She risked approaching the door. She needed her glasses, but could see her candlelight touching him; perhaps he was providing his own illumination, a pale phosphorescence like dim moonglow. Either way, it let her see contours and details beyond the simple outline of his body. Like the L-shaped scar across the back of his left hand. He had survived the hardships of a German stalag without a scratch for a year and five days, waiting out the last gasps of the truncated Thousand Year Reich, only to slice his damn fool hand wide open on the radiator fan of a 42 DeSoto as his first act during peacetime.
Well, okay, second or third act.
She had loved Sam Saks, the damned fool. He was an honored war vet, strong and capable as the farm laborers of legend, yet knew how to treat a woman in bed when things got intimate.
Annabelle watched the wind fluff his wiry brown pubic bush. His cock was already rising toward her, each pulse of blood elevating it a minute distance.
Annabelle. His lips formed her name in the dark.
She went warm and soft downstairs, thinking of how his manhood could fill the emptiness that defined her life, of late. Sam could make her so full, so flushed and hot. She remembered how she used to lock her legs around him, grab his rear end and milk him dry ... and how they had once both shared laughter at their own fervency.
Annabelle.
The door was locked. She had to let him in this time. The item of equipment Sam used to call his Serpent was arched upward, fully erect now, straining toward her, urging her to move faster. She knew all of Sam's physical twists and turns; all his moles and skin patterns were branded into her memory in a mordant way only twenty years of marriage could achieve. The only scar unfamiliar to her was the one she could see on Sam's chest, when the lightning revealed it.
The one left by the autopsy.
Her hand was on the handle of the French door. "Oh, Sam' she murmured.Make me warm."
A thin streamer of shockingly hot candlewax dripped to seal the knuckles of her other hand together. A yelp of pain escaped her - and brought her back to her senses.
Sam's breath was not clouding the chilly window glass because Sam was not breathing. Because this Sam was not Sam.
She sprang back from the yet-unopened door and tore down the bodice of her nightgown. That threshold was a fortress wall for her, and the hand that had almost admitted this creature across it now collected up and thrust forth another of her many protections - her amulet, the thing she called her "string?'
"Sam" caught sight of the string and promptly began to claw at his face, screaming in the middle of what was now a downpour.
Like bugs when you turn on the kitchen light, she thought. Utilize the correct charms and bad magic evaporated like teapot steam.
"Sam" came apart like a wax doll in a microwave oven. His eyes flickered and extinguished first; they were the first line of assault, the weapons which could hypnotize and charm her. His false body bloated, bleached, and dissipated the concentrated energy it had taken to deceive her. Complete discorporation used up about fifteen seconds. Once she'd counterattacked, it never took long.
The false Sam rejoined the rain and the elements which had been used to fabricate him. There would be no further attacks tonight. Annabelle knew the rhythms of her enemy, but also knew it would never give up. She would not be forced from her home, the home she'd shared with the real Sam before he died. She'd stay here till Doomsday.
The second bit of "Brass" titled Walpurgisnacht, 1959, would have detailed the Spilsbury slaughter referenced in the story. That would have been followed by the actual funeral of Grant Mantell's father, which would have been a better place to introduce Jennifer and that's as far as it got. "Brass" wanted to be a novella, not a novel, and I've striven not to have many trunk projects in the cobweb drawer, although there are a few, including another novel I gave up after 350 pages.
Maybe I could shorten it, and CALENDAR GIRL is brand new. Nimble readers can figure out for themselves whether Brett's photographer pal McCabe bears any resemblance to the POV character of "Red Light" ten years after.
THE FALLING MAN
…was bought for publication in TZ during the editorial tenure of Tappan King, who suggested running it as what may be that magazine's only two-part story. It was bracketed by italicized commentary about the Tarot which has nothing to do with the actual story other than providing an intro and outro. Splitting the story into two parts seemed to demand additional use of this invisible omniscient presence, if for no other reason than to tie off Part One, which concluded with: The next item on Peter Deutsch's agenda was the blissful hell of M. Rogoffs kiln.
This was followed by the extract which originally (and now) concludes the story.
In the TZ version, Peter's lot in life is spelled out more pointedly by the added capper, which closed Part Two:
The Major Arcana of the Tarot - the Greater Trumps - is actually predated by the Minor Arcana, whose suits of wands, cups, swords and pentacles (signifying fire, water, air and earth) gave birth to the clubs, hearts, spades and diamonds of modern-day gaming cards. It is from the Minor Arcana that a "court card" is chosen to symbolize the person whose Tarot is being read. Called a significator, this card anchors the subject's Tarot throw and embodies certain general traits. Significators are never chosen from the Major Arcana.
There is one conditional exception.
Every so often in the whirl of centuries there is born a person who so perfectly fits that lost card of the Tarot, the Falling Man, that no other card will answer. That person, man or woman, may be caught and crushed by the card's unforgiving physics, or may be strengthened by enduring and surviving them. But it cannot be said that this card signifies one individual among billions. Rather, the individual epitomizes the qualities of the card.
That person, luckless or blessed, empowered or destroyed, is the Falling Man.
It strikes me now as superfluous. It belabors the obvious. But it might clear things up for readers who leave the story wondering why Peter winds up the way he does.
MONSTER MOVIES
"Do you have to be perverted to write horror?"
No, but it helps, especially when dealing with moronic questions like this one. A whole subset of inquiry regarding ModAmHoFic* can be summed up by such questions, whose idiot variants include "What kind of child were you?" and "Do you write as self-therapy or sexual release?"
The damnable presumption which sizzles at the heart of these questions is what really rankles me, and it goes something like this: Deep in the heart of my normal, well-adjusted, readerly being lurks the gut sense that people who write scary stories for me to readjust have to be, well, bent somehow, and I'll just betcha it was some traumatic event in their childhood. That's pat, simplistic, illogical, misinformed, and just plain imbecilic ... and immortal. It'll never die. If you don't believe me, just pay attention the next time a horror writer guests on some talk show.
If you're still wondering why this question is so offensive, imagine asking it of a writer of anything besides scary stories.
One gorgeous Southern California day long ago, I stopped by Hilltop Liquors (still on Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach) and unpocketed fifty of my very own cents to procure a copy of Famous Monsters of Filmland whose cover luridly shrieked about something called The Flesh Eaters.
Hooked, are you kidding? I was nine.
Modern American Horror Fiction.
"Do you ever scare yourself?" No.
The first FM I actually owned featured Ray Harryhausen's Cyclops (from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) on the cover; I'd just missed #26, with the Outer Limits cover, and would not acquire that one until about twenty years later. I tapered off reading FM about the time they altered the binding style to make it more comicbook-like. By then I was already well along my unswerving course toward damnation.
Fun, I mean.
However, "Monster Movies" is not autobiographical. No coded in-jokes, revelations, or exposes as to why I turned out the way I did, where I get my weird ideas, or why I write s
tuff sometimes called horror.
"Is this character based on me?" No.
What "Monster Movies" turned out to be was the first third of an eventual triptych of stories concerned with a generational perception of classic film monsters. The follow up stories were "Last Call for the Sons of Shock" (1990, available in Black Leather Required) and "(Melodrama)" (1995, available in Crypt Orchids), with the more recent "Gills" (also in Crypt Orchids) as a satellite.
The story was original to the first edition of Lost Angels and was, for me, a good up-note on which to close the book.
Famous Monsters eventually reappeared in a modern incarnation, without the central organizing presence of Forrest Ackerman. It's sort of a zombie version of the original magazine, vacuumed clean of soul and content to mindlessly push the old buttons over and over. It's the opposite of fun.
You may have also noticed, since the first appearance of this story, that red M&Ms made a comeback. Now they have blue M&Ms , too, and trust me - they taste funny.
Once again, my thanks goes out again to the Unholy Three behind the resurrection of Lost Angels - Arthur Byron Cover, Lydia Marano and Kristina Etchison of Babbage Press, and all my love must unerringly find its way to the amazing Christa Faust.
Steven R. Boyett originally suggested the title Lost Angels, which has nothing to do with the 1989 film of the same title directed by Hugh Hudson, although its publicity suggested some great images, particularly the graphic of a Los Angeles freeway sign with the appropriate bits altered by red spray paint to form the title.
Tappan King took it upon himself to house "The Falling Man" and "Pamela's Get" in Twilight Zone, and "Brass" in Night Cry, so a lot of this book is his fault. Ellen Datlow grabbed "Pamela's Get" for her prestigious yearly anthology of fantasy and horror and it remains one of her favorite stories, which still gives me a modest measure of pride.
Thanks too to Robert "Garage Band" Sabat, Terri Windling, Marcus Nickerson, Robert Knowlton, Jessie Horsting, Anya Martin, Amy Thomson, Charles De Lint, David B. Silva, Beth Gwinn, Debra Richardson, Tim Walker, Ed Bryant, Bill Warren, and surrogate moms Roselle Campbell and Eleanor Bloch.
—DJS
January 2000
This book is dedicated with love to the memory of
SHIRLEY JOAN SCHOW
the first Lost Angel.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION (BY RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON)
PAMELA'S GET
BRASS
CALENDAR GIRL
THE FALLING MAN
MONSTER MOVIES
AFTERWORD
Lost Angels Page 24
