Video Nasties
Page 30
"Oh thank God," Jack said, peering at them through the screen. "Dr. Saunders, I see them!"
"Jack?"
Dr. Saunders appeared beside the writer, cramming into frame. She wore her graying dark hair in a bun, and squinted through her cat's eye glasses. Harlan recognized her as the film scholar who'd done several documentaries on the video nasties craze, and Funelli in particular.
"Where are they?" she asked Jack. "Is this your 'Videolimbo'?"
"I don't know where the hell they are," Jack replied. Tiny screams rose from the speakers. "Harlan, listen to me. Funelli's gotten loose. He's taken over everything. First he made them zombies, the ones who'd been watching when his broadcast went out on all the channels, all over the goddamn world..."
An explosion rocked the image, followed by more screams. A fireball erupted behind Dr. Saunders and Jack, who stumbled out of view as the window shattered inward and a rain of miscellaneous body parts thudded and squelched around them.
After considerable grunting, Jack stood the camera back up with agony in his tired eyes. Behind him, blurs of terrified people scurried past the window. For a moment Harlan was sure he saw giant squirming tentacles probing the debris in the background but the picture flickered to white noise and when the image returned they were gone.
"Harlan, please... we need you."
"You're wasting time," Dr. Saunders snapped as she moved into shot. "Mr. Wallis, we need your assistance. Millions of people are going to die if you don't help us soon."
Harlan turned to Vicky. She watched the television impassively, as if she'd seen it all before. "What do you think?" he asked her.
Vicky turned to him. "What do I think?" A slow smile crept onto her face. "I think it's a repeat."
Jack's face crumpled. "No, Harlan..."
Harlan stood up, feeling the hot sand between his toes as he sauntered toward the television stand.
"Harlan, please don't do this. You've got to help us, dammit!"
Dr. Saunders shook her head. "It's no use."
"You have to help us!" Jack cried.
"I'm sorry, Jack."
Harlan reached out and turned off the TV.
FROM THE AUTHOR
I saw John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness the year it came out--I must have been 19. To say it was a transformative experience would be a huge understatement. As far as horror goes, that and Jacob's Ladder are the movies that influenced my writing the most. I think the nightmarish quality of the film struck me more than a lot of people, since many of the shooting locations can be found in the area where I grew up. The asylum, the church, by the time I saw Madness, I hadn't seen those places in maybe five years... except in dreams. When I first watched Madness, I felt like the movie had been pulled directly from my nightmares.
I've spent years trying to recreate with my writing the dizzying, manic, out-of-control feeling I get every time I watch Madness, but I fear I've always come up short. The last of the tales in this book, the eponymous Video Nasties, is my most direct homage to Carpenter's much-maligned masterpiece.
When I write, I like to think of my stories as mini movies. Many of these 16 stories are homages to those films and television shows that inspired me. I hope you have enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.
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There are many people I need to thank for this book. Firstly, I'd like to thank my wonderful and very helpful beta readers, Cindy Jensen, John Drinkall and Tracey A. Green who caught many of my mistakes. Thanks to Chad Clark, who read the first incarnation of the novella Video Nasties (then called Nicolo Funelli's "Back from the Dead"), and offered helpful advice. Thanks to all the readers who reviewed "How to Kill a Celebrity" and "Dead Men Walking" when they were standalone short stories I'd plopped up on Amazon out of various frustrations ("DMW" was originally going to be the opening chapter of a novel called Z Block, until Walking Dead went to prison; "HtKaC" was intended to be a part of a larger collection but I had to release it early when I discovered Stephen King had written a story for Bazaar of Bad Dreams with essentially the same concept--except his protag is, naturally, a writer).
Thanks also to those who read some of these stories within the anthologies where they were first released. And thank you to those publishers who took a chance on my little twisted imagination. Thanks to The Sinister Horror Company (including Duncan Bradshaw, who has since moved on) for asking me to be a part of the first Black Room Manuscripts, and letting me know that "Cuttings" was one of the nastiest stories contained within. Thanks to KnightWatch Press for printing not one but two stories of mine ("Chompers" and "Where the Monsters Live," which was later fleshed out as a standalone novella.) Thanks also to Sirens Call Publications for publishing "Sanctuary" in their eco horror anthology. And of course, a massive thank you to Matt Shaw for taking me under his wing and releasing not just a handful of my short stories, but also the wacky b-horror novella Prick and the extreme horror novel Woom.
Many thanks to Peter Frain from 77 Studios who absolutely nailed the cover art. Working with Peter on this beast was a delight every step of the way and the cover turned out far better than I could have imagined.
Lastly (but not "leastly") I'd like to thank every one of you for reading Video Nasties. I hope you've enjoyed what you've read and will join me again for another dark tale or two.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Duncan Ralston was born in Toronto and spent his teens in small-town Canada. As a "grownup," Duncan lives with his partner and their dog in Toronto, where he writes dark fiction about the things that disturb him. In addition to his twisted short stories found in GRISTLE & BONE, the anthologies EASTER EGGS & BUNNY BOILERS, WHAT GOES AROUND, DEATH BY CHOCOLATE, FLASH FEAR, and the charity anthologies DARK DESIGNS, BAH! HUMBUG!, VS: US vs UK HORROR, and THE BLACK ROOM MANUSCRIPTS Vol. 1, he is the author of the novel SALVAGE, and the novellas WILDFIRE, WHERE THE MONSTERS LIVE, WOOM, an extreme horror Black Cover book from Matt Shaw Publications, and THE METHOD from Kindle Press.
MORE FROM SWP
Dark Designs: Tales of Mad Science (collection) edited by Thomas S Flowers and Duncan Ralston
VS: US vs UK Horror (anthology) edited by Dawn Cano
The Hobbsburg Horror (collection) by Thomas S. Flowers
Parham's Field (novel) by Jeffery X. Martin
Where the Monsters Live (novella) by Duncan Ralston
I Am Karma (novella) by Dawn Cano
Black Friday (collection) by Jeffery X. Martin
Wildfire (novel) by Duncan Ralston
Hunting Witches (novel) by Jeffery X. Martin
Lanmo (novella) by Thomas S. Flowers
The Idea of North (novel) by Alex Kimmell
Salvage (novel) by Duncan Ralston
Short Stories About You (collection) by Jeffery X. Martin
Reinheit (novel) by Thomas S. Flowers
Tales of Blood & Sulphur (collection) by J.G. Clay
Gristle & Bone (collection) by Duncan Ralston
The Key to Everything (novel) by Alex Kimmell