From the Heart of Darkness

by David Drake

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  Acknowledgments: The stories contained herein were first published and are copyrighted as follows:

  INTRODUCTION, by Karl Edward Wagner, MD

  MEN LIKE US

  from OMNI; May, 1980

  SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE

  from F&SF; February, 1975

  THE AUTOMATIC RIFLEMAN

  from DESTINIES; Fall, 1980

  THAN CURSE THE DARKNESS

  from NEW TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS; ed Ramsey Campbell; Arkham House, 1980

  FIREFIGHT

  from FRIGHTS; ed Kirby McCauley; St Martins; 1976

  THE RED LEER

  from WHISPERS II; ed Stuart Schiff; Doubleday; 1979

  THE SHORTEST WAY

  from WHISPERS; March, 1974

  BEST OF LUCK

  from THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR STORIES, SERIES VI; ed Gerald Page; DAW, 1978

  DRAGONS’ TEETH

  This version differs from both earlier-published versions.

  OUT OF AFRICA

  Original to this collection

  THE DANCER IN THE FLAMES

  from WHISPERS; August, 1982

  SMOKIE JOE

  from MORE DEVIL’S KISSES; ed Linda Lovecraft; Corgi; 1977

  CHILDREN OF THE FOREST

  from F&SF; November, 1976

  BLOOD DEBT

  from THE FOURTH MAYFLOWER BOOK OF BLACK MAGIC STORIES; ed Michel Parry; Mayflower, 1976

  THE BARROW TROLL

  from WHISPERS; December, 1975

  THE HUNTING GROUND

  from SUPERHORROR; ed Ramsey Campbell; W H Allen, 1976

  DEDICATION

  To the friends to whom I read the manuscripts:

  Karl and Barbara

  Bobette and Richard

  Glenn and Helen

  Sharon and Bob

  Bernadette

  and especially Jo

  INTRODUCTION

  BY KARL EDWARD WAGNER

  Anyone who has read more than two books is well aware of the exaggerations indulged in by those who write cover blurbs and, yes, even introductions. “A shuddery feast of thrills to chill you to the marrow!” “Be warned! You are about to embark upon a nerve-shredding excursion into the ghoul-haunted nightmares of the psychotic mind!” “These tales will terrify you through a thousand heart-stopping nights of horror!” Exclamation points always go nicely here. So do comparisons. “Not since Edgar Allan Poe!” “In the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft!” “Out-horrifies even Stephen King!”

  Forget the typical barrage of strident hype and crescendos of superlatives. Forget the stock characters and tried-and-true plots that have proliferated like junk food franchises throughout the horror genre. Here there be no enchanted castles, endearing dragons, nor darling little elves. Here you are not about to encounter suave vampiric counts, brooding gothic heroines, nor moaning phantoms abroad midst a dark and stormy night. Here you will not find perpetually haunted New England towns, nor menacing children possessed by supernatural forces, nor trendy California couples in soap opera throes of Some Dark Secret.

  You are holding a collection of thoroughly vicious, uncompromising horror stories.

  For any author, the publication of a volume of his collected short stories is a welcome event—all the more to be cherished owing to the unlikelihood of its occurrence. Flatly stated, publishers do not like short story collections; short story collections, even very good ones, simply do not sell as well as novels, even very bad novels. It is an exceptional short story collection that entices an editor to publish it against very sound misgivings, and it happens that this is a collection of exceptional short stories.

  The short story, as is too often lamented, is a vanishing literary form. Again the harsh realities of economics are a major factor. The markets for short fiction have all but disappeared. Where fifty years ago there were literally hundreds of fiction magazines published each month, today the magazine whose contents are primarily fiction is all but extinct. Those few that remain are paying substantially the same rates for fiction as did their forebears. A glance at the most recent market reports for the surviving science fiction and fantasy magazines (two of which were doing business fifty years ago) shows payment rates of three to seven cents a word. Fifty years ago similar magazines paid one to three cents a word. Taking into account inflation, a 7500-word story sold during the Depression paid for a lot more groceries than a same-length story could buy if sold to today’s magazine and anthology markets. On the other hand, a paperback novel, say a science fiction or horror novel, that might have earned a $500 advance thirty years ago, can pull down today an advance from a comfortable five figures to past the million dollar mark.

  Any author who can sell novels is wasting his time by writing short fiction. No one wants to publish short fiction; if they do, they pay only peanuts, and when they do, no one wants to read it. A successful author who writes short fiction can only do so for the personal enjoyment it brings him—a sense of satisfaction at having mastered a difficult craft. David Drake is a successful novelist, and these stories are those written by a painstaking craftsman with a lifetime love for the horror story.

  David A. Drake was born in Dubuque, Iowa on September 24, 1945. Growing up in that midwestern state, he graduated from the University of Iowa in 1967 with a double major in history and in Latin. Marrying his childhood sweetheart, Joanne Kammiller, the couple honeymooned in Providence, Rhode Island—indulging Drake’s avid interest in horror fiction with a visit to the H. P. Lovecraft collection at Brown University. In autumn of 1967, Drake moved to Durham, North Carolina, where he entered Duke University School of Law. Drafted out of law school, Drake wound up in the Eleventh Armored Cavalry Regiment, working in military intelligence. After a year stateside at Fort Bliss, Texas, Drake was shipped to Viet Nam, just in time to be sent in with the spearhead of the Cambodian invasion. While Drake insists that the closest he ever came to being under fire was when a spent cal .50 core plopped down beside his tent during a mad minute, he does admit to having been a good listener to the conversations of combat veterans. Returning to North Carolina in January, 1971, Drake graduated from Duke Law School in 1972 and moved to nearby Chapel Hill, where he found employment as deputy town attorney.

  As a teenager Drake read and was tremendously impressed by a paperback collection of H. P. Lovecraft’s best horror stories, entitled Cry Horror! Published during a period when Lovecraft’s work was not generally available, this book was a major influence upon the impressionable young minds of more than a few of today’s horror writers. Inspired by this discovery, Drake began writing stories of his own in the Lovecraftian mode. This might have passed as a harmles
s juvenile phase, except that in 1964 Arkham House published a collection of stories entitled The Inhabitant of the Lake, written by Liverpool’s J. Ramsey Campbell, another 16-year-old kid infatuated with the works of Lovecraft. Reading this book of Lovecraftian pastiches convinced Drake that he could do the same, and he began to make a serious attempt to break into print. Following Campbell’s lead, Drake started submitting stories to August Derleth, editor-publisher of Arkham House, persisting despite Derleth’s caustic rejections. Eventually this persistence paid off. On its third submission, Derleth bought Drake’s short story, “Denkirch”—paying $35 and commenting that the story still wasn’t right and that Drake should compare the published version, as revised by Derleth, with Drake’s own final draft to see how the story should have been written. In 1967 “Denkirch” appeared in the Arkham House anthology, Travellers by Night, and Drake was at last a published author.

  The Derleth connection is another point Drake has in common with several of today’s horror writers, most notably Ramsey Campbell and Brian Lumley. Himself a noteworthy author—and not just in the fantasy genre—Derleth founded Arkham House to showcase and preserve the works of many of this field’s greatest writers. Not content merely to canonize certain authors of the past, Derleth worked to develop new writers—patiently reading their first stumbling efforts, offering criticism and encouragement, and, perhaps, publishing their awkward initial attempts at fiction, and thereby giving the greatest encouragement of all to the neophyte writer.

  Drake’s first few sales were all to Derleth, whose rejections always came tempered with sound advice. Gradually Drake broke away from the stultifying influence of Lovecraft, having managed (again in common with many writers at this stage) only in emulating all that was bad in Lovecraft’s prose. Drake’s interests in history and classical languages directed his writing to horrors that lurked in the historical past, whether ancient Egypt or the past century. His consuming interest in ancient Rome resulted in an excellent series of stories about a pair of fourth century adventurers, Vettius and Dama. Drake saw no reason to invent a mythical unhistoried past for such exploits, believing that the dimly known history of past ages holds an abundance of horrors and wonders.

  In July of 1971 Derleth bought “Black Iron,” a Vettius and Dama story, from Drake. It was to be the last story Derleth would ever buy, as death cut short his career the following day. Had Derleth lived, it seems very probable that Arkham House in time would have published a collection of Drake’s stories—not Lovecraftian pastiches, for Drake had moved beyond this now, but stories set in the historical past, crafted with loving attention to accuracy of detail. Such obsessive attention to detail was in part Drake’s major failing during this period; he expended all of his energy on historical accuracy, and characterization and plot became inconsequential. For Drake, accuracy and realism were everything, and the addition of a monster or two was all that was needed to transform a didactic exercise into a story. Other editors were not as patient as Derleth, and for a few years it appeared that Drake’s writing career was stillborn.

  Determination—and a few good breaks—have carried many a struggling writer through difficult times. Drake got an agent, a newcomer from Minneapolis named Kirby McCauley, who joined several of Drake’s fellow writers in urging him to make use of his Viet Nam experience in his fiction, to write of modern day horrors rather than those from a period with little market clout—to try science fiction, perhaps. Drake reluctantly followed advice, and his career abruptly shifted from that of a promising amateur to full-fledged professional.

  A series of fantasy and science fiction stories set in Viet Nam quickly sold to F&SF, Analog, and Galaxy—markets that had previously rejected all of his submissions. Extrapolating the Viet Nam experience into the future and onto other planets, Drake found a ready market for the Hammer’s Slammers cycle of science fiction stories—space opera with realistic gore. Slowly emerging as a name author from the “and others” ranks, Drake now discovered a market for his contemporary horror stories as well as his beloved historical fantasies. In addition to the magazines, Drake’s stories came into increasing demand for anthologies of original fiction, both here and in England. Stuart David Schiff, editor-publisher of the premier fantasy/horror magazine, Whispers, was not merely content with buying some of Drake’s best fiction, and he tapped Drake as his assistant editor. Drake found further involvement with the small press field as a partner in Carcosa, a fantasy/horror limited edition publisher located in Chapel Hill. With the publication in 1979 of his first two books, Hammer’s Slammers and The Dragon Lord, the inevitable conflict of careers came to a head.

  Any writer who is serious about his work and who has another career eventually has to make a commitment: either he will write full time as a career, or he will relegate his writing to the status of a sometime hobby. It probably drove the final coffin nails in Drake’s law career that his friends included one writer who had been writing full time for half a century and another writer who had turned his back on a medical career. In summer of 1980 Drake left his position as deputy town attorney and took a job as part-time bus driver—this to pay the bills while he wrote. It was a gamble, but a successful one. In autumn of 1981 Drake drove his last bus and turned to writing on a full-time basis.

  An extremely versatile writer, Drake seems as much at ease with his material whether it’s fifth century Britain or today’s cold war espionage or some future colonial war on a distant planet. His writing reflects his many hobbies and interests—firearms, motorcycles, high tech hardware, ancient and modern warfare, dinosaurs, classical history. Drake owns an extensive library of specialized reference works as well as thousands of science fiction and fantasy books. The fact that he is equally enthusiastic over his set of Arkham House books and his complete run of Planet Stories and his collected novels of Sven Hassell is a fair indication of his orientations as a writer. Nor is all his research second hand. Drake is a crack pistol marksman, and his motorcycles include the 108-horsepower Suzuki GS1100E.

  His style is straightforward and economical, somewhat unusual in a genre overladen with purple prose, and Drake professes a debt to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. One unfailing trademark of Drake’s writing is that it always is well researched—in point of fact, obsessively accurate in those areas of particular interest and expertise. While Drake has mastered the intricacies of plot and characterization over the course of some fifty published stories and half a dozen books, his overriding concern remains get it right.

  Drake’s fiction usually has a very strong impact upon the reader. Some readers find his work extremely unpleasant—enough so to write angry letters to the editor or inveigh against him in reviews. His story, “Smokie Joe,” originally published in the British anthology, More Devil’s Kisses, is partially credited with Scotland Yard’s seizure of the book and jailing of its publisher. On the other hand, two of his stories (“The Red Leer” and “Best of Luck”) have been optioned for television production, and Hammer’s Slammers has attracted enough of a cult following to be adapted by Mayfair into a board game. Readers enamored of lovely unicorns and romantic quests, or who insist upon the inevitable triumph of Good over Evil had best leave Drake’s fiction strictly alone. Drake’s insistence upon accuracy of detail extends to gruesome surety that swordcuts bleed and that bullets make rather nasty holes in things. Depending upon one’s personal philosophy, one might argue that Drake’s determinedly pessimistic attitude toward humanity, separately or as a race, is a further extension of his obsession with realism. Drake is not an author readers are likely to feel neutral toward; either they enjoy his writing, or they react with heartfelt aversion.

  From the Heart of Darkness is an excellent introduction to Drake’s work, offering examples of his Vettius and Dama stories, historical pieces, Viet Nam horrors, contemporary nightmares, and bleak visions of the future. It is also an excellent collection of horror stories from an author who has paid his dues. These stories may frighten you and they may turn
your stomach, but you are not going to forget them—and that is the hallmark of successful horror fiction.

  MEN LIKE US

  There was a toad crucified against them at the head of the pass. Decades of cooking in the blue haze from the east had left it withered but incorruptible. It remained, even now that the haze was only a memory. The three travellers squatted down before the talisman and stared back at it.

  “The village can’t be far from here,” Smith said at last. “I’ll go down tomorrow.”

  Ssu-ma shrugged and argued, “Why waste time? We can all go down together.”

  “Time we’ve got,” said Kozinski, playing absently with his ribs as he eyed the toad. “A lot of the stories we’ve been told come from ignorance, from fear. There may be no more truth to this one than to many of the others. We have a duty, but we have a duty as well not to disrupt needlessly. We’ll wait for you and watch.”

  Smith chuckled wryly. “What sort of men would there be in the world,” he said, “if it weren’t for men like us?”

  All three of them laughed, but no one bothered to finish their old joke.

  * * *

  The trail was steep and narrow. The stream was now bubbling twenty feet below, but in springtime it would fill its sharp gorge with a torrent as cold as the snows that spawned it. Coming down the valley, Smith had a good view of Moseby when he had eased around the last facet of rock above the town. It sprawled in the angle of the creek and the river into which the creek plunged. In a niche across the creek from the houses was a broad stone building, lighted by slit windows at second-story level. Its only entrance was an armored door. The building could have been a prison or a fortress were it not for the power lines running from it, mostly to the smelter at the riverside. A plume of vapor overhung its slate roof.

  One of the pair of guards at the door of the powerplant was morosely surveying the opposite side of the gorge for want of anything better to do. He was the first to notice Smith. His jaw dropped. The traveller waved to him. The guard blurted something to his companion and threw a switch beside the door.