It was pouring outside, my brain was out of thoughts, ideas, words, colors – anything, and I needed to get out from behind my desk where I live, eat and sometimes sleep. It was time to flee. The best flee places are the beach with my dogs, a coffeeshop, my good friend, Maria’s house where we eat carrots and tell silly stories and the movies. The choices were romance or horror so I chose Wolfman – a movie I would never have chosen but for one unexplainable reason. I wanted a good scare.

As a kid, I was terrified of a nursery rhyme character called Wee Willie Winkie. He ran “upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown” and I was certain one night he would climb into my window and drag me into a deep dark forest. Willie never came. But now as I sat in a dark theatre with a teensy bag of popcorn watching a man turn into a wolf who tore people to bits – I didn’t flinch.

I asked myself, if I am a true crime writer who has written about and and lived with death and horror – why didn’t these images on the screen terrify me? Then I thought: Real terror sneaks into your life like the friendly next door neighbor borrowing a quart of milk. Or it’s the cheerful piano teacher or the trusted aunt Mabel. Real terror is elusive and unexpected and sometimes has a friendly, comfortable, familiar voice – not a howl that jangles you to your toenails.

I left the theatre remembering how terrified I was standing in the the silence in the Mojave Desert where Bill Bradford murdered Shari and Tracey. There was just wind blowing and sand flying. That’s all there was. But the silence was more frightening than all the wolf howls Hollywood could manufacture.