During the collaborative process, Dave and I had many conversations about not only that book but writing in general. He noted something in my writing that I had been doing–what, he said, was probably unconscious–and it opened my eyes and helped me become a stronger writer. Even Dave, after all these years of writing and editing, admitted he was still learning as we worked on the project.
We also collaborated on a ghost story–“At the Meade Bed & Breakfast”–which was basically just Dave taking an old story of mine and rewriting it and then me taking that rewrite and polishing it a bit.
It was an absolute thrill and honor working with Dave on our two projects.
It was an absolute thrill and honor having him as a mentor.
Most importantly, it was an absolute thrill and honor calling him a friend.
Robert Swartwood
RECURRING NIGHTMARE
G.L. Raisor
A faint, persistent beeping pursues me. It evokes unease. I must be in the dream again, and if it is a dream then it always begins the same way: just me, prowling the nighttime streets, searching for something… I don’t know what… expiation of my sins, perhaps?
What have I done that I need to repent?
The chill dampness that climbs inside my clothes is very real. A newspaper, driven by the wind, rolls down the street and presses against a door before traveling on, a wandering prodigal who will not be admitted. Automobiles pass in the distance. The night stretches ahead. It seems endless.
My hands ache from the cold. I want to go home, but I can’t remember where it is or how to get there. A frantic search of my clothes reveals no wallet, no form of ID at all. Over and over, I tell myself this is a dream.
The words bring no comfort.
I am in a part of the city unknown to me and I have no idea how I came to be here. Shards of glass lay hidden in the weeds, staring out at me with glittering, unfriendly eyes. Everything that emerges from the night seems deformed, nightmarish. Sounds get lost. Alleys, intersected by gutted and decayed buildings, parade by. A man staggers out of one, muttering vague threats to some unseen companion as he brushes past me. A child, a boy of about five, watches me from a window until I’m out of sight. Something is wrong with him, I’m certain of it, and yet I can’t fathom what it is. At first I think the child is blind, but that cannot be. His eyes looked right into mine and his smile was filled with secret knowledge.
I walk on, drawn along the street by something I cannot understand.
A crowd has gathered up ahead and I wander closer, not really wanting to, yet unable to stop myself. I pause and watch from a distance. A man is sprawled beneath the wheels of a rusty blue van, his chest laboring as he clings to life. He is old and worn down by the years. When I peer at his face, I see a bloody ruin. His hand sticks out from beneath the sheet that has become his shroud. It lies with palm upturned, as if beseeching someone to take hold of it
– to say this is a mistake.
There will be no one to take his hand. Onlookers ring the body, looking down with faces devoid of all expression. The scene is a frozen still life that the police, anonymous guardians of death in rain gear, continue to wave traffic around. Off to the side, still another cop is taking a statement from the woman who drives the van. He looks bored. The woman repeatedly wrings her hands as if trying to wipe them free of guilt. A small white poodle, with blood-red ribbons on its ears, stares up at her and whines for attention. After a moment, the van driver slumps and her shoulders heave in rapid stitches.
The cop, unmoved, continues writing his report.
Two paramedics arrive and the ambulance swallows the crumpled form. Sirens rend the darkness as they pull away. The show is over for tonight.
Not a single word is uttered by anyone in the crowd. A man in a gray sedan looks at his watch and frowns. Something should be said. A man’s life, even if he is a derelict, shouldn’t pass without notice. My eyes drift over the crowd, looking for a shred of humanity. Nothing. In the back, barely visible, is an old man in shapeless, rumpled clothes. He seems to be listening. Something about him is wrong. He simply doesn’t belong. Even though he wears dark glasses, I’m sure his eyes are fixed on me.
I stare back.
He nods and smiles…
Everything dissolves behind the curtain of rain as I take my leave. Soon, all I can see are pulsing lights from the police cars. After a few seconds, they too disappear.
The image of the injured man lingers in my mind as I hurry to cross the street. The rain hasn’t slackened. Wet neon flashes DON’T WALK DON’T WALK DON’T WALK. Rows of cars are lined up, waiting for the light to change. Pale blank faces stare back at me while windshield wipers sluice away the rain.
The faces appear.
They disappear.
They appear.
Not one identifiable emotion I can detect. Not happiness. Not anger. Not anything.
The sight makes me far colder than the rain.
I hurry along, unable to outdistance my unease, my steps echoing down concrete byways frosted by the glow of mercury lamps. The green of a park swims into view and the cannibalistic rumblings of the city seem far away as I follow a path into the woods. On either side, shadows scurry along in the undergrowth. As I stare directly at them, they mimic the darkness that clings so closely to the trees. The sounds I hear are unplaceable. They must come from the steady, monotonous dripping of rain from overhead branches – not footsteps keeping pace.
Finally, the path deposits me by a railroad yard. It is old, abandoned. Boxcars sit on rusted tracks, going nowhere. When I pass by, they seem to follow into the drizzle like dogs abandoned by their masters. Seeping through the dark, the slap of water on rocks carries. A finger of smoke beckons to me from beneath a crumbling trestle that spans the river.
I have no choice but to go.
Concealed by shadow I watch as a group of men cluster around a trash-barrel fire, trying to warm themselves against the chill that blows in off the water. The wind is restless tonight, whipping the flame, and it gutters a moment before leaping out of the barrel and shooting skyward. Reflected in the river, the tongue of fire strides across the water on elongated red stilts. It is a beautiful and eerie sight.
The men continue staring out at the water, unmoving, as though waiting. I believe they are waiting for me.
Rising up out of the river mist, the ancient and massive trestle congeals the blackness about itself. My eyes shy away. Deep within the cave-like interior, their shadows – chased by the fire – hover and fling themselves about in abandon.
These men are the reason I have come, but I am afraid to approach any closer; I am frozen. A touch from behind, soft as a whisper, and I whirl around. It is an old man. His clothes are dark and shapeless, his skin is dead white. He tilts his head up as if listening for something.
For an instant, that persistent beeping sound returns.
We regard each other and I watch the fire dance in the dark glasses that hide his eyes. When he runs a hand across his wide bloodless gash of a mouth, I am reminded of a praying mantis regarding his meal. He appears old and frail but I am afraid of him.
I step back into the light and…
and… their heads swivel toward me in unison as though they were a being controlled by a single will.
All of them are wearing dark glasses.
They shamble over to stand with the first old man. I back away from them. A clatter of rocks and more of them materialize from beneath the girders. An undercurrent of some kind ripples among them so quickly I am unable to decipher it. They shuffle closer, circling me, and I can’t move without touching one of them. Their rank, animal-like smell fills my nostrils.
Hands touch me. At first they are barely felt – a kind of wet, cold, spidery probing. My mind numb with fear, my flesh crawling, I push them away. They return. And more hands join the first. Their touch becomes rougher and more insistent as they gather still closer.
As we struggle – not a word is spoken by any of t
hem. Only my breathing and the hungry sucking of the mud from our macabre dance disturbs the silence of the night. Desperately, I push at their wasted flesh. Some go down but, grimly, the rest close ranks and surge forward. They are trying to hold me here by the river.
I tear free of their grasp and stagger toward the open park. The ground rushes up. Expecting to feel the touch of mud, seconds pass before I react to searing heat. I have fallen over the barrel containing their fire! The embers hiss like scalded cats as they spill onto the wet earth. Some of them land on me. Scrambling up, I beat at my smoldering clothes. And the night is showered with temporary brightness – long enough to catch a glimpse of something just within the light’s reach. I have only a vague impression of a man, tall and gaunt, standing at the edge of the river. He is looking at me, but he is too far away for me to read his expression.
Wrenching my gaze away, I look around and the silent men are there. Their gray, emotionless faces turn toward me. They wait patiently.
“What do you want? Just tell me what you want!”
My voice gives them movement. Their hands grope jerkily, like insects suddenly released from beneath a rock. They stumble toward me. “Please,” I sob, “what do you want?”
No answer.
I turn and run, and only an echo of that constant, maddening beeping sound tracks me into the night.
****
I’m back on skid row now, and my footsteps thud down the street like heavy, irregular heartbeats. Two old vagrants are standing on the corner talking. The shabby, stooped men hear me and turn.
Both of them are wearing dark glasses –
I keep running, and the city stretches out in a haze of neon that is too bright in the rain-mirrored pavement. Several bag ladies scream at a wino lying across the sidewalk. A man with a cup of pencils for sale sits motionless in a doorway. He has no legs. People stare at me, their expressions unreadable. I don’t understand this. Everything is confused. What is happening to me? Please… what is happening to me?
– Finally I can run no farther and I sag against a building. My head touches the bricks, feeling the wetness.
A hand touches me. “Scuse me, buddy. Could you spare a little change for a man down on his luck?”
My eyes dart upward…
past the smiling yellow teeth.
Until they come to rest on the dark glasses, but they’re not on the derelict; they’re on me. It’s my reflection in a plate glass window that I see. I turn away from the sight. The alleys swallow up my pleas and spit them back at me. Their tone is mocking.
The scream of tires biting into the pavement yanks me around. Frozen to the spot, I can only watch as the vehicle moves closer. It skids sideways, nearly swapping ends before righting itself. The driver, now just a rapid blur, continues wrestling with the wheel… and I know she’s not going to miss me after all.
The van fishtails one last time and darkness topples onto me.
I am lying in the street and people stare down at me. They have no expression. I look past them, and there is a police officer talking to a woman who is constantly wringing her hands. A small white poodle, with red ribbons on his ears, looks up forlornly at her. A man in dark glasses nods and smiles in my direction.
Someone pulls a sheet over my face and strong hands lift me. A door slams and I scream.
Darkness smothers all around.
Until I hear a rhythmic beeping… regular and monotonous… it is oddly soothing as I float on a haze of warm brightness. A disembodied voice cries out, full of rage and yet tinged with sadness, “… massive internal injuries. Can’t stop the bleeding. Give me some suction here. Damn it, nurse, hurry! We’re going to lose him…”
But I know the struggle is useless.
The voice fades a piece at a time, and the faint sloshing of water against rocks fills in the emptiness. I turn and gaze at the moon-painted scene. Nothing has changed from the last time I was here. The barrel that earlier contained a fire lies on its side, blackened and empty. The smell of ashes floats on the wind and it carries the scent of death.
I have returned to the river.
The men in dark glasses silently emerge, shadows without shadows, from beneath the trestle. Slowly, oh so slowly, they approach – slower than in the worst nightmare. And even though I try to escape, I understand there can be no escape. Several take my arm and lead me, unresisting, down to the river. We stand at the water’s edge and listen until, finally, the beeping subsides into silence. A creaking of wood carries from the dark as though there is a boat out there. Something is coming across the river…
… coming for us.
We stand together in the mist and wait.
****
Remembrance by G.L. Raisor
I remember the only time I ever met Dave Silva. It was The World Fantasy convention in the late ’80’s, but Dave and I were already friends from numerous letters and phone calls, and due to the fact he bought a story from me for The Horror Show. My first professional sale. I would become a regular in that wonderful little magazine. So anyway, I’m at the con, looking for him. You form impressions of what people look like from their voices. So I was expecting a scholarly looking little guy, loafers, glasses, maybe a cardigan - what I got was this lumberjack looking guy roughly the size of a redwood. A large redwood with a beard. Anyway, I get over my shock, and we’re standing there chatting about stuff writers chat about. An attractive lady walks up to us and asks if we’re David Silva and Gary Raisor. We nod because we writers are cool and suave like that. She then introduces herself, Ellen Datlow, who at that time was the editor of Omni magazine. Our eyes go big, but we hold it together, and we chat with her for a minute, like we do this all the time, before she moved on. After she left, Dave and I looked at each other with big ol’ shit-eating grins. I said, “Dave, we’re famous. Ellen Datlow knows who we are.”
That was the last time I ever laid eyes on Dave Silva. A few years later, Dave closed down The Horror Show. He went off to do his thing, I went off to do mine. We lost touch. Not intentionally, it just happened. I would think about him sometimes, wonder how he was doing. I think I might have sent an email or two, but I never knew if those messages reached him or not. Then two things happened. Facebook, along with the fact I recently decided to bring some of my old titles over to the eBook world. I knew Dave ran Hellnotes, so I reached out to him on Facebook. It was as though no time had passed. With his customary warmth and kindness he gave me a plug, never once mentioning he was not well. Dave was never a man to talk about his problems, he was more interested in what you were doing, because he was unfailingly kind and generous to everyone who was lucky enough to know him. Thank you, Dave, from a lot of us, for giving us our start. You’re one of the best. You are missed.
****
G. L. Raisor
WHEN THE HEART SINGS
Paul F. Olson
He saw her on Tuesday, coming out of the morning mist, like an apparition.
She was just a girl, no more than twelve, with short blonde hair and pale skin. She was thin, almost gaunt, dressed in faded jeans and a red nylon windbreaker, and for just a moment he thought he recognized her. She seemed familiar in the vague, uncertain way you remember someone you see at the grocery store once or twice a year. Is it the same person? Is it someone you know? Maybe, maybe not.
Page was sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the bay window toward the woods, when she appeared, coming up the hill toward the house. He sat motionless, watching, partially because he couldn’t believe there was actually someone out there on his property, partially because getting up and walking anywhere took conscious thought and effort these days. His coffee cup was poised halfway to his lips. His heart was thudding in his chest, too heavy, too loud.
She moved lightly, gracefully, almost as if she were floating up the hill, although that couldn’t be; he could plainly see the matted footprints she left behind in the long, dew-damp grass.
“Not a ghost then,” he murmured, and the sound of
his voice startled him almost as much as his choice of words. He didn’t have much occasion to speak out loud anymore, not since his dog had died in March, and not since his health had declined to this particular point, this unexpected and decidedly unpleasant point where it physically pained him to do yard work and trips into town were no longer regular occurrences but reserved for biweekly shopping trips, doctor’s appointments, and other necessities.
The girl paused at the top of the hill. She was standing where the grass gave out to dirt, just a few feet from the old picnic table and the remains of the rock ring where he used to build late-night campfires a million years ago. The girl raised her eyes and looked at the house – not in his direction but toward the far end. It seemed that she was gazing at his office window. He couldn’t shake the utterly irrational feeling that she was looking for him. The thought made that ridiculous sledgehammer in his chest hesitate briefly, then thud all the harder. He held his breath and waited.
Page studied her face – dark eyes and sharp cheekbones and skin that was almost transparent – and felt that twinge of familiarity again. He tried to remember the last time he had spoken to a child this age, or even seen one who wasn’t on television or in a movie. His nephew, who used to play outside this very bay window, was in his mid-twenties now, married, with a child of his own on the way. There was his old friend Amelia, who had worked at The Written Word bookstore on Fillmore Street and lived on Manzanita Road, where she often had neighborhood children over to swim in her pool. Many hot summer afternoons he would sit with her on the patio, drinking iced tea and chatting about nothing in particular as they watched the kids do shrieking, giggling cannonballs into the deep end. But Amelia had moved away from Kingston Mills two years ago. Or was it three?
Better Weird: A Tribute to David B. Silva Page 25