One summer evening, I saw a remarkable production of one of Shakespeare’s plays on the roof garden—it was not The Tempest—and met a swath of good people as a result. There was great talent there and then.
That’s the core of the story.
I learned of John’s wartime experiences from John and, after John’s death, heard more from his son, Colin, who is a great barman and who told the stories almost as well as had his father. I kept the facts and mixed them with a bit of implausible froth and fairy tale-telling and published Cordwell’s Book in Tales from the Red Lion. I revised it for a second edition of Tales… and I fussed with it for this effort.
Those who know about such things say the Red Lion Pub is one of the most haunted spots in Chicago. I know people who have had experiences. I have not, not preternatural ones anyway.
At this writing, the Lion is a sheer hulk. Unavoidable decay and expensive repair estimates forced Colin to close the building. The notion was to raze it and build a new Red Lion on the spot. Then came the crash.
At this writing, the shell remains. And the memories. The memories, bless them. Bless them all, they’re alive.
DYING’S EASY. HORROR’S HARD: THE LAST SCOOT AT SKIDOO’S TAP
This is more about me as a writer than about where The Last Scoot… came from. Where the story came from is simple. My wife suggested it.
“Look at this!” A well-known book dangled from her fingertips. “Write a vampire book,” said as though asking me for the last time to take out the trash.
Now, I have friends who have written vampire stories and were very happy with their lives.
I said, “Sure,” then, perversely, I wrote this.
Here’s a life-rule: Nothing will be what you expect. Nothing real, neither will vampire, zombie, man-wolf, or any creature of the night be a thing you’ll recognize. They will come from the literal dark, blindside you, and do things you cannot imagine.
I believe that a writer of the strange has a responsibility to that truth and to the creatures that support him.
The vampires of Skidoo’s Tap inhabit a grubby part of creation. They drink not blood but life itself. They take not what we hold dear, but that which we are happy to forget. They take pain, the drear of life. In return, they offer paradise, a heaven of non-being.
The trap of course is that pain and tedium are the artists of the beautiful. The dreary slog through life provides the contrast that allows us to see, touch, feel, smell the wonders of it all.
From where did Skidoo’s Tap come?
When Tycelia made her suggestion I was working on a novel. Not horror, not exactly fantasy, the story is set in small-town pre-JFK America and deals with a band of kids who set out to grab death by the tail and toss him.
The vampire story began in the same town. My town. Railroads did run through it. There is—was—a Skidoo’s taproom there. It wasn’t called Skidoo’s but it was as described. When I was 12, my genteel gang of non-Ender hooligans did weekly scoots into the joint. We ran screaming in, around the electric eye pole and out the OUT door. Doing so we caught whiffs of beery, smoky, sex-charged conditioned air then hooted all the way to our theater on the far side of our yards. There was a subway viaduct. We also had a gathering place in the cemetery.
That’s it.
I started there. I’d gotten about 16 thousand words into the thing before I realized what I was writing. Inefficient way to work, I know, but I do love to hang out in those grubby places of the mind. When I found where I was heading, I went back and fussed. The story went from 16 thousand to just over 9 thousand.
This is one of those stories that I wrote and never tried to sell. Sorry, Tycelia. I know vampire stories can make big money right now but that’s dependent on people actually liking the damn vamps, finding them cute, sexy!
So there. The stories are yours and you now know, more or less, where they came from.
A final word. I don’t plan for the most part. I begin, typically, with a notion and a person, an image, a face. When I have at least a person in my head, I begin writing. Most of the time I’ve no idea where the path is or through what country we’ll travel. For example: I was walking in the neighborhood today. I saw a sign in a store I’ve passed many times. “WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ROBOTS?” I was returning from a visit to my doctor. I wondered, what if a robot stopped in because…
Well, because.
See, my process might be summarized best by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi: “Respond to every call that excites your spirit.”
I hope you’ve been excited. Now excuse me, I have the call.
The shop was in a dark part of town on a narrow, unclean street…
About the Author
Award-winning writer and narrator Lawrence Santoro began writing and reading dark tales at age five.
In 2001 his novella “God Screamed and Screamed, Then I Ate Him” was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. In 2002, his adaptation and audio production of Gene Wolfe’s “The Tree Is My Hat,” was also Stoker nominated. In 2003, his Stoker-recommended “Catching” received Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s 17th Annual “Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror” anthology. In 2004, “So Many Tiny Mouths” was cited in the anthology’s 18th edition. In the 20th, his novella “At Angels Sixteen,” from the anthology A DARK AND DEADLY VALLEY, was similarly honored. Larry’s first novel, “Just North of Nowhere,” was published in 2007.
He lives in Chicago and is working on two new novels, “Griffon and the Sky Warriors,” and “Mississippi Traveler, or Sam Clemens Tries the Water.”
Stop by Larry’s blog, At Home in Bluffton, at: http://blufftoninthedriftless.blogspot.com/
and his audio website, Santoro Reads, at: http://www.santororeads.com
and you can find him on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/lawrence.santoro.
Table of Contents
A FEW WORDS…
DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME
ROOT SOUP, WINTER SOUP
WIND SHADOWS
IN A DAINTY PLACE
AT ANGELS SIXTEEN
SOME STAGES ON THE ROAD TOWARD OUR FAILURE TO REACH THE MOON
THE BOY’S ROOM
LITTLE GIRL DOWN THE WAY
A VERY BAD DAY
RAT TIME IN THE HALL OF PAIN
THEN, JUST A DREAM
SO MANY TINY MOUTHS
JEREMY TAKES HIS TEXT FROM THE LIVES OF THE SPIDERS
CORDWELL’S BOOK
THE LAST SCOOT AT SKIDOO’S TAP
FINAL WORDS
Drink for the Thirst to Come Page 35
