Phantom
by
Thomas Tessier
A revised edition with a new introduction by Bob Booth published by
Necon Ebooks at Smashwords
Revised Edition Copyright 2010 Thomas Tessier
Cover Art Copyright 2010 Kellianne Jones
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* * *
Thomas Tessier: A Man of Few Words
Thomas Tessier is a man of few words, in all senses of that phrase. For his admirers, and I count myself among them, he is not nearly prolific enough. Since 1970 he has published three slim poetry collections, one collection of short fiction and ten novels. That’s a book every three years or so, in an age when genre writers produce at least a book a year, sometimes more.
On top of that his books are usually on the short side. You won’t find any grand epics from Mr. Tessier, nor any trilogies.
I’m not the only one who feels this way. The eminent genre critic Don D’Amassa said: “Tessier’s fiction comes only at unfortunately long intervals. Even his lesser works have interesting elements, and his better stories are beautifully written and hard to forget.” (The Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction, Checkmark Books, 2006)
Tessier doesn’t just write succinctly, he speaks that way. Long time genre observer Stan Wiater has produced a whole shelf of books that depend on author interviews. I’ve just proof-read one of them, Dark Dreamers on Writing (forthcoming from Necon E-Books). The book is a collection of advice and commentary by “fifty masters of fear and suspense” arranged by topic. Some of the writers take the opportunity to go on for paragraphs (sometimes pages) to express their thoughts. Not Tessier. Here are a few examples:
“I don’t plan. I don’t analyze, I write intuitively.” and “Resignation, not satisfaction, sets in around deadline time.”
Doesn’t that tell you all you really need to know about his writing process? I don’t picture him studying the markets to see what’s hot. I don’t see him creating bulletin boards full of index cards, or laboring over extensive outlines. Rather I picture a writer, like Hemingway, alone with his notebook and No. 2 pencils, telling a good story he knows and then working with it, shaping it, sculpting it, until he has to give it up.
His ideas on his chosen genre are equally condensed. Wiater captured them in another book, Dark Dreamers: Facing the Masters of Fear (with Beth Gwinn). Typically, Tessier’s contribution is the briefest of them all. Channeling Hemingway again though, it is what Papa called “iceberg writing” — you only see about one sixth of what the author knows. The rest is there, under water as it were, and if you read carefully and think about the words that are there you can intuit those the writer has left out.
Tessier said: “I don’t worry about running out of strange ideas, because what I try to write about is not so much the mere strangeness but the people, the characters and what happens to them. Life is full of terror and beauty, and they can’t be ever separated, and in that conflict is our endless drama.”
Doesn’t that brief paragraph get to the essence of why those who write horror fiction do it, and why those who read it do so? A few words, carefully chosen, like a fine book collection. Tessier only tells stories he knows and has fully digested. As a reader you get the feeling that he has thought about each tale a long time and only lets you have it when he is ready, when he knows he can do it justice, when he believes it will mean something.
Tessier was born in Connecticut in 1947, a great year, producing Tom, Richard Laymon, Stephen King, and less brilliantly, me. He went to University College, Dublin, after which he spent several years in London. He was friends there with another young poet who was to turn to horror fiction, Peter Straub. During that period he produced three slim volumes of poetry as well as three plays that were professionally staged (but not published) before writing his first horror novel.
Phantom, the book you are getting ready to read, was published in 1982, his fourth novel. Briefly, it is the story of Ned Covington, a ten-year-old boy, who explores an abandoned building near his home and what he finds there. According to D’Amassa it “is a quiet, modernized ghost story that derives most of its impact from descriptions of the boy’s reactions to what he discovers and his growing isolation from the world of the living.”
The critical response was immediate. Douglas E. Winter in Faces of Fear (Berkley, 1985), published a mere three years later, listed it as one of the books that he considered “the best of the modern generation of horror fiction.” It was also included on a similar list published as an appendix to Stephen Jones’ and Kim Newman’s Horror: 100 Best Books (Carroll & Graf, 1988).
Winter was also the author of a justly famous article called “Writers of Today,” published in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (Jack Sullivan, ed., Viking Penguin, 1986). He said “Tessier, who had earlier written The Fates (1978), proved himself one of the major new talents in horror fiction with a little-known supernatural romance, Shockwaves (1982), and a compelling humanist ghost story, Phantom (1982).”
In Neil Barron’s Horror Literature: A Reader’s Guide (Garland, 1990) the reviewer (Keith Neilson, Cal State Fullerton) said: “A touching, scary book. The child’s point of view is handled quite believably and sensitively, and Ned’s final hallucinatory confrontation with the ‘woman’ is as harrowing and imaginative as anything in current horror fiction. The unanswered question of whether the phantom is real or a projection of Ned’s emotional confusions adds additional ambiguity and tension to this fine novel.”
Phantom was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in a very tough year. I know. I was a judge. I can tell you that one of the books we considered was Ray Kinsella’s classic Shoeless Joe, the basis for the film Field of Dreams. It didn’t make the final ballot.
Phantom’s competition on that final ballot was Charles L. Grant’s The Nestling, the book Charlie himself considered his “breakout novel;” George R. R. Martin’s original take on vampires, Fevre Dream; Gene Wolfe’s Sword of the Lictor, third in his groundbreaking “New Sun” series; and Nifft the Lean, a highly original fantasy by relative newcomer Michael Shea.
The judges (myself aside) were as distinguished as the nominees. Alan Ryan and John Coyne, two horror novelists themselves were joined by two acquisitions editors Sharon Jarvis and Elizabeth Wollheim. We all met one Saturday at a bar in New York (I think it was called The Brass Rail). We drank, we ate, we drank some more, and we talked horror and fantasy fiction for the better part of six hours. We all agreed on most of the categories without much debate. Best Novel was the exception. John, Alan and I argued strenuously for Phantom while Sharon and Elizabeth pushed for Nifft the Lean. The split was right along party lines, as it were. The men, all with horror backgrounds, supported the horror novel, while the women, both involved in fantasy publishing, supported the fantasy novel. Nifft the Lean won, and it is a worthy book, still, as a horror guy ....
I’ve gone on too long introducing a novel that really needs no introduction. Such is my passion for this writer, and particularly this book. Read it for yourself and marvel at the economy of prose and the depth of insight it contains. Like I said. Thomas Tessier is a man of few words, but they are always well chosen.
Bob Booth
Publisher, Necon E-Books
September 28, 2010
* * *
For Sam
AND IN MEMORY OF
&
nbsp; JOE CAVANAUGH
HUBIE HALL
DOUG SHAW
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Table of Contents
The Night They Came
1. Lynnhaven
2. The Baithouse
3. Parents
4. A Very Special Room
5. Old Woods Tales
6. The Farley Place (1)
7. In the Ruins
8. Polidori Street
9. Under the Half Moon
10. Linda
11. Explanations
12. There Is Magic ... and Magic
13. Goodbye, Greta Garbo
14. Resistance
15. Sounds
16. The Noekk
17. Straight Lines Breaking, Becoming Circles
18. And/Or
19. The Spa (1)
20. The Spa (2)
21. Mother and Child
22. The Farley Place (2)
23. On The Street Where You Live
24. Stony Point
25. The Vigil Begins
26. Into the Night
27. 4:47 A.M.
28. The Dance of Death
29. 4:50 A.M.
Summer's End
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The Supernatural experience always appears as the transfiguration of Natural conditions, acts, states ....
— BARON VON HUGEL
If there is any place truly haunted, it is one that men have discovered, lived in, left, and forgotten.
—DONALD CULROSS PEATTIE
The Road of a Naturalist
* * *
The Night They Came
A child hears best what happens in the night. He may be awake or asleep, or his mind may be roaming the dreamy gray landscape in between, but his ears cannot fail to pick up what takes place on the dark side of the day. Nor is it necessary for a child to understand what is heard: things have their own mysterious meanings beyond the realm of mere words. It does no good to explain the Sandman when the Sandman will still be there, waiting for the chance to sneak in and stop you dead by filling your eyes and ears and nose and mouth with hardening sand.
Ned Covington, not yet five years old, was in his bed and almost asleep, but he was aware of the noises coming from the other side of his bedroom door. Footsteps in the hallway. Bare feet. Coming this way. But there was something wrong, something about the way the sound moved, falteringly, that told him it wasn't just his mother or father making a routine trip to the bathroom. Ned turned toward the window but no light penetrated his eyelids, so he knew it wasn't yet morning.
There was a funny thump from the hallway, as if the person out there was unfamiliar with the place and had bumped into a wall. Then, silence. Ned struggled to wake himself more. It couldn't be his mother or father; they didn't move like that. He knew every sound they made in the apartment, the way they walked, the weight of their steps. This was clearly different. Had someone broken into their home, a bad person, or, even worse, a night thing? Were his parents all right, or were they already lying dead in their room? Why wasn't his father awake and doing something?
Ned wanted to get up and run as fast as he could to his parents, but they were at the end of the hallway and he would have to face whatever was out there before he could get to them. He could shout—but no, that would reveal his presence for sure, and besides, his mother and father might not hear or be able to do anything in time. The best thing to do was to slide way down under the covers and hope that it would pass with the night.
Ned felt safe in his bed, but there was one lingering problem.
Cocooned in his blankets, there was no way he could see anything. The door to his room was always left an inch or two ajar at night, so whatever was in the hallway could crawl right in beside his bed without Ned knowing it until it was too late. Many times he had carefully scattered his toys on the floor, making a perfect alarm system, but his father always made him put them away before going to bed, It was too late to move now. But regardless of the drawbacks, Ned still felt reasonably safe where he was.
He knew there was only one way out of a situation like this. You couldn't move. You had to remain completely covered up and perfectly still. As long as you did that, you wouldn't be harmed. And, although he had never been foolish enough to try, Ned also knew that if you violated this rule by getting up or even just peeking out from under the bedclothes, then, for sure, someone or something horrible would be standing there and reaching toward you, and there wouldn't be a thing in the world you could do to save yourself. At the wrong time, if you merely poked a hand out to test the air it could be chopped off or turned to stone.
The noise was so close now Ned was certain it was at his door. He wanted to jam his fingers in his ears, but even that limited movement seemed too risky. He must not stir at all. It was the sound of breathing, but there was nothing at all normal about it. An open mouth trying desperately to breathe, but caked with a thousand cobwebs or thickening sand-that was what Ned heard. He wanted to scream so ,loud the window would fly open and fresh air sweep in, blowing it away, but now more than ever he had to keep still and silent.
There. It had turned away from his room. A few seconds later Ned recognized the change in sound as bare feet went from the hallway into the bathroom. Then a heavy thud suggested someone half-sitting, half-falling onto the toilet seat. Ned thought it must be one of his parents after all. He sat up sharply in bed, all demons banished for the moment. That awful gasping sound continued, and then Ned heard a short mechanical click followed immediately by a tiny gusting noise. Of course-it was his mother's medicine. He had seen her use the inhaler many times, and while he didn't know what it was for, he had no doubt about the sound it made. But could that really be his mother? He had never heard her breathe like that before.
Ned climbed out of bed and made his way across the room to the door. He peered through the narrow space. The bathroom door stood wide open, and as his eyes adjusted to the dark Ned could dimly see his mother slumped on the toilet seat. Her nightgown defined her, a pale, white shape in the darkness. At first Ned was reassured that no phantom or night thing had come to menace their home, but then another vague fear began to grow in his mind. What was his mother doing sitting there like that? Her head was bent forward to her chest and her hair hung like a rough curtain in front of her face. That was wrong. Had she fallen asleep? She wasn't making any of the sounds people make when they use the toilet. In fact, she wasn't making any sound at all. Even that terrible breathing noise was gone, Ned realized. He was shivering and his feet felt as if they were glued to the floor. Fear of a different kind started to fill him from within.
His mother's hand relaxed slightly and the inhaler clattered on the bathroom tiles. It was shockingly loud to his ears, and Ned flinched. Something inside was trying to get him to move, to run to his mother and do whatever he could for her, but he was unable to budge from the spot. His bones had become iron rods welded tight and he could only stand there, fixed in one place like a scarecrow.
Then his mother slid forward off the toilet seat and crashed to the floor with such force that the walls seemed to shake. The sound was a bottomless thunder that roared in Ned's brain. The next thing he knew, the hall light came on like an explosion and pain stabbed his eyes.
His father, wearing only underpants, had come into view, but Ned was looking again at his mother, who lay sprawled face up on the floor, half out of the bathroom. Her eyes were partially open but they appeared to be filmed over, like a car window in winter. Her cheeks were incredibly white and her lips-her lips were turning blue, and then purple, even as he watched. She's becoming a ghost, Ned thought, and he really expected her to flyaway from them forever in the next few seconds.
"Oh, God, no." Michael Covington bent over his wife and put his ear to her lips. "Breathe, Linda, breathe."
Michael snatched the inhaler off the floor, but when he tried to put it into Linda's mouth he found that her teeth were clamped tight and it was impossible for him to force her jaw open. He slapped h
er cheeks lightly, then harder, but it had no effect. He splashed her face with cold water from the bathroom faucet, but that too failed to bring any response. Again Michael pressed his ear to her face. Nothing. If she's not breathing, he thought, she's dying. Now. Here. On the floor of their apartment. He grabbed her wrist, but his own hands were shaking and he was sobbing now, so he couldn't tell whether she had much of a pulse or not. He turned and rushed to the living room to call for an ambulance. Somehow, he dialed and got through.
" ... Severe asthma attack .... "
He heard them, but the words meant nothing to Ned. All he knew was that a phantom had come and done something monstrous to his mother. Any second now she would disappear before his very eyes. Then she would be caught, she would be one of them. and he would never see her again. Then what? Another night, soon, they would come back and take his father. How could he stop them? Ned would be left all alone. Until, at last, they came for him, and he knew that when that happened nothing, not even the borders of his own bed, would save him.
Michael Covington returned to his stricken wife. He placed a pillow beneath her head and wrapped her in a wool blanket. He raised her feet and rested them on the edge of the toilet seat so more blood would flow to her head. 'Still, she looked like a dead woman. Michael hurried away to put on some clothes.
A few feet away, in the darkness of his room, Ned gazed through the one-inch gateway to hell. Perhaps he had seen too much; certainly, he had heard too much. Overloaded, he was going numb, vacating himself to deeper, inner havens. Like everyone else, Ned lived in two worlds: day and night. But this was reality of another kind. Bizarre and disturbing as the night, it was nonetheless the daylight life of his mother and father, now tom and twisted. Within the space of a few minutes the two worlds had been thrown together in a way Ned had never experienced before, and it was a diabolical mixture. That was his own mother out there, propped against the toilet like a stray plank.
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