by Brian Hodge
The old man froze. Before another word was spoken, the synapses deep inside his brain fired like a barely smoldering ember coming to life: a memory of a midair collision, Christmas morning, four long years ago, swooping down off the frozen Pacific, the reindeers blind in the blizzard, navigating by instinct over British Columbia.
“Way it happened, Sir,” chimed in the one named Dooley, “was you didn’t see the new radio tower they put in north of Prince George – they call it progress – but the world ain’t ready for such progress, you ask me.”
“Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord,” the old man uttered, remembering how the tower had come out of nowhere, striking the front flank of his team that terrible morning, and how the sleigh had fallen out of the sky, engulfed in sparks and fire, and how the old man had hit his head on the great iron struts, thrown senseless into a drift, the impact wiping away his memory, leaving behind only the crumb of a false impression: that he had somehow brought about the accident. “I remember now oh God I remember,” he moaned, the carol warbled on the wind around him.
Shamus the elf spoke up. “Sir, I don’t mean to be presum – presummp –”
“Presumptuous is what yer trying to say, ya Git,” the older elf corrected.
Shamus nodded. “Right, it’s just that – that – that —”
“Captain, what the lad is trying to say in his awkward manner is ya probably best be comin’ along with us, seein’ how it’s the sacred evenin’ and all, and we still got time to do some good.”
The old man stared at the elf for a good long time, then took in a deep breath and stretched his tired, depleted limbs. Already his body was transforming, replenishing itself with fat. His face seemed to soften in the half-light of the dusk as he rose on creaking joints. “God bless ya, boys, both of ya,” he murmured, using Shamuses shoulder for balance as the elves escorted him away. “God bless ya for finding me, now and forever more.”
In the moments and hours and days that followed, the eyewitnesses present that night – the Ranger and the orphan and the orderly from Eldritch Asylum – found themselves victims of their own amnesia, the sight of the old man being ushered away into the night by elves fading into half-formed memories as in those of a dream. The Ranger even tried to capture what had happened that night in the pages of a personal journal, but over the years even that documentation was lost. He was never supposed to see what he had seen, and the hidden world eventually obliterated the images from his consciousness. In time the events of 1932 melded into the bland stew of history – that amorphous cauldron of recriminations and subjective analysis that always lands on some outer orbit of the actual truth. But one thing remains steadfast and inexorable in the history of the Great Depression: a mere six and a half weeks before the uncanny rendezvous in the dust storm, the governor of New York, a complex man who suffered from a paralytic disease, managed to rise through the ranks of national politics and get elected as the 32nd president – a number strangely synchronous with the year itself – announcing in his acceptance speech, “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had help with his New Deal, which would eventually awaken the country from the ghastly slumber of the Depression.
Christmas had returned, and Santa Claus now wore protective headgear each time he ventured out on that magic night of nights.
NOTES
On “Animal Rites”
Some short stories I write in a fever, in one sitting, without taking a breath. There is no rhyme or reason for this technique, it merely depends upon the story or the state of mind I’m in, or sometimes the physical location in which I’m composing it. There’s also no guarantee that this approach will yield anything interesting. Sometimes it does, usually it doesn’t.
They say that Kerouac wrote ON THE ROAD while buzzed out of his gourd on Benzedrine, pounding out the first draft on one gigantic continuous toll of teletype paper so that he wouldn’t have to pause to reload the paper into his old Smith Corona (which may have prompted the irrepressible wag, Truman Capote, to quip: “That’s not writing, that’s typing!”). I don’t know if this teletype story is apocryphal or not, but I empathize with Old Jackie Boy, because I get in that zone sometimes.
I got into it with “Animal Rites.”
You see, I have this terrible fear of flying. And the only way I can deal with plane trips is by doing two things: 1) Taking a sedative such as Xanax or Valium, and 2) Writing furiously so that I lose myself in a story and forget where I am. I’ve written quite a few of these “distraction” stories on board airliners. Most of them are garbage. But occasionally I’ll produce something like “Animal Rites.”
“Animal Rites” may very well be most successful short story I’ve ever written. It’s been reprinted the most times. It’s been translated into French. And it’s been performed in public countless times to fairly appreciative audiences.
It was written at 30 thousand feet over the states of Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska.
On “Black Celebration”
I was weaned on punk rock. I always wanted to incorporate punk rock into my horror fiction but could not solve the conundrum of blending those two mutually exclusive and almost adversarial mediums. Rock and roll is a hot medium – sweaty, loud, immediate, tribal, felt in the solar plexus – while literature is a cold medium. Literature is solitary, intellectual, passive, and felt in the cerebral cortex. Never the twain shall meet. And yet… I thought it might be interesting to meld punk rock with the Lovecraftian mythos. Somehow the awesome unease conjured by the best of H.P. Lovecraft – those unnamable horrors from other dimensions – seemed just as ethereal and hard to grasp as the inscrutable power of four junkies banging on instruments, screaming about sex, drugs, and injustice.
On “Steagal’s Barber Shop”
It probably is no surprise that I consider myself a died-in-the-wool Democrat politically… but at times I can fall somewhere to the left of Timothy Leary. Take war. What is it good for? As the man says: absolutely nothing. Except maybe two things: Destroying humans, and generating lies. It never helps, it never triumphs over anything. Maybe the second world war was the last necessary one. I don’t know. All I do know is that I hate the idea of hypocritical fat cats in suits sitting in Washington, sending people like the characters in this tale into hell. I suppose that’s why I wrote this story – which is also, in its own weird way, a gentle tribute to another soldier name Rod Serling.
On “The Panic Switch”
Not too long ago, I filled out a renewal form for a pugnacious little writer’s group called The Horror Writers Association, of which I’ve been a member for nearly a decade. It’s a letter-size document tri-folded into a display-window envelope. Black and white. Single-sided. No frills. It looks like something that was perhaps mimeographed at my kid’s kindergarten.
It’s a far cry from the endless stream of glossy propaganda with which the Writers Guild inundates its members. But I guess that’s the point. Unlike the Mercedes-driving, espresso-swilling screenwriters of the Guild, we poor schmos and schmo-ettes who proudly call ourselves “horror writers” are mired in the ghetto of the publishing world… and nowadays resources are scarce.
As a mass-market literary category, horror enjoys a reputation a few rungs below Afghan cook books. Some believe this is because of the glut of cheesy slasher novels that came out in the 1980s in the wake of Stephen King’s success. Others believe it’s due to that cinematic high watermark, FRIDAY THE 13TH, and all the brilliant, poignant, feel-good sequels it has spawned. My personal theory is that horror fiction is currently on the down-slide — at least commercially — because of its name.
THE OXFORD AMERICAN DICTIONARY defines horror as “a feeling of loathing and fear, an intense dislike or dismay.” This is not what HWA folks write. Nor is it what name brands like King and Straub and Barker and Rice do. Nor is it the product of lesser known but equally brilliant practitioners such as Joe Lansdale or David Schow. Horror is what S
eptember 11th was. Horror is what passes as government nowadays. Horror is your nightly news. Horror is CNN.
The myths and metaphors of the HWA are more like dark wonders… or supernatural suspense… or psychological fantasy… or whatever.
In fact, what I set out to do in this tale, “The Panic Switch,” is combine all the elements of what have come to be collectively called “horror” into one story. The lonely, noir, pulp hero. The darkly fantastic surrealism of Lovecraft, King, and Barker. The disturbing Freudian subtext. And I worked and worked on this thing you’re about to read. When I was done, I had no idea where to send it. That’s the problem with this writing business, you have to sell your stuff to a market in order to enable readers access to it.
I hate that part.
Thank God, Rich Chizmar at CEMETERY DANCE is as twisted as I am.
On “Deal Memo”
Let me get something straight. For the record, I love Walt Disney. The guy, I’m talking about. The genius who invented the modern cell-animated feature. With that said: the corporation that Hollywood accountants created after Uncle Walt’s death…? Not so much. The genetically modified monster conjured up in the sleazy laboratories of the modern blockbuster movie industry… not so much. Not crazy about the business model. The way they keep product locked up for years and then release it like it’s the crown… oh never mind. One other thing: I once got a call from my agent about a possible job “novelizing” Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. Let us pause for a moment and consider the absurdity here. In the words of the Christ himself: “Oy ve.”
On “Mole”
I was baptized as a Catholic, and grew up as a Catholic, and received my first communion at my Aunt Jane’s house in St. Louis with Welch’s grape juice and Wonder Bread serving as the blood and body of Christ. By the time I was old enough to drive, I had become a card-carrying “lapsed” Catholic… but the power of all the rituals never left the fecund soil of my subconscious. All of which is why the whole idea of tangible evil – i.e. demonic entities that come from somewhere and go back to somewhere – has always fascinated, frightened, tickled, obsessed and amused me.
On “Necrotica”
“Name something you believe in, something that nobody could ever talk you out of.” The voice crackled in my ear, and I just froze like a lawn ornament. The year was 1997, and my first hardcover novel, The Killer’s Game, had just been published. It was a rainy morning in March, and I was on Simon & Schuster’s dime in a dilapidated roadside motel in Ann Arbor, Michigan. At that time, I still fancied myself as this up-and-coming wunderkind author. I figured it was only a matter of time until I broke big, and then it was going to be lamb chops and Jaguars the rest of my life. Little did I know the vagaries of the book biz… but that’s another story for another book. The voice crackling on the phone was a producer for “Politically Incorrect,” a woman with the personality of a railroad spike. I presume it was her job to weed out the stiffs and find the next feisty pseudo-celebrity to chew Bill Maher’s ear off. (Important aside: I adored “Politically Incorrect” when it was on the air; I think Bill Maher is brilliant and the true successor to Johnny Carson; but that didn’t make this “pre-interview” any easier.) My publicist had set up the call, and it was going fairly well until the producer asked me this bombshell of a question.
I stood there in that cheesy-smelling motel room, staring out the window, thinking about what I believed in. And I have to confess, it knocked me down. I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything that I believe in that was absolute. I know it sounds kind of strange, but I’m just not sure if there are any absolutes in the world. I know there are Christians out there who would damn me to hell for this, but I’m just not sure. Folks, I’m being honest here. About the only thing from which I could never be swayed is the love I have for my wife and kids. Oh… and one other thing. That everything is about sex. Everything. From thermonuclear war to oral hygiene, from enormous phallic missiles coming out of the ground to renaissance painters adorning chapel ceilings with voluptuous images.
Eye contact is sexual. Politics is sexual. Health and fitness are sexual. Economics is sexual. Art, commerce, medicine, architecture, mathematics, cooking, eating, washing the dishes… even going bowling… all are sexual. Sex is more than mere life force, more than biological programming. Sex is both subtext and text, alpha and omega, yin and yang. Sex is why we’re drawing breaths. Sex is, at the end of the day, our job. Our only job. And the best part of it is, it feels so damn good.
Even an absence of sex is sexual. All this talk lately of abstinence for high school age boys and girls, just saying no, looking the other way, keeping your pecker in your pants, whatever — all this does is make kids hornier. All this does is point out how irresistible — inexorable even — sex is. And the dirtier sex is, the better. The more forbidden it is, the more attractive.
We only go wrong when we try to inhibit it, or repress it, or contain it, or alter it, or otherwise fuck with it (pun intended). Which is, I guess, what this story, “Necrotica,” is all about.
And then again, maybe it’s just about bowling.
On “Big Bust at Herbert Hoover High”
If there’s one thing short story introductions are good for, it’s the shameless promotion of half-baked theories and philosophies. The story “Big Bust at Herbert Hoover High” is the nexus of several of these preposterous pet theories. For instance, I believe that all men, to some extent, secretly want to return to the womb. In other words, it’s not just women’s pants they want to get into. And this fixation often manifests itself in a fetishistic obsession with breasts. Not that I have any personal experience in this area. I’ve merely read about such things. I have no feelings one way or another about this part of the female anatomy. Why are you looking at me like that? It’s just a goddamn story… for Chist’s sake! It’s just a stupid little yarn I wrote for one of Norm Partridge’s anthos. It’s not autobiographical in any way. You’ve seen one bosom, you’ve seen them all! STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!!
On “Stash”
In many ways, “STASH” encapsulates all my work over the last ten years. My obsession with… well… obsessions. My fixation with Hitchcockian suspense. My tendency toward exploring the seamy underbelly of suburban life. My propensity toward action. And my love of humor as a leavening agent. It’s also a story that pays tribute to the greatness of my mentors, a greatness that I will also be grasping for yet never reach: Stephen King’s clash of the surreal and the everyday; Harlan Ellison’s quirky, voice-driven fantasy; Thomas Harris’s dark, literary suspense; and Joe Lansdale’s funky, regional, humanistic prose style.
The seed of the idea for “Stash” came from my buddy, Andy Sands, who was joking one day about the closeness of certain friendships. “He’s a porn pal,” Andy told me of one gentleman. “He’s a what?” I asked. And Andy went on to explain that it had nothing to do with porn per se. It had more to do with what happens after you use the porn for so many years. You can guess the rest.
Flash forward several years. I got the enclosed story published in several venues, got TONS of mail, and I noticed a leitmotif in many of the responses. “Does this ‘company’ actually exist?” they would invariably ask. All of which led me to write a screenplay in 2006 based on the story. The movie version of STASH – my directorial debut – was released in 2009, and stars the great comic character actor Tim Kazurinsky and the late, great porn goddess Marilyn Chambers. It is a “mock-u-mentary” in the style of Christopher Guest, and I’m proud of the fact that it does what it sets out to do: It gets laughs. You can still find and stream this little puppy if you look hard. Turns out there are quite a few perverts out there… God bless ’em!
So I’ll give the last word on the matter to Old Willy the Shake. As he wrote in Hamlet: “Nature her custom holds / Let shame say what it will.”
On “The Beaumont Prophecy”
My only comments here are the enduring power of the ghost story… and the generosity of a w
onderful fellow writer and editor in Chicago named Tina Jens. The ghost story endures, very simply, because it is about the past devouring the present. It is about guilt. It is about baggage. Things with which we all deal. These are the things that swim beneath the surface of “The Beaumont Prophecy.” And thank God for Tina Jens. Tina is a brilliant writer and anthologist – one of her books, SPOOKS, included this ghost story
On “Obituary Mambo”
I confess that I have zero objectivity about this story, which represents my first professional sale. The transaction occurred way back in the halcyon days of the late 1980’s, when horror was king of the spinner rack and the shopping mall bookshelf. God bless you, Peggy Nadramia, for your good taste and your wonderful literary mag GRUE, and for birthing my first baby into the world. The old cliché about the first-born is true – you love them warts and all, and you love them for all their faults. From my perspective this story represents a young writer trying to get at deeper themes and subtexts within the context of literary horror – something I’ve been honing for the past two decades. You be the judge as to whether it works as a yarn – I have no idea.
On “Due Date”
Years ago, somebody asked Raymond Carver, arguably our greatest short story writer, to name his influences. In a moving, nakedly honest essay — an essay not unlike the best of his fiction — Carver explained why his sole influences would always be his children. And not in the ways you might first suspect. His children were grand and horrible distractions. Although he loved them desperately, he was also imprisoned by them. They sucked away his creativity, his energy, his focus.