Sunday at the World Horror Convention began in the middle of the night, which is appropriate, I guess, for a horror con. But the things that went bump in the night weren’t vampires or werewolves, but instead those damned frat boys, who for whatever reason decided to begin moving furniture from one hotel room to another at around 3:45 a.m., drunkenly bumping into walls as they carried box springs while shouting directions at each other. When I phoned the front desk, the immediate answer I got was, “I’m sick of these complaints. I’m calling the PD.” Whether the police ever arrived, and what they might have done when they got there, I have no idea, because I turned up the fan to block the noise and struggled to get back to sleep. Which, after 45 minutes or so, I was finally able to do.

After I woke, packed, and checked out, I headed to the 10:00 a.m. “Zombies Mega-Panel,” a 90-minute celebration of the living dead moderated by Joe McKinney and featuring me, RJ Sevin, Julia Sevin, Joe R. Lansdale, and John Skipp. (And Brian Keene, too, whom we pulled onstage about halfway through.) But before we began, I tossed out a couple of dozen glow-in-the-dark zombie finger puppets to get people in the mood.

It turns out that Lee Thomas also had something planned to get people in the mood—a video which was played before any of us began talking about why we loved zombies so much. Thanks for warming up the crowd, Lee! Check out what we all saw in Austin.

As soon as the panel ended, I ran off with my only willing victim … er, volunteer … Liz Gorinsky, to the Cathedral of Junk, which I already told you about, after which I dropped Liz back at the hotel and headed to the airport … where I discovered the con was not yet over.

I had lunch at the airport branch of the Salt Lick, which as you might expect wasn’t quite as good as its Driftwood branch (no ribs!), but was still some of the best airport food I’ve had in awhile. And then when I wandered toward my gate, I bumped into this motley crew …

That’s Derek Clendenning, Gord Rollo, and Eunice Magill, and since the pic was taken by Michael Kelly, you can see that World Horror was the con which wouldn’t die. I hung out with these guys as long as I could, but eventually I had to board my flight to Dulles. But WHC wasn’t over then either, as I happened to overhear the person in front of me mention the word “horror,” and when I asked, learned he was Henrik Sundqvist, one of the artists who had displayed work in Austin. We chatted a bit, until my exhaustion overtook me (damned frat boys!) and I slept for most of the flight.

And that was my World Horror Con!

Well … there is one more thing I have to tell you about—my Friday night outing to the Rude Mechanicals production of the play “I’ve Never Been So Happy.” But I’ll leave that for another day …