Mark B. Perry Screenwriter & Novelist

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Morbid Child
by
Mark B. Perry

I grew up in a neighborhood built on the grounds of a former pecan orchard. Our street was flat and straight and had started its life as a gravel driveway that led to the modest farm house guarded by chain link at the far end. Old Mister Allen, whose sons had betrayed him by showing no interest in the nut business, still lived there, alone, but had sold off large parcels of his acreage to real estate developers so they could build new homes for the thriving middle-class. The land that included his driveway was the last to go. People were then leaving the city of Atlanta to nest and raise their families just outside its perimeter, and such neighborhoods were springing up everywhere, adding the word “suburbs” to the vernacular. My father said Mr. Allen had made a “pretty penny” from the sale, and hoped it was enough to take the sting out of having his driveway lined by mid-century split levels and ranch styles, each with one surviving pecan tree in its front yard to remind the old man of what he’d lost. Even before we moved in, our tree was already dropping its fall harvest, blanketing our new yard with hundreds of brown shells that crackled underfoot. To earn a raise in my allowance, I cleaned them up as best I could, grateful for the additional quarter, but sorry for having made the deal.

Our house was the first to be completed, and my parents and I were now the pioneer “suburbanites” while the other homes were still under construction. By day, the neighborhood was a symphony of buzz saws, hammering, and the rumble of big trucks delivering supplies. But at night, especially in that chilly September of 1967, those half-finished houses took on a more sinister air. Against the dark autumn sky, the spooky silhouettes of their wood framing became the rotting ribcages of giant, fallen monsters. Or, from another angle, the moonlit ruins of Castle Dracula. At nine, I had already read Stoker’s masterpiece. Twice.

Monsters were my favorite thing. And as I grew, I nurtured a passion for the macabre in almost all its incarnations . “Macabre” being a word I’d picked up from the hands down best show on TV: Dark Shadows. My afternoons were consumed by that daily gothic soap opera with its ghosts and vampires and witches, followed by Dialing for Dollars, a program that aired classic monster movies in between hosted call-in giveaways. The hours between school and bedtime beguiled me with the likes of The Wolfman, Bride of Frankenstein, Creature From the Black Lagoon, and my favorite, House of Dracula. My Aunt Dodie said she’d never in all her life seen a child who actually liked to be scared. It was true. I was addicted to the feeling of the hair raising on my arms and the back of my neck, the intoxicating jolt of being frightened.

So long as I knew I’d be safe once the lights came back on.

I also loved doing magic tricks, seduced by the cleverness of deception and the sanctimony of knowing the secrets of how they were done, which I never—ever—revealed. This in kind fueled my fascination with murder mysteries. To me, Agatha Christie was nothing if not the greatest magician of all, each of her books a perfect trick pulled off with artful misdirection.

Writing then came naturally to me as a way to share this gospel of horror. In third grade, I scribbled my first short stories about haunted houses and zombies and such. But my greatest achievement that year was the tale of a serial killer on a spree in London, a setting I only knew from the movies. When I couldn’t come up with a Christie-esque twist, I just had the FBI jump out of a trap door and shoot the murderer dead on the spot. Trap doors being another fascination of mine.

Odd. My teacher, Mrs. Hartsell, didn’t call my parents to express concern. Instead, she seemed more delighted than alarmed, and continued to encourage my literary ambitions.

When combined as if in a bubbling cauldron, my penchants for monsters, magic, murder and mayhem naturally fueled another passion, one that became an addictive new hobby: pulling pranks on the unsuspecting. There was nothing more exhilarating than scaring people “half to death” as my grandfather put it.

When I was only seven, I ordered a tube of fake blood from the back of a comic book, then covered my hands and neck with it and ran into the kitchen, clutching my throat, pretending  a mad man had tried to cut my head right off. My poor mother screamed but soon realized she’d been fooled and then imposed the worst punishment of all: no TV for a solid week.

I’d never seen her that angry. Or afraid. So I set to work trying to top myself.

My mom was obsessively neat and tidy and could spot anything out of place from a mile away, a trait I could easily exploit for my purposes. She was always buying greeting cards to have on hand for various occasions, and kept them stashed in a giftbox on the top shelf of her new walk-in closet. I nearly squealed when I found an identical box among our Christmas stuff which was still sitting unpacked in the garage along with several other things we’d brought from our old house. I neatly cut a flap—like a trap door—in the bottom, then filled the box with rubber snakes and switched it for its twin on her shelf, making sure it was sticking over the edge with the lid askew so she’d notice. That same afternoon, I heard her open the closet door, then the sounds of hangers scraping as she looked for something. I ran into my room, sat down by the door, put my chin in my fists, and waited. Mere seconds later, I was rewarded with a piercing scream as the wiggling snakes fell from the box when she started to take it down. Worked precisely as I’d planned. As she described to my father that night, most of the snakes landed right on her head before plopping at her feet and “like to’ve given me a heart attack!”

The result? Another TV free week for me, but her shriek had been enough entertainment to get me through.

When I put a very big, very real live but harmless spider in the drawer where she kept her silk “lady garments,” she didn’t scream. Instead, I was the one who was surprised when I heard her say “shit” for the first time. Turns out she’d swatted the spider and it squirted bug juice and blood all over something she had inexplicably named “Teddy.” It had been a wedding gift from my father. Although she scrubbed and soaked and washed, the stains were indelible. I felt horrible when I walked by her bedroom and, through the crack of her barely open door, saw her sitting on the edge of her bed, the ruined silken garment cradled in her hands, head down and shoulders convulsing as she cried. I realized I’d gone too far, so I went in and apologized over and over again.

The result was the same. No TV for a week, but this time, she turned the knife by taking away my daily afterschool Co’cola as well. And with that diabolical flourish, she’d hit upon a combination that worked and I knew I had to make some changes to my behavior.

From that day forward, I’d target my father instead.

The pecan tree in our front yard turned out to be great for climbing, and its full leaves provided the perfect hiding place. One Saturday afternoon when my dad was proudly tending his new lawn, his rake scratching as it harvested the crisp, dead fall leaves mixed with a few errant pecans, I climbed up unnoticed and waited. I watched in gleeful anticipation as his work drew him ever closer. When at last he was standing just beyond the limb where I was hiding, his back to me, I dropped down and shouted “Boo!”

Simple, but as it turns out, pretty effective. I’d scared him so good he took away that week’s allowance. Talk about backfire. I begged. I pleaded. I apologized. But he stood firm and said maybe it would teach me to find a new way to channel my, in his exact words, “weird energy.”

I found much easier targets in the children who lived in the finished neighborhoods surrounding our street. Once, I spent two whole days transfiguring our big, roomy basement into a creepy spook house complete with a ghost made from old sheets and a plastic model human skull my dad had helped me assemble, pie tins of human brains made from cold spaghetti, and bloody eyeballs from frozen grapes and ketchup. The children, traumatized, refused to touch any of my creations until I told them it was the only way I’d set them free. Worked like an evil charm. And just when they believed it was all over, I pulled a string tied to the light switch and plunged my prey into total darkness. They were already screaming when I turned on a flashlight under my chin and bared the upper and lower glow-in-the-dark fangs I’d just slipped in. Their shrieks turned to tears as they scrambled in the tomb-like dark for the exit. It was locked, of course, and their tiny hands tugged and pulled desperately on the doorknob. When their pleading reached an electrifying crescendo, I at last turned on the lights and released them.

I’d never seen anyone run so fast. Objective achieved.

In fact, I’d scared them so thoroughly their parents complained to mine, and I once again found myself getting “blessed out” (as my mother called it), this time by both my parents yelling at the same time. I tried to appeal to the businessman in my father, pointing out that I’d charged each of those kids “only a quarter” for the experience, and had raked in almost two whole dollars to show for it. Unpersuaded, my folks made me go door to door and return the money along with an apology. I guess I finally learned my lesson: I really did need to channel this “weird energy” into something more constructive. Something less likely to blow up in my face.

It came to me one day at school, when my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Johnston, gave us an art project. She brought in a grocery bag filled with sheets of “shirt cardboard,” so named because her husband’s dress shirts came back from the dry cleaners neatly folded and pinned around them. These were like over-sized pieces of paper, though much stiffer, with a smooth white surface on the front, and the back an unfinished gray. With paste and tape and scissors and colored pencils, we were instructed to create a three dimensional object, so we set about our work.

Mrs. Johnston was the prototypical dowdy southern schoolmarm from the top of the tight white bun on her head to the soles of her orthopedic shoes, and with no fashion sense to speak of. She moseyed up and down the aisles between our desks, hands clasped behind her back, oohing and ahhing over the other children’s creations. Lovely little houses. Churches with crooked steeples. One ambitious boy asked for more cardboard so he could complete his model of the new Braves Stadium. The class goody-two-shoes and teacher’s pet, Cathy May Moody, proudly showed off her miniature rendering of the thing she loved most: our school. I was embarrassed for her.

Then Mrs. Johnston approached my desk, stopping cold as if she’d bumped into an invisible wall. She looked at my creation, then at me, then back at the perfect little six-sided model coffin I was just finishing. On its lid, I’d drawn a tiny plaque and neatly penciled in my own name. As she watched, I beamed and opened the lid to show her how I’d drawn myself as a corpse inside. Mrs. Johnston took in my handiwork, then leveled a withering gaze and paid me perhaps the highest compliment I’ve ever received.

“Mark Perry,” she drawled, “you are a morbid child.” A perfect word to add to my growing macabre vocabulary.

I’m sure Mrs. Johnston had no idea what that seminal assignment had instilled in me. She had, without intention, ignited a drive to create bigger three dimensional objects. Propelled by this inspiration, I dragged my red wagon around to the construction sites on our street to scavenge plywood and particle board and whatever scrap lumber might be piled for hauling away, always asking the workers for permission. I may have been morbid—deliciously so—but I was also a very good little boy.

My father loved to build bird houses and such, so he had a well-equipped work shop in our brand new cinder block and concrete basement. There, perhaps hoping to nudge me toward some semblance of masculinity, he had taught me how to safely use his assortment of power tools. Thanks to his patience, I also knew my way around the drill press, how to use a level and a right angle square, and to always measure twice and cut once. With these newly acquired skills and my foraged building materials, I set to work on my most ambitious project to date: a full scale four-sided casket like the one vampire Barnabas Collins slept in on Dark Shadows. When my dad called my newest handiwork a coffin, I was quick to lecture him on the obvious difference between coffins and caskets, priding myself on such thanatological knowledge, even more so on knowing that “thanatology” meant “the study of death.”

With rescued strips of quarter-round trim, I coffered all four sides, then painted the whole thing black, because that’s how Barnabas’ casket looked on our TV set. I used my saved up allowance to buy eight metal drawer handles at the hardware store, one for each end, and three for each side. Finally, for the piece de resistance, I rescued an old avocado green bedspread my mom was tossing out. It was quilted with stitched triangles and ideal for my needs. Using patterns I made from old sheets of newspaper, I cut it into pieces and stapled them in place, creating the perfect tufted lining upon which to repose.

To their credit, my parents never really discouraged my ghoulish proclivities. Nor did they send me to therapy or hide me away in the attic like I heard Granny telling Dad they’d had to do with “poor ol’ Aunt Mazie,” whoever she was. Maybe they were just relieved I’d stopped trying to scare them. I’m not sure they even knew I spent hours in the basement, cozy in my custom casket and playing vampire in my black broadcloth cape and plastic fangs. I’d crawl in, close the lid, cross my hands over my chest, and pretend to be avoiding the instant death rays of sunlight.

Until Mom called me up for supper, that is.

As a happy little morbid child, Halloween was my true religious holiday. When at last it rolled around that year, mere weeks after we’d moved into the new house and days after I’d completed my casket, I ran home from school to catch that day’s episode of Dark Shadows, then put on my vampire costume and makeup while it was still daylight. Using a generous dab of Brylcreem, I struggled to shape the pointed Barnabas bangs so they’d look like giant fangs on my forehead, but that proved to be too challenging for my styling abilities. I gave up and slicked it straight back like Lugosi’s Dracula instead. Once properly outfitted, I filled the time before trick-or-treating by lying in my casket, cocooned in the scent of freshly cut wood, paint, old fabric, and hair cream. So peaceful. So delectably macabre. I was as snug in my casket as those children in their beds with their stupid sugar plums in “The Night Before Christmas.” Just as I was beginning to doze off, I heard the basement door open at the top of the stairs and then my mother’s voice.

“…it heats the house just fine,” she was saying, “but the fan makes a rattling sound. It’s brand new so I’m wondering if it might be a screw or a bolt come loose or something.”

“I’ll get it fixed in no time, Misrez Perry,” a deep, jovial voice responded.

“Thank you,” my mom said, then added, “oh, and I don’t know where my son is, but if he’s down there, don’t let him scare you. He’s a little…unusual. But he’s harmless.”

“O…kay,” the man replied in a tone of confused hesitation.

I almost laughed as a rush of excitement tingled from my plastic fangs to my newly-polished dress shoes. This was a once-in-a-death-time chance I couldn’t ignore. The Halloween gods had gifted me the perfect situation to pull off the ultimate Halloween prank. An opportunity to scare the living Beelzebub out of another real live human being. One I wasn’t related to. One who didn’t live in our neighborhood. And best of all, a grown up! I was giddy, listening to the man’s heavy boots as he came down the concrete steps, unaware that he was striding right into my providential clutches. I next heard him stop dead in his tracks, just like Mrs. Johnston had done under strikingly similar though miniaturized circumstances.

“Uh, Misrez Perry?” the man called out.

“Yes?” my mom was still at the top of the stairs.

With a forced chuckle in his voice, he asked, “Is this a…coffin?”

“Well, according to my son, it’s a casket. There’s a difference, you know. Just ignore it.”

I swelled with pride for the funereal education I’d given her.

“Huh,” the man said, then I heard him mutter something under his breath as he lugged his toolbox over and began to unscrew the furnace’s cover plate. Next came the sound of my mom closing the basement door, sealing the poor unsuspecting man in my dungeon lair.

The trap was set. The game afoot.

Lying in the sepulcher of my darkness—“sepulcher” being another of those deliciously gothic words I’d picked up from Dark Shadows—I knew my timing called for precision. At first, I was tempted to lift the lid a crack so I could peek and get a bead on my prey. Then I thought better of it, not wanting to risk discovery before I found the perfect moment to fling it open, leap to my feet, spread my cape like giant bat wings as I bared my fangs, hissing at the poor fellow like a hungry animal in my best Hungarian accent: “I vaaant to dr-r-r-ink you-r-r-r bloooooood!”

Then again, that might be a bit much.

I mean, what if had a heart condition? My Great Uncle Doozy had one and dropped dead right in the check-out line of the Winn-Dixie. I could get charged with murder. Or maybe it would be manslaughter like they talked about on Perry Mason. Or, if the repairman was in the middle of fixing something, he might startle so violently he’d stab himself with his screwdriver or cut off a finger or even one of his hands. Maybe I should prime him by knocking lightly on the lid where there wasn’t any lining, a light tap once or twice to spook him a little before I attacked. Then another scenario came to me and a pretty creepy one if I did say so myself. It was one I could see clearly like a black and white movie scene in my head:

The man would be hunched over, working away on the furnace. Behind him, seen over his shoulder, my casket was bathed in the dim, spooky glow from the lone bare bulb in the basement ceiling. As he tinkered, the casket’s lid would slowly start to rise with a drawn out spinetingling crrreeeak. His eyes would go wide, and he’d look over his shoulder in time to see me slowly, deliberating rising upright before turning my head to stare at him with cold dead eyes, baring my fangs with a scream.

I almost laughed out loud imagining how he’d drop his tools and high tail it up the stairs like something out of Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The possibilities were as endless as they were alluring, and the casket was the only thing now containing my excitement. All I needed was a lull in the banging noise he was making.

I lay still as a corpse, listening as he at last removed the cover from the furnace. It rattled like the thunder at Collinwood as he set it aside. Unable to resist temptation, I ignored the voice of caution and pushed the casket’s lid up just enough to peek through the sliver, confirming his position was just as I’d imagined. When I lowered the lid, it made the softest little tap. Quiet but audible. Enough to stop the sounds of his work.

“Hello?” he said, the tantalizing sound of fear in his voice.

I held my breath until he resumed his task, and grinned as he began whistling a nondescript tune. To me, it was the sound of genuine fear. What my Aunt Lydia-Belle called “whistling past the cemetery.” Now I understood what that expression meant. I had succeeded in infusing my newest victim with genuine dread which he hoped to dispel with his hesitant, jaunty warbling. As I once heard Vincent Price say in a movie, the time was nigh.

And then, my stomach growled. It was loud, but the repairman was rattling something which mercifully covered the noise. That’s when I became aware of a new sensation. My bladder was starting to swell from my afternoon bottle of Co’cola, reminding me that the undead might not have to go the bathroom, but I sure did. Meaning if I was going to scare this guy, I needed to do it now.

I took a deep breath and put my hands flat on the underside of the lid and prepared to begin my performance. With a deep breath, I steeled myself, ready to strike before…

The man’s voice stopped me. He spoke in a low, dangerous growl with a toying inflection, and said:

“I know you’re in there you little rascal.”

I tensed. Rigid with horror. Baffled as to how I had given myself away, and now terrified of what this stranger might do to me. After all, I didn’t know this man from Adam, as my dad liked to say. He could be one of those child murderers for all I knew. He might even cut off my head and carry it by my hair as he escaped out the door to the backyard. My mom wouldn’t find my remains until supper time, or when she caught sight of me out the kitchen window, staring back at her from the top of the pole of her clothesline, my mouth sagging open and dripping blood onto her clean sheets.

“Gotcha!” he said, and I flinched, petrified. Eternal seconds went by before he went on. “What kind of a dumb dumb leaves a hex key inside a furnace fan?”

My eyes rolled back into my head with relief, and I decided to bail on my plan. Now that he’d found the trouble, he’d have the furnace up and running in no time. Then he’d leave and I could get out and run upstairs to the bathroom. My change of heart brought a rush of logic. As my Grandma Sheer would have said: what “on God’s Green Earth” had I been thinking? Hadn’t I learned anything after all those wretched days with no allowance. Those endless boring afternoons with no TV. No Co’cola. No Little Debbie Nutty Buddies!

If I had gone through with my plan and scared this poor man, my mother might’ve been so furious who knows how she would have punished me? Lately her favorite misery to inflict was banning me from watching Dark Shadows on Fridays when they always showed the best episodes. Or, this being Halloween, she could ground me from trick-or-treating. What if she did both? Or worst of all, what if she inflicted the additional agony of making me choose between the two? The prospects were abominable and potentially fatal for me. I was still a morbid child through and through, always would be, but in that moment, sanity had prevailed and I was newly resolved to again be the best little boy in the world.

In my feverish delirium, I’d almost forgotten about the repairman. His whistling was now cheery and confident, and at last I heard the clatter of his tools as he tossed them back into their metal box and snapped the hasp on its lid. The furnace whooshed to life, and a clomp clomp clomping told me he was headed toward the stairs.

Then he stopped.

For a little piece of forever, it seemed.

The next sound was of his boots scraping the floor, suggesting he might be turning back around. Had he left a tool behind? Or something more sinister?

A metallic thunk announced he’d set his toolbox down, followed by the stealthy slow and rhythmic shushes of his feet scraping the bare concrete floor, growing louder, drawing closer to my hiding place. I held my breath. I squeezed my eyes shut. I prayed as I pictured his menacing shadow looming larger and larger over my casket, his footsteps now drowned out by the thup-thup-thuping of blood pulsing against my eardrums, my little heart beating so loud I was sure he could hear it.

A light, eerie scraping noise came next, as if he were dragging a fingernail across the lid just above my nose. Or maybe it was a long, deformed claw. What was he doing? Testing to see what my casket was made of? Toying with me? Performing some kind of devil worship? Whatever it was, it had me so scared I was about to start crying. And for the first time in my young life, it didn’t feel so good. Because in those ceaseless ticking seconds, the terror was real.

And then, after that small eternity, he sighed and turned and started back to the steps but before I could exhale he pivoted again and strode with thuds of determination back toward me closer and closer until—

The lid of my casket was flung open and he stood over me and—

We both screamed at the tops of our lungs! Louder and louder until I could feel the warmth of urine blooming across my dress pants and down to my cape underneath. The thing is, we kept screaming, both equally startled and beyond terrorized. A patch of bright light swept over us as my mother opened the basement door and came flying down the stairs drying her hands with a dish towel.

“Good night a livin’. Y’all are like to wake the dead screamin’ bloody murder like that!” Her eyes burned into me like white hot sunlight on the skin of a vampire.

“Mark Perry? What did you do to this poor man? And why would you…” She trailed off, spotting the wet stain between my legs, then slumped and covered her face with the dish towel. Her shoulders began to rise and fall as she sobbed.

There it was. I had finally broken my own mother.

Thing is, she wasn’t crying. She was laughing. And not just laughing. She was howling. Worse still, the repairman joined in, pointing at the spreading stain between my legs as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever seen.

When Mom composed herself enough to speak, all she could manage was to chortle out the words, “Well…Happy Halloween!”

Which sparked another wave of hysterical, choking guffaws, their laughter now rising like a ferocious beast from the depths of Hades, feeding on itself, gaining strength and volume. If  it began to wane, my mother’s lips would splutter again, triggering a fresh round of shrieking.

My face burned with a fierce blush and the sprouting of tears. The ferocious vampire had been destroyed. Not by a stake through the heart, but by raw humiliation. This time, the tables were turned on me, and I had been exposed as no more frightening than a leaf.

When at last they regained some semblance of self-control, my mother poked the man in his arm and said, “Thanks, Duane. I heard it all from the top of the stairs. We sure got him good.”

“Taught him a lesson,” Duane replied. “Oh, and I found your trouble. This was trapped inside the fan cage.” He held up a little hex wrench, but now my mom was looking at me.

“Mark, hon, you look red as a beet,” she said, at last sobering from her laughter.

I scrambled out of my casket and ran upstairs, my soaked cape flapping behind me. When I got to my room, I slammed and locked the door and stood panting against it. Staring heartbroken at my carefully assembled and painted row of monster models on the shelf above my bed, then at the picture of the Mummy I’d painted in second grade still taped to my closet door, now the sad little rubber vampire bat I had intended to carry as part of that night’s costume. And finally, my tear-filled eyes fell on my empty candy sack hanging over the back of my chair, waiting to be filled.

But I didn’t go trick or treating that year. Or ever again.

My mother, bless her, spent the rest of her life apologizing to me, even as she still insisted on telling the story of our most memorable Halloween. Over the next fifty years or so, as with all good family stories, it became more fanciful and detached from the truth with each retelling. She told it to all the nurses when she was in and out of the hospital. To the woman who delivered her groceries from the Publix. And to the young people who came to the house for her physical therapy sessions.

To her credit, when I was around, she’d always wind down with a confession, admitting she’d gone too far in conspiring with the repairman to give me a taste of my own poison. In her final year, she’d often cry in genuine remorse, and I’d sit and reassure her with my own admission: I really had deserved it after all the stuff I’d pulled.

As she grew aimless with grief after my father passed, we talked on the phone every day unless she wasn’t up to, and I stayed with her for weeks at a time back in Georgia. I’m so grateful for that chance to get to know her in a way I never had before. Those precious hours weren’t “too little too late” but “cherish it while you can.” Through it all, the story of “that one Halloween” became a fixation. As if she were seeking contrition and absolution.

I tried to change the subject once by asking her why she and Dad had put up with all of my bizarre shenanigans with coffins and caskets and pranks and scary stories about serial killers. I was moved by her reply:

“Your dad and I knew you were creative,” she said, a faraway look in her eyes. “And we knew the two most important things we could give our children was roots and wings. Strong roots with your family, and wings to go wherever life might take you.”

Not long after, she was back to telling the Halloween story again. This time to the mail carrier who’d come to the door to deliver a package. She couldn’t seem to let it go. And still, we’d laugh as we cried with each new telling and her continued embellishments until I finally realized something. She had helped me outgrow the mortification by teaching me to laugh at myself, and in doing so, she’d also inspired the story teller in me. There was solace this late in life to realize the two of us were as alike as we were different.

Still, she’d seize any opportunity to retell the legend of that long ago Halloween, both of us always in tears by the end. And every time—every damn time—she’d blow her nose and wipe her eyes and look at me through a sly sparkle of mischief and say, “But I sure got you good, didn’t I?”

That, she did. And today, I’d love nothing more than to hear the tale of my greatest humiliation one more time. Maybe someday, I will.

Happy Halloween. Hug your loved ones.

Then scare the living daylights out of ’em.

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© 2025 Mark B. Perry