FALLING INTO HEAVEN
MAYNARD SIMS
The Maynard Sims Library
Volume 6
Copyright Maynard Sims Limited 2014
www.maynard-sims.com
[email protected]
07801 472554
Originally published in limited edition hardcover by
Sarob Press 2004
First ebook and paperback publication Enigmatic Press 2014
3 Cutlers Close, Bishops Stortford, Herts, CM23 4FW England
www.enigmaticpress.com
[email protected]
This is a work entirely of fiction and all the names, characters, events and places portrayed are either fictitious or are represented entirely fictitiously.
Typesetting and design by L H Maynard & M P N Sims
Cover design by
IAIN MAYNARD: MAD: Maynard Art and Design
CONTENTS
Introduction by William P Simmons
1: IMAGES
2: DEAD MEN’S SHOES
3: A VICTORIAN POT DRESSER
4: SAND CASTLES
5: CALLING DOWN THE LIGHTNING
6: SOAKING WET WITHOUT A BOAT
7: SALVATION
8: SHORTCUTS
9: CAVISO GAMO
10: OCTOBER CRIES
11: DANCERS
12: FLOUR WHITE AND SPINDLE THIN
13: GLIMPSES
14: SLIDING DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLIP
INTRODUCTION
William P. Simmons
There is darkness, and then, there is darkness.
The one is nothing more than a natural deepening of night. Skies cloud over, the sun drowns in crimson. Shadows ripple and pool like memories. But then, there is darkness. Long nights of soul and flesh, guilt and fear. Much is suggested in this dark, but nothing completely revealed, for to reveal is to identify, and to name a demon is to diminish its strength . . . and we all know that very few terrors give up their secrets easily.
If natural darkness is a confirmation of natural law, fostering in us the illusion that we know (and by knowing, control) all that we perceive or believe, then that other darkness, that oppressive entity of internal doubt and external threat, reminds us of what we don’t know, or, worse yet, those very things we fear we might have understood all along. This ambiguous shadow-land carries the fears and suspicions, the subversive desires and threats of our entire species, connecting us to our animal cousins without downplaying the specific challenges and night terrors of our contemporary age. It is this confused geography of nightmare and dream, reality and fantasy, that Maynard and Sims have explored, charted, and unarguably made their own.
Primarily fictionists, but also editors, publishers, and critics, Maynard and Sims’s contributions to the supernatural tradition of literature are in no small way responsible for the continued survival, appreciation, and revision of supernatural horror fiction in general, and the modern ghost story in particular. Inviting a modern appreciation of ghost fiction by instilling classically constructed weird stories with a distinctly contemporary narrative style and approach, the fictional landscapes of Maynard and Sims are the secret desires of the soul. As proficient at evoking the horrors inherent in the actions and motivations of average men and women as they are at lending wicked vibrancy to such mythic characters as ghosts, witches, demons, nature sprites, and un-namable powers of psyche, Maynard and Sims have found several opportunities to spin their shamanistic terrors. Shadows At Midnight, their first collection, published in 1979 by William Kimber & Co and reprinted in a revised and enlarged form by Sarob Press in 1999, offered just a furtive glance at the macabre team’s refreshing earnestness and craft, both of which have increased in pitch and poignancy through an onslaught of projects within the last few years.
Working on several crime and dark fiction novels (none of which saw print), Len Maynard and Mick Sims were largely absent from the publishing world until 1998, but it was the year 2000, which saw the publication of Echoes At Midnight from Sarob Press. Echoes was their major comeback to the field of dark fiction and included several remarkable tales, including the Bram Stoker nominated Moths, a compelling horror novella featuring a surprisingly sinister mythic femme fatale, “At The End Of The Pier,” just one example of the duo’s ability to lend new breath into traditional troupes of the ghost story, and “An Office In The Grays Inn Road,” one of my personal and professional favorites, whose creeping intimacy, perfectly realized characters, and sense of tragic loss and redemption reaffirmed for me the literary and social power of the supernatural story handled by people who care as much about the human condition as the ghouls, ghosts, and demons they choose to explore them in.
Whether we’re discussing the 2002 retrospective companion collections, The Secret Geography Of Nightmare and Selling Dark Miracles, or the anthologies and novellas of fiction they have edited and published under the sadly-missed Enigmatic Press, and the US published Darkness Rising, the work of Maynard and Sims not only stands out as first-rate supernatural fiction but, in fact, may be safely counted as fine literature in general, the diversity of their themes, treatment of the often inhuman-human condition, and poetic yet concise word-craft saying as much about life as about death and the shadowy dimensions we both fear and hope exists beyond.
In our banal, often drab existence of neon sign and forced domesticity, it becomes almost too easy to ignore the possible threats that lurk within the parameters of both the un-known and the all-too-believably recognizable. The numbing influence of the media, the grind of daily relationships, and the dull mechanics of daily work lulls the average man and woman into a dimension of complacency and blindness to the creeping possibilities of shadow . . . so long as sunlight licks the earth, and all is well with the fiction we call our lives . . . so long as the bills stay paid, our relationships remain stable, and death is far enough removed from the intimate scope of our everyday attention. This is when we know all because we believe we see all there is to be seen. We are safely interwoven within the predictable reality forged by our communal agreement as to what constitutes reality, perception, and safety.
Maynard and Sims, who have been crafting excellent supernatural, horror, and weird fiction for over 30 years now, challenge this consensus with remarkable insight and creativity in the book you are lucky enough to hold in your hand. Travelling into the deepest depths of both the subconscious and the well-spring of archetype and mythic symbols which have themselves long been used to embody human fears, insecurities, and external phenomena unclassifiable in any other way, Maynard and Sims offer in Falling Into Heaven rare glimpses into experiences neither wholly fantasy nor reality, fable or fiction. Theirs is the language of cosmic conflict, and they shape their parables of fear and longing into the raw material of the modern reader’s nightmares, revising the classic fixtures of the English ghost story and traditional supernatural fiction by shaping primal impulses in urban wardrobe. And the face we most often see bulging from midnight shadows is our own.
In the capable hands of Maynard and Sims, the ghost story helps us peer into dark recesses of soul and mind that we possess neither the courage nor natural facilities to face in our daylight world. From the moment birth snaps open our eyes, we’re taken in cold hand by Death and led through a nursery of ever-worsening pain, dread, and confusion. Maynard and Sims know this and use it to startling effect, revealing both what lurks in the dark and perhaps more importantly, what walks beside us beneath the sun. Whereas realistic fiction operates on the assumption that there is a fixed definition of logic, focusing on characters and happenings within a fixed context, supernatural fiction questions the very nature of experience and the perception by which we define it. H. R. Wakefield, Algernon Blackwood, Sarban,
and Arthur Machen each emphasized the dictates of logic and illusions of normalcy to make their deviations from the norm more credible. Malignant ghost, nature demon and Faerie are no longer separate or distinguishable from normal experience, but emphasized as natural components of the natural world. The best supernatural fiction of Maynard and Sims combine such elements into an authoritative, contemporary brew convincing enough to appear natural while resonating with the mystery of unknown spheres.
Several of the finely sculpted nightmares in Falling Into Heaven reveal a split in the “good fabric” of perception, logic, and culturally implied safety – barriers of both the spiritual and physical are broken to our delight and apprehension, and the seemingly impossible becomes threateningly probable. There lurks beneath the finely crafted eloquence of the author’s words an energy – a joyfully perceptive rush of power – combining universal themes with intimate struggles pertinent to the expertly rendered characters who make us care so very much for their safety. Through the sureness of style and believability of characterization, the authors often reminded us of ourselves. It becomes we who are suffering, reacting to unholy dangers tiptoeing or recklessly charging from spirit and demon-infested battlegrounds.
Although the writing is formal in execution, never for a moment is the language outdated or archaic. Maynard and Sims manage to be both stylists and experimental craftsman in their manipulation of language, twisting phrases and descriptions with a freshness that many critics lament in the work of Victorian and Edwardian authors of the macabre. When reading these stories, you may get the impression that the authors didn’t set down and plan their fictions so much as they lovingly summoned, honed, and shaped raw essence into art. Layers of meaning pulsate beneath simple words. Each fresh reading of the stories within will reveal something new, something guaranteed to not only invite shudders but also introspection. In a haunted world where darkness of soul combines with supernatural night, magnifying and feeding upon the other, Maynard and Sims, travelers on the night-side of experience, use the recognizable conflicts and flaws of characters to emphasize purely occult threats. Half-breed bastard mutants, vengeful spirits, and cursed objects share the spectral spotlight with abusive relationships, modern estrangement, self doubt, and the day-time terrors of both financial and social anxieties. By interweaving every-day fears with fantastical terrors, the authors create an aesthetic, emotional bridge between normalcy and supernatural. Characters who unknowingly slip between borderlands of soul, mind, or flesh are treated as distinct personalities– not the cardboard symbols so often used by modern authors to simply instigate plot. The collection continually reveals the relationship between internal conflict and supernatural threat. Characters’ insecurities, pasts, and personalities mirror the malignant forces gathering against them.
Like us, the businessmen, politicians, housewives, widowers, and travelers in these tales call for something in the darkness, sometimes unknowingly. The authors suggest again and again that attempting to be a “good” person, minding one’s business, or surrounding oneself with material illusions of safety is poor protection against evil, often tragic possibilities. Although Maynard and Sims offer their share of nasty, self-centered people whose guilt and crimes make them targets for inventive unpleasantries, more disturbing and satisfying are the instances where moral expectations and constructs are obliterated. It’s when more or less wholesome, likeable characters find themselves prey to ghostly and human malice that we fear (and believe) in their fictions most. In short, this collection of terror whispers with unpleasant sureness the unfair and un-predictable nature of daily life and the supernatural. I am willing to bet that they leave you wondering if we’re not all calling out to a deadly, formless darkness. Yes, victims and victimizers, spirits and shades tell us, we call out to the dark. We throw into undefined night our fears and hopes and pain. And sometimes, the darkness answers. The darkness answers, and herein is what it has to tell those wise and hardy enough to listen.
In seemingly innocent descriptions of places and people hide dark miracles. What struck me most about these stories was the ever-present use of calmly applied suggestion to intensify the tension and dramatic flow of each tale. Without fanfare, shadows are revealed to be much, much more. Characters feel what they fight not to feel, breath lingers against skin like the haunting burn of memory, and the eyes spot glimpses of shape where none should logically be. Minute details of coincidence slowly but relentlessly blossom into waking, undeniable nightmares. Never do we feel cheated by trite or convenient scares. Never do the authors resort to use of artificial revelations or stock shocks. Warnings of supernatural presences and disaster are cleverly, quietly given to us beforehand. Yet so subtle are said warnings, and so very engaging the characters, that our minds co-conspire with the authors, making us pay such attention to the complexities of human interaction and transformation that when the echoes of fantasy materialize into physical, undeniable threat, we’re surprised and titillated . . . just as I was delighted and surprised three years ago when it fell to my lot as a critic to be assigned a review of Echoes Of Darkness, an occurrence that revived my faith in weird fiction as a form of both entertainment and philosophical inquiry, and more importantly (for myself if not for readers wishing I would stop yapping) the continued friendship of two men whose honesty, humor, and skill carries across countries as easily as their writings surmount the stigmata of critical categorization. This feeling of immense enjoyment, of privileged belonging, was further cemented by reading the third original collection, Incantations and the strong novella The Hidden Language Of Demons, both 2002.
You, dear reader, are in for a dark, wicked treat. In your hands you hold a passport into unfettered imagination, a guide to all those places you have long wished to go but never quite dared.
You no longer have a choice.
Open the first page, and the spell will be cast.
One sentence is all it takes; one word leads to another, one image bleeding into a full-fledged narrative attack.
Just as you wanted.
Just as we all want when the lights are low, the wind reminds us of promises broken, and we have the courage to be honest if only until the shadows grow skin to touch us.
In truth, I’m jealous of anyone out there unfamiliar with the supernatural alchemy of the most effective literary dual since Erckmann-Chatrian, for said reader will experience for the first time that strange border-land geography of shadow and light, menace and awe that Maynard & Sims discover in the simplest of settings and the most innocent of events.
Long may they continue to travel the dark waters of even darker souls, and long may there be readers who appreciate such efforts.
William P Simmons, USA, 2003.
IMAGES
Raymond Gideon watched the cloud as it hovered in front of the sun. Any minute now and it would pass, releasing the sun’s rays to play on the golden thatched roof of the farmhouse. His Hasselblad was fixed securely to the tripod, a new back fitted, a fresh roll of film in place. He checked the Polaroid print again. The light was perfect, picking up the pointing on the brickwork, reflecting from the casement windows. The effect was exactly the one he wanted, and long experience had taught him patience. The art of good photography was that of capturing light, and the light on this crisp autumnal morning suited his subject perfectly.
The cloud drifted past, exposing the sun and, touched by the rays, the farmhouse came to life. He leant over the camera, checking focus, and depressed the plunger of the cable release, activating the shutter. The picture was his, captured and caged.
He rolled the film on and took several more at varying exposures, leaving nothing to chance. He knew he could sell this photograph several times over. There were magazine editors who would pay highly for his work, and this image was exactly what they wanted. A bucolic scene, romanticised, perfectly lit – wish fulfilment for their many readers who lived in grey, urban landscapes and fantasised about a rural lifestyle that for most of them was just a piped
ream. It was a hungry market, and he’d built a career on providing the images to fuel those eager dreams.
He was so absorbed in his work that he was unaware he was no longer alone on the hillside. When she spoke he visibly started.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to make you jump.’
She had her back to the sun and he squinted to get a better look at her. Tall and willowy, with a crisp white ribbon catching long chestnut hair in a ponytail. She was dressed in a riding outfit of tan jodhpurs, knee-length black boots, a hounds tooth jacket and a white shirt, fastened at the neck by a gold brooch in the form of two crossed riding crops.
‘Kate Hammond,’ she said, extending her hand. Her other hand was holding the reins of a bay thoroughbred that stood at her side, steam rising from its flanks.
He took the hand and shook it warmly. ‘Raymond Gideon,’ he said, moving round to get a better look at her face. She looked no more than thirty and was extremely pretty with ivory skin and deep brown eyes that regarded him with something close to amusement.
She looked past him, following the line of the camera. ‘The house looks much better from up here,’ she said. ‘From here you can’t see that the thatch needs renovating, and that the walls are so bad they soak up the rain like a sponge.’
‘Is it yours, the house?’
She nodded. ‘It’s been in my family for years.’
‘You don’t mind?’ he said, gesturing to the camera.
‘Why should I mind? It’s quite flattering you should want to photograph my home. Do many people mind?’
‘You’d be surprised.’
She smiled. ‘Tell me, do you do this for a living?’
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