The Hook on the Hand

So one of the things I didn't get around to mentioning in my The Cemetery post is the use of the urban legend commonly known as The Hook. It comes up twice - once when Rick is telling ghost stories at the Halloween party* and again when Dorian is killed by the Ripper. Just before his death, Cyndi finds a hook attached to Dorian's car:

If you're not familiar with the story, The Hook dates back to roughly the 1950s, and like most urban legends, serves as a morality tale for hormonal teens, much the same way fairy tales like Red Riding Hood warned young women against predatory men of court back in the day. The quick and dirty version of the story is thus:

A young couple are parked up down some lovers' lane. The radio plays while they make out. A breaking news story announces that a serial killer has escaped from a local mental institution and can be identified by the hook on his hand. The couple decide to leave, with various spins on the end of the story following. Either they get home to find a bloody hook dangling from the car door, or for some reason the man has to leave the car, and the woman later finds him dead. Some variations see her hearing strange thumping on the roof of the car, only to discover said serial killer up there with her boyfriend's severed head. One version sees her finding the boyfriend hung from a tree over the car, his nails scraping the roof as his body swings back and forth.

However the story ends, the message is clear: keep it in your pants, kids!

Now, clearly this is a warning against loose morals and sexual experimentation, and we could even link to back to the real-life Phantom Killer case of 1946, but I'm not here to talk about horny teens and the fates they richly deserve. I'm here to ask questions. Two questions, specifically.

First - why is the killer an escaped mental patient?

And second - why the blazing hell would someone who'd been instutionalised be allowed to keep a hook on their hand?

I mean, look, I know mental health care in 1950s America wasn't the best, but we were seeing a move towards more community-based care and less underfunded, understaffed, brutally poorly-run institutions. In any case, I have to assume that even the worst asylum going wouldn't let someone with a hook for a hand just keep that hook. Especially if that patient was also a serial killer and also certifiable insane as the story implies. That's just...really bad practice, you guys.**

Also, for the record, I think a hook is probably a really inefficient way to serial-kill people.

But let's circle back to question one. Why does the story conflate mental illness with murder? Why is a mental patient automatically dangerous, or a killer?

I noted with Help Wanted and The Mummy that there is a tendency in Point Horror books to make the villains "crazy." I guess it's an easy literary shortcut - they're doing bad things because they're mentally ill! Case closed. And of course nowadays you don't have to wait long to hear "was he mentally ill?" whenever a lone white male goes on a mass shooting spree. This clearly completely ignores the fact that many of us with mental health problems never bloody kill anyone***.

We can blame it on the era. Like I say, mental health care in the 1950s was undergoing a change, but the change in treatment options wasn't necessarily followed by a change in understanding. The stigma surrounding mental health continues to this day, and the understanding of conditions evolves slowly, with social understanding tending to lag behind medical understanding, because let's face it - "sociopath" is just such a cool term to throw around.****

You would think, for a 1950s warning against whipping your dick out in public places, you wouldn't need the added "scare" of the killer being a crazy guy. We can talk about the abnormal psychology that might lead someone to become a serial killer, for sure, but there are always exceptions to the generally accepted "signs." I'm not here to say serial killers are not mentally ill, though. I'm here to say mentally ill people are not destined to become serial killers, and that the conflation of "mentally ill" with "dangerous" is itself a damaging stereotype. And it's so prevalent in the news, in literature, and even in old spoopy urban legends, that it feels worth reiterating as often as possible. Psychotic is not psychopathic. Depressed is not dangerous. Hooks are not good murder weapons.

*Even though this is categorically not a ghost story, Rick, you moron. I'm glad someone knocked you out.

**And don't tell me he could have got the hook after escaping. Where's an escaped asylum inmate going to find a hook? Like, how much effort is that kind of person going to put into find a hook they can attached to their wrist and use to kill people? There are easier ways to kill people, that's all I'm saying. 

***Even if Karen is super annoying.

****That was sarcasm, by the way.

Retro Reading - Help Wanted

If you asked me to name my major literary influences, off the top of my head I'd say Tamora Pierce and HP Lovecraft. With some more thought I'd talk about CS Lewis, Laurell K Hamilton, MR James, and Patricia Leitch. I would almost certainly have never mentioned Richie Tankersley Cusick.

Yes, it's more Point Horror! After enjoying the nostalgic kick of The Silent Scream last week, I decided to indulge my inner teen a bit more with Help Wanted. This is another of my favourites, and I always remembered it fondly when I thought back, but it wasn't until I re-read it yesterday that I realised Cusick may be the greatest literary influence I never knew I had.

To briefly recap the plot, Robin Bailey is a smart and conscientious student looking to make some fast cash for a Thanksgiving vacation with her friends. She answers a "help wanted" ad and finds herself cataloging books in a creepy old house for a creepy rich family with plenty of creepy secrets. Shenanigans ensue! I am simplifying it somewhat, of course. There are moments of genuine unease and disquiet throughout Help Wanted (like how did I not realise the school janitor was an actual sexual predator the first time round???). There are also some unintentionally uneasy moments, like sort-of love interest Parker Swanson casually dismissing his step-sister's suicidal tendencies as like "eh, she's weird, whatever."

But it holds up for me. I adored Robin as a teenager and I adore her more as an adult. I mean:

She's clever and caring. She defends her best friend, Faye, against boys who label her as "that airhead." She looks after Parker's step-sister, Claudia when everyone else dismisses her and slags her off. She works hard and is unassuming and earnest and I want to be friends with Robin, basically.

Another thing I always liked about this book was the romance - or lack of it. It's too easy to cram a pointless love angle into any book, and I do remember Point Horrors being replete with awkwardly timed teenaged fumbles. Like, look, you're running from a madman/vampire/crazy roommate. You have no time for flirting! Help Wanted skips this. Parker and another guy, Walt, are both obviously interested in Robin, but she has no time for their shit. The book ends with both guys gentlemanly escorting Robin home from a traumatic night of nearly being murdered, and lightly teasing each other about being competition for her, but Robin just sort of rolls her eyes and ignores them. I have to admit, I always kind of assumed that she ended up dating both and they formed a happy open relationship, as this seemed the most logical conclusion to me. On re-reading, I agree with my younger self.

So what are the things that made me realise how much Cusick influenced me? The setting - there's a gothic vibe to this story, with mediums, ghosts, and huge spooky houses playing central roles. If you've read any of my work from UNDERTOW to NIGHT AND CHAOS or my Brides of Darkness books, you'll know I dig that classic gothic vibe. Small towns with dark secrets, the undead, creepy locations, yes. Give me that. I doubt that all came from Cusick, but re-reading Help Wanted made me realise she definitely contributed. There's also the element of doubt in here - is it really something supernatural or is there a rational (but horrible) explanation. That appears in PHANTOM FEARS, for a quick example.

This is also the first book I remember reading where mental illness was a plot point, and an important one at that. I think I'd probably always gravitate towards characters who suffer or have suffered mental illness, because I have myself and it fascinates me, but Help Wanted was probably the earliest book I read where it was addressed and discussed openly. Does it handle it well? No. Claudia's paranoia and suicidal tendencies are dismissed as attention-seeking at best, and (spoiler!) she turns out to be the villain, so there's that nasty undercurrent of "crazy people are bad!" in there. Even so, it was...illuminating for me, a depressed and anxious teen, to read about a paranoid and anxious character in any context.

Thinking about Help Wanted lead me onto another Cusick book, Teacher's Pet. I haven't re-read this one yet, but it's another story that features a dark and gothic-esque plot with the whole "creepy setting, dark family secrets, mental illness" thing going on. If I remember correctly, I was outraged by the ending, in which the character I fell in love with turned out to be the villain (and mentally ill. I really need to write something about the presentation of mentally ill characters in Point Horror books, I guess). And the character I thought was a milquetoast wet blanket got the girl, even though he was considerably less attractive and interesting. Bah.

From Teacher's Pet, I think I drew a love of unconventional characters and love stories, in a strange way. I like darker, prickly heroines and romances. Is that all down to Cusick? Probably not, but throughout Help Wanted, I kept thinking "I love that trope! I write that trope!" and it was pretty cool to think about how I've used those tropes in my own work.

Next on the retro reading list? Probably Caroline B Cooney's Freeze Tag. We shall see!