When the Darkness Falls

by Gonzalez, J. F.

  About once a year after Book of the Dead 3 imploded the first time in 1994 (I’m not going to talk about the second time it imploded in 1996 but I’ll go on record here as being a chief supporter of a mission several contributors undertook to shoot it in the head). I’d take out “Menage A Trois” and rework it. At some point I started submitting it to various places and it was actually bought twice for projects that died in utero. In 2003 Paul Fry announced he was going to edit an anthology of zombie stories and I took the story out, gave it a polish and updated it, and sent it to him. He took the story for Cold Flesh and it took an even longer time for the volume to see print from Hellbound Books in 2005. But it finally did, alongside other cool material from John Evenson and Patrick Lestekwa. I like it, and whether I write another Romero-based zombie tale remains to be seen. In the meantime, this is my contribution to that brand of mythos.

  Out of the Cradle

  I have no idea where this one came from. I wrote it in 2002 and 2003, and it was based on a nightmare I had a year or so earlier when I could hear my daughter running around the house and I couldn’t see her because she was invisible. Freaked me out. I started thinking about a man haunted by the ghost of his murdered child and this story came to me. It’s a gentle piece, one of a handful I’ve done that actually made it into print. I like writing subtle ghost stories. I like writing stories that have a happy ending, but for some reason I can’t sell them. People seem to like the more grim horror stuff I write for some reason, and they think that’s all I write. They’re wrong. This story is proof of that. Anyway, this is a story that provides a nice counter-balance to the more gruesome stuff in this book, and I hope you like it.

  Mummy

  I wrote this one in 1998 or so as an homage to the pulp writers I grew up reading, like Robert Bloch. Another influence was Joe Lansdale’s early stories, especially the ones he wrote for The Twilight Zone Magazine and The Horror Show. It was originally accepted for publication by Delirium Books head honcho Shane Ryan Staley in 1999 for a chapbook he was going to put together. The chapbook was to be part of a whole line he was doing called The Twilight Garden. Each chapbook was going to contain five short-shorts (or vignettes) of mine, and he was going to publish a whole line of them by writers like A. R. Morlan, Greg Gifune and I can’t remember who else. He wound up publishing one by Michael Laimo and a few others and then scrapped the idea, and the entire line. This story, and some of the others, bounced around in limbo until Jane Letty took it for the first (and only) issue of a web zine she’d put together, where it appeared in November 2002.

  Riding the Storm Out

  I had a cousin named Eddie who was a great storyteller. He used to tell us younger kids in the family these great stories that he claimed were either true or were nightmares he’d had. Eddie had nightmares all the time. They were all vivid, they were all bloody and bizarre and terrifying, and when I was a kid I wondered how the guy got any sleep. He’d tell his siblings and parents about these nightmares he’d have and then they’d have nightmares. That’s how vivid they were.

  The nightmare in this story is actually from one Eddie is alleged to have had, and it has stayed with me all these years. Members of my father’s side of the family will recognize it immediately.

  Anyway, one day Eddie’s crazy nightmares came to mind and I wondered if he'd been fibbing about nightmares; in other words, they were stories he made up just to entertain the younger kids in the family. It’s only been recently since I’ve suspected this, as Eddie was an avid horror fan (in the late seventies when he lived with us briefly he used to tell me about the horror films he would see that were playing in the theaters at the time, films I couldn’t get into because they were rated R and I wasn’t old enough to get in by myself...films like The Hills Have Eyes and Martin and When a Stranger Calls. Listening to Eddie tell me about these films was like watching them, that’s how good an oral story-teller he was). It didn’t matter to me if he’d made the nightmares up or if they were real. I focused on this one nightmare-induced anecdote in particular and this story came from it. Richard Chizmar bought it for his Shivers II anthology, and it remains a favorite of my readers.

  I only wish Eddie were around to see it published. He passed away in January 1985, one of the very first wave of AIDS victims that perished from that tragic disease. Therefore, the dedication.

  The Watcher From the Grave

  I love old pulp horror fiction. I cut my teeth on it when I was a kid thanks to my mother and maternal grandmother, who bought me anthologies that reprinted stories from the pulps. My grandmother read pulps, and I remember the covers of those old Gold Medal mystery and crime paperbacks she used to read, as well as the covers of the Ballantine paperbacks that rescued many classic horror stories from obscurity. I was very influenced by writers like Robert Bloch (probably the big influence on this story), Hugh B. Cave, Manly Wade Wellman, Henry Kuttner, and Robert E. Howard (both his Conan and his mythos work). Lovecraft was an influence, too, but I encountered his imitators first.

  I’ve always wanted to write my own take on the Mythos, and I’ve done a few Lovecraft inspired stories. At the time I started writing this story, I was reading a lot of non-fiction material about lost civilizations, pre-history, and the occult. You name it, I read it: Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Fingerprints of the Gods, The Book of the Law, The Golden Bough, and many more. My reading into this subject matter, and my yearning to write a Mythos story, sort of converged and the result was this novella.

  I wrote the first draft of it in early 1993 while I was doing temp work at some company in Pasadena, California. I was supposed to be working, but when I arrived for the assignment that day I entered a complete clusterfuck. Nobody knew what to do with me, and I was placed in a cube and told to “look busy”. After attempting to actually perform what I was supposed to be doing for this company, and after being told to “look busy”, I did what they said. I pulled out a blank floppy disk I had with me, inserted it into the PC in the spare cube I was sitting at, and started writing this novella.

  Hey, they told me to look busy, right?

  I “looked busy” for the rest of that week and basically made over $400 on this novella.

  The finished novella pretty much resembled what you read here. I didn’t send it anywhere for a long time because it was so goddamned long. I might have sent it to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction because they’re one of the only professional magazines that publish novellas. I did show it to the late Mike Baker at one point for his short-lived magazine Skull, and he wanted to run it as a serial but he killed his magazine before that could happen. No way was I going to send it to the revived Weird Tales, since they were publishing very sporadically at the time and this piece was way too long for them. The story lay dormant in my files until I started placing stories with Fading Shadows, Inc., a small publisher of pulp-related magazines. I sent them this novella, originally intending it to be for Weird Stories, but it wound up in Classic Pulp Fiction Stories instead.

  I’ve always liked this story, and over the years I’d receive an email a year from readers telling me how much they loved it. Then in 2004 I got a great email from a guy named James Ambuehl who loved it so much he wound up reprinting it for his Elder Signs Press anthology Hardboiled Cthulhu. The only hardboiled element in the story is David Corban’s dogged pursuit of his friend’s death (and the dame that seduces him at the end), but hey, when it comes to reprint offers, I’m easy.

  Sending Them Home

  I remember having the idea for this a year or so before I actually wrote it. One night, my friend Gary Zimmerman was at my house visiting my wife and I, and the idea for this story came up. When I told them about this idea, Gary burst into laughter. He couldn’t stop laughing. That’s when I knew I had a good idea...I thought it was kinda funny, too, but I hadn’t told him the ending I had in mind.

  Encouraged by having one of my best friends laugh at my idea, I wrote the story. It’s the first (and only) story I ever wrote in which
I cast a friend of mine as a main character. I gave it to Gary to read and he not only found the funny parts funny, he understood the horror behind it. That’s what I was aiming for. Also, by some strange coincidence, he saw a parallel with the fictional Janet Hain with his real older sister, who he is estranged with and hates with a passion. According to Gary, my Janet Hain is exactly like his sister. Gary’s only criticism of the story was that he wanted the fight between his fictional counter-part and Janet Hain to be more violent. Aside from that, he liked the novella and, most importantly, he got the ending.

  The novella was inspired by an often misinterpreted Biblical quote, one often translated as meaning God will not allow one to suffer through something they do not have the strength to handle (I Corinthians, 10:13). More than once I’ve heard people of deep religious faith say something along the lines of, “God, please take this burden from me” or “God, I can’t wait to get to heaven because I can’t take this anymore.” And I thought, suppose God gave somebody a vision to help these people out?

  Because of its length and theme, this novella was a hard sell. It was bought twice for different projects that died in utero. It eventually appeared in my chapbook That’s All Folks from Yard Dog Press with another story “House of the Damned” (which doesn’t appear here). Selina Rosen, who is one half of Yard Dog Press with her business and life partner, Lynn Stranathan, not only understood the story but loved the black humor of it, and I thank them for it.

  In hindsight, “Sending Them Home” bears a slight thematic resemblance to the film Frailty (2002), which I highly recommend. Ironically, this story was conceived and written circa 1998-1999, probably around the same time the screenplay for Frailty was created.

  How’s that for the Lord working in mysterious ways?

  Finding the Flame

  I knew a lot of people like Mike and Lisa Peterson and Barbara Franklin in the mid 1990’s. They made tons of money working seventy and eighty hour weeks as consultants for big firms, doing God knows what (what the hell do consultants do, anyway?). I knew one woman who was so married to her job that she was actually dumped by her date as Barbara Franklin describes being dumped in this story—during a concert at the Hollywood Bowl; the guy just left the show without telling her. Shitty thing to do, I know, and she had no clue why he dumped her. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t keep boyfriends. I guess that makes us even because to this day I do not understand the workaholic mentality that stresses blind devotion to your job over everything else, including your life and dignity. It’s a theme I’ve explored most recently with a novel I’ve just completed called The Corporation.

  This was what I wanted to explore when I originally sat down to write this story. Although this is the only original story in this volume, it wasn’t written for this book. I wrote this in 1995 one day at work (see my notes on “The Watcher From the Grave”...I was supposed to look busy and what else was I going to do? Besides, I was surrounded by dozens of these so-called consultants; they provided the perfect inspiration). I set out to deliberately not write a horror story, but a tale of love and tragedy. When I was finished I put the story away. I had no idea what to do with it. The story of Mike Peterson, who is alone with his invalid wife and their young child was haunting, and his devotion to his wife is unwavering, but a person can only go so long without real physical companionship. That was the theme I was exploring with this story, and I like the way it turned out.

  Perhaps in a way this is a horror story after all. It’s subtle, heart-breaking, and ultimately tragic. I also think this story provides a nice counter-balance to the material I am probably more known for (like Survivor and Maternal Instinct). Horror doesn’t have to be visceral and in your face. It doesn’t have to have sociopathic killers or succubi or werewolves or giant crabs. It can be quiet, subtle, heart-breaking, and sad.

  Offices

  I was at work one day when part of this story really happened. While the place of employment in question was no doubt one of my best, there was a subtle suggestion that high ranking executives and middle-managers thought they were better than everybody. You will find this in every corporate office, pretty much everywhere.

  What part of the story really happened? One day everybody except secretaries, word processors, computer graphic artists and IT staff, and administrative assistants got a nice bonus due to a project that completed successfully. A project, I might add, that the aforementioned people who held those various job titles (of which I was one) had a significant role in helping to accomplish. Naturally, everybody I knew who was in a similar position as I was mighty peeved we were overlooked. And because I realized even then that complaining to upper management wouldn’t do any good, I took out my frustrations over the incident by writing about it. The result was this story, which was intended to be slightly surreal, and darkly humorous.

  I liked the story, but it was hard to sell. Not that many people got it. One who did was Pam Chillimi-Yeager of the small press magazine Fantasque, who took it for her December 2004 issue.

  While re-reading the story for inclusion in this collection, it occurred to me for the first time that this story bears a thematic relation to the Rush song The Trees. If you aren’t familiar with the song, the lyrics are easily found on the Internet. I don’t remember listening to Rush when I originally wrote the story (I listen to all kinds of music while I’m writing, everything from classical to Johnny Cash), but it’s possible since they are one of my favorite bands.

  Going Home

  This was another story inspired by my work place...or at least it was inspired by a person I used to/sort of worked with. She was a sad character who had a lot of hard knocks in life. I started thinking about her one day after a particular nasty meeting at work where she was chastised by her boss in front of her co-workers. Basically, she was humiliated before her peers. I felt sorry for her. I was reading some Lovecraftian material at the time and started thinking about this character I started developing based on this woman. The Lovecraftian material kind of meshed together and this story came out.

  The Lingering Scent of Brimstone

  I remember jotting the basic idea for this in my notebook in the days after the birth of my daughter: young couple sell their soul to the devil in exchange with providing a life-long protector for their child.

  That basically sums up my feelings of how far I’d go to protect my child. It also taps into some spiritual aspects I wanted to explore in the story, namely concerning violating ones religious faith to protect a loved one.

  Like many people, I was raised in a faith I no longer adhere to. But when I was still a practicing member of that faith I attended church regularly. I even attended churches comprised of other Christian denominations. One of the first seeds of doubt that were planted in my head was at one of these institutions and it came from a sermon. Basically, the thrust of the sermon was about putting God first above everything: your family, friends, job. Even your children.

  Years later a friend and I were having a discussion on spirituality and religion (two different things!), specifically Christianity, and we unanimously agreed that any religion that downright demanded complete and total subservience to a diety that was indifferent to the cruelties of the world was a religion neither of us could no longer adhere to. By this time I pretty much considered myself an Agnostic and I still do. I also started questioning why deeply religious Christians saw Satan the way they did—in the Old Testament he was the questioner, the guy that made sure God was doing the right thing. I also started wondering what would happen if a conservative Christian couple, disturbed by the demands of being subservient to their religion over the basic human needs of their family (especially their children) and realizing that the easy explanation of “God’s plan” wasn’t going to cut it should their child be killed in an accident or – even worse—from murder, decided to thwart this plan by going over to the other guy and making a deal. Hey, if God can’t (or is unwilling) to protect the weak and the vulnerable, than as a par
ent shouldn’t it be in your child’s best interest to secure the best protection you can?

  A few years later I wrote the story, and when Richard Chizmar called to see if I could contribute a story for Shivers III, I sent this to him. He bought it right away and it appeared a few months later.

  Some readers might notice a resemblance between the events that happen in “The Lingering Scent of Brimstone” and the real-life case of the abduction and murder of Samantha Runnion. These events are only slight, but they exist nonetheless and they aren’t intentional: I actually wrote the first draft of this story a month or two before she was kidnapped and murdered. Freaked me out.

  As I write this, the asshole who killed Samantha has been convicted in her murder and was given the death penalty and I learned something else that gave me the chills when I first read it. During the death penalty phase of the trial Erin Runnion, Samantha’s mother, testified that Samantha was a big believer in heroes and probably hoped for one to save her as she was being driven to the remote spot where she was later found dead. Erin testified her daughter’s entire belief system at the end of her short life was “shattered”.