A Long December

by Richard Chizmar

  And I suddenly realized that it was Bailey who was keeping the darkest of secrets from her family. I realized something else, too—I was scared of that little girl, and with good reason.

  HEROES—“Heroes” is one of my most popular and reprinted short stories. It’s also one of my earliest efforts, first published way back in 1991.

  Originally written for a paperback anthology of vampire tales, I still remember receiving the invitation from the book’s editor and feeling determined to do something different with the vampire mythology.

  While I loved the scary, bloodsucking vampires of Dracula and ’Salem’s Lot and I Am Legend, I figured that most of the anthology’s writers would wind up following that familiar dark path—and I wanted to try something else. Something focused on the lore-based concept of vampires being able to grant eternal life with a bite to the neck—but in an uplifting manner, instead of a menacing one.

  Somehow, from all those admittedly jumbled thoughts, I ended up with “Heroes”—a story about love and hope and redemption. Not in the romantic sense, mind you, but instead a father and son love story.

  A love letter, as it turned out, to my own father, who was doing quite fine at the time, still out there in his mid-60’s, mowing the lawn and tinkering with his car most evenings in the garage.

  I wrote the story longhand, sitting in my junker of a Datsun in a college parking lot somewhere in Delaware, waiting for Kara, my then-fiancée, to finish a graduate school interview. I remember the story surprised me. It came fast and furious, and when I finished scribbling the final sentence, I had a lump in my throat.

  The story wasn’t scary, and it never once utilized the word “vampire”—but it was powerful and true, and most of all, it was me.

  My voice. My heart. My fears.

  It was the first time I’d felt that I had written a truly “honest” story—and it felt like magic.

  Many years later, my childhood friend and successful actor and director, John Schaech, would fall in love with the short story, and we would combine forces to write and produce a short movie based on “Heroes.”

  The experience would lead to a successful writing and producing partnership with John and many other film projects. It also led to my first visit to Los Angeles for the filming of “Heroes.”

  Filming took place over two very long and chilly nights at John’s house in the Hollywood Hills, and while I have many wonderful memories from the set, there are two in particular that stand out to me:

  The first moment occurred during a break in filming, when I found myself sitting alone with actor Djimon Hounsou. Djimon is a kind and talented actor, whose work has appeared in blockbusters such as Guardians of the Galaxy and Blood Diamond. At the time, he’d been recently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Ridley Scott’s epic Gladiator, and I often wondered what the heck he was doing playing the role of a vampire (or “Mystery Man,” as he was referred to in the script) in our little movie.

  Well, I was about to find out the answer.

  Because Djimon spent the next twenty minutes or so pouring his heart out to me—explaining with sweet sincerity how touching and unique he had found the story of “Heroes,” and asking me questions about my father and telling me stories about his own father. In the course of the conversation, Djimon also shared with me that his father was in his final days in Africa, and that he hoped to get home soon after filming to be with him one final time.

  After a bit, John came over, and the three of us sat there, swapping stories about our fathers, and celebrating how blessed we were to have them in our lives. It was a beautiful and poignant conversation, and something I will never forget.

  The second moment came during the final hours of filming—and it blindsided me.

  There is a flashback sequence in the story where the son talks about how his father is losing his race against time and age. Growing more and more confused and slow and lost as each day passes.

  One way we decided to show this decline visually in the film was by having the actor who played the father sit at a kitchen counter, staring off into space, while slowly eating a bowl of cereal, hand shaking as he lifted a spoon to his mouth, milk dribbling down his chin.

  It was a subtle, but powerful moment in the movie—and I thought I was prepared for it.

  I was wrong.

  The camera started rolling, the actor started doing his thing, and I immediately began to hear the words I had written—as a private voice-over inside my head:

  I don’t watch my father anymore. It hurts too much. Ten months ago, on a Friday night, he forgot my name.

  I lasted two takes, and then I had to get out of there. It was too much. It felt like the monitor I was watching was a porthole into the future, my future, and it was no longer an actor I was watching; it was my own father.

  I walked outside and sat on the front porch until the scene was finished. I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t look at anyone. I couldn’t.

  Later, I found out that John had experienced the exact same emotions.

  DITCH TREASURES—I’m blessed to call Stephen King my friend. If you know any background history at all about my magazine and publishing company, you know that if it weren’t for King’s books and short stories, neither the magazine nor the book company would exist. His work inspired me and gave me direction at a very early age.

  So, to find out firsthand many years later, that the guy behind the books is not only kind and generous and still insanely talented, but also down-to-earth and just flat-out cool? Well, that’s been the cherry on top of the sundae for me.

  Steve and I rarely get a chance to see each other these days—our schedules are jammed—but we email or text frequently. Books. Movies. Sports. Pop culture. Our dogs. Family. We cover a lot of ground, including the occasional off-the-wall topic, which I guess should be expected with guys like us.

  I take full responsibility for this one:

  My oldest son, Billy, and I were hanging out together at the beach, talking about the wild and wonderful internet, and it occurred to me—completely out of the blue; no, Mom, we were not talking about porn, I swear—that kids nowadays would probably never get a chance to experience the juvenile wonder and joy of stumbling upon a rain-swollen, puffy-paged girlie magazine on the side of the road or in a Dumpster or tucked away in someone else’s hiding place.

  I explained to my son that every tree house or fort we’d ever occupied as kids had boasted a stash of just such magazines. It was as much a part of growing up in the 1970s as firecrackers or slingshots or BB guns. Billy was momentarily fascinated, and then he was on to the next thing.

  But, for some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. My God, it brought back so many memories.

  I immediately emailed several friends—including Steve—and ex-

  pressed my dismay at this sudden revelation.

  Several of my childhood friends soon emailed back, and while I cannot, in good taste, tell you what they wrote—did I mention that I grew up with some weird guys?—I can tell you that they possess wonderful memories and haven’t grown up nearly as much as their wives would prefer.

  Thankfully, Steve’s response was much more measured and mature. He told me that he understood exactly what I was describing, and that he and his friends had always called such findings “ditch treasures” back when they were kids.

  Ditch treasures—it was perfect.

  A month later, I emailed Steve the first page of this short story and thanked him for the title.

  THE SILENCE OF SORROW—I’ve written about this story a couple times before and discussed my own surreal experiences with “cleaning up after the dead.”

  Fortunately, I’ve never lived the nightmare of finding the sort of thing described in this story, but as the main character explains in heartbreaking detail:

  “Even then, while he struggled with the cardboard boxes and the packing tape, he’d clearly known that the details of the day would haunt him forever; he wo
uld never be able to forget what kind of plates and utensils the woman had in her kitchen, the titles of the books on her shelves, the simple prints and paintings on the walls, her favorite color of shoes, the style of dress she preferred, what her handwriting looked like on a grocery list magneted to the refrigerator door. And so many other little things he had no right to possess knowledge of.”

  And he was right; those memories have never left me. They remain etched inside my soul, a permanent scar.

  Reviewers have been very kind to “The Silence of Sorrow”—calling it everything from “devastating” to “emotionally complex and powerful” to “an understated masterpiece” (Publisher’s Weekly).

  I usually couldn’t care less about reviews, but I’ve always felt relieved and gratified that readers have understood and accepted this story.

  It’s the most difficult story I’ve ever written.

  AFTER THE BOMBS—I adored the story of Robin Hood when I was a boy. Not so much the green tights and frilly outfit, but the idea of shooting arrows and hiding in trees and robbing from the rich to give to the poor was right down my alley. I still remember running through the woods near my elementary school, pretending it was Sherwood Forest and the sheriff’s men were in hot pursuit. They never caught me back then. Not even once.

  So, when Joshua Allen Mercier tracked me down last year and asked me to write a story for his anthology of reimagined fairy tales and folklore—cleverly titled Twice Upon a Time—you better believe I jumped at the opportunity to revisit my childhood hero.

  My initial plan was to set my story in a war-ravaged, post-apocalyptic world and go very dark with it. Plenty of violence and blood and radioactive monsters—a completely modern take on the Robin Hood myth.

  But that didn’t happen.

  Instead, “After the Bombs” turned into a story within a story—one about the perseverance of the human spirit and love passed down from generation to generation.

  There was some violence and there was some blood, but no monsters—and for that, I apologize.

  Joshua told me that he cried at the end of “After the Bombs.” I hope you did, too.

  LAST WORDS—When I was young, I would often bury foreign coins (from my father’s Air Force travels) in my yard and draw a map leading to the treasure. I would do my best to make the map appear worn with age, wrinkling it and often charring the edges, and then I’d present it to my friend, Jimmy Cavanaugh, as an authentic pirate treasure map discovered in my garage or attic.

  Common sense rarely applies to ten-year-old boys, and we were no exception.

  Jimmy got wise after the first three or four expeditions turned up the same old, dirt-crusted coins (which I, of course, tried to pass off as pirate doubloons), so I soon gave up on these treasure hunts and turned my attention to more profitable ventures such as lemonade stands and magic shows.

  But I never forgot about those treasure hunts.

  And either did Jimmy. He now swears that he knew from the start that I was behind the treasure hunts and only followed along to be a good friend. That’s only half true, folks; Jimmy may be the very best of friends, but he’s also a big fat liar when it comes to my treasure hunts. And he knows it.

  Okay, a quick admission before we move on:

  Not many people realize that I took off almost a full decade from writing and publishing new fiction. I still had plenty of reprints appearing in books and magazines. Countless interviews saw print and my name appeared on the covers of more than a dozen anthologies as an editor. I also co-wrote a number of feature films, as well as episodes of Showtime’s Masters of Horror and NBC’s Fear Itself.

  But, brand new short fiction? Nada. Not a thing.

  The reasons (excuses) were many: I was busy helping to raise two young boys; I was busy coaching a dozen sports teams for those two young boys; I was busy traveling and writing movies; I was busy running the book publishing business. You get the point.

  But the truth of the matter was this: writing short stories had simply stopped being fun somewhere along the way. I didn’t have writer’s block, the ideas were still bubbling, but the joy of writing them down and shaping them into a story had vanished for some reason. So, I just stopped—and got busy doing other things.

  Written in the late summer of 2014, “Last Call” was my first new short story in nearly a decade—and it was both a personal triumph and a relief. A triumph because it was a brand new story, written very much in my familiar voice. And a relief, because, to be perfectly honest, I was terrified that I had forgotten how to write a short story.

  I’m grateful to editor Greg Kishbaugh (also a fine writer) for pulling the story out of me. I still don’t know how he did it, and that’s just fine with me.

  NIGHT CALL—I still remember the frenzy surrounding the Millennium with head-shaking clarity. Don’t you?

  Perfectly sensible folks lost their minds, and the crazy ones…well, they took center stage and seemed to relish every minute they spent in the limelight.

  “Night Call” was my way of trying to make sense of that period of time; my way of trying to make sense of something that made no sense at all to me.

  I really like the two cops in this story. They’re my kind of guys. And if I ever have to experience that madness again, I think I’d like to do it riding shotgun with Frank and Ben.

  “Night Call” ends with what is probably my favorite closing sentence of all my stories.

  THE LAKE IS LIFE—I grew up with three older sisters, so I had plenty of early and prolonged exposure to the mysteries of the opposite sex. I learned a lot about mood swings and hairbrushes and waiting in line for the upstairs bathroom and how you should never ever look in a girl’s purse without asking first. I even learned to like Bee Gees music.

  My favorite activity was entertaining my sisters’ dates while they sat on the living room sofa waiting for my sisters to finish getting ready. I would usually do this by sledding down our stairs on an inflatable Hershey Park pillow, skimming across the living room floor, and casually informing the date that my sister would be down soon, she just had a bad case of diarrhea. True story.

  Anyway, despite their best efforts, I can’t claim that I learned much in the way of wisdom when it came to preparing me to be a better boyfriend or husband—I can hear my sisters laughing now—but the experiences did probably help when it came time to write “The Lake Is Life.”

  I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed writing a story where almost all the characters were female. It was a first for me, and I look forward to revisiting it sometime soon.

  It occurred to me later that the story of Becca and her mom and Grandma could’ve almost transitioned into a mainstream tale of a loving family in crisis.

  Almost.

  Becca probably deserved a better fate than the one I gave her.

  THE GOOD OLD DAYS—For some reason, I’ve always enjoyed writing about elderly characters. I’ve also enjoyed reading about them, which explains why Insomnia is one of my Top 10 Stephen King novels.

  Sure, old folks can be just as evil and despicable as their younger kin, but I think there’s an innate grace and dignity to many old-timers that really comes across on the page.

  That’s exactly how I felt about The Three Horsemen in “The Good Old Days.”

  GRAND FINALE—This is another very early story, as evidenced by the frequent references to VCRs and videocassette tapes, and the occasional (ahem) clunky sentence or two.

  I’ve included it here because it’s the sexiest story I’ve ever written—which might not be saying much—and because I think “Grand Finale” would make a pretty nifty and frightening half-hour of television in the hands of the right people.

  (For the record, I’m still thinking about Frank and Ben, the two cops from “Night Call,” a few stories back. I’m going to have to write a new story featuring those two. I miss them.)

  THE ARTIST—My father served in the Air Force during World War II. He saw action in both Europe and the Pacific,
and his stories of that war were a huge part of my life growing up.

  When I was very young, he converted hundreds of photos—from the war and his later travels in the Air Force—into slides, and our family would gather once or twice a year in the living room for a slideshow on our old-fashioned, pull-up screen. It was always a special night, and I would often invite neighborhood friends over to join my mom and my sisters and me.

  I can still remember the sound and the smell of the projector; feeling almost hypnotized watching the dust motes floating through the thin beam of light; and the comforting sound of my father’s voice as he described each slide to us.

  I also remember going to sleep on those slideshow nights wondering how those young soldiers could have been so brave and unafraid. Many years later, I would remember those night thoughts when I first watched Band of Brothers on HBO—still, for my money, the finest hours of television I have ever watched.

  My father’s experiences also inspired my own fictional war stories at an early age. When I was eight or nine, I would often pretend I was John Boy from The Waltons—don’t laugh; I was eight—and I would sit at my little desk in the corner of my bedroom and scribble war stories in a spiral notebook. After awhile, I started writing monster stories, too. Each time I finished a new story, I would illustrate it, and then show it to my mother (she was my first and kindest audience). She encouraged me to write more stories, so that’s what I did.

  Originally written for a tribute anthology honoring Richard Matheson’s classic novel, The Beardless Warriors, “The Artist” is my first war story in close to forty years. It also might be the scariest story in this entire collection. It’s certainly the saddest.

  I was nervous when I emailed my story to the editors. I so badly wanted to honor Mr. Matheson and my father with my words. So, I was extremely relieved and thrilled when Richard Christian emailed the following response: “…a poignant story I think my father (as a young writer, himself, during the war) would appreciate. You did something very rare; conveying idealism of your soldiers and broken hearts of war in so subtle a way.”