Stalking the Nightmare

by Harlan Ellison

  In the control room Burt Handelsman, crack engineer, was trying to laugh and pick his nose at the same time.

  “The time is 10:55 and this is KPFK-FM in Los Angeles,” Hodel said. “And this is Hour 25, the weekly program of speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy and wonder … and I’m your host, Mike Hodel.”

  “This is a science fiction program?!” Ellison shrieked. “This isn’t The 700 Club? But I came to declare for Ba’al!”

  Hodel punched up a call. “You’re on the air.”

  It was William Stout, the artist responsible for the bestselling DINOSAURS book. “I want him to think up a story in which William Stout gets to meet some real dinosaurs,” he said. He waited.

  Ellison said, “Okay, there’s this story in which William Stout gets to meet some real dinosaurs, and they have lots and lots of real nice adventures, and if you want to find out how this story ends, go to the library and ask Miss Beckwith to let you check out the book. So long, Stout, you asshole.”

  Hodel said, “Thank God we have an eight second delay on the live phone lines.”

  “You don’t have any eight second delay,” Ellison said.

  “I know, I know,” Hodel said, dropping his head into his hands.

  “And now, let’s cut to Pasadena, to the LungFishCon, for the weekly calendar of events and the scintillant Terry Hodel, this dip’s ex-wife,” Ellison said. Hodel was weeping.

  Burt Handelsman, crack engineer, threw the switch and the booth went dead as Terry Hodel did the calendar remote.

  Hodel looked up, with tears in his eyes. “The FCC’s gonna get me again. You did it to me the last time, and you’re gonna do it again this time.”

  “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it,” Ellison said. Then a look of transcendental horror passed over his face. “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod … where’s Jane? What happened to my girl friend, Jane? Where did I leave her? Ohmigod, this program has drained my brain. Where did I park her, did I lock her, is someone even now stealing her hubcaps?”

  “She went home to North Attleboro to see her parents last week,” Hodel said. “Calm down. She’s all right.”

  Ellison visibly relaxed, breathed a sigh of relief. “Boy, it was touch-and-go there for a minute.”

  Burt Handelsman, c.e., suddenly boomed in the room. “Terry’s almost finished. Get set for a cue.”

  The red light flashed and Hodel said, “Well, we’re back now. How’re you doing, Harlan?”

  “You know, I work seriously at my craft. I spend hours and days and months and years writing these stories with proper serious intent … and then I’m thrown into conjunction with my readers … and it’s scary, very scary. These people are all nuts!”

  “Yes, but you’re the one making stories out of these crazy ideas.”

  “I’m just a Force for Good in My Time,” Ellison replied.

  “Well, we’re going to make it easy for you,” Hodel said. “Group Mind, we’re only going to take, say, five more ideas; and then Harlan and I will just chat about other things.”

  “Bless yuh, Massa Ho’del suh; I jus’ loves wukkin’ foah yuh heah on de plantation.”

  Hodel punched up a caller. “This is Tad Stones, and I’m calling in an idea for Ed Coffey.”

  “Good old Ed Coffey, whoever the hell he is,” Ellison murmured. “Now they’re selling shares in my breakdown.”

  “This is a science fiction story,” Tad Stones said.

  “What a swell change of pace,” Ellison said through clenched teeth, thereby making it unintelligible to the audience.

  “An average looking man offers the owner of a video arcade a free computer game for market testing. At the same moment, apparently the same man is making the same offer to arcades across the country.”

  Ellison gritted his teeth. The sound of avalanches went out at one million cycles per second.

  “It’s an alien plot, okay?” Ellison said.

  “You asking me,” Tad Stones said.

  “Yeah. I’m asking you. Alien invasion, right?”

  “Sure. If you say so.”

  “Clones. They’re clones. That okay, too?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Alien clone invasion, howzabout it?”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “I aims to please, Mr. Stones. An alien clone invasion from Far Centauri that has as its secret intent the violent overthrow of video arcades. How about it, Stones, you dip? Satisfactory?”

  Hodel was getting disturbed. Ellison was no longer funny. He was getting actively vicious. The self-mocking tone at the edge of his remarks was vanishing. Hodel scribbled a note and thrust it in front of Ellison’s glazed eyes. Are you okay?

  “Am I okay, am I okay?” Ellison howled. “No, I’m not okay. I‘m going bugfuck in here! Do you have any idea what it does to someone who spends fifteen hours a day writing to have to deal with this shit?”

  “I write, too, Harlan,” Hodel said gently.

  His concern was evident Ellison, who had been spiraling up into hysteria, calmed down quickly. “I’m sorry. Yes, of course, you understand. I’ve read ENTER THE LION and you’re a very good writer, Mike. He’s a very good writer, folks.” He paused. “But I’m still going bugfuck!”

  Great clouds of smoke Etna’d from his pipe.

  There were only four more to go. The first was a man named Jon Clarke who reminded Ellison that he had held down the tire-puncture spikes at the entrance to Cal State, Northridge, when the writer had spoken there some years before and was late in arriving and had to drive in the egress to get to the auditorium. He offered an idea about a Group Mind on cable television stealing the souls of those who appear in its circuits. Ellison was far gone by that time, and could make no sense of the idea. He babbled something about gestalt video vampirism and sank into a depressed funk.

  Then a woman named Diana AdMns called and they both listened as she said, “This really happened, A little boy I knew, who was very bright, was asked why, in school and everywhere else, he didn’t exhibit how bright he was. And he said, If I hold a candle under the bed, no one will see the flame,’ and when he was asked why he would hold a candle under the bed, he said, ‘Because if I don’t, someone will put it out.’”

  Hodel said, “That’s very sad.” Ellison said nothing.

  “Thank you for calling,” Hodel said. He cut to a new caller. Only two to go. He was worried about his guest. He’d known Ellison for years, and the sharpest parallel to what seemed to be happening to him was a story Ellison had written about a man being drained by emotional vampires. He wanted to cut this off before something more spectacular than he could handle went down.

  “You’re on the air, and you’re next to last, so make it good,”

  His name was James Haralson, he was calling from Covina, and he said, “A TV evangelist Markus Osgood, awakes one fine morning in his huge bed to discover that during the night something inexplicable had occurred. His consciousness had slipped. Somehow, as he slept next to the lovely and beloved Catherine, his center-of-being, his point of view, his ‘I,’ had shifted from the usual spot in his head and was hovering near his left armpit.”

  Ellison mumbled, “Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?”

  But Haralson was continuing. “Disconcerting, it was; and disorienting. But he makes do until that afternoon when, during his live, satellite-beamed, ocean-spanning ministry of the air, his consciousness starts slipping again. As he talks to the Orange County studio audience, he realizes his center-of-being is heading for his navel.”

  “I’m going mad,” Ellison muttered. “I’ve gone mad; I’ve been sent to Hell and I’m never never going to be reprieved.”

  Hodel rushed in quickly. “That’s an invalid concept. Consciousness isn’t in a certain location. It’s wherever you perceive it to be. In the Eighteenth Century they thought it was in the heart, the Greeks thought it was in the liver, which is why Prometheus had his liver chewed out by the big bird. Because of Freud we think consci
ousness is in the brain.”

  Haralson argued. “Well, if he thinks it’s heading somewhere else, from his armpit to his navel to beyond … then it could be. So let Ellison say where it’s heading.”

  Ellison drew a deep breath, sat up, laid his pipe on the studio table, leaned in close to the mike and said, “It’s heading for Provo, Utah, where it will meet a woman who works for the city sanitation department, in the typing pool; it will woo her, win her, marry her and have three children by her, one of which will be a waterhead like you.”

  Then he slumped back in his chair. He closed his eyes.

  “Uh …” Hodel said. “Uh … he was, uh, just kidding, Mr. Haralson. It’s been a long night. Just a joke.”

  “Didn’t sound like a damned joke to me,” Haralson said. “I didn’t call in to be insulted.”

  “Consider it lagniappe,” Ellison murmured.

  Haralson hung up.

  Hodel was now flat-out worried. Ellison was on the far side of flakey. This wasn’t such a good show any more. It was getting useless and nasty. He decided to take on the last caller himself.

  He punched up the last call, signalling Burt Handelsman, c.e., to cut off all other incoming callers, and said, “Okay, you’re the last idea tonight. What’ve you got for us?”

  “My name is Genadie Sverlow, and my idea is that the reason Sherlock Holmes never went after Jack the Ripper is that the Ripper was actually Dr. Watson, and Holmes knew it.”

  Hodel heaved a sigh of relief. Synchronicity lived! His novel, ENTER THE LION, was a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. It could not have been a better question.

  “Glad you asked that,” Hodel said. “In point of fact, it couldn’t have been Watson. The reason is, if you’ll excuse the expression, elementary. Look: would you want Sherlock Holmes looking for you? Of course not. Watson couldn’t be the Ripper … he’d know that Holmes could spot him right off. Besides … it’s bad art. Too pat.”

  Ellison stood up and stepped away from the microphone as Hodel went on. “There are other reasons, chronological ones, why he couldn’t have; but that’s the bottom line. It would have been too dangerous. Whatever else Watson was, he was no fool.”

  Burt Handelsman, c.e., came to the window between the studio and the control booth and held up a note written with heavy felt-tip lines: THERE’S A GUY ON LINE 4 NAMED TIM LEWIS WHO SAYS HE HAD THE SAME STORY IDEA. WANT HIM?

  Hodel signalled no, and drew a finger across his throat to indicate no more calls. Then, before the caller on the line could get him into further Holmesian minutiae, he cut the line. “Okay, that’s the end of the story ideas.”

  He looked over at Ellison. The writer was standing with his face to the wall. The time was 11:26 turning to 27.

  “Harlan?”

  The writer turned slowly. His eyes were cold and faraway.

  “We’ve got about thirty-three minutes. Want to just chat about what you’re writing these days?”

  Ellison nodded wearily and fell into the seat again.

  Then a voice came through the studio speaker. “May I impose, please, to enter your conversation?” It was a male voice.

  Hodel snapped a look at the call director. All the lights were eut. He raised his eyes to B.H., c.e., and drew a finger across his throat sharply, urgently. “No more calls, please!” he said. But Handelsman was looking frantic. He waved wildly and indicated by his confusion that he wasn’t responsible for this call.

  Hodel looked for the little red light on the mike pedestal that indicated the speaker phone was on. It was dark.

  Ellison didn’t seem to realize what was happening.

  What was happening, beyond reason, was that someone was coming in over the telephone lines … without using the telephone lines. Hodel decided to go with it—carefully.

  “Do you have an idea for Harlan Ellison? It’s pretty late and we were just going to knock around some small talk.”

  The voice said, “There is a concept of some interest. Postulate, if you will, an alien life-form; an intelligent, sensitive being who, for reasons we need not go into now, has been cast adrift. Marooned, if you will, in a dark place. Alone, left to drift between the stars. And there it waits, without light, without weight, without emotional sustenance, without the companionship of thinking, feeling beings. A thing without purpose. Waiting, forever waiting, drifting emptily in the stars.”

  Burt was running around the control room trying to find the active link. He kept coming back to the window, pushing his nose against the glass and waving his arms wildly. It wasn’t happening, it simply could not, would not be happening!

  “Where are you calling from?” Hodel asked.

  “Nearby,” said the voice.

  Hodel didn’t know what to do but continue talking.

  “Well, that’s an interesting idea,” he said. “Maybe it’s not the newest idea, but—”

  Ellison was leaning in to the mike. His eyes were closed, and his face looked strained. “But how do we know this being is as represented?” he said. His voice was calm now, all trace of his tension and hysteria gone.

  “What do you mean, if I may ask?” said the voice.

  “Well, what I mean is this,” Ellison said. “What if this creature, this sentience, this intelligence, was marooned by its own kind for reasons humans couldn’t even understand; but for some quality or maleficence that branded it forever as a life-form unfit to exist with—”

  “With responsible beings?” the voice said.

  “If you will. What if?”

  “Then perhaps the lonely creature would wait until it could make contact, to fall back on the kindness of other decent, responsible beings.”

  “Ah,” Ellison said, concentrating. “I see. Wait for some gullible, young species that would be so amazed it wouldn’t ask the proper questions. That would take this Trojan horse in, to succor it …”

  “To warm it.”

  “To nurture and protect it.”

  “Yes, yes, that is exactly what I speak of. A new home without darkness, where the companionship of other thinking beings would return it to the community of intelligent beings.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ellison said.

  “What do you mean?” the voice said.

  “What I mean,” Ellison said, now staring at the wall beyond the microphone, “is that we know about you. We’ve known about you for a long time. You don’t think they cast you out on their way past, and left you there to find a home, do you? They left records. We know what you are, and where you are. When we reach that pocket of space where you lie, we will do one of two things: ignore you … or destroy you.”

  “You cannot destroy me.”

  “You mean destroy that hypothetical creature we were talking about.”

  “Yes. Hypothetical. It cannot be destroyed.”

  “But it can be left to swim in blindness forever.”

  The speaker went dead.

  Ellison sank back in his seat.

  Hodel stared at him. His mouth was open. In the control booth, Burt Handelsman, crack engineer, sat staring at the console.

  After a while, Ellison rose, let out a long breath, and walked wearily toward the door of the studio. Hodel sat where he was. As Ellison opened the soundlock door, Hodel said, “Jesus, am I crazy, or did you just save the entire world?”

  Ellison looked back over his shoulder and managed a faint smile. “I’m just your basic everyday Force for Good in Our Time,” he said. “And if I ever offer to talk to fans again, I want you to drive a stake through my heart.”

  He walked out, the door sighed shut, and Mike Hodel realized it was still three minutes till midnight.

  “Uh, this is KPFK-FM, 90.7 megahertz on your dial; and this has been Hour 25. Fm Mike Hodel; our crack engineer this evening has been Burt Handelsman; and for Terry Hodel, myself, and our guest, Harlan Ellison, this has been the hour that stretches.”

  He paused a moment and added, “And to all our listeners, wherever they may be, whatever they may be, I hav
en’t the faintest idea what the hell went on here tonight.”

  THE DAY I DIED

  An excerpt from The Harlan Ellison Hornbook (1973)

  Driving home from Norman Spinrad’s New Year’s Eve party at which I finally met Cass Elliot—as invigorating an experience as one could wish for the dawn of a new year—skimming the crusty ‘67 Camaro with its 56,000 miles of dead years in its metal bones through Beverly Hills, KFAC was working Ravel’s Bolero. Not tired, it was still early for a New Year’s Eve, something like one o’clock.

  Thinking,

  No. Woolgathering. (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, p. 1473, col. 2; woolgathering «. Absent-minded indulgence in fanciful daydreams.) That’s what I was doing: woolgathering.

  Frequently, that’s how my writer’s mind conceives plots for stories, or more accurately, concepts for stories. The unconscious computer makes a storage bank search of idle thoughts looking for linkages, cross-references, points of similarity. When it finds something interesting, it checks it against all the muddle and mud swirling around in the cortex, and comes up with something that makes a story.

  The elements this time were these:

  1972 is gone. It’s a new year. 1973. Another year.

  One year older. Moving on up the road toward the grave jutt the way old Camaro is moving on up the road to Beverly Glea. Traveling the road.

  Harry Truman is gone. I miss him, Salty old Harry who told them all to go fuck themselves. Ten years ago he said he wouldn’t die for at least ten more because he had ten years’ work still to do in the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. Ten years later, all the work done, almost to the month, he died. Did he know? Could I know when I’m going to die? Will I get to finish all the stories I have to write? Will I suddenly get rammed by a Pontiac Grand Am at the next light, centerpunched into an early oblivion? When will I die?