When people ask me why I write dark stories, I think not of any one book, movie, or other cultural influence. Instead, I think of that summer in Philly when our neighbours lost their minds, and our small corner of the world began to eat itself.
Childhood Fears: That Summer In Philly When Our Neighbours Lost Their Minds by William J Donahue
I trace everything back to the burning church. That event shaped me as much or more than any one horror movie, book, or cultural touchstone.
I grew up in the 1980s in Northeast Philadelphia. When you say you come from Philly, people who don’t know the city well envision a sea of concrete, asphalt, and smog, with nothing but sad-looking row homes beneath a pale grey sky, sort of like the neighbourhood where Rocky Balboa made his living breaking people’s thumbs. I’m sure those places have existed, and probably still do exist, but it not the Philadelphia I called home.
I came of age in a part of the city called Millbrook, which was more suburban than urban: single houses with willow trees in decent-sized backyards, a statue of the Virgin Mary or St. Francis of Assisi on every porch, and neighbours who looked out for one other.
I was living there when I was introduced to modern horror films. Jaws, Poltergeist, The Howling, The Fog, and The Thing all scared the hell out of me, as did Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, because … well, the King of Pop made for a convincing werewolf. Those films helped me develop an illogical fear of sharks and werewolves, as well as lightning and human babies, though I attribute the latter two to the simple act of seeing the damage lightning can do and the messes babies can make.
As I started to get old enough to pay attention, though, I realized there were more serious things to be afraid of—like neighbours turning on each other. I recall one summer in which the world around me seemed to be unravelling, on the brink of collapse.
My sister remembers the timing differently, but we agree on the tragic events that shaped our view of the world. First, there was a string of sexual assaults in the woods down the street, though at the time I didn’t quite understand what any of that meant; I only knew that someone had gotten hurt and someone else deserved to be punished for it.
Then the mother of a classmate was brutally murdered at her home, which was less than a quarter mile from our front door; she was stabbed to death just down the hall from where my classmate slept. My classmate was the one who discovered her mother’s body. We treated her differently when she came back to school, because how do you go on living a normal life after seeing something like that?
At about the same time, I had my first run-ins with the neighbourhood bullies—bigger, stronger, older kids who seemed to take joy in being cruel for cruelty’s sake. Those interactions, combined with the sexual assaults, the murder, and the church arson, made me realize that not all people are good, and that there truly are monsters among us. The world, I began to learn, was not a safe place, nor a kind one.
The murder and the bullying were difficult enough to process for a ten-year-old kid, but the incident that struck me the most was the fire at the Catholic church, which was maybe eight-hundred feet away from our doorstep. Back then, my family and most of our neighbours went to Mass every Sunday; the head priest came off as a kind man who seemed to genuinely care about the parish. The bad things at the church began quietly, with one or two instances of vandalism—graffiti, someone trying to pry open the locked church doors, stuff like that. Then one night we woke to shrill sirens and fire engines roaring down our street. Someone had nearly succeeded in burning the church to the ground—attempted arson. I don’t think the fire got very far, but it still did some damage.
My family moved out of Philly and into the “more civilized” suburbs within a year or two of that traumatic summer. I was sad to leave our neighbourhood behind, especially because I didn’t care for our new neighbourhood, where I encountered more meanness and cruelty. I learned to live with it and, worse, developed an appetite for bullying for a few years until I came to my senses.
Coming-of-age stories by nature tend to be bittersweet. Many of them have elements of horror because age teaches you that humans have the capacity to do monstrous things to each other, to other living things, and to the planet. I recently fictionalized my coming-of-age story from that Philadelphia summer in “The Devil Sings in Millbrook’s Ear,” coming out later this year in a literary journal called Neshaminy.
When people ask me why I write dark stories, I think not of any one book, movie, or other cultural influence. Instead, I think of that summer in Philly when our neighbours lost their minds, and our small corner of the world began to eat itself.
William J. Donahue’s new novel, Only Monsters Remain, recently published by JournalStone, pits a mortician’s apprentice against a horde of otherworldly monsters. Candace Nola, author of Bishop and the creator of UncomfortablyDark, describes the novel as “masterfully crafted cosmic horror, vivid and visceral, with dynamic characters driving the story to its epic conclusion.” Don Swaim, author of Deliverance of Sinners: Essays and Sundry on Ambrose Bierce, characterizes it as “a clever take on the apocalypse.”
Only Monsters Remain by William J Donahue
“Donahue at his best plumbs the souls of his characters. In this tale of a crushing apocalypse undreamed of by man, beast, or Bibliomancy, he redefines humanity as well as the nature of monsters.” -Ef Deal, author of Esprit de Corpse
“Masterfully crafted cosmic horror, vivid and visceral, with dynamic characters driving the story to its epic conclusion, Donahue is quickly forging his place among the likes of John Langan, Laird Barron, and Thomas Ligotti.” -Candace Nola, author of Bishop, creator of UncomfortablyDark
Jillian Futch relocates to the peculiar coastal town of Pell, Rhode Island, to pursue her work as a mortician’s apprentice. Having spent most of her life as a misfit, she believes she has finally found a home where she can blend in among her fellow “freaks.” Her peaceful existence turns to chaos when a horde of tentacled monsters descends from the clouds and destroys the civilized world.
As the invaders retreat, Jillian emerges from the rubble intent on rebuilding her life. She helps her fellow survivors heal from unimaginable loss by hosting primitive funerals for loved ones killed in the months-long apocalypse. When a cadaver enters her embalming room bearing an impossible surprise, Jillian realizes the otherworldly horrors have only just begun.
William J. Donahue
William J. Donahue is an editor, feature writer, and kitten
foster who has not been the same since watching John Carpenter’s The Thing as a ten-year-old. His published works include the recently released novel Only Monsters Remain, as well as two previous novels: Burn, Beautiful Soul and Crawl on Your Belly All the Days of Your Life. He lives in a small but well-guarded fortress in Pennsylvania, somewhere on the map between Philadelphia and Bethlehem. Although his home lacks a proper moat, it does have plenty of snakes.
WEBSITE LINKS
https://www.facebook.com/wjdonahuefiction
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196829863
https://journalstone.com/bookstore/only-monsters-remain
