My sympathies have always been with the monsters. Growing up, they were my friends. I read about them in Famous Monsters and Fangoria magazines, and in my cherished collection of EC Comics reprints. I sketched them on childhood ruled paper pads, and in the margins of my textbooks. I imagined meeting them on my Saturday walks through deep woods. By the time I grew up and realized that the monster was a metaphor - that we were all monsters - it was too late: the love of dark things had taken root in my soul, where it still grows, albeit wrapped now, like some subservient vine, to the foot of a cross.
This little collection is full of the sorts of delicious dark things little me would love to have had on his boy-bedroom shelf. I would have put the Severed Ear right next to my Universal Monster models, and the Backwoods Babies in their boxes on my dresser next to the paperbacks of Poe and Bradbury. I'd have put on a Don Post mask and recited from the framed Vade Retro Satana exorcism ritual through the mask's sweaty mouth opening, garbling the Latin but sure that now I had Old Scratch where I wanted him.
My mother would have rolled her eyes.
I'll add more oddities as they come to mind and heart. And when I am gone, I hope this little shop of horrible collectibles outlives me. I've loved horror with all my heart since I was young. I'm ever grateful to have been a small part of it as I have grown old. Long live the monsters. ~ Bill
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