The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  “Look at that, will you?” asked Skeeter a few minutes later. “He’s giving it to a guy whose kid is dying.”

  But Elmo Simpson, The Large Charge, from Bridge City, Texas, was lying on his back, fast asleep. Snores began to form inside his mouth, and every few minutes, one would escape.

  Donny talked to his wife over the phone out in the motel lobby. They told each other how much they missed each other, and Donny asked about the new record of his coming out this week, and Dottie said she wished he’d come home soon rather than going on the tour, and they told each other they loved each other, and he hung up.

  Val Ritchie was sitting in a drugstore just down the street, eating a chocolate sundae and wishing he were home. Instead of going to do a show tonight, then fly with one or another load of musicians off to Alaska for two weeks for the USO.

  He was wearing some of his old clothes and looked out of place in the booth. He thought most northern people overdressed anyway, even kids going to school. I mean, like they were all ready for church or Uncle Fred’s funeral.

  He hadn’t been recognized yet, and wouldn’t be. He always looked like a twenty-year-old garage mechanic on a coffee break.

  Bud and Lou swerved to avoid a snowdrift. They had turned onto the giant highway a few miles back and had it almost to themselves. Ice glistened everywhere in the late afternoon sun, blindingly. Soon the sun would fall and it would become pitch black outside.

  “How much further is it, Bud?” asked Lou. His stomach was growling.

  “I don’t know. It’s around here somewhere. I’m just following what’s-his-name’s orders.”

  “Why doesn’t he give better orders, Bud?”

  “Because he never worked for Universal.”

  Stan and Ollie did not know what was happening when the doors of the moving van opened and carpets started dropping off the top of the racks. Then the van slammed into another vehicle. They felt it through the sides of the truck.

  The driver was already out. He was walking towards a small truck with two men in it.

  Stan and Ollie climbed out of the back of the Mayflower truck and saw who the other two were.

  The four regarded each other, and the truck driver surveyed the damage to the carpets, which was minor.

  They helped him load the truck back up, then Stan and Ollie climbed in the small van with Bud and Lou.

  “I wonder what Quackenbush is up to now?” asked Bud, as he scrunched himself up with the others. With Lou and Ollie taking up so much room, he and Stan had to share a space hardly big enough for a lap dog. Somehow, they managed.

  “I really don’t know,” said Ollie. “He seems quite intent on keeping this thing from happening.”

  “But, why us, Bud?” asked Lou. “We been goood boys since…well, we been good boys. He could have sent so many others.”

  “That’s quite all right with me,” said Stanley. “He didn’t seem to want just anybody for this.”

  “I don’t know about you two, but Lou and I were sent from Peoria. That’s a long way. What’s this guy got against us?”

  “Well, there’s actually no telling,” said Stanley. “Ollie and I have been travelling all day, haven’t we, Ollie?”

  “Quite right, Stanley.”

  “But what I don’t get,” said Bud, working at his pencil-thin mustache, “is that I remember when all this happened the first time.”

  “So do I,” said Stanley.

  “But not us two,” said Lou, indicating Ollie and himself, and trying to keep the truck on the road.

  “Well, that’s because you two had…had…left before them. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that he sent us back here to… Come to think of it, I don’t understand, either.”

  “Or me,” said Lou.

  “Quackenbush moves in mysterious ways,” said Bud.

  “Right you are,” said Stan.

  “Mmmm Mmmmm Mmmmm,” said Ollie.

  By the time they saw they were in the air they also realized the pilot wasn’t aboard.

  Leonard was still stuck upside down in the forward cockpit. Arthur managed to fly the plane straight while his brother crawled out and sat upright.

  Looping and swirling, they flew on through the late afternoon towards Cedar Oaks.

  The line started forming in front of the doors of the civic auditorium at five, though it was still bitterly cold.

  The manager looked outside at 5.15 pm. It was just dark, and there must be a hundred and fifty kids out there already, tickets in hand. He hadn’t been at the sound rehearsal and hadn’t seen the performers. All he knew was what he heard about them: they were the hottest rock and roll musicians since Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry.

  The show went on at 7.00 pm as advertised, and it was a complete sellout. The crowd was ready, and when Rip Dover introduced the Champagnes, the people yelled and screamed even at their tired doo-wah act.

  Then came Wailon, and they were polite for him, except that they kept yelling “Rock ’n’ roll! Rock ’n’ roll!” and he kept singing “Young Love” and the like.

  Then other acts, then Val Ritchie, who jogged his way through several standards and launched into “Los Niños.” He tore the place apart. They wouldn’t let him go, they were dancing in the aisles. He did “Los Niños” until he was hoarse. They dropped the spots on him, finally, and the kids quit screaming. It got quiet. Then there was the sound of a mike being turned on and a voice, greasy in the magnificence, filled the hall:

  “Helloooooooooooo, baby!”

  It was long past dark, and the truck swerved down the road, the forms of Stan, Ollie, Bud and Lou illuminated by the dome light. Bud had a map unfolded in front of the windshield and Ollie’s arms were in Lou’s way.

  “It’s here somewhere,” said Bud. “I know it’s here somewhere!”

  Overhead was the whining, droning sound of an old aeroplane, sometimes close to the ground, sometimes far above. Every once in a while was a yell of “Watch-a youself! Watcha where you go!” and a whonk whonk.

  The truck below passed a sign which said:

  WELCOME TO CEDAR OAKS

  Speed Limit 30 mph

  After The Large Charge hung up the telephone receiver, and they let him offstage to thunderous ovation, the back curtain parted and there were Donny Bottoms and the Mosquitoes.

  And the first song they sang was “Dottie,” the song Bottoms had written for his wife while they were still high school sweethearts. Then “Roller Coaster Days” and “Miss America” and all his classics. And the crowd went crazy and…

  The truck roared into the snowy, jampacked parking lot of the auditorium, skidded sideways, wiped out a ’57 cherry-red Merc and punched out the moon window of a T-Bird. The cops on parking lot duty ran towards the wreck.

  Halfway there, they jumped under other cars to get away from the noise.

  The noise was that of an airplane going to crash very soon, very close.

  At the last second, the sound stopped.

  The cops looked up.

  An old biplane was sitting still in a parking space in the lot, its propeller still spinning. Two guys in funny clothes were climbing down from it, one whistling and honking to the other, who was trying to get a pointy hat off his ears.

  The doors of the truck which had crashed opened, and four guys tumbled out all over each other.

  They ran towards the auditorium, and the two from the plane saw them and whistled and ran towards them. They joined halfway across the lot, the six of them, and ran towards the civic hall.

  The police were running for them like a berserk football team and then…

  The auditorium doors were thrown open by the ushers, lances of light gleamed out on the snow and parked cars, and the mob spilled out onto the concrete and snow, laughing, yelling, pushing, shoving in an effort to get home.

  The six running figures melted into the oncoming throng, the police right behind them.

  Above the cop whistles and the mob noise was an occasional “Ollie, oh
, Ollie!” or “Hey, Bud! Hey, Bud!” or whonk whonk and…

  The six made it into the auditorium as the maintenance men were turning out the lights, and they ran up to the manager’s office and inside.

  The thin manager was watching TV. He looked up to the six, and thought it must be some sort of a publicity stunt.

  On TV came the theme music of “You Bet Your Duck.”

  “It’s-a Quackenbush!” said Leonard.

  The TV show host looked up from his rostrum. “Hi, folks. And tonight what’s the secret woids?” Here a large merganser puppet flopped down and the audience applauded. The show host turned the word card around and lifted his eyebrows, looked at the screen and said:

  “That’s right. Tonight, the woids are Inexorable Fate. I knew I should’ve hired someone else. You guys are too late.”

  Then he turned to the announcer and asked, “George, who’s our first guest?” as the duck was pulled back overhead on its strings.

  The six men tore from the office and out to the parking lot, through the last of the mob. Stan, Ollie, Bud and Lou jumped in the truck which a wrecker attendant was just connecting to a winch, right under the nose of the astonished police chief.

  Arthur and Leonard, whistling and yelling, jumped in the plane, backed it out, and took off after circling the crowded parking lot. They rose into the air to many a loud scream.

  The truck and plane headed for the airport.

  The crowd was milling about the airport fence. Inside the barrier, musicians waited to get aboard a DC-3, their instrument cases scattered about the concourse.

  The truck with four men in it crashed through the fence, strewing wire and posts to the sides.

  It twisted around on its wheels, skidded sideways, almost hitting the musicians, and came to a halt. The four looked like the Keystone Firemen as they climbed out.

  There was a roar in the air, and the biplane came out of the runway lights, landed and taxied to a stop less than an inch from the nose of the passenger plane.

  “We not-a too late! We not-a too late!” yelled Leonard, as he climbed down. “Arthur, get tough with-a that plane. Don’t let it take off!”

  Arthur climbed to the front of the crop duster and repeated the facial expressions he’d gone through earlier with the pilot. This time at the frightened pilot of the DC-3, through the windshield.

  Leonard, Bud, Lou, Stan and Ollie ran to the musicians and found Wailon.

  “Where’s Bottoms?” asked Bud.

  “Huh?” asked Jimmy Wailon, still a little distraught by the skidding truck and aeroplane. “Bottoms? Bottoms left on the first plane.”

  “The first plane?” asked Ollie. “The first aeroplane?”

  “Uh, yeah. Simpson and Ritchie were already on. Donny wanted to wait for this one, but I gave him my seat. I’m waiting for someone.” He looked at them; they had not moved. “I gave him my seat on the first plane,” he said. Then he looked them over in the dim lights. “You friends of his?”

  “No,” said Stanley, “but I’m sure we’ll be seeing him again very soon.”

  Overhead, the plane which had taken off a few minutes before circled and headed northwest for Alaska.

  They listened to it fade in the distance.

  Whonk went Arthur.

  They drove back through the dark February night, all six of them jammed into the seat and the small back compartment. After they heard the news for the first time, they turned the radio down and talked about the old days.

  “This fellow Quackenbush,” asked Ollie. “Is he in the habit of doing things such as this?”

  “Ah, the Boss? There’s-a no tellin’ what the boss man willa do!”

  “He must not be a nice man,” said Lou.

  “Oh, he’s probably all right,” said Bud. “He just has a mind like a producer.”

  “A contradiction in terms,” said Stanley.

  “You’re so right,” said Ollie.

  “Pardon me,” said the hitchhiker for whom they stopped. “Could you fellows find it in your hearts to give me a ride? I feel a bit weary after the affairs of the day, and should like to nestle in the arms of Morpheus for a short while.”

  “Sure,” said Lou. “Hop in.”

  “Ah yes,” said the rotund hitchhiker in the beaver hat. “Been chasing about the interior of this state all day. Some fool errand, yes indeed. Reminds me of the time on safari in Afghanistan…” He looked at the six men, leaned forward, tapping a deck of cards with his gloved hands. “Would any of you gentlemen be interested in a little game of chance?”

  “No thanks,” said Bud. “You wouldn’t like the way I play.”

  They drove through the night. They didn’t need to stop for the next hitchhiker, because they knew him. They saw him in the headlights, on the railroad tracks beside the road. He was kicking a broken-down locomotive. He came down the embankment, stood beside the road as they bore down on him.

  He was dressed in a straw hat, a vest and a pair of tight pants. He wore the same countenance all the time, a great stone face.

  The truck came roaring down on him, and was even with him, and was almost by, when he reached out with one hand and grabbed the back door handle and with the other clamped his straw hat to his head.

  His feet flew up off the pavement and for a second he was parallel to the ground, then he pulled himself into the spare tire holder and curled up asleep.

  He had never changed expression.

  Over the hill went the eight men, some of them talking, some dozing, towards the dawn. Just before the truck went out of sight there was a sound, so high, so thin it did not carry well.

  It went honk honk.

  I AM BONARO

  John Niendorff

  This story has haunted me for over forty years. It first appeared in Fantastic in December 1964. It intrigued me then, and it has continued to intrigue me ever since. Although I looked for other work by the author I found none, and even suspected he might have used an alias. Not until the advent of the internet did I discover that Niendorff (b. 1939) had written several episodes for the TV western series The High Chaparral and Death Valley Days in the later 1960s and subsequently became editor of Science of Mind magazine, which deals with practical spirituality. Some of his writings for that magazine were collected as Listen to the Light (1980). But I knew none of that until recently when I stumbled upon the author’s website at www.john-niendorff.com. This story may be short, but then, so are splinters.

  Only the ticket agent saw the old man as he was thrown from the motionless boxcar and tumbled crazily to the gravel-covered earth. The train hissed and wheezed for a moment as it gathered energy for movement then began crawling away from the station.

  Slamming the lid of his cashbox closed, the agent ran from the tiny office to track-side where the old man lay. He paused for a long breath then called, “You okay, Mister?”

  The old man stirred noiselessly. Dressed in faded coveralls, he had long white hair that fell in tangled disarray to his rounded shoulders; his matted, filth-encrusted beard was the same white as his hair.

  “You need any help, old man?”

  Painfully slowly, the old man rose to his knees, pushed his arms hard against the ground, and shoved his body erect. The agent took a startled step backward when he saw the face: the most pitiful, wretched face he had ever seen. Brittle skin, like old parchment, was shrunk against the bone and eroded with deep wrinkles; and eyes that were hollow, empty and desperately sad.

  Across the front of his shirt, a crudely-lettered cardboard sign, pinned carelessly onto the wrinkled cloth, proclaimed simply, “I AM BONARO.”

  “Bonaro? That your name?”

  The old man gave no sign of recognition, for he was incapable of even that elementary act. He only began to dig deep into his trouser pocket, bringing out a soiled yellow mass that he gripped tightly in one withered hand. It was a sponge.

  He held it out.

  The agent tentatively reached out his own hand. “For me?”

&
nbsp; Bonaro said nothing, but held out the sponge until he was certain that the agent did not understand then he drew it back and let the hand fall limply.

  “Bonaro? I guess that’s your name. If you’d like some coffee, I’ve got a pot inside. Otherwise, you’d better beat it.”

  Bonaro’s face remained immobile. Not even his empty eyes altered their fixed stare.

  “Look, friend, if you don’t need help, at least stay away from the tracks. They’re dangerous. You understand that? Dangerous. You’ll get hurt if you fool around here without knowing what you’re doing.”

  Bonaro swayed uncertainly as though he were going to fall then he held out the sponge once more, hesitated a moment, and began to pad silently away from the tracks, holding the dirty sponge in front of him as if it were a guidepost by which he steered.

  Old Bonaro was not aware of having been thrown from the train; he was not aware of having met the ticket agent. He only knew that he was Somewhere…and that which he sought might be anywhere.

  He had been five years old when he first wished himself different. The place he had lived was high above the asphalt streets, a slim wooden shambles squeezed between rotting tenements. He had distant memories of a thing called Father: a loud, dirty man who never shaved and snored raucously. And Mother: a screaming, anxious assortment of abrupt nervous reactions like spank and slap and swear.

  Bonaro recalled being locked in a closet because he had cursed at his father; a closet that was small and dark, where spiders crawled and tickled his skin and the groans of the tired walls were magnified until they filled his head with droning, foreign speech.