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  Books by J.N. Williamson

  Fiction

  The Black School

  Shadows of Death

  Noortspell

  The Longest Night

  Ghost

  The Evil One

  Death-Coach

  The Banished

  Babel’s Children

  The Houngan

  The Ritual

  Nonfiction

  New Devil’s Dictionary: Creepy Cliches & Sinister Synonyms

  Edited by

  How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction

  Masques

  Masques II

  The Best of Masques

  MASQUES III. Copyright © 1989 by J. N. Williamson. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  Design by Glen M. Edelstein

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Masques III : all-new works of horror and the supernatural / edited by

  J.N. Williamson,

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-02948-9

  1. Horror talcs, American. 2. Horror tales. English. 3. Supernatural—Fiction.

  I. Williamson, J. N. (Jerry N. ) II. Title: Masques three. Ill Title: Masques 3.

  PS648.H6M35 1989

  813'.0873808—dc20

  89-35106

  CIP

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  “Introduction” and “Stories for All Seasons,” “The New’ Horror,” “Concerns of the Mind and Spirit,” and “Creatures of Terror” prefaces, and author/story introductions copyright © 1989 by J. N. Williamson.

  “Drifter” copyright © 1989 by Ed Gorman.

  “Reflections” copyright © 1989 by Ray Russell.

  “The Happy Family” copyright © 1989 by Melissa Mia Hall and Douglas E. Winter.

  “Dew Drop Inn” copyright © 1989 by D. W. Taylor.

  “Refractions” copyright © 1989 by Thomas Millstead.

  “The Spelling Bee” copyright © 1989 by Adobe James.

  “Better Than One” copyright © 1989 by Paul Dale Anderson.

  “Ever, Ever, After” copyright © 1989 by Graham Masterton.

  “Prometheus’ Declaration of Love for the Vulture” copyright © 1989 by Alan Rodgers.

  “Long Lips” copyright © 1989 by R. Patrick Gates.

  “Sinners” copyright © 1989 by Ralph Rainwater, Jr.

  “Sunday Breakfast” copyright © 1989 by Jeannette M. Hopper.

  “Third Rail” copyright © 1989 by Wayne Allen Sallee.

  “Coochie-Coo” copyright © 1989 by Mark McNease.

  “The Wulgaru” copyright © 1989 by Bill Ryan.

  “The Luckiest Man in the World” copyright © 1989 by Rex Miller.

  “The Boneless Doll” copyright © 1989 by Joey Froehlich.

  “The Skull” copyright © 1989 by Diane Taylor.

  “On 42nd St.” copyright © 1989 by William F. Nolan.

  “Safe” copyright © 1989 by John Maclay.

  “All But the Ties Eternal” copyright © 1989 by Gary A. Braunbeck.

  “Pop Is Real Smart” copyright © 1989 by Mort Castle.

  “When the Wall Cries” copyright © 1989 by Stanley Wiater.

  “Return to the Mutant Rain Forest” copyright © 1989 by Bruce Boston and Robert Frazier.

  “The Willies” copyright © 1989 by James Kisncr.

  “The Drinking Party” copyright © 1989 by K. Marie Ramsland.

  “Chosen One” copyright © 1989 by G. Wayne Miller.

  “Them Bald-Headed Snays” copyright © 1989 by Joseph A. Citro.

  “Motherson” copyright © 1989 by Steve Rasnic Tern.

  “Kill for Me” copyright © 1989 by John Kcefauver.

  “Shave and a Haircut, Two Bites” copyright © 1989 by Dan Simmons.

  “The Orchid Nursery” copyright © 1989 by Amanda Russell.

  “Of Absence, Darkness, Death: Things Which Are Not” copyright © 1989 by Ray Bradbury.

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  STORIES FOR ALL SEASONS

  Drifter - by Ed Gorman

  Reflections - by Ray Russell

  The Happy Family - by Melissa Mia Hall and Douglas Winter

  Dew Drop Inn - by D.W. Taylor

  Refractions - by Thomas Millstead

  The Spelling Bee - by Adobe James

  Better Than One - by Paul Dale Anderson

  Ever, Ever, After - by Graham Masterson

  Prometheus’ Declaration of Love for the Vulture (poem) - by Alan Rogers

  THE “NEW” HORROR

  Long Lips - by R. Patrick Gates

  Sinners - by Ralph Rainwater Jr.

  Sunday Breakfast - by Jeannette M. Hooper

  Third Rail - by Wayne Allen Sallee

  Coochie-Coo - by Mark McNease

  The Wulgaru - by Bill Ryan

  The Luckiest Man in the World - by Rex Miller

  The Boneless Doll (poem) - by Joey Froehliich

  CONCERNS OF THE MIND AND SPIRIT

  The Skull - by Diane Taylor

  On 42nd St. - by William F. Nolan

  Safe - by John Macaly

  All But the Ties Eternal - by Gary A. Braunbeck

  Pop Is Real Smart - by Mort Castle

  When the Wall Cries - by Stanely Wiater

  Return to the Mutant Rain Forest (poem) - by Bruce Boston and Robert Frazier

  CREATURES OF TERROR

  The Willies - by James Kisner

  The Drinking Party - by K. Marie Ramsland

  Chosen One - by G. Wayne Miller

  Them Bald-Headed Snays - by Joespeh A. Citro

  Motherson - by Steve Rasnic Tem

  Kill for Me - by John Keefauver

  Shave and a Haircut, Two Bites - by Dan Simmons

  The Orchid Nursery (poem) - by Amanda Russell

  Of Absence, Darkness, Death: Things Which Are Not (poem) - by Ray Bradbury

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The people cited here include not only the ones who helped to make the present anthology possible but some of those whose cooperation, affection, or imaginative suggestions led to the development of Masques as an open-ended scries. For my own reasons the list begins with Mary, my wife; followed by John Maclay, publisher of the first two Masques anthologies, and his wife Joyce; Dean R. Koontz; Ray Bradbury; David Taylor; Lori Perkins, my agent; editors Stuart Moore and Gordon Van Gelder, St. Martin’s Press; and the late Milton L. Hillman, whose title for this scries continues. Alphabetically but with similar gratitude I wish to acknowledge the following individuals: Hugh and Peggy Cave; Irwin Chapman, 2AM; Don Congdon; Michael Congdon; Richard Curtis; Norman Curz; Reid Duffy, WRTV, Indianapolis; Editorial Consultants International; William J. Grabowski, The Horror Show; Charles L. Grant; Allen Koszowski; R. Karl Largent; Barbara Lowenstein; Wiescka Masterton; Rex Miller; Mystery Scene; Barbara Pucchner; Katherine Ramsland; Ray Russell; Alan Jude Suma; Uwe Luserkc; Robert and Phyllis Weinberg; and World Fantasy Conventions 1985 and 1988 Awards Committee.

  INTRODUCTION

  “Fear sells,” critic Stephen Schiff wrote in The New York Times (March 6, 1988). But concerning “the Gothic short story,” he added, “Serious people don’t take it seriously anymore.”

  He then lumped together in one “horror ch
amber” such disparate bedfellows as best-selling novels, the virgins and rascals of romance fiction, pulp magazines, comics, and the movies. A mistake. One might just as fairly combine with the Olympics the ancient Mayan basket-sport that demanded the winners sacrifice their lives. Or confuse the song of whales with that of Michael Jackson, church choirs, Frank Sinatra, and the Beatles. Then throw in Pavarotti and any author in this book who vocalizes in the shower!

  Schiff did argue, however, that if horror fiction—he persisted in using the term “Gothic”—is to survive, it can’t “rely on plot twists and shockeroo endings alone.” Agreed. It must “haunt and tantalize” the way “well-wrought prose” generally docs.

  Agreed, once more. And each of the brand-new tales and poems in this book is the work of a very serious person who has also set out to entertain and quite possibly scare the hell out of you into the bargain. Tantalizingly. Hauntingly.

  There appears to be a lot of sudden concern going around about the matter of horror’s survival. Yet, curiously, this sudden solicitude is being expressed at a time when both the most and the best of this fiction is being written and published. And it’s a time when we need to be entertained, and we need to have the hell scared out of us. Because, I think, we cannot afford to give hell a free ride much longer.

  You’re about to enjoy exceptional encounters with many old favorites of fright in new disguise—ghosts, vampires, nameless terrors prowling the streets or lurking at the pastoral fringes of town—but you’re also going to run headlong into shockingly contemporary beings and circumstances. Material for the first Masques anthology was selected during the year and a half before release in 1984, and many of the recurring fears human beings now experience have mutated, or shifted in emphasis. Whether they are greater or lesser in fact, we are today more haunted than ever before by the spectacles and specifics of apathy, poverty, disease, ill-used surplus. And by negligence of God and ever greater deceits and conceits; by the abuse of such divine indulgences as parenthood and other basic, obvious human obligations.

  Writing independently, the authors in this anthology mirror a point in history when acronym and euphemism attempt to replace apology, action, grief; when definitions with real meaning are more brutally twisted than our characters. We arc poised on the brink of another century, and the writers in this anthology seem to be wondering if it isn’t the seventeenth century, or the first, that we’re leaving! It’s clearly time to jettison surplus cargo before venturing ahead. But some of these writers appear to suggest we may want to rethink the situation and reach out, hastily, for the baggage we must not pitch—even at times when the craft might seem to be going down.

  The idea for a certain kind of anthology was born in the brain of former publisher John Maclay. The onetime Baltimore ad executive felt his life was missing something central without a more active participation in writing. Then the writer of quietly disturbing limited-run works concerning the unwise replacement of grace and style in architecture with gross commercial structures, Maclay wished to recapture the concerns and elements of the science fiction anthologies he’d read as a boy, but in the modem horror/supematural genre. We discussed it over the phone repeatedly, at length.

  Maclay’s concept was to publish original fiction without a primary intention of either shocking or preaching—but fiction that said something about the way people are at heart. And the frights we become whenever we meet the bad guys and bad things without trying to do something about them. He hoped I’d seek writers with a feeling of awe and wonder who created yams with style and grace. With the sweep of imagination often discouraged editorially, there was a place for humor, gore, the experimental or outrageous—and for the sort of subtlety readers understood only much later. There’d be tales that scarcely fell within conventional descriptions of the genre, but that furnished some horror; of disturbing (haunting) reflection; tantalizing glimpses of the reality of the victimized, and of the mad. We viewed short-shorts as a lost art—welcome—but plots were essential.

  It was one of my tasks to locate and introduce the gifted new writers—and some thirteen writers have made their first professional fiction-writing appearances in the three Masques anthologies. At least twenty writers have been published for the first time in these hardcover books. Many have sold their own first books of fiction (R. C. Matheson, Wayne Miller, Alan Rodgers, Dave Silva, Steve Tern, Doug Winter, Jeannette Hopper, and John Maclay among them) since appearing in these anthologies.

  When M III was conceived, I meant to continue things basically as John Maclay envisioned them. Then, when most of the material had been chosen, I happened upon a remark by Ed Bryant in the December 1988 Twilight Zone that illumined the creative process exercised in assembling an anthology. It led to the format for these new tales and verse. Bryant, a fine writer, said, “. . . no single anthology has yet captured in one volume the full panoply of talent and amazing energy presently propelling the horror boom toward its inevitable peak.” Commenting on an anthology other than mine, he observed that it comprised work by many “of the top rank, at least saleswise . . .”

  He noted, as well, that it included no female contributors.

  The remarkable energy Ed correctly celebrates is, I think, in a constant state of flux, of growth. Whether anything like a “peak” is “inevitable” is debatable and in any case may suggest a pinnacle that, once attained, necessarily implies imminent decline.

  With all due respect, I deplore such attitudes. I believe that the same variety of literarily homicidal and suicidal prophecy doomed mystery and science fiction to previous declines, that such predictions were fundamentally self-fulfilling, and that there arc ways to wage a holy war against such sophistries.

  The first battle begins with the will to resist falling into the trap of trying seriously to approach Bryant’s “full panoply.” No individual writer can unfailingly sustain the same level of excellence from work to work. The more we write, the more we may be published, and the less easily we become motivated by “invitations” to any published works—unless we want to write on a particular theme or for a particular publication.

  It seems to me an unacknowledged fact that, in the case of many of our best-known writers, their finest work either was created at a time when their first encouraging successes came along, or that it was their best work that actually made them famous—at a time when they were neither well-known nor affluent. The moon moves, planets shift, loved ones fall ill or quarrel, and the famed author may discover he has made commitments beyond the time or energy allotted him or her. On the other hand, productive newer writers sometimes craft stories that fairly bubble off the page. When they are amenable to editing, their fiction tends to charge an anthology with electricity, with fire; to balance it.

  So, stratagem two is seeking the ideal blend from a variety of writers. “Levels” or “kinds” of writer shouldn’t be determined either by affluence or lack of financial success but by the degree of individual creative talent—and the particular material the writers submit for consideration. If there’s one place left where we should not make cither celebrity or economic status our first criteria, it’s in what we read.

  Bryant is right. There should be women among the concerned human beings crafting our fiction and verse. And newcomers writing because they’re scared stiff by what they see around them; and alarmed, outraged pros. Gays, other minorities. Troubled single people, anxious parents—all the “kinds” of writers there are as people, identifiable only (if then) as an afterthought to the enjoyment of their work. Horror and other genres should reject the star system the way it was done years ago in films. To the degree that publisher profit will not suffer needlessly, all fiction should do so.

  Genres peak or dip for numerous reasons, but writers of talent must have a marketplace in which to sell their wares censor-free, creating their work in their own best ways, not in imitation of their predecessors. Whether they are household names or not.

  they should be expected only to satisfy the
primary standards and tastes of the editor—who never, surely, makes selections without surmounting his or her own prejudices. It is exclusively in what the editor creates himself, or herself, that a right to advocacy is permissible. Anything less is story-ordering and not story-finding, and selection; anything more can become didactic, dictatorial.

  Horror and the supernatural come in many forms. Most of them now await you. And the fiction will go on selling, even “booming,” when editors remember they are really “first readers.” Surrogates for those who buy the publications. Horror fiction is energetic, and the talent producing it does represent a panoply of passions, aspirations, and terrors. If it has freedom to develop, it will be haunting, it will tantalize.

  But horror will only truly “peak” when we can agree that people have done so.

  Let the masque begin!

  J.N. WILLIAMSON

  Indianapolis

  STORIES FOR

  ALL SEASONS

  IN this volume of Masques, the writing—all of it new—is conveniently gathered under four hard-thought subsets or finer groupings. With the first of them, it was tempting to call such stories (and the poem) “traditional/’ And my Roget’s didn’t help much when I looked for a term that was less likely to carry connotations of old-fashionedness. It mentioned “standard,” “elegant,” and “custom-bound,” terms both close to what I mean and far from it! “Standard” sounds as trite as “customary,” and “elegant” could imply pretentiousness.

  I almost called this group “time-honored,” since Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz write time-honored fiction, just as did Charles Beaumont and Frcdric Brown. None of these writers would create stories that are either hard to understand or done “by the numbers.” Rather, in the tradition of great writers of the past, their work is so readable that it can be enjoyed decades or centuries later. Their subjects, concerns, settings, and styles are widely, enduringly familiar.

  But such stories are also, obviously, tales for all seasons of people’s thinking, people’s fears and worries. Enjoying yams such as theirs—and those in this group of stories—triggers a feeling that they have always been around, somehow. That they were plucked magically from some collective, Active cosmos with merely the help of writers who, in the cases of artists such as Brown and Beaumont, may merely appear to have been gone from us for decades. They frighten today, would have frightened a hundred years ago, and they will frighten one hundred years from now.