As Saturday night was snowy and frigid, the weather all but begged us to stay inside and to watch movies. We followed this directive and soon chose to watch Salem’s Lot. This adaptation of Stephen King’s awesome 1975 novel was pretty damn good, considering they squeezed 750 pages into 90 minutes.
Vampires. A writer comes to a sleepy Maine town around the same time as a vampire and shit hits the proverbial fan. Nobody trusts strangers. I won’t spoil anything but I will say that even if you have read the book go ahead and watch the movie. You’ll have plenty of fun. Also, the film did a great job of capturing the 1970s America vibe and mixing it with the hopeless despair only Stephen King can not only supply, but can also demand $20 for and get it with unequalled speed. We were soon pleasantly freaked out, spooked, and casting looks out into the dark night.
When one horror movie ends, it’s time for another. No need to break the vibe. So we put on These Woods are Haunted, a documentary-style show about people’s terrifying encounters in the woods. The show is very well done and some of the stories genuinely creepy. It’s a great show if only to utterly enjoy the ironic tales of Bigfoot hunters being hunted by Bigfoot. And we can only hope with all our crossed bits that somewhere in the Northwestern woods Bigfoot is telling his friends the same story from the other side. We can only chalk its meager three seasons up to a lack of people who’ve been terrorized in the woods. Or a lack of survivors.
The opening starts out with informative bits about the vastness of American forests (800 million acres) and then proceeds to spook you (the viewer) out by saying things like ‘who knows what is lurking in these forests?’ Now, there’s no better lexical phrase to get me in the mood for a spook than one like ‘lurk in the forest’. And so I repeated it.
“I like that, ‘lurking in the forest.’”
Burke looked back at me. It was dark but I could tell there was something like confusion cum surprise on her face.
“What?”
“Did you just say, ‘I’m the Murder Kind of the Forest?’”
What happened then was a raucous explosion of laughter. The Murder King of the Forest! As if! But I took to the role as if it was meant for me and I was wearing a crown befitting that of the forest’s murder king – made of human bones and a scepter made of birch tree and squirrel teeth. Eventually the laughter died down and we ended up talking about the minutiae of life.
“Are you busy tomorrow?”
“Of course I am, for I am the Murder King of the Forest. I’m booked up all weekend.”
Laughter.
“Can you bring her [dog Maisy] out before bed?”
“Of course I can – who else would you trust on this sort of night than the Murder King of the Forest?”
OK. You had to be there. Still, it was funny. And we drank our magnesium around 11 and, naturally, went to bed shortly after that. But every few minutes or so one of us would laugh and we would blurt out the Murder King of the Forest and his resume. Magnesium brought sleep.
In the morning, it was time to do something I didn’t to do – I had to bring out our dead and dry Christmas tree – Shed Danson. Shed gained his name from his most common action. If you look at this tree crosseyed he drops half of his needles. I knew that to get from the fifth floor to the dumpster was going to be a thrill. Simply getting Shed out of the flat involved him dropping half of his needles onto the floor and into every nook and cranny a sack full of pine needles can go and stubbornly stay. Miraculously, Shed seemed to grow more needles as I brought him into the hallway and he bushed out so that it was obvious the elevator was no option. I ran him down the steps and cursed him, myself, Burke, and any other being or person I could think to include in my rant. And then, for some reason, on the first floor, I decide to invoke the gods of my name.
“I am the damn Murder King of the Forest.”
It’s roughly 2.1 seconds later that I notice two neighbors standing at their door. I smile, shoot out a pleasant dobry den. I am holding Shed by the neck, the good old star-holder.
“Uh, muj strom,” I say. “Plešatí,” I say. My tree is going bald. I shake Shed a little and he drops the better part of a pine forest onto the floor. “ooh, to budu uklidím.” I will clean that. I wince as I realize my grammar mistake. I will will clean that.
Oh well, at least I didn’t mistake uklidím ‘clean’ with Ukydám ‘shovel manure’, Ukradnu ‘I will steal’ Uklovnu ‘I will peck (like a bird), or Udusím ‘I will choke it’. Since I have just proclaimed myself to be Murder King of the Forest, this is especially fortuitous.
Nobody smiles. But the man darts an eye at the girl and instead of leave, they open their door and go inside. I have nothing more to offer the conversation. I run down the rest of the steps. Then I sweep the steps. I can feel the eyes of untrusting neighbors on my back. I get home and peer in the mirror – I look like a guy who would be called the Murder King of the Forest. I am in a purple top and pink shorts. My hair and beard are disheveled. There’s nothing to do but watch more vampire TV.
