Welcome to “Dread on Arrival,” the author’s “living” journal about writing THE CLIFFSIDE CHRONICLES.
In addition to the latest news about the books, “Dread On Arrival” is where you’ll find horror movie and book reviews, my takes on writing in general and on the horror genre in particular, and essays regarding my own highly personal journey from discovering a love of books at age 4 to writing the Chronicles over 60 years later.
And, yes, if you don’t have a Post It covering your webcam, I’m watching you reading this right now.
Where It All Began
The following piece (haha) chronicles the first idea for a scary story that I ever had, back in June 1969 when I was between 6th and 7th Grades. When I finally started junior high at Cornwall Central High School – the model for Landing High in THE CHRONICLES – that Fall, I didn’t do anything else with the concept. Instead, I wrote a goofy James Bond parody for Mr. David Weidner’s English class, encouraged by his student teacher at the time, a Miss Donahue (I don’t remember her first name). Miss Donahue was young, bubbly, and energetic, and championed my creativity that year. She reminds me in retrospect of Miss Alice Johnson, the student teacher in Season 1 of the TV series ROOM 222, played by the effervescent Karen Valentine.
October 12, 2024
Well before the movie DOG SOLDIERS came out, during the first of my two 10-day-long stints in the West Point Hospital, I got an idea for a horror story that turns out to not be too different from the story told in that 2002 film about a squad of soldiers fighting for survival against a pack of werewolves tracking them after what starts out as a military training exercise in the Scottish Highlands.
Regrettably, I never developed the idea further. In fact, I’d totally forgotten about it until I ran across the notebook in which I scribbled a few things about it in a trunk in the attic of my parents’ house a few years ago. Then the full set of circumstances that led to the concept came back.
Both hospital stays occurred in July, the first in 1969 (7th Grade) and the second in 1971 (9th Grade). I was in for surgery on my wonky left leg, guaranteeing I’d spend the hottest days of the summer in a hip-to-tie cast and begin the school year on crutches.
Both times, I was in a ward with cadets that had gotten injured during what was then called “Recondo” training, which was held at one of the Point’s two outlying infantry training camps, Camp Buckner (the other being Camp Natural Bridge). Recondo was held every Summer (my Dad ran the mess hall out there for years, along with his regular supervisory duties at the Cadet Mess on post), and every “yearling” (cadets that had completed their plebe year and would enter their second in the Fall) had to go through it.
The term Recondo is derived from RECONnaissance commanDO. The main part of Recondo training usually involved an upperclassman leading a small reconnaissance team comprising yearlings on patrols “deep behind enemy lines” (in this case, the rugged forests in the mountains north of the camp). The training involved long hikes with “full packs,” scaling cliffs, crossing streams, establishing camps and setting up defensive perimeters, spotting for artillery, and even engaging in mock firefights with “opposing forces.”
The notebook is dated July 1969, so I had just turned 12 the month before, and the cadets I shared the ward with were probably all 18 and 19. While they primarily chatted up the candy stripers, I spent most of my days reading, doing paint-by-numbers (two of which have survived, believe it or not), and writing whatever popped into my head in a big, lime green, hardcover U.S. Government “Record” book with a Skilcraft ballpoint. We always had both around the house, as we lived on military bases for years.
The two cadets that I remember best, because they were the only two that actually gave me the time of day, were Buzz and Jim. I can’t remember their last names, so I can’t presently Google what might’ve become of them. My Dad used to say that Buzz would be a general someday, but maybe one or both washed out. I’ll never know. They were opposites, with Buzz the gregarious one and Jim the silent type. I can’t recall exactly why Buzz was in the hospital, but I remember that Jim was in because of a crushed testicle. Not something you’d forget, right? I remember cringing when he told me. I don’t know if they had to remove it or what. Probably. If I was writing about him in a book today, he’d be called “One Ball.” Of course.
The three of us would usually eat breakfast together, Buzz and Jim having pulled up chairs around my bed. My favorite (and the best-tasting) meal in that joint was, by far, breakfast, and my favorite breakfast was grits and sausage. I liked my grits heavily buttered with lots of pepper, and still do. I’d developed a taste for them when I was 2 or so because our next-door neighbor, from somewhere in the South, would make me a bowl from scratch every morning.
After breakfast, Buzz and Jim would then spend the rest of the morning lounging in the long sunroom that ran the full length of one side of the hospital, just off our 3rd floor ward, sitting in wicker chairs and reading sci-fi novels and dirty magazines. They’d return to the ward in time for lunch, served by the candy-stripers, which served as a masterclass in flirting as I watched from my bed, not that I would apply what I observed any time soon.
All the patients, including me, were dressed in Army-issue striped pajamas, bright royal blue robes with a caduceus embroidered in white over the left breast pocket, and white terry cloth slippers. (A caduceus is a winged staff with two snakes wrapped around it, and is the symbol of the U.S. Army Medical Corps.) In retrospect, we probably looked like a room of Forest Gumps from the hospital scenes in the movie, you know, after he gets shot in the “Butt-TOX.” We, however, did not have a ping pong table or get all the ice cream we could eat.
Right after my surgery, I didn’t get ambulatory for a few days, but once I got my old-school wooden crutches I would spend a lot of time in that high-ceilinged sunroom, imagining that was where future generals like Patton and Eisenhower might’ve sat when recuperating from an injury sustained during their days as West Point cadets. But I never could find those dirty magazines Buzz and Jim were reading and always tried to hide when I crutched past, trying to get the hang of using those things, and seeing how fast I could cover the distance from one end to the other in something akin to “giant stride” mode.
The sunroom decor was reminiscent of one you might find at a military post in the tropics, perhaps Hawaii or Panama. Lots of plants, deep copper-colored tiled floors, slowly turning ceiling fans (there was no AC), and the aforementioned wicker or rattan furniture, ranging from chairs to sofas, all with plush cushions in various styles. Every end table was piled with books and magazines, on top and underneath. Anyway, I’d take my green Record book out there, soak in the Vitamin D, and write whatever came into my head. It was a great room to write in, especially when a candy striper dropped off a glass of icy lemonade and a homemade cupcake.
One thing I recorded in that Record book was a description of the aforementioned story idea that could’ve become something like DOG SOLDIERS if I hadn’t completely forgotten about it in the whirlwind of moving into a new house and starting life at yet another new school (and actually started writing it).
I called it PLAYING ARMY. I didn’t know it then, but that title was ironic, since reflecting on it now I realize the plot involved mostly teenagers (the cadets going through Recondo) playing a war game who get much more than they bargained for. “Playing Army” was actually my favorite game in my K-3 time, a natural progression for many Baby Boomer boys – especially those living on military posts and bases – after their Cowboys and Indians period, so I imagine the concept was rooted in those experiences. Like me, the 18- and 19-year-old cadets in that ward weren’t too far removed from viewings of COMBAT! and later shows like THE RAT PATROL, so “playing army” was not exactly a remote idea to any kid that grew up in the Sixties.
Though I didn’t note it then, I’m guessing now that my old wardmates Buzz and Jim were destined to be the main protagonists, with Buzz supremely suited to be the uber-capable team leader and Jim the “scared kid.”
Which brings me to the plot, which is based largely on my original notes, though expanded with a few details that occur to me having re-read them over 30 years later.
Instead of locating the opposing force of fellow cadets they’re to engage in a night exercise, Jim and Buzz’s 12-man team get lost in the heavily forested mountains not long after being air-lifted in just before sundown. The mountains of the Hudson Highlands (note that DOG SOLDIERS takes place in the Scottish Highlands) around West Point are rich in iron, which often makes compasses go haywire and can make radio communications unreliable. When darkness falls and the area is hit by a sudden and violent rainstorm, they find themselves out of radio contact, and soon realize they’re being hunted by a pack of what seem to be large wild dogs. The team must fight to survive for the next 24 hours as the storm rages around them. Making matters worse, everyone except the fictional “Buzz,” a 3rd year cadet and de facto leader, isn’t carrying live ammunition, and he’s only got a few clips of real ammo for his M-16 in case they have to deal with a bear or mountain lion, not uncommon in the woods around Buckner. All they have are signal flares, smoke grenades, fighting knives, and bayonets. The team ultimately must resort to making spears, bows and arrows, slingshots, and traps as they try to survive several attacks by the hyper-intelligent pack.
Although not in my original notes, a “horror” angle for the story presents, i.e., the pack is controlled by a Manitou, an Indian demon that features in many Hudson Valley Native American legends. The Manitou was conjured by a local tribe hundreds of years before to protect their sacred burial ground. The Recondo team unknowingly enters the burial site early in their mission and takes 5, leaving trash from rations and even urinating on several of the stone cairns marking the graves of long-dead chiefs of the tribe, basically desecrating the site. The Manitou, “awakened” by the interlopers, has, in turn, summoned the pack of dogs to hunt the team and kill them. Only what the team is up against aren’t ordinary dogs. And after Buzz is killed, it falls to Jim to lead the team.
Basically, it’s the basic premise of DOG SOLDIERS 33 years before it was written and filmed. And kinda like SOUTHERN COMFORT (1981) with demon dogs instead of homicidal Cajun hillbillies.
Continuing to tap into my current storytelling sensibilities, I’m gonna say that Buzz gets killed pretty early in the story, and Jim has to grow up fast and take over the squad. I didn’t get as far as to conceive of an ending when I was 12, but I think I will now.
Stay tuned for a possible short story based on the basic idea for PLAYING ARMY that might finally see the light of day, or the dark of night.
Monster-in-the-House
Each book in CHRONICLES, beginning with Book 1, THE ISLAND, is a “Monster-in-the-House” story (also called a “Monster-in-a-Box” story). Horror stories don’t always have to be one of those, but some of the very best ones are. But that’s not all the CHRONICLES are. They’re also what are called “Kids-on-Bikes” stories. More on those in a separate post.
October 8, 2024
Think of horror stories (books or movies) you love, and see if they have the following three required elements of the Monster-in-the-House story. I’ll wager they do.
1) A “monster.” Yes, Virginia, there is a Captain Obvious. Whatever “it” is, it usually possesses supernatural powers, but not always. Sometimes the monster can be human, but with motivations and actions rooted in, or corrupted by, evil, which can be internal to the character or driven by an external force, like demonic possession. The monster can even be a group of people, like a coven of witches, a clique in a typical American high school, or the current Republican caucus in the U.S. Congress. It can even be an animal that seems to act with evil intent (the shark in JAWS, the dog in CUJO, and the rat in OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN).
In Book 1 of the CHRONICLES, THE ISLAND, the supernatural creature at the heart of the story is … well, you’ll find out soon enough. It is quite literally a type of monster you’ve encountered in literature, TV, and film before, but with some extraordinary differences.
But other monsters can appear in Monster-in-the-House stories too, in supporting roles, e.g., bullies like Richie Killian and Ricky Carnicki in THE ISLAND and Curt Black in THE CLOVE, possessive people, sexual predators (e.g., teacher Barry Jeffries in THE ISLAND), creeps (like Carl Kapelos in THE ISLAND), and even abusive parents, among others.
2) A “house.” Captain O strikes again. The house – or box – doesn’t always need to be a literal structure (the Overlook Hotel in THE SHINING, the house in THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, or the mortuary in PHANTASM, for example). But it has to be haunted, possessed, or otherwise compromised by evil. Actually, any enclosed “space” qualifies, which can range from a family unit or an entire town (as in the CHRONICLES). Even the ocean, as in JAWS (I’ll stop short of including the World at large, which is a legitimate choice in some stories, especially those featuring apocalyptic and dystopian settings). In THE ISLAND, the old Bannerman Island Arsenal (“the castle”) on Pollepel Island in the Hudson River serves as the main “house” in which evil ultimately dwells. What’s more, in all of the CHRONICLES, fictional Cornwall Landing High School is another somewhat confined space where more of the aforementioned common monsters – a pair of card-carrying teenage bullies and one extremely dangerous teacher – are encountered.
3) A “sin.” Generally, it’s the transgression of bringing the monster into the “house,” even unknowingly. The spacecraft that returns the killer virus to Earth in THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN can, with a bit of stretching, be considered the “transgression” that makes that novel and film a Monster-in-the-House tale, with the town of Piedmont, New Mexico, the Wildfire facility, and ultimately the entire World serving as the “house.” What’s the sin exactly in the story? Well, like I said, with a stretch, it could be the sin of pride in the power of human technology and the failure of imagination that fails to anticipate the danger. In the ALIEN film franchise, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is hell-bent on bringing the “monster” (an extremely deadly alien species) into the house (its off-world laboratories, with the goal of weaponizing it. An “evil” corporation that commits a “sin” is no stranger to fiction, from thrillers to spy yarns to straight drama to horror stories. Some Monster-in-the-House stories feature a cursed place that provides the reason for the monster or monstrousness to manifest (e.g, PET SEMATERY). In THE ISLAND, for example, two sins are committed that let the monster into the house: Francis Bannerman’s arrogance and ignorance and a clique of Landing High students a little too interested in the occult.
The goals of the heroes in all Monster-in-the-House stories are simple ones: to get rid of the monster in the house and survive. How they do both is what drives each narrative.