Blog-o-ween 2023: "Raymond" by Nancy A. Collins

Yesterday’s Blog-o-ween entry was a terrific example of the “creepy kid” sub-genre in horror. In Robert Bloch’s hands, the story of Irma and her revenge against her father had an almost comic effect. That “snap ending” that Stephen King talked about certainly acted as a punchline, did it not? You might even say that the humor in “Sweets to the Sweet” was rather...biting...heh-heh-heh! Irma’s dad certainly laughed his head off. Heh-heh-heh!

Today’s story is a somewhat more sober and somber examination of the cruelties of childhood. All kidding aside, children can be vicious towards one another. The playground pecking order is a closely guarded and scrutinized hierarchy. Anyone who doesn’t fit into the established order quickly finds themselves banished to the end of the line to become the punching bag for everyone above them. Such is the fate of the title character of Nancy A. Collins’s short story “Raymond.”

“I remember the first time I saw Raymond Fleuris...”

Darryl Sweetman is your average seventh-grade kid in small-town Arkansas. He and his best friend, Rafe Mercer, are interested in the same girl, Kitty Killigrew. Both Darryl and Rafe wonder if this year’s county fair will feature a kootchie tent and, more importantly, if they’ll be able to sneak in and see the ladies in the undies.

Into this mundane world of normal desires and daydreams, Raymond Fleuris is dropped. Raymond’s dirt-poor social status along with his hillbilly bib overalls would be more than enough to seal any kid’s fate as the schoolyard’s scapegoat. Unfortunately for Raymond, he also comes to his first day at school with his head wound with gauze and gloves secured to his hands with string at the wrists. He doesn’t exactly blend in.

Raymond is also what Darryl refers to as “simple.” While he sits in the back of Darryl’s class, Raymond “never handed in homework and was excused from taking tests. All he did was sit and scribble in his notebook with one of those big kindergarten pencils.” Later, on the playground, the local bully, Chucky Donothan, decides to make sure that Raymond understands his place in schoolyard society. He pushes Raymond to the ground, but Raymond doesn’t fight back. He verbally abuses Raymond, accusing the new boy of wearing gloves to hide the hair that grows on his palms through masturbating too much, but Raymond says nothing. It isn’t until Chucky attempts to remove those gloves from Raymond’s hands that Raymond defends himself. And, boy, does he ever! Raymond becomes like a wild animal:

“One second Raymond was your basic slack-jawed moron, the next he was shrieking and clawing at Chucky like the Tasmanian Devil in those old Bugs Bunny cartoons. His face seemed to flex, like the muscles were being jerked every-which-way.”

During the scuffle, Raymond bites Chucky on the upper arm, drawing blood and screams from the bully. One of Raymond’s gloves comes off, giving Darryl a look at his bare hand. Raymond’s ring finger, Darryl notices, is longer than the other fingers. And that, Dear Reader, is our clue as to what sort of story this is. An elongated third finger is a sure sign of lycanthropy.

I said an elongated THIRD finger!

Poor Raymond, it seems, is a werewolf or shapeshifter. Collins doesn’t treat his affliction in the usual way, however. In her hands, Raymond’s condition is not monstrous. What is monstrous is what’s been done to him by his family and the doctors at the State Hospital in the name of normality and fitting in. Raymond’s fate at the end of the story is as much a snap ending as the end of Robert Bloch’s story, but instead of leaving the reader chuckling at the black humor, Collins’s last line is a sad reminder of what can happen to those misunderstood souls that “normal” society doesn’t know how to handle.

Nancy A. Collins was born in rural Arkansas. During her life, she has moved around the country, living in New Orleans, Atlanta, New York City, as well as coastal North Carolina and Virginia. She is best known for creating the character “Sonja Blue,” a woman with demonic powers who hunts and kills vampires. Sonja Blue appears in a number of books. Collins has also written for the comics, taking over the writing reins on Swamp thing, Vampirella, and Red Sonja.

“Raymond” was published in an anthology called The Ultimate Werewolf. Later, it was included in Collins’s own collection Knuckles and Tales. I first encountered the story in Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell’s Best New Horror 3, published in 1992. I’ll be featuring more from this collection in the coming weeks.

Sadly, there isn’t an audio version of the story that I could find, but I think “Raymond” would sound great dramatized, especially those scenes that take place at the carnival. The carnival is a great trope in horror, and one that isn’t taken advantage of as much as it should be.

So, track down this story at your local library, curl up with it late at night...and...pleasant dreams...hmmm? Heh-heh-heh!