incredibly effective.  Even if Hitchcock forever popularized this story, and everyone who reads it now, probably already is aware of the twist at the end, it was still a really refreshing read.  And Norman Bate’s characterization and relationship with his mother, are fascinating to watch play out.  The way he projects his misgivings and failures onto others that comes together in a climactic revelation at the end was masterfully done.  But I still don’t think of it as horror.  I found it more interesting, almost a character study, than horrifying.  And this is due to the fact that Norman, and his relationship with Mother, outshine what the actual story is about: catching the killer of Mary Crane.    

For instance, each murder, really the catalysts for every major plot point, are committed very briefly on the page.  The first murder, Mary, is committed because Norman projects onto her that she is teasing and judging him as he watches her through the crack in the office wall.  In his head, he blames her (as killers are want to do), and because of that Mother steps in and finishes the job.  But her actual death, the scene where she is actually attacked, is so brief.  It’s almost washed over.  Now this, in the context of the story, is due to Norman’s psychosis.  He has a split personality, so Norman blacks out, and Mother does the deed.  But as a writing technique, it makes the crimes themselves much less important.  It’s Norman, and his relationship with his mother, and all of what he does to protect her, that drives the story.  Sure, Mary’s sister and fiancé’s quest to find the whereabouts of Mary play a part, and the end of the novel obviously results because they complete their quest, but for me, that was only fueling the fire of Norman Bate’s characterization.  We see a distinct character arc from him over the course of the novel as each crime, makes him grow and strengthen.  And each stride for him is only achieved through his “interactions” with mother.  It isn’t the murders.  They help him, but its the taking ground from Mother that makes him grow.  And that is where the novel is.  

From the very first scene when Norman’s mother walks in on him reading, we are already locked in to who Norman is.  We see his meekness, and through his mother’s toxic berating comments, we understand how he got to be this way.  Just a brief snippet of the scene: 

           

“I make you sick, eh? Well, I think not.  No, boy.  I don’t make you sick.  You make yourself sick”

           

“That’s the real reason you’re still over her on this side of the road, isn’t it, Norman? Because the truth is that you haven’t any gumption.  Never had any gumption, did you, boy?

            

“Never had the gumption to leave home.  Never had the gumption to go out and get yourself a job, or join the army, or even find yourself a girl—“

            

“You wouldn’t let me!”

           

“That’s right, Norman.  I wouldn’t let you.  But if you were half a man, you’d have gone your own way” (Bloch 6-7).

What characterization!  This all occurs in the first scene.  These are the first lines of dialogue in the novel and what lines they are.  Bloch explodes these two characters to life and already we know exactly who they are.  They fly off the page.  Yet the crimes, each murder, the true reason (or reasons) the story takes place, is mostly washed over.  His grows every time a crime is committed, but that’s only because he feels emboldened to finally stand up to his mother.  Because he feels he is helping her by cleaning up her messes.  So, in effect, the crimes are essential but not the reason for his growth.  It’s Norman and his mother’s give, and eventual take, that are the meat of the novel.    

And that’s why I never felt horrified, or even dreaded, the pre-crime build up, or post-crime clean up.  It was Norman and his mother that were the most interesting.  For his is the one constant viewpoint throughout the novel.  Each chapter, Bloch reveals just a little more about their relationship until, at the end, we discover, that (spoiler) he had killed his mother and her lover and had been projecting her onto himself ever since.  And then once we discover that, it’s up to us to play back each scene and pinpoint all of the times that his mother was there.  And then we realize that he never did actually describe his mother.  She just always spoke, and it’s through her dialogue, and interactions with Norman that bring out her characterization.  Bloch lets us fill out her physical description.  And then we take it a step further and realize Norman makes his mother out to be an all-knowing, almost benevolent, woman.  She knows he was watching Mary in the shower, she spies on him in the swamp—we think they are just so close that it’s almost as if she can read his mind.  And we believe it.  And then at the end we discover the truth.  And it’s that discovery, that realization that their relationship was so well done that it existed on two planes: 1. in reality since we believe she is actual flesh and blood; and 2. in his head since we discover that she’s actually been dead the entire time, and not only did Norman have the rest of the world fooled that she was alive, he had fooled himself as well.  And it’s this that make this not only a great novel, but make them the driving force of this novel. 

So is that the reason this is horror?  Is it horrifying to be put in the shoes of a killer that is completely wrong in every sense of the word, and root for him because he’s just that compelling of a character?