Their women from housesa walk like falling toward the far waters
Of lifein moonlighttoward the dreamed eternal meaning of their farms
Toward the flowering of the harvest in their handsthat tragic cost
Feels herself gogo towardgo outwardbreathes at last fully
Notand trieslessoncetriestriesah, god—
Afterword: An Important Message
from the Flight Deck
Bev Vincent
Although flying can be scary business, I’ve flown all over the planet and I can’t recall having any scary experiences. While working on this anthology, I spent over 24 hours in the air, and it was all smooth sailing (except I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things that might go wrong, thanks to the stories assembled here). An aborted landing in foggy weather is about as bad as it’s been for me in my entire air travel history.
However, the first time I was ever on an airplane was in March 1978, on a high school spring break trip to Greece. Our Alitalia 747 landed at Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome the day after the Red Brigade kidnapped former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. The airport was on high alert, filled with soldiers carrying Uzis. Tensions were elevated. When one of my classmates went through a metal detector with his camera slung around his neck, he almost caused an international incident.
Another time, while returning to the US from a business trip in Japan, my coworkers and I learned that the police officers accused of beating Rodney King had been acquitted, setting off riots in Los Angeles. We were supposed to change planes there, but we decided to reroute through San Francisco after hearing unconfirmed reports that people were shooting at airplanes landing at LAX.
In July 2017, prior to the Bangor premiere of The Dark Tower, Richard Chizmar and I were in a restaurant (across the street from Bangor International Airport, as it happens), when Stephen King approached us. “I just had an idea,” he said. “An anthology of stories about all the bad things that can happen to you when you’re flying. I’ll introduce the stories.” To Rich, he said, “You’ll publish it.” He suggested a couple of titles, then said, “Someone needs to help me find some more stories.” He turned to me. “That’ll be your job.”
So that’s how this anthology came about. I immediately thought of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” and I set to work looking for other examples of scary stories involving airplanes and flying.
There are plenty of novels and films with terrifying scenes on airplanes. The gold standard is probably Arthur Hailey’s 1968 Airport. Hailey started his writing career with a script called Flight into Danger, which sounds like a good title for a companion to this anthology. I read the novelization, Runway Zero-Eight, as a teenager, and I’m pretty sure I also saw the TV movie based on it: Terror in the Sky. Airport was, of course, turned into a feature film that spawned several sequels during the 1970s, but the hilarious spoof version Airplane! is probably better known these days. And who could forget Air Force One or Red Eye or Snakes on a Plane? There’s no end to the kinds of disasters that can occur when you’re trapped in a metal tube five, six, seven miles up.
The sub-sub-genre of scary airplane short stories is much smaller, I discovered. Finding good candidates took some work. Google search results were dominated by real-life scary anecdotes about bad flying experiences—much like the one Steve relates in his introduction. I also sought suggestions from the “hive mind,” posting a query on Facebook, and was rewarded with recommendations for stories I might not have found otherwise. So, hive mind, many thanks!
While searching for candidates for the anthology, I was working on an essay for the Poetry Foundation and was reminded that one of Steve’s favorite poems—one he has mentioned several times in interviews—was inspired by the real-life story from 1962 of a flight attendant who was sucked out of an airplane when the emergency door popped open in flight. I asked Steve if he thought we should include it in the anthology. As it turns out, he was thinking the same thing. Thus we end with a real-life tragedy made poetic and metaphorical.
I was also reading Joe Hill’s novella collection Strange Weather while working on this book. “Aloft” starts with an anxiety-ridden young man trying to impress a woman by going sky-diving. Nerves kick in and he tries to back out at the last minute, but he ends up having to bail out of the airplane when the engine quits. We were pleased when Joe told us that he had another—deeply disturbing—idea for a story that was a perfect match for this book. Owen King brought Tom Bissell’s story to our attention.
Does this anthology cover everything that could possibly go wrong on a flight? Absolutely not. As I was writing these notes, an alert went out about a passenger who went through Chicago O’Hare while suffering from the measles. So even if your flight makes it safely to its final destination, what other passengers might you carry home with you? The possibilities are endless. Something to ponder as you pack for your next journey.
Although this anthology consists mostly of previously published stories, I suspect there aren’t many people out there who’ve read more than a few of them before. I had only read four of the works before I embarked on this project. It has been a voyage of discovery and we are very pleased with the group of stories we’ve assembled.
Once we had a table of contents mostly established, I revisited “The Langoliers” for the first time in years, and found unexpected connections between this novella—novel, really; it’s as long as this entire anthology—and the other tales we had selected. This is the Stephen King universe, of course, where a character named Jenkins in “The Langoliers” muses that “you can’t appear in the Texas Book Depository on November 22, 1963, and put a stop to the Kennedy assassination,” so such things shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it did.
Consider, if you will, the self-same Jenkins, an author who at first describes their plight in terms of “locked room” mysteries. One of the stories I’d found was a locked room mystery that takes place in an airplane bathroom. Jenkins goes on to say that a real-world mystery wasn’t an appropriate metaphor for their predicament. “It’s too bad Larry Niven or John Varley isn’t on board,” he says. Wait…what? Who did we have in the table of contents other than Mr. Varley himself?
And then there’s the discussion about how to get back through the wormhole. Their solution could conceivably “turn the plane into Jonestown,” Jenkins says. And where does the cargo in the opening story in our anthology come from? Uh-huh. Jonestown.
It was like it was all meant to be. I love that kind of discovered symmetry.
****
And now, an important message from your two pilots up here in the cockpit. We would like to thank the passengers on this flight. We know you had a choice of carriers and we appreciate very much that you agreed to join us on board. We hope the flight wasn’t too rough, but you knew what you were getting into when you boarded this plane. Maybe one of the passengers helped smooth out the rough patches. These things happen, you know.
Thank you, too, to their travel agents, who arranged their journeys and made sure they arrived at their final and intended destinations. Many of the passengers in these stories were not quite so fortunate.
We would also like to thank our cabin crew, led by Chuck Verrill, for helping ensure a smooth trip for everyone involved, and the ground crew at Cemetery Dance Publications, who maintained this airship and made sure it was in working condition—in particular CD’s crew chief, Rich Chizmar, and operations agent Brian Freeman.
Now, if you’ll please obey the lighted signs, return your seat backs and tray tables to their full, upright and locked positions, stow any items you may have brought out during flight, turn off any electronic devices you have been using, we’re about to land. It might be bumpy, so brace yourself—this is your co-pilot’s first flight. Remain seated until the aircraft is parked at the gate and the seat belt sign is extinguished. Be careful opening the luggage bins as items are guaran-damn-teed to have shi
fted during flight and those heavy bags are just waiting to conk you on the head.
Oh, and if you ever see someone reading this book at an airport or—better yet—on an airplane, please take a picture and send it to us. That would be awesome!
Bev Vincent
The Woodlands, Texas
March 8, 2018
About the Authors
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) is perhaps best known as the author of The Devil’s Dictionary and the frequently anthologized short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” He worked as a printer’s apprentice and enlisted during the American Civil War, an experience that informed much of his subsequent writing. For a quarter of a century, he wrote and worked for newspapers on both coasts. In search of further wartime experience, he disappeared while traveling to Mexico to observe the revolution led by Pancho Villa. His fate is unknown.
Tom Bissell (1974-) was born in Escanaba, Michigan. He is the author of nine books, including the New York Times-bestselling The Disaster Artist (written with Greg Sestero) and Apostle. His work has been awarded the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) was the author of more than three dozen books, including such classics asFahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine,andSomething Wicked This Way Comes,as well as hundreds of short stories. He wrote for theater, cinema, and TV, including the screenplay for John Huston’sMoby Dickand the Emmy Award-winning teleplayThe Halloween Tree,and adapted for television sixty-five of his stories forThe Ray Bradbury Theater.He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other honors.
Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was born in Cardiff of Norwegian descent. He joined the RAF at the age of twenty-three and began writing for adults after being injured in a plane crash during World War II. Sitting in a hut at the bottom of his garden, he went on to write some of the world’s best-loved children’s stories, including Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG. Today, his stories have been translated into 60 languages and he has sold more than 250 million books. Many of these stories have also been adapted for stage and screen, including the 1971 film classic, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Wes Anderson’s acclaimed Fantastic Mr Fox, Steven Spielberg’s The BFG and the multi-award-winning Matilda The Musical from the RSC with music by Tim Minchin. Dahl died in November 1990.
James L. Dickey (1923-1997) was an American poet and novelist best known as the author of Deliverance, which was adapted as a major motion picture in 1972. Dickey had a cameo in the movie as a sheriff. He served as a radar operator in a night flier squadron in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and served again in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in English and Philosophy from Vanderbilt, he returned to complete an M.A. in English at the same institution. He taught at the Rice Institute and the University of Florida, and spent several years writing advertising copy. He started publishing collections of his poetry in 1960, and was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Book Award for Poetry, as well as being named poetry consultant for the Library of Congress. After serving as a visiting lecturer throughout most of the 1960s, he became a professor of English and writer-in-residence at the University of South Carolina in 1969. He was appointed the eighteenth United States Poet Laureate in 1966 and was invited to read at President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in 1977. His reading of his poem “The Moon Ground” was broadcast on television on the day of the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was a physician who created Sherlock Holmes, a consulting detective who appeared in dozens of short stories and four novels. Doyle also wrote historical novels and adventure stories featuring Professor Challenger. He wrote about the Boer War and other issues related to the African continent, but became fascinated by spiritualism, an interest that put him into conflict with the likes of Harry Houdini and Joseph McCabe. His autobiography, Memories and Adventures, was published six years before his death.
Cody Goodfellow (1970-) has written seven solo novels and three with NY Times-bestselling author John Skipp, and two of his four collections of short fiction, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars and All-Monster Action, received the Wonderland Book Award. He wrote, co-produced and scored the short Lovecraftian hygiene film Stay-At-Home Dad. As a hierophant of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, he presides over several Cthulhu Prayer Breakfasts each year. He recently played an Amish farmer in a Days Inn commercial, and has appeared in the background on numerous TV programs, including Aquarius, American Horror Story: Roanoke, G.L.O.W., You’re The Worst, Kirby Buckets, Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History and videos by Anthrax and Beck. He is also a cofounder of Perilous Press, an occasional micropublisher of modern cosmic horror. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, he actually lives in Portland, Oregon.
Joe Hill (1972-) is the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Fireman, NOS4A2, and, most recently, Strange Weather. As he lives part of his life in the United Kingdom and part of his life in the States, he spends quite a bit of the time in the air, musing about all the hideous things that could happen to a person at 30,000 feet.
Stephen King (1947-) made his first professional short story sale in 1967 to Startling Mystery Stories. In the fall of 1971, he began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels. In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co., accepted the novel Carrie for publication, providing him the means to leave teaching and write full-time. He has since published over 50 books and has become one of the world’s most successful writers. King is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2014 National Medal of Arts and the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award.
E. Michael Lewis (1972-) is an aviation and ghost story enthusiast who studied creative writing at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma. His short stories appear in The Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies (Megazanthus Press), Exotic Gothic 4 (PS Publishing), and Savage Beasts (Grey Matter Press). He’s also on Facebook and Twitter. He is a lifelong native of the Pacific Northwest, the father of two sons, and the chief attendant of two cats, who are also brothers.
Richard Matheson (1926-2013) is the author of many classic novels and short stories. He wrote in a variety of genres including terror, fantasy, horror, paranormal, suspense, science fiction and western. In addition to books, he wrote prolifically for television (includingThe Twilight Zone,Night Gallery,Star Trek)and numerous feature films.Many of Matheson’s novels and stories have been made into movies includingThe Shrinking Man, I Am Legend, Somewhere in Time,andWhat Dreams May Come. His many awards include the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards for Lifetime Achievement, the Hugo Award, Edgar Award, Spur Award for Best Western Novel, multiple Writer’s Guild awards, and in 2010 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
David J. Schow (1955-) has had his short stories selected for over 30 volumes of “Year’s Best” anthologies across four decades and has won the World Fantasy Award, the ultra-rare Dimension Award from Twilight Zone magazine, plus an International Horror Guild Award for Wild Hairs (his compendium of “Raving & Drooling” columns written for Fangoria). His novels include The Kill Riff, The Shaft, Rock Breaks Scissors Cut, Bullets of Rain, Gun Work, Hunt Among the Killers of Men, Internecine, Upgunned and The Big Crush (forthcoming). His short stories are collected in Seeing Red, Lost Angels, Black Leather Required, Crypt Orchids, Eye, Zombie Jam, Havoc Swims Jaded, DJSturbia, and a career compendium, DJStories. He has written extensively for films (The Crow, Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, The Hills Run Red) and television (Tales from the Crypt, Perversions of Science, The Hunger, Masters
of Horror). His other nonfiction work includes The Art of Drew Struzan and The Outer Limits Companion. A follow-up volume, The Outer Limits at 50, won the 2015 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Book. As expert witness you can see him talking and moving around on documentaries and DVDs for everything from Creature from the Black Lagoon, Incubus and The Shawshank Redemption to Scream and Scream Again, Beast Wishes and The Psycho Legacy. He is also the editor of the three-volume Lost Bloch series for Subterranean Press and Elvisland by John Farris. He co-produced supplements for such DVDs as Reservoir Dogs, From Hell, I, Robot, The Dirty Dozen Special Edition and Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. He was the recipient of the very first J.F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award, and thanks to him the word “splatterpunk” has been in the Oxford English Dictionary since 2002. He lives and works in his beloved Los Angeles. Google him, by all means.
Dan Simmons (1948-) was born in Peoria, Illinois, and grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source of his fictional “Elm Haven” in 1991’s Summer of Night and 2002’s A Winter Haunting. Dan received a B.A. in English from Wabash College in 1970, winning a national Phi Beta Kappa Award during his senior year for excellence in fiction, journalism and art. Dan received his Masters in Education from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971. He then worked in elementary education for 18 years—2 years in Missouri, 2 years in Buffalo, New York—one year as a specially trained BOCES “resource teacher” and another as a sixth-grade teacher—and 14 years in Colorado.
Peter Tremayne (1943-) now lives in London and first made a reputation writing supernatural thrillers before turning to crime fiction. As a former Celtic scholar he is internationally known for his long running historical crime series, The Sister Fidelma Mysteries. These are set mainly in Ireland in the 7thCentury, of which the 29thtitle has just appeared (July, 2018). Having appeared in numerous languages, an International Sister Fidelma Society was formed in 2001 in the USA and from 2006, a three day international fan gathering has been held in Cashel, Co. Tipperary, the “hometown” of the Fidelma character. Opening the 2014 gathering, Irish Government Minister for the Environment, Alan Kelly, described the series as “a national treasure.” Peter has written only a few non-Fidelma crime stories and “Murder in the Air” shows his talent is not confined to the 7thCentury.
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