The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction - July/August 2016

by Various

  I didn't realize any of this immediately. Like every other human being caught up in his sparkle zone, I was enchanted just by being in the charmfield of such a beautiful charismatic being.

  And when this same beautiful, charismatic being found out that I was a writer-producer with genuine television credits ( that episode of that TV show), he was suddenly my best friend.

  And in the three weeks that followed:

  The director of the low-budget movie I had written (as a favor) found a really nice cave in the San Bernardino mountains and wanted the T-Rex to come tiptoeing out of it, sneaking up on the resting heroine. When I explained to him how a T-Rex tiptoes, he fired me and asked for his money back.

  Negotiations for a film adaptation of my space-war novel collapsed when I found out the ambitious little twerp who had appointed himself producer had written his own version of the script behind my back—in violation of Writers Guild rules, thereby breaching the entire contract.

  The engine on my new car blew up because the service department had failed to refill the oil after draining it.

  And finally, the fellow I had been dating (and thinking about getting serious with) abruptly became Chuck's new boyfriend.

  Okay, now you can argue that except for that last bit, Chuck was nowhere near any of those other events, but—the only thing that had changed in my life was the presence of Chuck. The way he moved through a room of people was reawakening three decades of self-esteem issues and doubt. And if you believe that how you perceive the universe has an effect on how it behaves around you—like a sociomorphic transmutation field, like a metaforming presence—then all of this had to be the result of allowing Chuck to affect my thinking.

  It wasn't just the disruption of my burgeoning relationship that convinced me Chuck was the Bad Luck Fairy. It was the fact that for the next six weeks, I couldn't get a date—and that was because apparently I was still moving in the same social circles as Chuck. The chucklesphere was pernicious.

  And I wasn't the only one caught in it.

  The closer you got to Chuck, the worse your life became. While I was never eligible to join the growing club of Chuck's ex-boyfriends, I knew several Survivors of Chuck who attended weekly support group meetings. They experienced calamities much worse than mine. They reported mysterious comings and goings of strangers, financial losses, career misfortunes, economic disasters, stolen property, bizarre illnesses and infestations, deceased pets, evictions, and the occasional visitation of crab lice.

  I could go on. I won't. This should be sufficient. There exists empirical evidence that Chuck [last name redacted] was—and if he's still alive, still is—a locus of bad things happening.

  In my mind, Chuck has earned a justifiable literary immortality as a catalyst of catastrophe. So whenever bad luck occurs anywhere, I ascribe it to the presence of Chuck, the Bad Luck Fairy. As a personal exercise in revenge, launching this meme into the growing ecology of urban legends is far better than any conceivable work therapy from the outpatient clinic.

  I did see Chuck one more time. Ironically, it was at the aforementioned event at Dotty's Place. I turned around in line and there he was. I nodded a polite hello—and his boyfriend du jour grabbed his arm possessively and said, if you can believe it, "He's mine!"

  I replied, "Yes, please," and moved on.

  A dozen other possible replies, ranging from "Good luck with that" to "I'm so sorry for you" did not escape my lips, but rattled around in my consciousness for a few moments, like ball bearings in an empty steel drum. Perhaps my classes in social skills were starting to work and I was actually practicing courtesy that night.

  Apparently the boyfriend du jour still believed he had caught something other than a social disease. But his moment of possessiveness suggested that on some subconscious level even he understood that his relationship with Chuck was doomed to be transitory. His proprietory claim had an air of desperation.

  I mention all of this because…if I can believe in an ambulatory nexus of misfortune, then shouldn't it be equally easy for me to believe in a small haunted mansion?

  It would explain a lot of the weirdness at the World Horror Convention. They knew.

  The award is cursed.

  It makes perfect sense. Even a replica of the House of Usher is haunted.

  Just like birdhouses attract birds, little haunted houses attract itty-bitty ghosts. Or equivalent supernatural entities. Some kind of diminutive ghoulies? Why do ghosts always have to be human-sized? Do rats have ghosts too? Cockroaches? (Do cockroach ghosts have to go toward the light…? That must be confusing.)

  Apparently I was the only award recipient unaware of the situation. No wonder the other recipients were saying, "I don't deserve this," and, "Why me?" It was probably funny, or ironic, or a relief, to the other nominees that I was now the proud owner of a haunted trophy inhabited by little skittering things.

  There was only one thing to do.

  I called Uncle Harlan.

  Actually, first I made a cup of coffee and updated my will. Then I called Harlan.

  In the past, he would have answered with a harsh, "Yeah, what is it?" But now—no.

  No, he has not mellowed. He has Caller ID. He knows who's calling before he answers—or chooses not to answer. But usually Sharon, his assistant, answers. Or sometimes Susan. They're always pleasant to talk to.

  This time: "Yeah, kiddo. What do you need?"

  "I need—uh, I have to ask you a question. You know I won the Stoker Award last week—"

  "You did?" Pause. "Congratulations." Longer pause. "You know, I have five Stoker Awards."

  "Yes, I know. I also know there's a difference between quantity and quality."

  "You don't really want to go there, do you…?" he asked ominously.

  "Uh, no. That's not why I called. I have to ask you something. While I was there I told everyone the story of how you designed the award and Steve Kirk sculpted it. Some of them looked at me like I was a child who still believed in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Or Trickle-Down Economics."

  Harlan said, "Yeah…?"

  "So what's the truth about the award?"

  Longest pause. "Just what I told you, kid."

  "Uh-huh. And since then, I've lost seven pounds, I look like John Hurt without makeup. I keep hearing strange little skittering noises at night. And I saw a light on in one of the second story windows—all that was missing was a tiny distraught heroine in her nightgown, running away in horror in the foreground, like the cover of an old romance novel. And all this started when I brought the award home and put it on my shelf. So what's really going on?"

  "I can't tell you—"

  "You have five of these things, Harlan."

  "They hate me. They really hate me."

  "Yes, I know. Now I want to know what I did that they hate me too."

  "It was just your turn in the barrel. That's all. Consider it evidence that you've made it, that you've scratched your mark on literary history. All your success earns you an extra little bear to cross."

  "I already have enough bears. And if I need more, I can go to Silverlake." I took a breath. "I need to know, Harlan. Please. I'm serious."

  His turn to take a breath. His tone softened. He stopped being H*A*R*L*A*N and turned back into Uncle Harlan, the person only The Chosen Few are privileged to know. "Can you keep a secret?"

  "Of course, I can. I've never told anyone where writers really get their ideas. I haven't revealed my sister's real age. And no one will ever know what really happened to the piece of birthday cake with Shatner's face on it."

  "Okay," he said. "Those were for practice. This one you have to take to your grave. If you breathe a word of this, if you even write a syllable about it, it will be a yearly event that we dig you up and slap your face."

  "I'm planning on being cremated. With 'Light My Fire' playing."

  "That's beside the point. This is for real, David. I mean it. We're talking about things that man was not meant to know. Nor woman either.
Eldritch horrors, the whole enchilada."

  Something in his tone of voice—I resisted the urge for a snappy comeback about eldritch horrors and Mexican food.

  "Okay," I said. And meant it.

  He began slowly. It took the better part of an hour. I said little, except to punctuate the conversation with an occasional "Uh-huh" or "Oh my Ghu!"

  Gordon, I can say this much—because I've already said it. The story about Harlan designing the award, the story about Steve Kirk sculpting it—that's true, but not the whole truth. There's more.

  But I cannot repeat any of the rest of that conversation with Harlan. Not here. Not anywhere. I cannot even write it down in my own journal, lest my son or some other innocent finds it. (Well, my son isn't that innocent anymore, but you know what I mean.)

  I'm truly sorry that I ever told Harlan I could keep a secret. This is one secret I do not want to know.

  I know a lot of secrets. I've stumbled into a lot of arcane knowledge in my career.

  I know that most of the UFO conspiracy theories are really cover stories deliberately created by the government to distract attention from some very advanced technology the Air Force has been developing since World War II. Foo fighters, anyone?

  I know who had sex with who on the International Space Station (and no, it wasn't all hetero)—for the record, some positions are unworkable, it's a matter of leverage and having something to push against.

  I know why the Stargate TV series kept getting renewed for so many years—it was to flood all the Internet search engines with distracting links so it would be almost impossible for anyone to find information on a very very top-secret program—the one that does Very Very Bad Things, code-named "Stargate."

  And I know the real reason Tom Lehrer abruptly stopped writing funny songs.

  But this—I don't want to know this. It's wrong. And I am so sorry I asked. I wish there was enough brain bleach in the world to erase the paralyzing memory.

  Those who know anything at all about this—this phenomenon, this circumstance, this condition of the reality we swim in—have learned an interesting skill: the ability to talk about anything and everything—everything except the thing they're not supposed to talk about. It's a bit like painting a picture of the scenery around an elephant, leaving only an elephant-shaped white space in the middle. Even that much is dangerous—an astute observer might be able to figure out from what hasn't been said, what's really being said.

  It's a bad idea to look too closely. This is something you don't want to know.

  I can tell you this much, because any astute observer would have noticed it already.

  Some of the scenery around the white space:

  * * *

  Einstein's last words. His nurse was American and he was speaking German.

  The strange cold spot in the lobby of the Bradbury building.

  A mysterious manuscript carbon-dated to the early fifteenth century—one that still resists all attempts at translation.

  The continuing swarms of earthquakes up and down the California coast, but especially in the northwest corner of the nation.

  The disappearance of Ambrose Bierce in 1913. And possibly the later disappearance of Amelia Earhart as well.

  The Yellowstone Caldera.

  Nikola Tesla.

  Why the Kola Borehole was abandoned, and what the recordings from it revealed when you filtered out the screaming.

  The missing eighteen and a half minutes.

  That unnerving hum at Taos, New Mexico.

  Bob Dylan.

  What Howard Phillips Lovecraft didn't write about.

  Why 205 out of 274 anchor rods on the new Oakland Bay Bridge have slipped out of alignment.

  What cats see up in the corner of the room, near the ceiling, that we can't.

  Egg crates.

  * * *

  Here's the question to consider.

  If that's the scenery in the background, what's in the foreground?

  There are very few people who have seen the whole picture. I'm not one of them. Neither is Harlan. He told me only the smallest bit, only the part I needed to know.

  Maybe no one knows all of it. Maybe those who do know have gone insane. Maybe the best that anyone can know is just a quick sideways glimpse out of the corner of the eye, seen in passing, and imprinting a horrible uncertainty on the solidity of the world.

  This much.

  The Stoker Award.

  Handing out trophies is the organization's way of giving away pieces of… it. They're trying to dilute a particularly intense buildup of… it.

  The unwritten rule is this. If you're going to write a certain kind of story—what we think of as horror stories—then you are accepting a share of the responsibility.

  You just don't want too much of it.

  Stephen King was hit by a van after winning a truckload of those things. And Harlan's own health issues didn't clear up until he moved all of his into one of the lead-lined secret rooms underneath—Never mind, I can't divulge that part.

  Maybe this explains why some of the founding members quit the Horror Writers Association shortly after they started handing out awards. Yes, there's a cover story. There's always a cover story.

  Anyway.

  That's the simple version.

  That's what Harlan told me. The rest—I wish I'd stopped him in time. But you can't. No one can. It's impossible. He's a force of nature. All you can do is listen and get sucked in.

  When Harlan starts talking, he's a charismasaur. He generates a spectacular reality field around himself, so powerful it distorts the physical universe. It's why the neighbors' pot plants grow so well and the coyotes in Sherman Oaks are so wary.

  Dr. Morgan says that every author does this, rearranges reality, some more than others. Successful authors transform the material universe. The stories they tell overwhelm not only belief, but evidence as well. And the effect is cumulative. Like an avalanche. Lots of little pebbles—one pebble can't hurt you. All the pebbles can smash you. The more authors who add their weight to the conversation—no, I can't say any more. I'll digress, deliberately. Maybe you can extrapolate something just from what I've written. But whatever you extrapolate, it isn't.

  Think of the blind men and the elephant. The part we found is deep and squooshy. There's more. So much more—

  Never mind, I'll go somewhere else now.

  Think about this. The greatest authors of all hammer the world with a unique voice, distinct and powerful and immediately recognizable. Think about it. Not just Harlan, but Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert A. Heinlein, Samuel R. Delany, Jack Vance, Terry Pratchett, E. E. "Doc" Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and more, all the way back to Petronius.

  The world we live in is not the world we started in.

  That might be part of my chronic despondency—the pernicious knowledge that I will never achieve that kind of brand identity. I'm not sure I want it, I think I'm happier being relatively unknown, but even if I did want it, I can't have it. It's too late. I am not going to be a part of changing it back. Not in a good way.

  Bear with me, Gordon. Another digression here. Necessary.

  My first two years in college, I was an art major. I got just good enough to realize I would never be good enough. But one semester, in one of the drawing and painting classes, I had an instructor—I don't even remember his name—who changed my life forever.

  It worked like this. On Monday, we would look at the work of a specific artist. He'd darken the room and project hundreds of slides onto a faded screen. Sometimes the whole painting, sometimes close-ups of the details. We looked at Rouault, Seurat, Henry Moore, van Gogh, Picasso, and more.

  Each of these artists had a distinctly individual style. Rouault painted portraits and nudes outlined by thick black lines. Seurat assembled exquisite landscapes out of thousands and thousands of tiny dots of color—he invented the pixel. Moore sculpted rounded shapes, sometimes with holes throug
h them—mysterious blobs of significance. Picasso sliced reality into planes, disassembling and reassembling, sliding the pieces around like a savage jigsaw puzzle.

  And van Gogh—oh my god, van Gogh—he slashed at the canvas as if his brush was a knife, but it was really a scalpel carving light. He didn't paint scenery or objects, he revealed luminance. A splash of orange becomes the glow of a gas lamp. The face of a cat dissolves in shimmering outlines. Violent stabs of black evoke the flight of crows over a field of shining yellow wheat. Van Gogh was uncovering the hallucinatory world that hides beneath the safe veneer of sight.

  That was Monday, a different artist each week.

  Then, for the rest of the week, we'd draw or paint in that artist's style. Every week a different artist. The job wasn't to become that artist, but to understand what he saw and the way he recreated it on canvas. It was to free us from the limitations of our own perceptions. It was to expand our abilities to explore so we could create our own artistic identities. Friday, we'd finish and critique.

  As I said, I got just good enough to realize I would never be good enough.

  So I turned my attention to Journalism and Creative Writing. I thought I might have more skill there. Besides, it looked easy. Sit and type, right? Hah!

  Very quickly, the Creative Writing instructor told me I was wasting my time. I had no talent. I would never be any good. He might have been right, but as it turned out, I was also a lousy listener. By the time I was willing to recognize the truth of his observation, it was too late. I was already supporting myself in the genre.

  And that's when the bear trap of the art class snapped shut on my leg.

  I don't know how it is for other newbies, but for me—I felt like a toddler staring up at the legs of giants. I wanted to know how Heinlein made his worlds so believable, how Vance was able to create such intricate and baroque landscapes with just a few brushstrokes of language, how Zenna Henderson got inside the souls of her characters so deeply. I wanted to know how Delany made words sparkle, how Sturgeon made them sing, and how Ellison made them burn.