The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel

by Charles L. Grant

  The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant

  Volume 4: The Black Carousel

  by

  Charles L. Grant

  Introduction by Hank Wagner

  Cover Art by Matt Bechtel

  Necon Classic Horror #24

  Published at Smashwords by Necon E-Books

  ©2013 The Estate of Charles L. Grant

  Introduction ©2013 Hank Wagner

  Cover Art ©2013 Matt Bechtel

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  Introduction: The Secret Master

  By Hank Wagner

  I was dipping into my extremely battered copy of Doug Winter’s Faces of Fear a couple of months ago when I came across this quote from the always insightful David Morrell:

  “Stephen King and Peter Straub are like the luxury liners of the horror field. They’re always visible on the horizon when you look over these deep, dark waters. But Charlie Grant — he’s the unseen power, like the great white shark, just below the surface.”

  Besides creating a great mental picture, the quote is notable for the accurate portrayal of Charlie acting as a secret master of the genre, subtly exerting profound influence on all those in his orbit. He led by example, publishing the best prose he could craft, and by educating the rest of us through the numerous anthologies he edited, announcing by their inclusion in same that certain writers had arrived, and that these stories were worthy of our attention.

  And believe you me, folks noticed. He was twice nominated for the Nebula and Bram Stoker Awards, and received twenty-two nominations in various categories of the World Fantasy Awards. He won two Nebulas: in 1976, he picked one up for his short story “A Crowd of Shadows” and in 1978, he won in the Best Novelette category with “A Glow of Candles, A Unicorn’s Eye”. In 1979, Shadows won the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology/Collection. Charlie took home two more World Fantasy Awards in 1983 for “Confess the Seasons” (Best Novella) and Nightmare Seasons (Best Anthology/Collection). He was also honored with awards for lifetime achievement from the Horror Writers of America, the World Horror Convention, The British Fantasy Society and the International Horror Guild.

  * * *

  Although many had explored the subject of small town horror before Charlie created Oxrun Station (Shirley Jackson’s classic short story “The Lottery” (1948), Thomas Tyron’s novel Harvest Home (1973), and Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (1975) spring to mind), few have done it as well, or as long, or in as many and varied ways, as he did. Starting with The Hour of the Oxrun Dead in 1979, Charlie went on to write a total of eight novels and a series of four collections of novellas set in the secluded Connecticut hamlet over the next sixteen years, ending in 1995 with the collection you are now getting set to read, The Black Carousel.

  As a set, the Oxrun books represent a grand, wildly successful experiment in horror, as Charlie effectively explored dread and disquiet in many forms, whether it be the threat of harm from satanic cults, classic monsters like vampires, werewolves or mummies, the pain of loneliness, or the confusion of and despair caused by mental illness. Individually, many of these stories are classics of the genre, expertly evoking fear, terror, and, yes, horror, providing readers with fleeting, disturbing but memorable glimpses of what lurks in the shadows.

  The Black Carousel follows the pattern of the previous Oxrun collections, Nightmare Seasons, The Orchard, and Dialing the Wind, in that it features a series of interlocking novellas set in Oxrun. Grant sets the tone in his prologue, in which the unnamed narrator starts to tell the new sheriff, Deric Stockton (he’s replacing his brother Abe, now deceased), stories about the town, about a handful of its denizens who passed through the Pilgrim’s Travelers carnival (comparisons to Something Wicked This Way Comes’ Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show are inevitable and apt) the last time it visited. The stories are told in the hopes that they will help the sheriff to understand the town, and to give him a sense of what he might be getting into.

  “Abe ever tell you about a guy named Casey? A carpenter named Kayman? People like that?” says the narrator. Receiving a negative response, he proceeds to relate four tales.

  "Penny Tunes for a Gold Lion," tells the story of the aforementioned Casey Bethune, a mailman by trade, a gardener by inclination, and a loner by nature. Like all these stories, it deals with human relationships, or, as in Casey’s case, the lack thereof. Casey keeps everyone at a distance, and wonders why he is so lonely. When the town itself begins to excise him like an infection, he still wonders why.

  "Will You Be Mine?" tells the tale of Fran Lumbaird, the new girl in town. Another tale of loneliness, dealing with the despair of the newcomer, the outsider. This time, the town responds by sending out special emissaries.

  "Lost in Amber Light," is all about family, about mothers, and aunts and uncles, and cousins. Dreading the arrival of some annoying relatives, Drake Saxton decides to kill some time by visiting Pilgrim’s Travelers. His experiences there leave him shattered, unable to cope any longer with his domineering mother, or the bad news she’s about to deliver.

  Finally, "The Rain is Filled with Ghosts Tonight, " puts the listeners squarely inside the addled mind of the carpenter Kayman Kalb, teaching them the painful lesson that dementia is not only about forgetting, it’s about remembering.

  In the epilogue to this collection, we learn the ultimate fates of Charlie’s protagonists, as the narrator takes the Sherriff to visit the now abandoned, and impossibly small, field on the outskirts of town where the Pilgrims Travelers carnival sat when last in the area. They’re all “holding on,” we are told.

  As they make their way back home, they can hear the carnival’s carousel far off in the distance, playing its strange, haunting, ghostly music. The carnival is slipping away into the night, leaving them there, as the last line of the book reads, “Holding on.”

  I would encourage you to read and reread this excellent example of Charlie’s craft, and anything else of his that you can lay your hands on, as a way of “holding on” to him, and all the good things he represented. If enough of us do that, the strange but moving music he created will never fade away.

  — Hank Wagner, July 2013

  Prologue

  Stars fall in summer, and it makes no difference when someone claims that the light in the night sky isn’t really a star. Stars fall, just like gods, and like fallen gods there’s no sense searching for the site of their graves. There are no craters, no ashes, no explosions that at least give the dying a brilliant moment of satisfaction. A flare. A glance. A pointing finger to mark the trail.

  Nothing more.

  Nothing after.

  People are the same.

  Not the geniuses, the truly special, who put the lie to the notion that we’re all created equal; it’s the other one —

  the one who sits alone on the porch after supper and listens to the neighborhood wind itself down toward sunset, drink or newspaper in one hand, the other on the armrest, holding on;

  the one who walks the dog and changes the litter box and tunes the car engine and vacuums the carpets and scolds the baby and suddenly stands in the middle of the staircase, momentarily confused
, one hand lightly touching a throat, the other on the banister, holding on;

  the one who can’t figure out where the hell it all went because it was only yesterday — and it had to have been only yesterday, for crying out loud — that he had all his hair and she had no laugh lines and he could sprint a block without losing his breath and she could fit into the dress she wore the night she graduated from college . . . and they stand in the middle of the kitchen, staring at strangers, perplexed, bewildered, not wanting to cry because there is no tangible hurt, not wanting to scream because the monsters aren’t real, but afraid to move or speak because they’re too busy, holding on.

  It has nothing to do with attaching a meaning to a life; it has everything to do with measuring the length of that flare that barely lights up the night sky.

  It has everything to do with holding on.

  At that point, Callum Davidson shook his head and walked away, to fetch, he said over his shoulder, either drinks or rations of poison for the rest of us, and Nina Hunt said, “Gee, and I thought shooting stars were supposed to be romantic. Silly me.”

  We were, that night, escapees from the boisterous reception going on in my house. A lot of townspeople, a lot of laughter and chatter and nudging and sideways glances; food catered by Gale Winston from the Cock’s Crow, drinks thanks to Nigel Oxley at the Brass Ring. I provided the space because they asked me, and because I couldn’t think of one damn reason why not.

  Nina, four-year proprietor of Melody Tapes and Records, had lugged over a carton of records and compact discs that everyone picked over and no one listened to while they were playing. And when I suggested some fresh air, she grabbed my arm, grabbed Callum’s, and we lit out for the territory — in this case, the patch of green and trees and nightdark flowers in front of my house . . .

  “What’s the problem?” she asked after a while of staring at the houses across the street, at the empty street itself, and at the evergreen shrubs that lined the base of the porch. “You lose a bet?”

  I smiled, albeit wanly. Until that moment, I had no idea why I’d been smothered in such gloom. After all, the Station was welcoming its new chief of police; the reconstruction of Centre Street, after a number of political and economic delays, was at last completed and most of the shop and office facades finally remodeled to everyone’s satisfaction; and all was supposedly right with the world.

  “Don’t know,” I said, leaping back against a bole.

  “A writer’s thing, huh?”

  I frowned.

  “Moods,” she explained, as if I should have known. A tiny creature without seeming short, hair woven from ebony, skin that took the sun without looking like leather. “Up, down, sometimes sideways, for no reason at all. All great poets are reputed to be temperamental, you know.”

  “I’m not a poet”

  “No kidding.”

  Wan smile, instant grin.

  A waft of laughter from the backyard, where lights had been strung and tables set out. I looked that way, massaged the back of my neck.

  Callum returned and handed each of us a glass. When Nina questioned him with a tilt of her head, he stood tall — which was very tall indeed-and glared indignantly. “Madam, if I were going to poison you, I wouldn’t ruin perfectly good Scotch doing it.”

  She chuckled.

  Callum drank and said, “So?”

  I bridled a little. “What the hell’s going on? You guys think I’m going to cut my throat or something?”

  He took a spot beside me, shoulder against the bark. “No, but I think that you think you’ve already run the race, my friend You never reached the top, the way’s too crowded now with people who have more energy, the only way left is down. And if I know you, and I do, you’re about to go into a funk that’ll keep you from working for weeks.”

  “Go to hell.”

  He grinned at Nina. “See?”

  He was wrong, and he was so right I wanted to throttle him, but, as I proceeded to tell him without meeting his gaze, my immediate concern was the new top cop. Not a big man was Deric Stockton, but he was large enough to be intimidating if he had to be. He also had the laconic manner all Stocktons seem to have had, and no fear at all that he was about to take over a job that had been held by his family with few exceptions since Lucas Stockton inaugurated the position, back in the middle of the nineteenth century.

  What I didn’t know, what none of us knew, was how much he understood about Oxrun Station.

  And when he found out, how long it would be before he was on the next train out-the direction wouldn’t matter.

  Nina said nothing. Though she hadn’t lived here very long, she had picked up on things almost at once, had come to terms with them, and accepted them.

  Callum knew far more, and though he often fought — with me, with himself, with anyone who would listen — he hadn’t run either. He couldn’t. Those of us who loved movies new and old wouldn’t let him. He ran the Regency Theater, on Centre Street, elegant home for all our fantasies, the raft we sometimes used to get away from the terrors that lurked around us on the shore.

  “I think,” he said a few minutes later, “he’ll be all right. He was Abe’s kid brother, after all, and Abe must have told him something.”

  “I guess.”

  Nina looked at the house. “And if he didn’t, you will.”

  “What?”

  I saw it then, the look between them, and I felt like a complete jerk for not catching on the minute I had been asked to open my house tonight. Of course.

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  Deric Stockton came to the door, came out, and saw us. “Who better?” Callum wanted to know.

  “Nat Clayton,” I answered instantly. “Librarians know everything; Nat knows even more. Or Marc — newspaper editors are notoriously nosy and gabby. And being Nat’s husband, he’s worse than most.” I held up a hand, touched a finger. “Cyd Yarrow’s back in town — god knows she could tell him a thing or two. You want more? No problem. What about old Fred Borg, retired but not forgotten, from that selfsame police force? Not to mention a couple of teachers I could —”

  “All right, all right,” Callum said sourly. “Jesus, you’re touchy.”

  “Moody,” Nina corrected. I almost laughed.

  Stockton came down the steps, dearly uncomfortable in his dark blue suit, his still-fair hair slicked back but making a determined effort to cut loose, like his handlebar mustache. Although the light behind him put his face in shadow, it was evident he was Abe’s brother — every line carved deep, every angle sharp and ridged, eyes deep set and much too old for the man who used them.

  “Evening,” he said.

  We nodded, listened to the crickets, listened to the music, listened to the way time slowed on summer evenings. Comfortable. A few words about the season, the entertainments at the college, bits of gossip Davidson doled out without having to be told, or scolded about, a shifting of positions until Nina was with me at the tree, and the two men faced us, glancing up at the night birds fussing in the leaves.

  “I’m going to like it here,” Deric allowed into a silence that cut us off from the Station. He nodded, scratched the side of his nose. “Figure I’ll get along.”

  A round of nods and grunts and shifting of feet.

  He looked straight at me then. “I’m told you can help me.” I didn’t answer.

  Nina poked me, the disapproving kind that made me feel like a kid who’d forgotten to say thank you.

  “Abe wrote, you know.”

  I could hear it then — you loved that old man and so did I, he said I should listen . . . so I’m listening.

  Right.

  Some kids rode past on their bicycles, balloons tied to the handlebars, playing cards snapping against the spokes. A party somewhere, something doing at the grade school or at a church; a few seconds later another group sped by, faster, louder, voices echoing off the houses and swallowed by the dark. I put my hands in my pockets and walked down to the sidewalk, watching
the reflectors catch the streetlamps until they were little more than red sparks that winked out when a breeze came at me from around the corner.

  Sparks.

  Flares.

  I turned around.

  “You ever hear of Pilgrim’s Travelers?”

  Callum cleared his throat noisily. “I’m not sure —”

  “Well?” I asked, pointedly ignoring him.

  Deric shook his head, slowly. “Don’t think so.”

  Nina said, “Me neither.”

  Callum questioned me without saying a word, and when I nodded, he offered to refresh all our drinks. We accepted, and he made me promise not to begin until he returned. An easy promise, because if Deric wanted to know about the Station, wanted to hear it from a source besides a brother’s letter, I was going to need fortification.

  Not in the liquor.

  The company.

  I looked up at the stars I could see above the house, thought of those kids and their bikes and how they had reminded me of parties, and how the parties had reminded me of carnivals and fairs. Flares themselves, but blinding for a night or a weekend and just as swiftly gone, leaving behind nothing but an empty field, a blowing wind, tracks in the earth, and the smell not of cotton candy and candied apples, not of greasepaint and grease, but of a slow smiling dying.

  The way a carousel sounds when the last tune’s been played and the animals stop spinning.

  I led Nina and Deric to the steps, and we sat, took our glasses when Callum joined us, and I plucked with some trouble an ice cube from my drink.

  “Imagine,” I said, “what it must be like when all the ice melts and there’s nothing left to hold but the cold air left behind.”