Winter is almost over, but Twisted Pulp Magazine remains! It lurks in the dark recesses and shleps down the shadowy halls. Limping around with stories of horror and interviews of… interest. Yeah that’s right, everybody’s favorite neo-pulp and mock-shlock mag is back with a new set of stories, articles, interviews and more, covering everything pulpy and dusty, either in essence or spirit. So check it out. What’s it gonna hurt?
I’m stuck in my usual rut. A rut of watching superhero cartoons. I know this is a rut that you think you can’t identify with, but believe me, it’s a rut we all have. It’s not the cartoons that are the issue, it’s the comfort they represent.
I could go into my history and how at a point in my life I was reawakened by Batman the Animated Series, but the point is really that we all have comfort areas. And I’ve noticed that we, or at least I have them in creating as well. It was a lesson I learned in music, but need to be reminded of when creating in general.
In 1966, I went down to Greenwich Village, New York City to a rock club called Electric Banana. Don’t look for it; it’s not there anymore… not really, but I used to play in a band called the Roy Battys. We were a group of joe’s that liked to play music à la the pixies kinda (it’s hard to categorize one’s own creations).
In the Roy Battys there was a guitarist named Bill. We had played with Bill a bit in another band where he played keyboard, but we’d not heard much of him on guitar. Bill was a quiet guy and we used to joke about how we met him. Another bandmate, Jeremy and I had a bit of a party pad where we would put on shows. Bill would come over, sit on the couch, say next to nothing while drinking a six pack, and then he’d head home. This went on for weeks until Jeremy and I finally said to one another, “Looks like we’re friends with Bill.”
Well, Bill as a guitarist ended up being bafflingly creative and diverse with his guitar parts. And, not that creative kind where they play anything perfect, it was that truly creative kind where other things were played through the filter of Bill. They all sounded like different Bills from different realities.
I would ask myself, “How did this unassuming man get such a wide breadth of creativity?” When I saw his music collection I knew why. At the time I mainly listened to Punk, Industrial, a smattering of 50s rock and roll, and a bit of 90s alternative… and that was it. Bill’s music spanned genres and decades, clicks and centuries. And, of course, I knew then that was how he did it. He immersed himself in everything musically, more marinated in it than studied it. He was a cosmopolitan, at least by a 20 year-old’s standards.
Obviously the point here is that we have to leave our superhero cartoon comfort and safety zones to challenge ourselves more creatively, but we also have to not be “all or nothing”. Bill had his limits. He didn’t listen to Celeion Dion cuz it just wasn’t his jam. But there are many places I can go that are just outside my zone, or places that I loved before but don’t return to often enough. I can check out new genres that run parallel to some old ones I liked. In fact I started out writing this with a real question in my mind, the question was, “Does diversifying my interests on purpose make me a pompous ass or a cosmopolitan?” But, then I remembered Bill and I know the answer. It makes me a cosmopolitan. So, I’m gonna do more of that, and I suggest you do the same.
Caroline Santos is a talented visual artist and dedicated teacher hailing from Taubaté, nestled in the heart of São Paulo’s interior. With a decade of professional experience under her belt, Caroline has forged direct connections with art enthusiasts worldwide. Her passion lies in capturing the innate beauty of women and animals, a mission she fulfills through her vibrant creations.
Hi Caroline. Thank you for doing this interview. Is there a huge market for comic books in Brazil? What’s the tradition of comics there?
Hello Mark, I’m very happy for the invitation! Yes, there has been a great variety of comic artists in Brazil for a long time, but with few readers. In Brazil we have strong and traditional names like Mauricio de Souza with his work A Turma da Mônica, which represents almost 80% of all comics sold in the country. It is currently growing due to comic book events, such as the Comic Con Experience, which give visibility to comic artists in the country, and which encourage the geek public. However, despite having large publishers and many authorial comic artists, this comic book market competes with games, music, cinema and netflix.
What is your background? Where did you grow up?
My history in art begins there in childhood, at the age of 4 I already really liked drawing female figures. At the age of 11, I was approved at an Arts School in my city and since then I have never stopped drawing and painting. There I studied for 6 years and had experience with different artistic techniques, such as drawing, watercolor, painting, engraving, sculpture in stone, wood and clay. After my training, I started my artistic career working only with national commissions, always with a portrait theme. In 2018 I found myself in the world of comics and started to love painting characters from Marvel, DC comics and others.
What inspired you to be an artist?
My parents always encouraged my artistic training, so in a way they inspired me. My second inspiration was my painting teacher, Angélica Ferreira. Over the years several other artists have inspired me, as well as music, movies, American and Japanese comics.
I feel like there’s nothing in life that would make me happy like art does, it’s something that’s always been a part of my life, in a way I feel like it was born with me.
What got you into comics?
I’ve always loved watching movies and drawings of characters from the world of American and Japanese comics. I remember that at the age of 12 I created a comic book on improvised sheets in manga style, inspired by the tale Inuyasha.
However, what led me to comics was an Artist Studio that I joined in 2018, where we worked painting Marvel and DC Comics characters to sell at auctions and receive commissions.
It was an important experience to work with something I like.
What books, or comics for that matter, did you like to read as a youth?
Most of the comics were Brazilian, such as A Turma da Mônica by Mauricio de Souza.
My crush at first sight is Inuyasha, a Feudal Fairy Tale, a shonen manga series written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi. It was part of practically all of my childhood and adolescence and also inspired me to enter the world of comics.
What was your first published work?
I haven’t published any work yet, but it’s a dream that I intend to realize in the future.
What’s your method for creating your art?
I use a lot of authorial and cosplay photographic references from the internet. Usually in just one female figure there are about 6 to 7 references.
Many ideas for poses or scenes come up at dawn, my creative high point. After creating the character sketch, I start the first layer of painting with oil paint.
Who are your influences as far as music, film, books?
My musical influences are diverse, ranging from Madonna and Michael Jackson to Lana del Rey, Guns n’ Roses, System of a Down and music from the 70s, 80s and 90s.
I like adventure books, Peter Pan, Harry Potter, but my favorite and that I always read is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, it inspired me in life in general. I love Tim Burton movies, suspense and fantasy movies.
Some artists are obsessive getting their drawings right. Are you like that?
I always try to do my best, I like them to be well done and I’m always looking to improve my knowledge and artistic ability.
What other areas of art are you involved in?
I currently work with international commissions for characters and portraits, and I am a teacher at an art school. I teach painting, drawing, sculpture and art history classes.
What projects are you working on now?
I’m not working on projects at the moment because I’m dedicating myself to teaching, but I’d really like to delve deeper into the world of comics in the future.
By Chauncey Haworth
Two young punks, Chuckles and Full Pint, live on the edge in downtown Oakland. Their mundane existence takes a dark turn when they break into a pawn shop, only to unwittingly unleash a malevolent force upon the city in this vampire short story by Chauncey Haworth.
Chuckles and Full Pint sat around their shared record player, playing the game they played most nights, drinking cheap beer and listening to cheap records. The rules of the game were easy. Pick one half of a LP or a full 45, and then it was the next guy’s turn. They were currently half way through Chuckle’s pick of side-one of Lou Reed’s Rock n’ Roll Animal.
Punk nicknames were acquired in one of two fashions, either you were so cool you got something great, or, like most, you stumbled into one through unfortunate life choices. Neither Chuckles or Full Pint were that cool.
Full Pint’s real name was Jason Vala, but after a five-day bender of cocaine and Little House on the Prairie he demanded to be called Half Pint; the name of some girl in the show. After a few years of beer and fast food, the once skinny punk had ballooned to 260 and his once demanded nickname of Half Pint was ballooned to Full Pint.
Chuckles’ case was less in-depth. Originally named Charles Dearth, an evening of laughing fits thanks to huffing nitrous oxide and computer cleaner had forever deemed him Chuckles, and possibly borderline retarded.
The pair lived in a seedy part of downtown Oakland, in an apartment on a corner above a Japanese ramen house. The apartment was constantly engulfed in the smell of boiling noodles and pork belly, something both craved and neither could afford.
The apartment gave them a good vantage point of their corner. They could see everybody coming and going. They could see if friends were bumming around, or getting off the bus at the corner stop, or if there was some creditor out there, someone dumb enough to have lent them money.
One of the best aspects of the apartment’s location was the casing potential. They could see if someone left a bike on the curb, and for how long. They could see the grocery store across the street and how long the produce stand had been unattended. They could see the convenience store across the other street, and see if there were fresh ninety-nine-cent hot dogs on the rollers. Finally, catty-corner, they could see the Ye’ Old Antique and Pawn.
The pawn shop was a source of many of their conversations. They would sit there in the window, listening to old great records, and new shitty ones, talking about the riches that must be inside. Enough for new guitars and drums, more drugs and better food. Their vantage point gave them the perfect angle to fantasize about what they would do. And, isn’t that what young men are best at, talking about what they “would do”?
Like them, the owner, Mr. Kose, lived in the apartment above. They could see his normal schedule as they lived their abnormal one. He opened at eight AM and closed at eight PM every day, except Sunday, when the shop was closed. On Sundays he would leave once and come home with groceries. Every night it was close up at eight, kitchen till nine, bedroom till ten, then lights out.
It wasn’t uncommon that they would fantasize about sneaking in at night after ten and grabbing some goodies, but the timing was never right. Also, as archaic as the pawn shop was, one thing that was always lit up out front was the alarm keypad, a technological leap neither Chuckles or Full Pint were ready to take on.
The over thirteen-minute version of Lou Reed’s Heroin ended, noting the end of Chuckles’ record choice.
“You’re up,” Chuckles said.
“I’m hungry first,” Full Pint responded.
“Yeah, how’s the dog roller look?”
“Put on at five.”
“Six hours ain’t bad.”
“Nope, six ain’t bad at all,” Full Pint said with a smile.
The pair got up and both instinctively patted their pockets, even though both knew what they had; enough for a few more forties and a hot dog each. They each strapped on their hoodies and headed to the door.
The apartment emptied onto a narrow stairwell that spilt unfettered onto the back alley. It wasn’t uncommon to have to step over a crackhead or two, but tonight the staircase was clear.
The transaction at the convenience store was quick, both Chuckles and Full Pint, as well as the cashier, knew what they wanted. Chuckles and Full Pint wanted a hot dog each, topped with the most amount of every possible topping and whatever beer they could afford, while the cashier just wanted them gone as soon as possible.
On the walk home they heard the usual soundscape of far-off chatter and laughs as well as revving cars and distant, reverberating sirens. But this time the revs and the sirens were getting closer. They both knew what that might mean. It might mean free entertainment. They took up a bench at the bus stop to eat their hot dogs and await some action.
Sure enough, the action came. It came in the form of Jefferies in a stolen Honda Civic speeding around the corner and down their street, followed by a patrol car. They knew it was Jefferies because it was always Jefferies, and they knew the car was stolen because it was always stolen.
Normally Jeff was a pretty good driver, but tonight he must have had a little too much of the creature. The car wobbled as he sped by the pair and by the end of the next block the car crashed into a corner, sending up a light show of sparks and smoke.
Chuckles and Full Pint cheered, but immediately went silent when the power for all four of the blocks went out, leaving the area lit by the police car on the scene of the wreck. The pair surveyed the scene. All dark with more cops approaching, adding to the winding red and blue lights.
“Look.” Full Pint hit Chuckles on the shoulder and pointed to the gate at the pawn shop.
“What?” Chuckles asked.
“No keypad lights.”
It took Chuckles a few seconds to register.
Then Full Pint pointed up to the bedroom window, “Poor deaf bastard slept through it. Wait here.”
Before Chuckles could ask why, Full Pint grabbed the beer and was off toward the alley behind their apartment. Chuckles finished his dog and Full Pint returned, carrying two backpacks, a crowbar, and a bat.
The plan was conveyed with a glance. A glance is all it took. After all, the pair had had many a conversation about “what they would do”. This settled fine with Full Pint, but not so well with Chuckles. Chuckles had assumed their talk was just talk, but now, presented with a bat and a look of commitment from his only friend, he knew it was more than talk.
The two scurried across the streets to the awning covering the pawn shop. With little more than a glance at Chuckles, Full Pint buried the crowbar into the wood holding the iron gate and alarm panel. He wrenched back, cracking aside the wood and metal. The two stood back. No alarm.
Full Pint smacked Chuckles on the shoulder and pointed up. As Full Pint moved to pry the wooden door open, Chuckles stepped back and looked for light from the upstairs bedroom. It was still dark.
The door came open even easier than the gate, the old weathered wood softly and silently splitting like porous foam. Once inside, the two pushed the splintered door back into place the best they could.
The shop was dim, not dark, illuminated by the yellow glows of plugged-in stereo systems and the neon of antique beer displays. They passed the front display stuff, deeper into the dark of the store, passing the clothing displays to the back counter, where they knew the jewelry, guns, knives, and other valuables resided in glass cases.
Past the moth-eaten sweaters, past the ethically questionable Muumuus and Dashikis, past the inexplicable socks and underwear they went. They passed the lamps, the kids’ toys, the shoes, and for some reason, another aisle of lamps.
At the back wall they came to the row of glass cases, full of old jewelry and adorned knives. Full Pint slid one open and started stuffing jewelry into his backpack while pointing for Chuckles to go the other way. Chuckles did as he was told.
Full Pint went down his side to the left, finding more rings and necklaces, adorned brooches, and silk old lady scarves in obnoxious colors. Halfway along he found the register. He quietly wedged the claw end of the crowbar beneath the drawer of the register and pried it open, finding only a few hundred bucks. Not even enough for rent. He continued down the glass cases until getting to the corner and finding a locked metal door with two deadbolts.
Chuckles went down his side to the right, finding a collection of silver, jewel-encrusted knives. He set down the bat and took the knives, putting three in his pocket and keeping one in hand. Down the row he found glass cases with luxury pens, watches, and coins, and eventually, at the corner, an open door that led upstairs. Chuckles noticed light from the top of the stairs but it was too late. The old man, Mr. Kose, was behind him with a gun.
“Turn around,” the old man said, with a distinct Turkish accent and a tremble in his voice.
Chuckles turned around.
“What are you doing in my home?”
“I’m… I’m sorry,” Chuckles stuttered.
“What are you doing in my house?” Mr. Kose asked again, his voice moving from a tremble to confidence.
“I’m leaving. I promise. I’m leaving,” Chuckles begged.
There was a long stare down between the old man and Chuckles. Eye to eye unblinking, until Chuckles closed his eyes in fear. The old man realized too late that someone else was behind him.
Full Pint cracked the old man across the head with the crowbar, knocking him out and sending his gun clattering across the floor.
By the time the old man woke up he had been dragged to the locked door with his hands haphazardly tied with an extension cord.
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Chuckles asked Full Pint.
“Stop being such a fuckin’ pussy,” Full Pint replied. “I’m not risking jail for some old worthless jewelry, some old knives, and some old bitch’s scarves.”
Mr. Kose opened his eyes to see the two punks arguing, their faces now concealed behind colorful paisley silk scarves. Behind them was the metal door with the two deadbolts.
“He’s awake, Pint.”
“Oh, good,” Full Pint said, turning his attention to Mr. Kose.
Mr. Kose looked Full Punt square in the eye and said, “You are making a mistake.”
Full Pint responded with fortitude, “Oh, is that so, tough guy? Cuz to me, it looks like we’re the young guys with bats and guns and you’re the old fucker tied up on the goddamn floor. So to me you talking shit sounds like the mistake. Now open this fucking door.” Full Pint tapped on the door with the tip of the gun, not only pointing to his goal, but emphasizing the outcome if the old man didn’t play along.
“You don’t want to go down there,” Mr. Kose said. The statement almost sounded like a plea.
“Oh yeah? Well, shows what you know, gramps, cuz that is exactly where I want to go.”
“There’s nothing down there for you but death.”
“I told you, tough guy, you keep talking shit and you’re gonna take a pistol whippin’ or worse, you old fuck.”
Chuckled interrupted, “Maybe we should just go?”
“Shut the fuck up, Chuck. We’ve come too far. This is happening.” Full Pint turned his attention back to the old man. “Now where’s the fucking keys?”
“There is no key,” the man replied.
“Fuck you, old man!” Again, Full Pint tapped the door, once on each of the locks. “I said keys, two locks, two keys.”
“There are no keys,” he replied again.
“You’re a fucking lying old fuck.”
“I threw them away.”
Full Pint got down close to the old man’s face. “I don’t fucking believe you.”
“I swear it’s true. I locked the door and threw away the key… The keys,” Mr. Kose said, correcting himself.
Full Pint stood up straight in frustration, holding the pistol against his forehead as if it helped him think.
“What are we gonna do, Pint?” Chuckles asked.
“Shut the fuck up, Chuck. I’m thinking.”
“Maybe we should get out of here?” Chuckles suggested again.
Full Pint pointed the gun at Chuckles. “We started this and we’re going to fucking finish it, got it?”
“I got it, Pint.”
Full Pint aimed the gun at the old man. “Here’s how this is going to go. I’m going to ask you one more time, and if you lie to me, I’m gonna hurt you. I’m gonna whip this fucking gun across your face like I’m a rapper and you’re a bitch. Then I’ll ask you again. If you lie to me again? I’m gonna shoot you in the fucking foot. Got that, old man?”
The old man looked at him, “I swear there is no key. You don’t want to go down there. There is nothing there of value, only death.”
“Whatever, you fucking Scarface wannabe-don Eastern-European motherfucker. None of this yippee-ki-yay-motherfucker shit!” Full Pint calmed down and continued in a very deliberate tone. “Now tell me, where… are… the keys?”
“There are no keys.” The old man had barely finished his sentence when Full Pint slapped him across the cheek with the side of the gun, breaking his orbital bone and flushing that side’s eyeball with blood. The man fell sideways, lying on the floor in the fetal position.
“No, I’m gonna ask you again, you old fucker.” Full Pint stood tall over the injured old man and pointed the gun at his leg.
“Pint,” Chuckles says.
“Shut the fuck up, Chuckles!” Full Pint was in the zone. “Now, old man!”
“Pint” Chuckles said again, softly, but Full Pint ignored him.
“Now tell me, where… are…”
“Pint!” Chuckles said louder.
Full Pint turned to him, keeping the gun on the old man. “What the fuck is it? Fucking what?”
Chuckles just pointed down to the old man’s neck. Blood was dripping down from his head wound, soaking his shirt color, and eventually dripping off a pair of keys he was wearing around his neck.
“Well, fuck, Chuck, why didn’t ya say nothing?” Full Pint reached down and ripped the two keys from the man’s neck, breaking the chain. He wiped them on the man’s sweater, getting off most of the blood.
Full Pint waistbanded the gun and walked to the door while he directed Chuckles, “Watch that lying fuck.”
Chuckles held the silver knife and watched the old man, knowing the man could do nothing to hurt him. But, still terrified to just shy of pissing his pants.
After fumbling with the keys, Full Pint opened the metal door. A flood of musty old air rushed out, causing both of them to cover their noses. Inside was a rusted out old metal staircase, descending into the darkness below. Full Pint ran the walls inside with his hand until he found a light switch. Turning it on only illuminated a single bulb at the top, barely revealing the descent to the bottom. At the bottom, nothing but concrete and shadows.
“Check that old fuck’s ties and follow me. We hit the fucking motherload, I bet.”
As Chuckles checked the ties, the old man whispered to him, “Don’t do it, boy. The only thing down there is my brother. He has been there for fifty years… and he is hungry.”
Chuckles popped up and stepped back from the man, having heard, but not really registering the words.
The man continued. “I’ve sacrificed my life to keep locked up what you may release. Please just close the door and walk away. I’ll give you anything. I’ll give you both everything I have.”
“Come on, Chuck, hurry the fuck up,” Full Pint yelled from halfway down the stairs.
Chuckles backed away from the man and made his way down the stairs.
The two descended the staircase into the darkness, Chuckles scared and running through the words he’d just heard; Full Pint dreaming of the riches that must lie at the bottom. But at the bottom there were no riches, just a dog hatched door, large and made of iron, set into the concrete wall.
“Fuck yeah, that lying fuck. He’s got a mother fucking vault down here,” Full Pint shouted in success.
At the direction of Full Pint, the two of them went to each side of the door, undoing the large iron latches. Full Pint gave the door a yank and the seal was broken, audibly spraying out more putrid air from inside. The door was heavy and it took both of them to open it all the way. Beyond the door the air was more rancid and even darker.
Full Pint stepped inside the black. He fumbled in his pocket for his lighter. Discovering it, he kept one hand with the gun pointed forward, and with the other he flicked the light. In the darkness the lighter did little to dispel the shadow, all it did was cast two small reflections on the pair of hungry eyes in the corner.
The eyes leapt upon Full Pint, the emaciated, naked figure devouring the overweight punk like a first meal from a released prisoner of war. The blood splattered out of the room and up the front of Chuckles. Chuckles just held the knife up as if it would protect him from his friend’s blood; as if it would protect him from the voracious creature that fed upon him.
Possibly making the most proactive choice he’d ever made in his life, Chuckles moved quickly to the iron door and pushed it shut, the slam echoing through the bottom of the stairwell. He reached for the dog latch, but it was too late.
The creature threw the door open with ease, sending Chuckles across the room, sliding across the floor to the wall. With a hunger of fifty years, the creature leapt across the room in one bound, landing above Chuckles, but immediately reeled away from the silver knife Chuckles still clutched in his hand.
It hovered at the far end of the room, pacing like an animal, its once human face, fanged and skeletal, tracking Chuckles as it strode side to side. Just as it appeared ready to leap again at Chuckles, both he and the creature were startled by the slamming of the door at the top of the stairs. Mr. Kose had locked them in, down in the concrete stairwell, together.
Chuckles’ reaction to this situation was to immediately piss himself. The creature’s reaction was decidedly different. It pulled its eyes from Chuckles and focused on the stairwell. It bounded up the stairs like a large cat after prey.
At the top of the stairs Chuckles could hear a crash and then the old man pleading, “Please, Victor! I just wanted to protect people; to protect you. I have given you my life to keep you safe. Please!” But the pleading stopped. There were no more words, just the sound of flesh being chewed and blood being lapped; then silence.
It took Chuckles fifteen minutes to finally move from the piss puddle he’d been sitting in. He slowly walked up the stairs, holding two of the jewel encrusted silver knives in each hand. At the top of the stairs he held back vomit as he stepped over the pile of flesh, bone and blood that was once Mr. Kose. He mindlessly walked through the pawn shop, through the front door, and back onto the street.
Chuckles stood in front of the store in shock, looking at the plumes of smoke from one of the buildings, listening to the screams in the distance and the sirens he knew wouldn’t make it in time. He listened to the havoc the creature was unleashing upon the city and knew it was his fault, for there was no one left alive to blame.
“A Life of Sacrifice” is included in the vampire-themed anthology Vampirology: A Bloody Book of Vampire Tales from Screaming Eye Press. With its gripping storyline and thought-provoking themes, “A Life of Sacrifice” adds depth and complexity to the anthology, offering readers a fresh perspective on the timeless allure of vampire lore.
Christopher McMillen is a passionate collector, dealer, and fan of vintage paperbacks, pulp magazines, and classic literature. As the proprietor of McMillen’s Vintage Paper and Pulp, he has cultivated a deep appreciation for the nostalgic charm and historical significance of these relics of popular culture. With a keen eye for quality and rarity, Christopher curates an impressive collection that appeals to fellow enthusiasts and collectors alike.
Where were you born? Where did you grow up?
I was born on Staten Island, New York in 1964 and for most of my life have resided in Staten Island. My entire adult life.
What was the first thing you remember reading as a child?
The first book I remember was The Phantom Toll Booth by Norton Juster. I was drawn by the fantasy element and the lure of travel. It opened my mind to imagination. I read the book to each of my three boys when they were young and recently my eldest who is know 30 also stated to me what a great impact the story had on him.
Who are your favorite writers and artists?
My favorite writers have changed over the years. In my early teens I was a huge Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen fan. I especially enjoyed reading short stories and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine was quite influential. I didn’t realize it at the time but the mix of classic and new stories covering all genres of the field on a monthly basis made these monthly collections wonderful. It was my introduction to Hammett, Irish, and my personal favorite at the time Edward D. Hoch. As a young man I was more drawn to the classic detective story. It wasn’t till much later in life that I delved into hard boiled material.
Know as I approach sixty and having read hundreds of mysteries and suspense novels it is hard to pick a favorite but my short list would be Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain, Robert Parker, and Donald Westlake.
My appreciation for cover art didn’t evolve till my early thirties and I was drawn to Robert McGinnis, Richard Powers, Barye Phillips, and James Avati. Unfortunately, I was never bought original art work but focusing on the paperbacks themselves.
When did you start to be a serious collector?
My father was a NYC middle school history and a book scout in his spare time. Back in the 1970s my father sold books at flea markets and book shows. We did not have a brick and mortar shop and concentrated on mail order. During the 1970s and up until 2000 we quoted books to stores around the country advertised for in AB Bookman’s Weekly. Prior to the internet if you were interested in a book you would go to your local bookstore to see if they had a copy. If it was out of print or you were interested in a specific edition the bookseller would look for it for you. This was done through the Books Wanted section. We would go through the magazine every week and send out quotes to bookstores all over the world with our asking price. Generally, we would reserve the book for 21 days as a courtesy. If our copy was chosen a check would arrive in the mail and we would send it off. We obtained our inventory through estate, library and garage sales as well as auction houses.
As a young boy I would accompany my dad on these buying trips. My father had little respect for paperbacks and when bought in lots would sell at ¢35 or 3 for a dollar at flea markets just to move them along. I became intrigued with the uniformity of the early publishers and started out as a spine collector. The goal for me was number runs. Pocket Books, Bantam Books and Gold Medal caught my eye first and I quickly was grabbing anything published prior to 1960.
In the late 1970’s during high school we briefly opened a used bookstore which I worked in on weekends and after school. By the time I was 16 my collection was over 2000 volumes. It was while working at the store in 1980 that my father gave me a copy of Hancer’s Paperback Price Guide. I then quickly realized that there was more to this than cool spines.
The store was short lived and we like all book scouts turned into online sellers with the help of AbeBooks in the late ‘90s and the demise of the brick and mortar.
By this point my collection was well over 10,000 volumes and I started selling my duplicates and publishers I lost interest in on Ebay and eventually and almost every booksite I could find.
Is collecting a tough business?
Not at all. Collecting is fun. Selling is tough. The early days of Abe, Ebay and Amazon Marketplace were awesome. Fees were reasonable and direct communication with clients was encouraged. Being a book scout, I was well trained in the proper way to describe a book for sale and to this day take pride in the accuracy and conservative nature of my descriptions.
In the last ten years though as Amazon and Ebay moved away from books and collectibles the landscape has become harder to navigate. Too many collectors have been burned on both of these sites by amateur sellers that many rely on the wild to fill their collections.
From the sellers end runaway fees and establishing a client base are much more challenging.
What was the strangest book or set of books you’ve collected?
I have a full run of Quick Readers. These are small side stapled paperbacks heavily abridged and published between 1945 and 1946. Royce Books of Chicago published only 49. Each cover was illustrated and had a false spine to simulate a hard cover book.
Is it mostly pulp or Noir you collect?
I always considered myself a pulp collector. I also have an extensive collection of Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories. I have extensive runs of digest size magazines from the 1960s to 1990. I have near complete runs of EQMM, Alfred Hitchcock, Manhunt, Mike Shayne, and The Saint to name a few.
What would be the Holy Grail of book or books for you to attain?
Pocket Book #5—The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie.
The first ten Pocket Books were released in the NYC Metropolitan area in 1939 in a run of 10,000 copies. Of the first ten I have first printings except for #5. It is extremely scarce. Maybe 15 years ago a copy was offered online for $900.00 and while I tried to figure out how to explain the purchase to family it was sold. I have a fine 3rd printing but have never seen a first let alone a second.
What other fields of collecting would you like to get into? Art, maybe?
This field is big enough for my lifetime and beyond and it still evolves. Horror paperbacks of the 1980s and ‘90s are exploding right now and I was smart enough to start putting aside mint copies back then so I am just filling in some holes.
What projects are you working on now?
I am presently into Dell/Laurel Shakespeare with Glaser covers and Men’s Adventure Series (The Executioner, Matt Helm, etc.) Both were incomplete when I acquired them off the shelf back in the day and am trying to put together and offer full runs.
By Mark Slade
The film I want to discuss in this article, House, is not your usual haunted house movie, made in 1986 and stars William Katt as Roger Cobb, a very troubled writer.
Cobb is a fairly successful horror writer, and at a book signing, we see just how odd his fans are. Yet, Cobb continues in that aw-shucks manner while placing his John Hancock on the front sleeve of his reader’s books. Cobb wants to write about his experiences in Vietnam, but his agent assures him no one wants to read that, just his horror stories.
Next we see Cobb moving into a gothic designed house his Aunt (Susan French—Somewhere in Time, Jaws 2.) had left him. It seems Cobb’s Aunt had committed suicide in that very house. While walking the premises with the real estate agent, tells Cobb that the he Aunt was a painter and; as the real estate agent put it, “painted a very creepy picture” of the closet door opened and a bright appearing. Turns out Cobb had grown up in that house.
As they walk on looking into rooms, Cobb’s problems flash in front of the scene. Apparently, Cobb’s son fell in the pool. Cobb jumped in, but he didn’t find his son anywhere. The cops are baffled, but Cobb’s Aunt Blames the house and Cobb’s wife Sandy (Kay Lenz—Midnight Caller, Death Wish 4.) runs out of the room calling the old woman a crazy old bat.
Cobb informs the real estate agent he is moving in the house. The real estate agent shows Cobb a painting the Aunt was working on. “It gives me the creeps,” he says. The painting is of a young woman standing in front of an open door of a closet, illuminated by a bright light, objects from the room swirling around her like a grandfather clock and a pocket watch.
Cobb and Sandy never able to overcome the tragedy of losing their son, are divorced. Cobb has decided to write that book about his past experiences while living in that house may not have been his best decision.
While looking around the house, Cobb hears a door from the upstairs bedroom slam shut. More than curious, he investigates. Cobb hears a muffled voice call out. He goes into his son’s room, nothing is there. Then he hears more noise from the other rooms. He opens the door to a room and sees his Aunt standing there. “It won, Roger,” she says. “It tricked me.” She steps on a chair and proceeds to place a noose around her neck and informs Cobb, “It will trick you too. This house knows everything about you!” She jumps from the chair and disappears.
After such a strange incident, you’d think Roger Cobb would leave. Instead he chooses to ignore it, go on with his life. Later, he meets a neighbor Harold Gordon (played by George Wendt—Cheers, King of Ants). A funny scene where Gordon tells Cobb that the old lady who lived in the house was nuts, a crazy old hag—Cobb informs him, “She was my aunt.” Gordon’s reply, “A heart of gold—really—so beautiful for a woman her age.” Gordon invites Cobb to hang out, but Cobb declines, saying he’s a writer looking for solitude. Gordon puts two and two together, “Roger Cobb! I don’t believe it! I’m your biggest fan!” Gordon asks for an autogragh and pulls out a paperback with the pages falling out. Not the best way to meet your so called favorite writer.
There is a flashback to when Cobb was serving in the Vietnam War, stuck deep in the jungle. Cobb was asleep and his Sgt. Kicks his boots, telling to wake up and get ready. “We have a war to lose.” He screams at another soldier named Ben (Richard Moll—Night Court, Highlander TV show). Ben tells Cobb,” I’m sick of this punk telling me what to do! No one tells me what to do.” During a legion pow wow, Cobb asks Ben for a cigarette, Ben hands Cobb a cigarette box, and when Cobb opens it, a small snake appears. Cobbs drops it and Ben lights up with laughter, angering the commanding officer. At this point, Ben sees a grenade drop close to the outfit. They are under attack from the Vietcong.
What we really see is Cobb writing that scene. Was that truth or fiction?
Cobb takes a minute to pay attention to a movie on TV, decides to turn it off via remote, and hears a child laughing. He sees his son looking at him from the outside window. The child calls out to him and Cobb hits the off button on the remote to make his son disappear.
According to Wikipedia, House opened in 1,440 theaters on February 28, 1986 and grossed $5,923,972 in its opening weekend, missing first place to Pretty in Pink. By the end of its run, House grossed $19,444,631 at the North American box office and $22.1 million worldwide.
There’s a lot to like about House, skillfully directed by Steve Minor (Warlock, Soul Man, Forever Young) and produced by Sean Cunningham (Friday the 13th). Screenplay by Ethan Wiley (Children of the Corn IV), and a story by Fred Dekker (Night of the Creeps, The Monster Squad). The story builds and has loads of comedic touches, such as the appearance of George Wendt. You would think that would be out of place for most films, but it seems to add to this one. Of course the great Richard Moll and his character brought a wonderful edge to it. A soundtrack was released on vinyl and tape. House II came out a year later, which I wouldn’t even use as mental punishment to my worst enemy.
By Chris Miller
In Chris Miller's psychological thriller, we follow Sam as he grapples with the guilt of infidelity while navigating a tense encounter with unfamiliar, dangerous characters.
THE PLACE SMELLS of grease and misery, of fried food and apathy. Fitting, I guess. I shouldn’t be here. Not that there’s anything wrong with here, but why I’m here is no good. I was raised better than this. But am I turning around and leaving? Not a chance. I’m too far in to turn back now. I’ve had a taste, and I liked how it went down. How it lingered on my tongue.
I’m not turning back.
I scan the room. Pretty typical crowd for a dive like this. Blue-collar guys, mostly. A couple of elderly women with their equally elderly husbands. There’s one guy at the end of the bar shoveling eggs that I think started out as sunny side up but now are a pulverized ruin of yolk, the sun having crashed into all and obliterating it. He’s eating fast and sipping at his coffee. He winces as he sets the mug down. It’s hot, but he seems to like it. Asks for a refill. The briefcase next to him is black and looks like leather. He has a tie on, but it’s thrown over his shoulder to keep it out of his eggs and sausage and toast. This guy isn’t blue collar, but he fits right in just the same.
A couple of old men nearer to me at the bar are grumbling back and forth, laughing occasionally. They sip their coffee as their too-big bellies push against the bar inside their bib overalls. A few others litter the diner. I look down the row of booths to the right, mostly empty but for a couple leaning across their table talking—they don’t look happy—and two guys who don’t seem to fit at all. They’re big, but not like the men in the bib overalls. They’re wearing suits like the guy at the end of the bar, but these are much nicer. Their hair is slicked back and oily. They’re from out of town, no doubt. They seem jovial enough, though. Cracking jokes back and forth, though I can’t make out what is so funny.
Then I see her. She’s at the back, in the corner, and she’s already seen me. Her face is light and happy and mine matches hers as I move down the aisle between the booths. I ignore the arguing couple as I pass.
“This isn’t fair and you know it,” the man is saying.
“It’s not about fair, it’s what’s best for Kendall and Kerry,” the woman replies and then I can’t hear them anymore.
I’m halfway to her booth now, just past the arguing couple. I pass the two guys who don’t fit. They’re chuckling about something and one of them glances up at me. I nod a hello. He doesn’t nod back. He looks at the other guy.
“Waylon’s a fuck up,” he says, and now I know they’re from out of town. His voice tells me New Jersey or New York, but that’s just based on movies. I’ve never been to either. What the hell they’re doing in small town Texas is a mystery.
“Fuck ups still cause problems,” the other guy says as I keep moving. The first guy mumbles something, but I can’t make it out.
And then I’m only a few feet from the booth and her. My heart ticks up a notch. My internal heat, too. My mouth feels dry and I’m glad I can see the waitress making her way toward me as I slip into the booth and take in the smile still beaming at me beneath those eyes that I swear are sparkling.
“I’m so glad you came, Sam!” she quietly squeaks.
I open my mouth to respond when the waitress arrives with a weary smile and her pen poised over the ticket pad.
“Mornin’, hun!” she says and pushes a lock of hair over her ear. “What can I get you folks?”
“Coffee,” I say, and Millie orders the same with a side of scrambled eggs and sausage and hash browns. I tell the waitress to make that two and she’s off down the aisle. One of the Jersey guys barks something at her as she passes and holds up a mug that’s clearly empty. She smiles—still weary, but giving it her best—and nods in the affirmative.
I look into those sparkling eyes and I want to dive into them, get lost and drown in their depths. So beautiful. So sweet. So tender. She’s incredible in every way and she is here with me.
I shouldn’t be here.
I push away all the things telling me to leave. I don’t want to leave. This is new and exciting and I know the grass is always greener on the other side, but I don’t care. Even if the reason it’s greener is because it’s covered in shit, I don’t care. Not right now. I wonder if I ever will.
“I only have an hour or so,” I say, and I think she’s disappointed. I like that. But then she smiles again and it’s radiant.
“I’m glad for any time we can spend together,” she says and slides her hands out and clasps mine. “I’ve missed you.”
Her words are intoxicating, and I don’t care how toxic they are. Toxic to my soul. Toxic to my heart. Toxic to my—
My phone buzzes on the table and I can feel it through my arms. We both make a startled jump, then we smile at each other as though to apologize for being so silly. I pick up the phone and my smile vanishes.
What are you doing? the text message says, and my joy is instantly sucked dry. I don’t have to look at who sent the message. I know exactly who sent it, and this is a problem. It’s both why I’m here now and why I feel I shouldn’t be.
It’s from Cheryl, my wife.
“What is it, babe?” Millie asks, and I see her furrowed brow when I glance up for half a second and then look back at the text message. I haven’t opened it, it’s just there on the home screen notifications.
I click the screen off and lay the phone facedown on the table and smile at Millie.
“Nothing,” I say with a wave of my hand. I’m getting better at this, and I feel both pride and shame at this fact. But it’s the excited little boy in me doing something he knows he shouldn’t that seems to rule me now since this tryst started. “Did you get the package I sent you?”
She blushes and I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Then her expression changes to something more seductive, something like the face she made at me that first time we met at the motel outside of town and we rutted like pigs in slop.
It makes me stir.
“I’m wearing them,” she says and winks at me, and I can feel my face matching the color of hers.
My shade deepens and the smile fades when the phone buzzes again. I don’t pick it up this time. Millie’s eyes glance at it and then back to me.
“Is it her?”
I consider lying, but decide there’s no point.
“Yeah.”
She leans back and pulls her hands into her lap, the concern on her face changing to something like shame. She’s human. I’m human. The shame reminds us of that.
“I’m a bad person, aren’t I?” she says to her lap.
“No,” I reply immediately. “I’m the bad guy. Not you. You’re just…”
I don’t know how to finish the sentence, don’t know where it was going. Like you have an idea and it’s a light at the far end of a tunnel, but you never get there no matter how long you run toward it. Finally, you just give up and try to find your way out.
“I should go,” she says and starts to grab her purse. I don’t want her to leave. I want her to stay, and I want to throw caution to the wind and take her to the motel and make us both feel like we’re someone else for a while.
“Wait,” I say and reach out and touch her arm. “Don’t go. It’s nothing. I’m going to tell her soon. It will all be over then. No more sneaking.”
She smiles, but her eyes never fully accommodate it. She’s thinking something. I might know what it is, too. I’m thinking that the sneaking is precisely why this feels so good and exciting. Will I think she’s so amazing once we’re in the open?
Her hand covers the one I’m grabbing her arm with, and that electric tingle is there, and I don’t care about the future or my wife or any of it because now is all that matters to me.
“Hey!” a man’s voice shouts, and I jerk as I look up the aisle. One of the Jersey Boys is looking at the couple who were arguing quietly. Millie turns to see what’s happening, then looks back at me, her face confused.
“You know we can hear yous over here, yeah?” one of the Jersey Boys says to the couple. I can barely see the woman from my angle and all I can see of the man is the side of his face. He puts a surrendering hand up, waves it a couple times.
“Excuse us,” the guy says. “We’re having a conversation.”
“No shit you’re having a conversation,” Jersey One—the one with his back to me—says. “We can hear every goddamned word. Christ! Keep it the fuck down, will ya?”
The guy with the woman tenses, and his shoulder muscles draw together.
“Hey, who do you think—”
The second Jersey Boy whips his fork around and points it at the guy.
“You know who the fuck we are, little man? Huh? You shut your cock-holder, you know what’s good for ya.”
Jerseys One and Two drop words like “if” sometimes, and I instantly feel freaked out. They seem like gangsters. Like real gangsters. They have the look down pat. Voices, too. What the hell are they doing in East Texas?
The lady with the guy at the other table is saying something I can’t hear to him, probably trying to get him to back down. He doesn’t want to. But I think she’s right. They aren’t the types you want to mess with.
The clatter of forks on plates resumes as the Jersey Boys begin to eat again, absolutely no concern on their faces whatsoever. I’m watching the other guy—the one with the lady—and I think he’s working up the nerve to say something else, but if he does, I don’t hear it because my attention is drawn to my phone again, which buzzes three times in quick succession.
“Fuck,” I grumble and pick it up.
It’s Cheryl. Of course it is.
I glance up at Millie and my face is pained. Hers is, too. We’re bad people. The worst kind. Total asshol—
The phone buzzes in my hand againand I nearly jump out of my skin. Millie’s face is etched with concern when I glance up at her and make a pitiful attempt at a self-deprecating smile. She makes an equally pitiful attempt in return.
“I, uh…” she says, then loses whatever thread she had. She’s messing with her hands, clasping them, then interlocking her fingers, then spreading her palms flat on the table between us. Guilt warms my face and chest and I lift the phone so the notifications will show.
There are four more messages.
Sam, we need to talk.
Are you ignoring me?
Where are you?
Why won’t you answer me?
I sigh so harshly it makes me cough. I’m laying the phone down when Millie speaks.
“I care for you, Sam,” she says, and her eyes are pained. This isn’t going to go well. She’s feeling it, too. The guilt. The crushing weight of self-inflicted pain that seems worth every bit of it when we’re in bed. But now…
“We’re both adults,” she goes on and I can feel a different weight descending on me. “We’ve done some things most people would find unforgivable. I think even we find it unforgivable, if we’re totally honest. I know I do. We both know this is wrong. But, the thing is, when I’m with you I…I just don’t care.”
Her eyes are still pained, but they seem to light up here.
“I don’t know what I’m trying to say, here, just that I know this is putting you through hell. You don’t deserve that and neither does Cheryl. God, I feel like such a bitch sometimes. I wasn’t raised to do anything like this. But with you…” She reaches a hand out and touches mine, the one holding the phone. “…with you it all seems worth it to—”
My phone starts buzzing again and I drop it as we both jerk our hands away with quiet gasps. Our eyes fall on the screen, the one showing the Memoji of Cheryl in the background, announcing her call.
“Shit,” I mutter and Millie covers her mouth with both her hands.
I pick up the phone, look at it for a second as though it’s a venomous snake readying to strike, then glance up to Millie. She’s dropping her hands from her face and her eyes are wide and her mouth is opening.
I answer the phone as a bell chimes over the front door, announcing a new patron. It’s an old cowboy, big hat and even bigger dentures on display as he smiles and waves to the waitress as he comes in.
“What the hell is going on?” Cheryl’s voice barks in my ear, and I forget all about the cowboy.
“Cheryl, what are you—”
“No,” she says with authority, and I unconsciously obey. “I know you, Sam. I know you better than you know yourself. Something’s going on and you need to tell me what it is.”
I swallow and my throat clicks. I open my mouth to answer, but the waitress is here with our food and she’s noisily placing it in front of us, and the racket sounds enormous, and I start clearing my throat in hopes of covering the sound.
It doesn’t work.
“What is that sound?” she asks, and I’m thinking fuck-fuck-fuck!
“I, uh, it’s just—”
“Can I get you two anything else?” our waitress asks, and she’s loud and smiling too much and Cheryl hears it.
“Are you at a restaurant? Who are you with?”
“I’m not with anybody,” I lie terribly with a squeak in my voice and Millie is about to freak out.
“Goddammit, can I get a cup of coffee here?” one of the Jersey Boys says. The waitress turns red and Millie dismisses her with a smile. She saunters up the aisle to them and I absurdly look at her ass that might have been something to look at three kids ago.
I really am an asshole.
“I feel like such a fool,” Cheryl squawks in my ear, and I snap back to the moment. “Things have been rocky, but now—”
“Cheryl,” I say curtly and sigh. “Look, you’re freaking out over nothing. I’m just getting breakfast, nothing is going on, I’ll talk to you—”
“Don’t do this to me, Sam!” she screams in my ear and gooseflesh ripples my body as I quickly end the call and turn the phone off, sweeping the dust under the rug.
I’m an asshole and a wimp.
I sigh again and pinch my eyes shut. I can hear the faint grunts of the Jersey Boys talking about something and I hear that name Waylon again. I hear a southern accent asking what someone would recommend on the menu.
“First time here, darlin’!” the words float to me and I open my eyes and see the cowboy ordering something from the waitress. The couple that was arguing before are leaning in close and I can’t hear them, but it doesn’t look pleasant.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Millie says, and I blink a few times and take in her face. She really is pretty, but not abandon your marriage and throw your life away pretty. Only, there are moments where she seems to be just that attractive. Moments that lead to lines being crossed and carnal desires being satisfied.
I’m not a good person.
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Mill,” I say. I want to say so much more, want to get out of this place and just vanish somewhere where Cheryl can’t call and interrupt us ever again and we can do all those things my wife won’t.
Millie smiles weakly and scoops a bite of food. I sip some coffee and it’s hot and scalds my lips. I take another sip. The food is better than the coffee, but that isn’t saying much. The eggs are runny and the sausage is overcooked, but it’s passable. Hash browns are okay. It’ll keep you fueled and going. We eat in silence for a couple of minutes and I think she tries to say something once or twice, but I can’t be sure and she never speaks.
Jersey One gets up from their booth and he’s on his cell phone. His olive face is fat and scrunched and his cheeks are flushed. His eyes are darting around as he walks down the aisle, and I feel uncomfortable suddenly as he comes near us. He isn’t looking at me or Millie; he’s staring beyond us to the restrooms.
“The fuck you talking about?” Jersey One says as he moves past us. “That pain in the ass is supposed to be handled.”
He doesn’t say anything and I’m suddenly mesmerized by the man, still flabbergasted at why he and his friend are here, of all places. Fish out of water doesn’t quite cut it. It’s more like finding a McDonald’s on the moon.
He vanishes into the restrooms and I can’t hear anything else from him.
“You from out of town, friend?” I hear a cheerful and friendly voice and instantly know it’s the cowboy. I glance up the aisle and see he’s talking to Jersey Two, who looks annoyed.
“What’s it to you?” he replies, turning to the cowboy and staring over the bridge of his nose.
The cowboy laughs. “Oh, hell, ain’t nothin’ to me, I’s just asking. ’Round here folks is friendly.”
Jersey Two mumbles something and turns back to his mostly gone meal and starts picking at the remains with his fork.
“Yeah,” he grunts, “well, we ain’t from ’round here.”
He’s mocking the cowboy’s accent but the cowboy doesn’t seem fazed by it at all. He’s still smiling and his teeth are big, white things. He’s not a young man, but now I’m not sure just how old he really is. He seems so nondescript other than his voice and clothes.
“Fuck you, Brandon!” suddenly explodes from the woman at the booth with the guy, and she stands up. He’s reaching for her arm, but she yanks it away from him before he can get a hand on her.
“You’re just the same as you always were!” she spits. “Take it up with my lawyer.”
“You can’t do this, Ang!” he says and starts to stand.
Millie is turning around to see the commotion I’m mesmerized by.
“Hey!” a fat man behind the counter barks at them. He’s wearing a stained apron over a white undershirt and there’s a sheen of sweat on his brow. “Knock it off or take it outside, you hear me?”
Brandon looks like he’s been dipped in red paint. Everyone is staring at him and a hush has fallen over the room, leaving only the crackling sound of bacon and fat sizzling on the griddle.
Ang—is she an Angela or an Angel?—turns from him and storms out the door, the bell chiming loudly as she leaves. Jersey Two is staring up at Brandon, and I can’t make out the meaning of the look on his face. Maybe annoyed, maybe interested. Almost like he’s just waiting to see what this guy might do, if he’s going to make a scene. Maybe he wants there to be a scene.
“Shit, Millie, we should get out of here,” I say, and she nods.
Before we can stand, the restroom door makes a sucking sound and opens as Jersey One steps back into the aisle. He’s still on his phone and the color is drained from his fingers when I glance up at him. He’s right next to me. He isn’t paying any attention to us, but he’s stopped and staring straight down the aisle at Brandon’s back. A bead of sweat trickles down the side of his temple.
“One of Waylon’s guys?” Jersey One says, and I finally think of Waylon Blackshear, the only Waylon I’ve ever heard of. I don’t know him, but I know of him. Owns a bar on this side of town where I normally would never be if not for Millie and my inability to stop cheating on my wife who doesn’t deserve any of this.
I shouldn’t be here.
Waylon is a strange guy. In the news a lot, at odds with police, but never shut down. I don’t know what he does, but most folks don’t want to know. He’s not the kind of guy you talk to when you see him. In fact, you don’t see him at all.
“Take a load off, partner,” the cowboy says to Brandon with a big smile. “Let her cool off, it’ll be alright.”
Millie is nudging me to go, but Jersey One is still blocking our exit from the booth. Brandon is shaking his head and I can see him trembling from here. He’s wound up like a spring and he buries his face in his hands for a moment.
“Sit the fuck down, kid,” Jersey Two says to Brandon with that same annoyed look he’d given the cowboy a few minutes ago. “You don’t wanna make a scene.”
Brandon drops his arms to his sides and clenches his fists a few times. Then he nods and collapses back into his booth and lays his head on his forearms.
“Say, feller,” the cowboy says and Jersey Two’s head swivels around, annoyance projected masterfully, “that’s a nice suit ya got there, can I ask—”
“Listen, hick,” Jersey Two says with unhurried aggravation, “I ain’t here to have a fucking conversation, get me? Why don’t yous talk to your new pal here and leave me the fuck alone.”
He gestures to Brandon who’s still got his face down. Jersey One is still listening to whoever is on the phone and he’s breathing faster now. Another glance up at him and I can see hHis face is red and his brow is furrowed and he’s got the beginnings of a snarl forming over his mouth. I look away quickly and see the cowboy is still unfazed and smiling at Jersey Two. Jersey Two is still glowering at him with an aggravated aura.
I grab my phone to check the time and remember I turned it off. I hold the switch down to turn it on and the Apple symbol appears. Millie leans close.
“We should go,” she whispers, glancing sidelong at Jersey One. “This was a mistake. This was all a mistake.”
My phone comes on and nine new messages start machine-gun vibrating. They’re all from Cheryl. Of course they are.
I ignore the messages calling me a pig and a terrible husband and see it’s almost eight o’clock. I drop the phone as Jersey One says something.
“Listen to me, goddammit, this ain’t our mess. You get me? We was sent down here to this god-forsaken hellhole to strike a deal with that redneck son of a bitch, and he ain’t interested. When he ain’t interested, we create some incentive. He still don’t wanna make a deal, so fuck him. Boss says make it happen one way or another, so that’s what we’re doing. We’ll be on our way in a few minutes and this whole thing will get put to bed.”
He turns and sees me looking and I jerk my head away so fast bones pop. I can feel him staring for too many seconds, and Millie is looking up at him with wide eyes. I turn back slowly and see his eyes zeroed in on me with the phone placed against his chest.
“Mind ya fuckin’ business, you know what’s good for ya,” he says and I gulp and nod and he puts the phone back to his ear and starts to walk up the aisle.
“Come on,” I say and Millie and I slip out of the booth. I dig some money from my pocket and throw it down amongst the mostly untouched food and cooling coffee. I grab the back of her arm and start to move, but Jersey One is blocking us and still not sitting down. Excuse me might be customary, but right now I don’t want to say anything to this guy. I don’t want to be anywhere near him or this place. The Jersey Boys don’t belong here, and I’ve got a really bad feeling and I don’t need any of this in my life.
“We’ll call when it’s done,” Jersey One says and hangs up the phone and slips back into the booth with his companion.
The path is finally clear and we start to move.
“But they’re my babies,” I hear Brandon mumble, and I think he’s crying. I feel for him. He’s me in a week and I feel some shame at that, but he’s not our problem, and we move past when the cowboy turns his head in the direction of the Jersey Boys.
“Big plans, fella?” he says, and Jerseys One and Two turn to him as Millie tugs on my arm.
I turn to her, still trying to leave, and she says, “I forgot my purse.”
I sigh and we move back down the aisle to our abandoned booth and she starts grabbing up her things.
“Fuck off, hillbilly,” I hear, and I think it’s Jersey One.
“Order up!” someone says behind the counter and there’s a clatter of plates.
“You boys ain’t too friendly, are ya?” I hear the cowboy say, and I urge Millie to hurry up.
“Goddammit,” Jersey Two says, and he turns in the booth, throwing an arm over the back of the seat, “would you just fuck off, already? What, yous hard of hearing? Or are you just too stupid to know when to shut your fucking trap?”
“Okay,” Millie says, and I look at her and see she’s got her bag and is ready to go.
Good.
I place a hand at the small of her back and start leading her up the aisle. Brandon is openly crying now and the Jersey Boys and the cowboy are in some absurd standoff, the cowboy’s teeth still showing bright and large behind his friendly smile, and the guys who shouldn’t be here at all are red in the face looking ready to pounce. My phone is vibrating again in my pocket and I can tell by its cadence that it’s a phone call this time. My heart is starting to hammer in my chest. I’m an asshole and I shouldn’t be here, and I shouldn’t be with Millie, and why am I so nervous?
“I can hear ya just fine,” the cowboy is saying as he scoots to the edge of the booth with some effort. “Ain’t stupid, neither.”
“Yeah?” Jersey One says. “If you’re so smart, then mind your business and piss off.”
We’re nearly to the back of Brandon’s booth and he starts pounding his fist on the table.
“Why, why, why?” he’s saying in time with his fist.
“That’s just what I’m doing, fellas,” the still-smiling cowboy says as his hand comes up from under his table. “Waylon says for you boys to get a message to your boss.”
I pull up short when I hear that name again and now it’s starting to make sense what these Jersey Boys are doing here and a thousand pieces start falling into place at once, especially when I see the wide, angry eyes in their fat sockets.
“Millie, get down,” I gasp, and we both fall to the floor.
“He says to tell your boss to fuck off.”
I see the gun in the cowboy’s hand, and Brandon is hammering his fist so hard the plates and silverware on his table are bouncing and dancing, and I think my chest is going to explode.
Jersey One has a hand reaching into his jacket when his throat explodes and blood starts spraying all over Jersey Two. He’s clawing at himself and gurgling, and Jersey Two is in too much shock to do much of anything but blink.
That stops when the side of his head comes apart in a meaty pulp and he slumps over in the booth. Millie is screaming now and the phone in my pocket is still buzzing. Jersey One is slapping at his throat, trying to contain the spurting crimson but failing miserably. The cowboy turns back to him, the small revolver in his hand smoking.
“We got a certain way of doin’ business down here,” he says to the dying, terrified man, “and we don’t need no yankee interference.”
The final shot takes the back of Jersey One’s head off and a lot of it lands on me. All over me. I’m shaking and dripping with another man’s blood and brains. I can hear a faint scream from Millie, but my ears are ringing, and Brandon isn’t slamming his fist anymore. He’s staring at the whole thing in shocked awe.
I turn back and the cowboy is tucking his gun in his waistband as casually as he might put away his wallet. He’s also smiling at me.
“Sorry ’bout that, partner,” he says and winks at me. “Dirty job, sometimes.”
Then he’s leaving, and Millie and I are shaking and the other patrons are getting off the floor and the employees are peeking over the counter and from the window to the kitchen. The bell chimes as the cowboy exits, and all I can think is that any hope I had of keeping Cheryl from knowing what I’m doing is gone. I’m going to be interviewed by the cops and TV vans are going to show up and everyone who’s ever known me is going to wonder what the hell I was doing at this diner and who the hell this woman with me is.
I look at the dripping cavity at the back of Jersey One’s head again and I begin to laugh. I’m an asshole. A cheating asshole. But in this moment I realize that I just got everything I wanted and cut through all the bullshit. I don’t have to explain things to Cheryl. I don’t have to lie and sneak anymore. All of that is over. The cowboy with the big teeth just dashed all the red tape of ending a marriage for me.
I laugh all the harder for a few moments as my bones begin to tremble and Millie’s screams get louder. Brandon is joining her now. I settle again on the open wound of Jersey One’s skull and feel tears sting my eyes and my howling laughter turns to howls of horror. Then I remember what I’m covered in and look down at myself.
My screams are louder than all the others.
Chris Miller lives in Winnsboro, Texas. He is the author of such novels as Dust, The Hard Goodbye, and The Damned Place.
By Tyson Blue
In this story of mystery and suspense from Tyson Blue, a private investigator and his partner are hired to investigate a company suspected of illegal activities. As they uncover a toxic conspiracy, tragedy strikes, leaving one to navigate a perilous situation alone—or so he thinks.
“Cheer up, mi hermano,” Fernandez said, cracking the passenger-side window and blowing a column of smoke outside. “You walk around like you’re under a cloud.”
I looked back at him and turned slightly to face him in the seat.
“What are you talking about? What’s to be happy about?”
“What’s to be unhappy about?” he fired back. “You’re a successful PI, we’re workin’, we’re healthy—”
“Not for long if you keep smokin’ those damn cigars,” I interrupted. He chuckled, sending little puffs of smoke out into the car as he did.
“I have to watch what I eat, what I drink, I can’t smoke cigarettes, I have to spend an hour a day at the gym to make up for sitting around on these stakeouts all the time,” he said. “A man has to have a little vice to make life interesting.”
He had a point. Unlike the world of television and the movies, the life of Steve Edwards, Private Eye, consisted mostly of sitting around slumped in the front seat of a beat-up old car keeping an eye out for philandering husbands or wives, insurance claimants who were doing things they shouldn’t with the injuries they supposedly had, or, in the present case, for industries violating health and safety regulations.
We’d been hired to investigate Global Chemical, a Philly-based concern, who were suspected of transporting toxic waste in substandard containers and dumping it into the marshes outside the city. This was dangerous to the people doing the transporting, and also was dangerous to the wildlife in the wetlands where the stuff was being dumped. A couple of the drivers had gotten concerned when they began feeling sick, and had hired us to spy on the company to get enough evidence to turn the matter over to OSHA for legal action.
Sounds pretty important and exciting, right? What it actually boiled down to was parking close by the side gate to Global’s plant and waiting there all night for someone to move a cargo out and following them to see where they went, and, if it proved to be something illegal, to photograph them while they were doing it. The problem was that they never moved the stuff at the same time or on the same day, so we just had to sit there and hope we got lucky before the client ran out of money. At $100.00 a day plus expenses for two operatives, that might not take long.
We’d already been at it for three days, and so far, all we’d gotten was stiff joints and a lot of bad food and coffee. In the five years since Frankie Fernandez and I had opened Hermano Investigations—named for Frankie’s habit of referring to me as his brother—we had spent a lot of time doing what we were doing right now, and in the process had consumed a lot of bad food and washed it down with a lot of bad coffee. I was beginning to wonder if there was any other kind.
Then, Fernandez sat up. He tossed his cigar out the window, and rolled it farther down, sticking his head out, listening.
“Hear that?” he whispered. I listened and heard the sound of a heavily-laden truck nearby. Lights shone out of the gate of the Global plant, and then a stake-bed truck rolled out the gate and stopped by the gatehouse. A man came out of the building and leaned in the passenger door of the truck.
“This might be it, mi hermano,” Fernandez whispered, opening his door and sliding out. The dome light in our car was turned off, so there was no light to reveal us to the driver and the guard. We could see that the back of the truck was loaded with steel drums and what looked like truck batteries behind them.
“Where are you going?” I asked Fernandez.
“I’m going to see if I can sneak into the back of the truck while they’re talking.”
“What are you gonna do that for?” I asked. “We can just follow them!”
“You follow them,” he answered. “If they spot you, just fall back and I can still see what they do.”
With that, he moved out in front of the car and crept swiftly and silently up to the back of the truck, using the bulk of the vehicle itself as cover from the two men near the front. He reached the back of the truck without incident, and crawled slowly up onto the back, so as not to cause any movement of the truck body and alert the driver that someone was getting on.
That did nothing to keep him from being noticed by the man who emerged from the shadows behind the truck and stopped, pointing a very large gun at my partner. I began to slide out my side of the car, reaching for my own gun.
“Hey, you!” the man shouted at Fernandez. “Hey you guys! We got somebody snoopin’ around back here!” The driver and the man from the gatehouse looked back.
Fernandez turned, bracing himself on one of the drums in the truck, reaching into his jacket for his ID.
“He’s got a gun!” the guy shouted, and simultaneously fired. The sound of the shot was loud in the canyon of the street. I yelled something, I don’t remember what. I got about two more steps, then froze as the cold barrel of a gun pressed against my temple.
“Not another move,” a harsh voice grated in my ear.
I didn’t even blink. I just stared at Frank, who stood frozen for another moment, a moment during which I hoped the shot had just been a warning. Then, he slowly leaned back over the back of the truck, pulling the drum with him.
“Mi hermano,” he gasped, then fell off the truck. the drum fell down on top of the batteries behind it, the steel making contact with the posts. Arcs of electricity began flowing across the surface of the drum, whose top fell off. A viscous green liquid, its surface also coruscating with bright blue electric snakes, flowed over the back of the truck and washed onto Frank’s body in the street below.
“Frankie!” I screamed, starting toward him. I was brought up short as the gun barrel pressed harder into my temple.
“I said not another move, Pal,” the voice grated.
I never found out what was in the drums Global was moving that night, but it was corrosive. As it flowed over Frank’s body, clouds of acrid steam rose off him, arcs of electricity flashing through them. Frankie’s body began to change its shape, folding in on itself as it dissolved in the bath of chemicals which drenched it. In a matter of two or three minutes, body, bones and clothing all dissolved into the thick puddle beneath a small flashing cloud which slowly dissipated. All that was left was a strong acidic smell. For a moment, no one made a sound.
Then the driver looked at the guard and said, “What the fuck was that stuff? What’re you people doing?”
“You’re paid to take it out and dump it, and you don’t need to know what it is to do that,” the guard replied. “And those drums are going to start to leak in about an hour, and you don’t want to see what that stuff’ll do to your truck. So get going and do what you’re paid for. And you,” he said, turning to whoever had the gun on me. “Get that mook over here.”
The gun left my temple and prodded me in the small of my back. I stumbled forward a few steps, not at all anxious to get anywhere near the toxic puddle at the back of the truck. As I came up to the guard, the driver climbed back in the truck and put it in gear. As he rumbled quickly away, the man with the gun came around in front of me. He was a foot or so taller than me, and outweighed me by fifty pounds. He had a Colt pistol in his right hand, still pointed at me.
“So who are you and what’re you doing here?” the guard asked.
“I’m a detective,” I told him. “I was hired to find out if you were moving toxic waste out of here illegally. Looks like you were.”
“Yeah, I guess we were,” the guard said, smirking. “Just you two?”
It was, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“No, there’s three of us in the agency. Our partner knows where we are, so you’re screwed one way or the other.”
“Not if they don’t find you,” the guard shot back. “And judging by what happened to your friend there, that should be pretty easy to arrange.” He pointed at the steaming puddle that had been my partner and grinned. I looked at it for a moment, then looked back at him.
“You better think more about cleaning that up before you have a lot of explaining to do,” I said. The guard looked closer, and his face went pale.
“Holy shit,” he breathed.
Where the body had been, a large hole was forming in the pavement as the chemical spill dissolved the surface. The gravel beneath it was foaming and steaming as well. The guard looked at his pal with the gun.
“We need to water this down quick before it eats through to power lines or something,” he said. “Take him in the back room of the gatehouse and tie him up, then come back out here and help me. We’ll take care of him after.” The gunman poked me forward with the barrel of the gun and prodded me in the direction of the gatehouse door. When we reached it, the man who had shot Frankie opened the door and walked in, crossing the room and passing around the guard’s desk and through a door behind it.
Through the door was a small room with no windows. it was furnished with a wooden chair, in which my captor prodded me to sit. Keeping me loosely covered, he went back out to the guard’s desk, rummaged in a drawer and came back with a roll of duct tape. The guard came in the door behind him.
“Here,” he said, handing the tape roll to the guard. “Tape his hands together and then tape him to the chair.” The other gunman stood in the door and covered me.
I held my hands out to the guard. He passed the tape around them several times, then ripped the end off. next, he taped one ankle to each leg of the chair, then took a few turns around the chair back, securing my body to the chair back. He stood back and admired his handiwork.
“You just sit tight until we get back,” the man with the gun said. “We’ll take care of you after we clean up the mess your friend made.” Chuckling to each other, the three left the room, closing the door behind them.
Alone for the first time since Frank had been shot, I felt a wave of grief wash over me. Hot tears streamed down my face as I remembered how we had met at community college taking criminal justice courses. Between classes, we had grabbed a cup of coffee and began talking about our lives to that point, our hopes and dreams, and over the course of a semester became fast friends.
I don’t remember when he first started calling me “Mi Hermano,” but it was sometime during that first year. And it was true—we did everything together—studying , going to movies, reading, double dating from time to time.
So it seemed inevitable that upon graduation we would get our licenses and open a detective agency together. And that was how it had been ever since—until tonight. Now, it seemed, Frank had done something without me, although I had a sneaking suspicion that I was going to be close behind him if my captors had anything to say about it. I had to get myself back under control again, try to think of some way out of this.
“Why so sad, mi hermano?”
It wasn’t a voice out loud, but I heard it in my head as plainly as if someone had spoken. It was Frank’s voice. I figured I was losing it. Maybe I’d inhaled too many chemical fumes and was hallucinating.
“Frankie?” I whispered. “Where are you? I thought you were dead!”
“Not exactly,” the voice replied.
“What you mean, not exactly? Where are you?”
“Up here,” the voice replied. I looked up, and that’s when I thought I’d really lost it.
Above my head, near the ceiling of the room, there hovered a small cloud. It looked a lot like the chemical mist I’d seen above Frankie’s body as it dissolved in its chemical bath, only without the electricity playing around the outside.
“Frankie?” I whispered. “You’re a—a cloud?”
“Looks like it,” he answered.
“But how?”
“How do I know? I’m a private eye, not a scientist,” Frankie shot back. “But don’t you think we better work on getting you out of that chair?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said.
So I got to work.
The three guys had made one mistake. They had taped my hands together in front of me. As I held my arms out, palms together, I had created a small space between my hands, which gave me some slack in the tape when I held them straight out in front of me. It was pretty short work to slide one hand free, and then quickly unwrap the other.
From there, I turned to the tape around my chest. I had breathed in and held my breath when the tape had been wound around me, and when I let it out, the tape had loosened a little. I began rocking my body back and forth, trying to stretch the tape. I felt around, trying to find the end of the strip, but it was somewhere behind me.
I was still working on this when I heard the outer door open. I heard footsteps crossing the outer office, then the door opened and the guard and one of the gunmen came in. The man with the gun snickered when he saw what I was doing.
“So, you managed to get your hands loose,” he said. “Good! Saved us one chore in getting you loose.”
“You’re not going to get away with this,” I said, although I didn’t know how they weren’t. “People will come looking for us.”
“And they won’t find you,” the guard answered. “That drum your friend spilled took care of him, and we got a whole lot more of it inside. We’ll just dump you in a barrel and fill it up with the same goo, and poof!—No more evidence. They might suspect something, but without a body, where’s the proof?”
“But if they come looking for us, they’re gonna find out what you’ve been doing.”
“They’ll be looking for a stiff, and they’ll be cops or private dicks like you, not scientists,’ the guard explained. “And without someone who knows what they’re looking for, they won’t find out anything. And even if they did, the owners’ve spread enough money around in the right places to get away with a slap on the wrist. “
“Besides,” his partner chimed in, “this is America. Nobody but a few tree-huggers care about this shit. Unless it affects them right now, they don’t care. Now enough talk, let’s get you a nice chemical bath.”
“And maybe,” the guard said, “if you don’t give us a hard time, we’ll kill you before we dump in the chemicals.” He snickered.
“Watch out, mi hermano,” Frankie said in my head.
While the gunman covered me, the guard leaned forward to begin cutting me loose. As his boxcutter sliced through the last of the tape around my chest, there was a flickering from overhead. I thought at first that the light was starting to go, but then I looked up. The cloud was pulsing with light, and as I looked, a small bolt of lightning flashed between the cloud and the barrel of the gun. Another fork shot out and struck the gunman in the center of his chest. He dropped the gun, then fell to the floor, where he twitched for a moment and then lay still.
The guard scarcely had time to react before another bolt danced crazily over his head. His mouth opened in a soundless scream, and tiny arcs of electricity raced over the fillings in his teeth. He dropped to his knees, then slumped to the ground.
The flickering in the cloud gradually receded, until it was once again just a hovering mass over my head.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a few more of those bolts to take out the rest of this tape?” I asked.
“I’m pretty new at this cloud business,” Frankie’s voice said. “I don’t know if I can aim lightning that precisely. I didn’t care if I hurt them, but I don’t want to fry you by mistake.”
I nodded.
“Well, thanks for the save, brother,” I said.
“De nada,” Frankie replied.
“I better get out of this and call the police,” I said. “How are we gonna explain two electrocuted bad guys in here?”
The cloud drifted around the ceiling for a moment, then I heard the voice in my head.
“Look on the guard’s belt.”
I looked. Along with the holster for his gun, there was a second, smaller holster which housed his taser. I hopped the chair over to the guard and plucked it from its holster. Arming it, I bumped the chair back a way and took aim. The barbs shot out and one lodged in each man’s flesh, giving each of them another 50.000-volt jolt that made them twitch for a few seconds.
“There,” I said.
“Don’t both barbs have to be in the same body to give the person a shock?” Frankie asked.
“How do I know?” I said. “I’m a private dick, not an electrician!”
Frankie chuckled. I reached down and got the tape off my feet, then walked over to the desk in the front room and called 911 from the landline on the desk.
“911 Center. What is the nature of your emergency?”
I gave the operator my name and license number, then told her I was reporting a murder. I gave her the details, and she told me to wait there for the officers to arrive. As she spoke, I began to feel dizzy. Some sort of delayed reaction to the night’s events, I don’t know. All I know is that I fainted for the first time in my life.
I came around to someone gently slapping my cheek. A voice said, “Sir? Sir? Can you tell me your name?”
I opened my eyes, and saw a police officer leaning over me. I looked past him to the ceiling, but didn’t see the cloud anywhere.
“Her — herman — o?” I said faintly. The cop’s brows furrowed.
“Herman Hoe?” he asked. “Your name is Herman Hoe?”
The cobwebs dissipated a little. I shook my head.
“No, no, it’s Edwards. My PI card’s around here somewhere. I fumbled around for it as the officer sat me up.
“Don’t worry about that now,” the officer said. “You wanna tell me what happened around here?”
For the next hour or two, I walked him through the events of that night, leaving out any mention of the cloud that was now my partner. I showed them the hole that had been eaten in the street, and explained how the two men had gotten the drop on me, and how they killed my partner and meant to kill me, and how as they were cutting me loose to take me and dump me into the same chemical bath that had done for Frankie, I had gotten my hands free and fought them, getting the guard’s taser in the struggle and taking care of them.
The officers seemed to buy the story, and asked me to follow them to the precinct and give a formal statement. As I got into my car, Frankie’s voice sounded in my head. It made me jump.
“Jesus!” I said. “I was beginning to think I made you up!”
“Nope, I’m here. I just thinned myself out a little. Didn’t think the cops needed to see a little cloud drifting around indoors while you were telling them what happened.”
“You might have a point,” I said. “So, what do we do from here? I mean, are you gonna be a cloud forever, or will you just drift away somewhere, or what?”
“I don’t know, mi hermano,” he said. “But for the time being, here I am.”
“You know,” I said as I put the car in gear and pulled in behind the police car, “We could use this in our job. You could spy on people without spy gadgets, just drift around in their rooms, get into locked rooms by slithering through keyholes and under doors, and —“
“And save your ass with a well-placed lightning bolt or two,” Frankie added smugly.
“That too,” I admitted. “But I am gonna miss having you around to talk to.”
“I’ll be right here, mi hermano,” he said. “The little cloud you walk around under all the time? That’s me.” “This could be the start of a beautiful friendship,” I said, then smiled. “Mi hermano.”
By Wesley Critchfield
Escape was one of radio's leading anthology series of high-adventure dramas, airing on CBS from July 7, 1947, to September 25, 1954.
Tired of the everyday routine?
Ever dream of a life of… Romantic Adventure?
Wanna get away from it all?
WE OFFER YOU… ESCAPE!!!
Designed to free you from the four wall of Today, for a half hour of high adventure, Escape was very similar to Suspense, only this show was primarily comprised of Classic Adventure stories, from “The Heart of Darkness” to “Leiningen vs. the Ants” to “Three Skeleton Key” this classic radio program was the weekly home of names like “Joseph Conrad,” “Rudyard Kipling,” and “Richard Connell.”
From 1947 to 1954 Escape brought classic fiction into the homes of America, over the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) the same network that brought Suspense over the radio, in fact two of the men known as “The Man In Black” were frequent contributors to Escape, usually in the same function as Host, (Paul Frees and William Conrad) with the strains of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain always in the background on the introduction. but unlike Suspense this show rarely had big stars to push it along (unless you count the writers of the original stories as stars) while you might find an occasional name considered famous today as part of the cast, they were mostly considered B or C level stars at best. Vincent Price, Jack Webb of Dragnet Fame, Frank Lovejoy, and Bill Johnstone (known for playing The Shadow after Orson Welles left the program) were perhaps some of the most famous names to ever appear on the show, with Paul Frees and Bill Conrad very often taking the lead.
And while the voices may have felt a bit familiar at times, this did not in any way detract from the hypnotic nature of the show, if anything it felt more like a cast of old friends getting together each week to tell you one of their favorite stories.
Tales of Sinbad the Sailor, Edgar Allan Poe, M.R. James, Kipling, H. G. Wells , Ray Bradbury, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Daphne du Maurier, Alexander Dumas, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Antony Ellis, Carl Stephenson and more would all have their work adapted for the show. It was truly an education in classic (or soon to be classic) adventure literature.
While many of the episodes would take place in the ends of the earth or the darkest jungles of Africa and South America, some took place in average places like New Orleans or the coast of England, but the show would occasionally venture into the realms of Science Fiction or “Future Fiction” taking place either in Space or on a future dystopian Earth, unlike Suspense which was almost taking place either in the present or the very recent past, and always on planet Earth. Perhaps the most notable of the “Scientifiction” (as the genre was called at the time) episodes is “The Earth Abides” by George R. Stewart, which has the distinction of being the only two-part story ever to air on the show. (It’s actually quite good and is more than worth the hour it takes to listen.)
If Escape could be said to have a “Most Famous Story” akin to “Sorry, Wrong Number” it is probably “Three Skeleton Key” about three men who are trapped in an Island Lighthouse when as boat containing hundreds of starving giant rats, the size of a small dog crashes on the shore, and the rats smell out the only source of food, Gulp the men.
This story was highly requested and would be performed several times over the life of the show, most often by Vincent Price who would also perform the story on Suspense. But as of yet the story (which by the way was discovered in an issue of Esquire Magazine) has yet to receive a much deserved feature length Presentation or even an appearance on other Anthology TV shows such as the Twilight Zone or Amazing Stories.
In 1950 Escape attempted to make the jump to television, but sadly did not last more than three months on the air. Little of that TV adaptation is known to survive, and the biggest guest star appears to have been Lee Marvin. Considering its adventurous nature, and the vastly different locales the show would require, it’s unlikely that Escape could have been properly adapted to Television in the 1950’s as the medium was just coming into prominence and would have required a massive budget for sets and effects to be done properly every week. Only now (in 2023) with the advent of digital technology and LED screen filming such as has been used in The Mandalorian might filming such as show be truly cost effective.
In September 1954 the show breathed its last with “The Heart of Kali” and the program was no more. But it has left behind a legacy of fine adaptations and introductions to classic tales.
On a personal note, in about 1998 I discovered an anthology of classic radio programs featuring the best of some lesser known shows, from Escape, to X-Minus One. On the tape for Escape (yes it was an audio cassette, if you don’t know what that was google it kiddies, or dig through your parents sock drawer) (which I still have, by the way) where two episodes, “Three Skeleton Key,” and “Leiningen Versus the Ants”. I would listen to this cassette over and over, and virtually had both stories memorized verbatim. In 2002 I was in High School and our Literature teacher assigned us to read “Leiningen Versus the Ants.”
After glancing through the story and seeing that the radio play was as close to verbatim as one could imagine. I closed the book and never looked at the story again.
During a sort of “Pop Quiz Game” in which the teacher would go over the previous week’s short stories by having each row of seats constitute a team, the teacher asked “In ‘Leiningen Versus the Ants’ what is Leiningen’s philosophy of Life?”
When no one else responded, I put up my hand and replied, “The Human Brain has only to become fully aware of its powers to conquer even the elements.”
“Correct!” Replied the teacher, “And 5 bonus points for the exact quote!”
Later he told me, “I have been teaching this story for almost 20 years, and no one has ever come back with the exact quote to that question before.”
Escape is not only a great show, it’s an education.
As with most anthology shows the quality differs from episode to episode, and not every story ends happily, but on the whole the series is wonderful and is a definite 8 out of 10, with certain episodes hitting the 10+ mark.
(To be read in the sonorous Orson Welles-like tones:)
“You are trapped in a horrible drudgery,
A 9-to-5 existence that wants to pull you down into a mire of despair.
Nearby sits a computer with an open browser window, and only by typing in the name of a radio show from days gone by can you hope to survive. The word you must type into Youtube is “Escape”!!
What was the first thing you remember reading?
The first thing I really went crazy for were a handful of my older brother’s comics. I was four or five and I’d read a slew of other, more age-appropriate stuff by then, but those comics are the thing that’ve stuck in my mind for forty-plus years as the foundation for my love of literature. The earliest one I can remember reading was an old Detective Comics issue from 1978, issue 458 entitled, “The Real Batman Dies Next!” I still have it, minus the cover. It currently resides in my eldest son’s room.
What writers/books have been most influential to you?
Richard Mattheson—both his short stories and his Twilight Zone scripts were pivotal for me. With just a handful of words, he could terrify, delight, or mesmerize. His stuff always ended with those killer twists that left your jaw hanging and your head itching. The Tales from the Crypt comics were also a huge influence. Grizzly horror, morality plays and wicked twists rolled into ten pages or less? Yeah, I’ll have some of that.
What book or movie did you enjoy that not many people would think you’d like?
One of my biggest guilty pleasure films is Same Time Next Year. It’s this romance drama from the seventies starring Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn. They have this affair where they meet one weekend a year at this hotel for nearly two decades. It’s funny, tragic and beautiful and—surprisingly enough—there’s not an axe murderer or zombie apocalypse anywhere to be found.
What type of writing do you enjoy more, Fiction or Non-Fiction?
Fiction, for sure. I was a newspaper reporter for five years, and enjoyed penning human interest stories, but that’s where the excitement ended. Recounting zoning code amendments, school board squabbles and the intricacies of biosolids land application is not my idea of fun.
Do you think your environment, where you live, has an effect on type of art you create?
Perhaps not so much geographically, but demographically, sure. Most of my short stories are about small-town relationships gone wrong (couples, friends, business partners, etc.). That’s definitely more of what I’m accustomed to—these seemingly white bread hamlets that run rampant with the rumors and secrets. My longer works spread out across more adventurous locales, populated by internationally-networked heroes and villains.
Is it easier for you to create if given an assignment or does it get in the way of your creativity?
When I first got into writing, it was easy to formulate ideas. Nowadays, with my ever-growing list of responsibilities, my creativity seems to extend little beyond what to pack in my kid’s lunchboxes. Thus, I currently welcome any and all story starters.
What are your methods creating a story or novel?
I wish I could say I had a formula, but I really don’t. I love horror tropes—vampires, werewolves, ghosts—and I like trying to put some alternative spin on them. But I try to use them less as the lead, and more so as a vehicle to bring change or resolution (whether good or bad) to my protagonists. Sometimes I have a fairly solid plot before I begin, sometimes an opening line hits me when I’m washing dishes and I craft the whole story around that intro. A lot of times in mid-story, I’ll type a line that flies in the face of the thousand words that came before. If it’s too good to toss, I’ll have to adapt the remainder of the story around it. It helps stretch me, I hope. On a side note, I tend to write a lot about cults. It’s probably good that I prefer not to go out much.
What have you written that you are most proud of?
My novella, The Sons of Solomon and the Beast-Men of Scepter. It’s a throwback to old pulp adventure novels. It’s the start of a series, chock full of two-fisted pulp action, magic, monsters, superpowers and espionage. Plus, Nazis get punched in the face, which is always fun. I also was really happy with the reception for my short story, “Bogged Down.” It was adapted for audio and was produced by the extremely talented Jeff Clement, now of the No Sleep Podcast. It currently has 61,000 views on YouTube. Oh, and the Wormwood Prophets Society, which I was graciously asked to help create with my buddy Mark Slade. It really is a unique collaboration with some amazing authors and one crazy-talented artist. Each writer assumes the identity of one of the Wormwood Prophets, weaving tales and dropping clues about their clandestine crusade to further the gospel of an otherworldly entity hellbent on consuming our reality. It’s something special.
What was the oddest thing you’ve ever been asked to do in your writing career?
Nothing too weird, but I will say, once people found out I’d been published, they asked me to help them write more practical things. Thus, I’ve been asked to contribute articles for newsletters, job ads for employers and flyers for fundraisers. And I get asked to proofread a lot. Once, back in my newspaper days, a local citizen wanted me to investigate why “so many” cars in my beat county were driving around with rusted hoods. Hard-hitting investigative journalism at its best.
What projects are you working on now?
Mark Slade just asked me once again to contribute to a wickedly clever anthology he’s putting together. He’s kept my writing career on life support these last few years. Every time I think I’ve go no more ideas, Mark plants just enough of a seed to get the gears turning again. I never thought my muse would end up being a dude, but considering his love of old TV, classic rock and all things horror, who am I to argue with the universe?
Step into the fascinating world of monsters and mystery with the hosts of The MonsterTalk Podcast, a trailblazing show that has been at the forefront of promoting science and critical thinking since 2009. Blake Smith, the podcast's host and producer, is not just a computer nerd and occasional adventurer but also an accomplished writer whose work has been featured in prestigious publications like Fortean Times and Skeptic Magazine. Joining him is Dr. Karen Stollznow, a prolific author, researcher, and Ph.D. linguist, whose work spans Scientific American Mind, Psychology Today, and Fortean Times. Together, they navigate the realms of skepticism and curiosity, exploring mysterious experiences reported by people while maintaining a keen eye on scientific inquiry.
Where are you from? What is your background?
KS: I’m an Australian-American from Sydney originally. I’ve lived in the Bay Area, California, and I’m currently located in Denver, Colorado. I’m a linguist, researcher, podcaster, and author with a passion for language, history, culture, and the paranormal. I’ve been fascinated by the paranormal since I was 5 years old!
BS: I’m from north Georgia but I traveled a lot for business and when I was in the Navy so I’ve been to most of the US, spent some time in Spain, and lived a couple years in Bahrain. I’m a lifelong learner with particular interest in topics of computer history, innovation, and “weird shit.” I care deeply about why people experience strangeness and always want to learn more. I guess I’m just maniacally curious about almost everything and feel lucky to have been born in an age where we have access to more answers and information than at any time in human history.
What inspired you to do a podcast on Paranormal subjects?
KS: Blake was the inspired one! He founded the show in 2009 and was kind enough to invite me to join him. We first met at Dragon Con back in 2008 and immediately bonded over our love of classic ghost tales, like Borley Rectory, Lord Dufferin’s ghost, and Gef the Talking Mongoose.
BS: All that’s true. My “paying career” is as an IT professional, and I had all the tech skills to do a podcast and had the good fortune of meeting someone who also never got tired of talking about this stuff. Doing it as a podcast just seemed like a natural step. But at the heart of it, Karen and I both were haunted as kids by a variety of monster fears. “Things that scared the crap out of us as kids,” is how we often term it. Our show very frequently helps alleviate people’s fears and absolutely the greatest reward I’ve gotten from this work has been the heartfelt letters of people for whom we’ve removed some major fear or explained some haunting mystery.
Do you think of yourself as a believer or a skeptic?
KS: I think of myself as a skeptic, but not one of those cynical, closed-minded types. I identify as a critical thinker with an open-mind who approaches the paranormal with a love of folklore, urban legends, and stories.
BS: I think of myself as a “pro-reality activist.” I think there’s a real material world out there but that humans have all this culture and belief structure in addition to faulty perception gear so I like to try—when possible—to figure out if something natural is behind the paranormal, or if there are real creatures behind cryptid sightings. We are so easy to fool that my decades of looking into this stuff not only eroded my belief in many supernatural topics, but it led me to be far more concerned about our legal system which is so heavily dependent on centuries—old mistakes about how people perceive the world. I’m far less frightened of monsters than of people misunderstanding their perceptions.
Have you had a guest that was belligerent about their beliefs? Or feedback that creeped you out?
KS: We’re choosy about our guests so most are in line with our beliefs and approach. However, we’ve occasionally had a guest who expressed some surprising beliefs, or who exhibited racism or sexism. That’s what the “edit” button is for!
BS: We typically have very good conversations with our guests prior to them being recorded so that they know what to expect, but we’ve had a couple of interviews where things got a little tight. If they’d gotten really nasty, I wouldn’t have aired it but we don’t have any darkives. Is that a word? If it isn’t, it does seem to effectively combine archives with the “shelved content” concept. We’ve had some guests that we knew ahead of time held beliefs we didn’t—but we don’t have an issue talking with folks who believe all sorts of weird stuff so long as we can politely discuss possible explanations besides the paranormal ones. Civility is the glue that allows many beliefs to share a table in peace. Or a microphone.
What performer or artist/writer inspires you the most?
KS: I’m a writer, but I’m mostly inspired by artists in other artistic fields. I grew up on the comedy of Monty Python and the music of The Beatles and other ‘60s and ‘70s rock. I watched Get Back as soon as it was released and was deeply inspired by the documentary. I also love art, especially that of the surrealists like Salvador Dali and the Australian artist James Gleeson. I like to think my writing is in the ‘spirit’ of these artists.
BS: My tastes are insanely eclectic but I’ve a huge passion for horror films, especially Hammer Horror and 1970s Italian horror. I like all sorts of reading and am inspired by science communicators like Carl Sagan, monologists like Spalding Gray and David Sedaris, and investigators like Joe Nickell. I love the stuff that people create and am fond of espousing humanist optimism. I like to say, “I don’t believe in much… but I believe in you.” And that’s sincere.
What advice would you give to someone who wanted to start a podcast?
KS: Don’t! (That’s a joke. Perhaps.) There are so many podcasts out there already and many don’t last terribly long. It’s a lot of hard work with little glory. If you’re going to start a podcast yourself, find a topic you’re truly passionate about and can stick to, through thick and thin, and then stick with it. But do it for love, not money.
BS: Making a highly successful podcast is both subjective and highly unlikely. But at the end of the day, a podcast is a medium for sharing your voice. If you have something to say, the vastness of the podcasting ecosystem means that somebody out there will be interested in your work. The original premise (and promise) of podcasting was that through the magic of “microcasting” you could find your audience or they would find you. That was definitely true before SERIAL came along and made a much larger audience aware of the medium. Now people in their basement are competing with NPR and mega-stars. Hardly fair – but, guess what!? Microcasting still works. If you have a passion and something to say about it, the barrier to entry in the podcasting world is insanely low. Finally, I’d advise trying to record 3 or 4 episodes before bothering to try and do all the tech work of uploading it. PROVE you can stick to it otherwise you do all that work setting up the show and sites and have no content to show for it. Better to record first and get over all the hiccups and challenges.
What long term goals do you have?
KS: We’ve been around for over a decade but I’d like to continue to grow the show and reach as many listeners as possible. We’re steadily building our YouTube channel right now with several playlists like “Debased on a True Story” in which we look at the fact and (mostly) fiction behind classic paranormal movies, like The Exorcist and The Entity. I’ve done a lot of TV work for other shows, so it’d be nice to get our own TV show someday. At any rate, I’m happy just to keep on truckin’ with the podcast!
BS: A TV show would be fun. I’d definitely like to get out a “MonsterTalk Book” of some sort about the stuff we’ve learned while doing the show. We say the show is a springboard to talk about science using monsters as the theme. But the truth is many of episodes have been almost like little notes we wish we could send back to ourselves when we were kids and scared, under the cover, worrying about that noise under the bed. My 14 year old self would actually LOVE the work we do. My 19 year old self would be screaming that I’ve let my body go so badly – but I’m going to ignore him and keep making content for the 14 year old me.
What do you think the popular culture will be like in ten years?
KS: In terms of the paranormal, everything is cyclic, from the interest in ghost hunting to UFOs and aliens to Bigfoot and other cryptids. The interest in these areas waxes and wanes over the years, but never goes away. I predict more of the same cycling over the coming decade.
BS: The future will not just be dumber than you imagine, it will be dumber than you can imagine.
What other things would you like to explore as a podcast?
KS: I’m content with the topics we explore right now. We have a broad definition of monsters, including not only mythical beasts, legendary creatures and cryptids, but monstrous people like Hitler and Rasputin, and also monstrous things like aging and disease. From famous ghost stories and conspiracy theories to deja vu, we have a long bucket list of topics that we’re steadily working through.
BS: After doing shows for more than a decade, the weird urge I have now is to go back and revisit old topics with new guests and see what’s changed. Science moves things along. When we started there was no such thing – so far as I know – as eDNA research. Now biologists can sample a watering hole and get vast amounts of data about the various life in that area. When you’re looking for “monsters” – that’s a game changer. What other changes has progress wrought? Worth having a look, I think.
What projects are you working on now?
KS: I’ve just released a book about the “monster” of infertility; it’s called Missed Conceptions: How we make sense of infertility. I’m currently writing a book about profanity. I have published a bunch of nonfiction and fiction books, including short stories. Please check them out at karenstollznow.com and, of course, check out Monster Talk!
BS: I formed a company called Monster House, LLC to manage my media projects and in addition to MonsterTalk I also produce a show called In reSearch Of… wherein archaeologist Dr. Jeb Card and I watch the old 1970s show In Search Of… and add in stuff the producers left out. Sometimes that’s just new findings, like with their episodes on Carlos the assassin and Joseph Mengele. Sometimes it’s more about injecting more science and history into paranormal topics. Monster House is also about to release a book by Joe Nickell as our first non-podcast production. I’m hoping to have that completed very soon and it’s almost finished with final production work. And I also do a very tiny and humble show that deserves more attention from me. It’s called The Horror Podcast and I’m working on the next episode. I swear.
Parts 1-4
By Rex Mundy
In this adventure thriller from Rex Mundy, two renegade Englishmen encounter trouble on an expedition into the jungle. Trigger happy colonial troops search for a missing officer; eccentric explorers quest for fabulous monsters; cannibal tribes and killer beasts lurk in the bush. But someone else is out there, stalking anyone who dares trespass in his jungle domain; the one the natives call the Forest God.
I was tired, footsore, and hungry. The jungle trail was dark, oppressive, and muddy underfoot; the shrieking of monkeys had grown monotonous, and flies plagued both of us. Branches and leaves dripped from the daily rains, from which we had sheltered ineffectually under a mahogany tree. We had not seen a black face in six days, and it was weeks since we had met any white men.
‘How long did they say it would take to reach the next village?’ I asked again.
‘Five days’ march,’ said Ned Storey, walking ahead of me. ‘And after that it won’t be long until we reach the river that leads to the coast. There are white people there, they said.’
‘I remember,’ I said. ‘Damn shame the blacks couldn’t tell us what nationality they were. I hope they’re not French.’
‘For all we know they could be British,’ Storey said. ‘We have no certainty of where we are in relation to the other colonies. The natives are as imprecise in their geography as in their concept of time.’
Ruefully I inspected my empty rucksack. It had seemed a weighty thing when we left the last village after successfully trading one of our rifles for food and machetes. That had been a gamble, a suicidal gamble I thought, although “dash” of that kind is what paves one’s way in Africa. And now we had no food left, while Storey, who carried the remaining rifle, was running low on ammunition. Although the countryside teemed with game, hunting was risky. If we used up our remaining cartridges, we would have no way to defend ourselves if attacked. Not for the first time I regretted plunging south into the jungle.
‘We should have given ourselves up to the authorities,’ I muttered to myself. A death sentence awaited us if we were caught. But even the firing squad would be better than a long, lingering death in the depths of the bush.
‘We must have taken the wrong trail,’ I added out loud. ‘The wrong turning.’
Storey shook his head. ‘We have been following the same trail ever since we left their village,’ he said. ‘There have been no other turn offs. This is the right way, unless the blacks were lying to us, and why would they, unless they wanted to rob us of what little we have left. And they would have attacked by now if that was the case.’
‘Bit vague, isn’t it, old man?’ I said after we had tramped on in silence a while. ‘Five days’ march? How far is that? Surely it depends.’
‘Exactly,’ said Storey. ‘They may travel faster than we. It may depend on the season. It may depend…’
He broke off as we rounded a turn in the trail. The sun was slanting through the trees, as they thinned out into fields and vegetable plots. In the middle of the fields, where maize, manioc and cassava grew, stood a crude palisade of roughhewn, unshaped wood, surrounding beehive huts with thatched, cone-like roofs. In the middle of the village stood a banyan tree, from which hung dark objects, indistinguishable from this distance.
The smell of smoke tickled my nostrils. I imagined cooking fires, roasting meat, native women pounding maize, men drinking pots of sour native beer. Although hardly the cuisine I had grown accustomed to in London, even in Seven Dials, I found myself salivating.
‘Come on,’ I said urgently.
‘No, wait,’ Storey jerked, placing a hand on my arm. Then he unslung his rifle, and pumped the bolt.
‘Why so cautious?’ I said. ‘The Ugabu are said to be friendly people.’
‘Can’t you see?’ Storey asked. ‘The fields are empty. At this time of day, the women would be toiling away, their children with them, while the men would be out hunting. But the fields are empty. Why?’
‘Maybe everyone’s in the village,’ I suggested. ‘Perhaps there’s a public meeting.’
Storey nodded pensively. ‘Come on, we’ll get closer. Keep your eyes and ears open. This could be dangerous.’
As we drew closer to the village, I thought I caught the sound of a man speaking; orating, in fact. I relaxed. I had been right. Some kind of public meeting, and that was a chief addressing the tribe. Reaching the gate, we looked curiously up the dusty street. The village square lay ahead of us, shaded by the limbs of the banyan tree. But now I saw what hung from them.
Black bodies, swinging from nooses, surrounded by clouds of flies. And the smell of smoke that I had taken for cooking fires came from the burning thatch of the big hut.
Men, women and children crouched in the middle of the square, hands on their heads. Standing over them were other negroes, these armed with rifles, one carrying a whip. As we watched, one man broke away from the crowd and ran down the street in our direction. But ere he could get far, there was a sharp report and a puff of gun smoke. He flung up his hands, then fell face down in the dirt.
‘A tribal raid!’ I said. ‘Maybe these are slavers. We had better leave. This isn’t our fight.’
Storey looked regretfully at his gun. ‘I would dearly like to intervene,’ he said. ‘But two of us with one rifle between us and barely any ammunition…’
‘Exactly,’ I said gratefully. ‘We had best get back into the bush, work our way round the village and carry on walking to the river.’
We turned. Standing in the gate, training rifles upon us, were five negroes in native costume, their almost naked black hides glossy in the afternoon sun.
‘Hände hoch!’ one barked.
My German is little better than my French, but I could understand that much, although it was strange to hear such a language in Darkest Africa. I raised my hands. The leader gestured for Storey to drop his rifle, and my companion complied with a scowl. A native ran forwards and seized it.
‘Hände hoch!’ repeated the negro, and Storey obeyed.
As they marched us up the dusty street, I said out of the corner of my mouth, ‘Dashed peculiar to hear German from these chaps.’
‘We must have entered German West Africa,’ Storey surmised. ‘And these aren’t slavers, they’re native troops…’
He broke off as we entered the square. In the shadow of the banyan tree and its grisly fruit, the captives cowered before the rifles of the soldiers. Standing over them, haranguing them, was a white man in a spiked helmet, wearing the khaki uniform of a German officer. To his side stood another white man, in NCO’s uniform, holding a rifle that had been recently fired. The officer broke off and stared at us as we were marched into the square.
He addressed us in German. I caught something to the effect that he had not expected to see white men this deep in the bush. ‘Sprechen sie Englisch?’ I asked, although I knew full well that Storey spoke German like it was his mother tongue.
‘Englischer?’ The officer wore a little imperial on his chin and a cheroot dangled from his mouth. ‘What are Englishers doing here?’
‘Herr Leutnant,’ said the NCO significantly, lowering his rifle. ‘Remember the expedition.’
‘But of course!’ said the officer urbanely. ‘You gentlemen are from the Venables-Playfair Expedition, nein?’
‘Indeed, leutnant,’ said Storey glibly. ‘We lost our way.’ He glanced at the banyan. ‘We thought we had stumbled upon a slave raid.’
‘A punitive exercise, nothing more,’ said the officer dismissively. He introduced himself as Leutnant Weismann, and his NCO as Feldwebel Hackenschmidt. There was a sheen of sweat on his handsome, youthful, Junker brow. ‘The Reich requests villages to set aside a third of their lands to produce a cash crop. It is the only way they will raise themselves above the level of beasts! Subsistence farming is hardly the way of progress! But they are obstinate.’
A cash crop would also make it easier for the Reich to tax them, it seemed to me, but I kept this thought to myself. The leutnant pointed at one of the corpses that hung from the tree, a grossly fat man who still wore a colourful cutch cap. ‘That was their chief,’ he said, with all the pride of a big game hunter. ‘He said that their ways had been good enough for their ancestors, and although I spoke to him about Progress, he was not dissuaded. So I had my boys hang him, and his cronies too, when they complained.’ He glanced at the abject villagers. Some of the women were sobbing, others sat hollow eyed. ‘The next chief they elect will think differently.’
‘So you are on patrol?’ asked Storey.
‘Nein,’ said Weismann, ‘this is merely a side issue. We are chiefly investigating the disappearance upcountry of one of my superior officers, Hauptmann von Schaumberg, who was sent on a mission into the interior. He has not reported back…’
‘Sir!’ barked Hackenschmidt, a burly Thuringian two decades older than the Prussian. ‘You should not speak so freely with these Englisher pigs.’ He was red faced and jolly looking. I could picture him in some spa town, drinking lager beer proffered by buxom, dirndl-wearing frauleins while guzzling bratwurst and sauerkraut.
‘Nonsense, Feldwebel,’ said Weismann. ‘Germany is not at war with the British Empire. The Venables-Playfair Expedition was given permission to proceed at the highest level.’ He clicked his heels. ‘Which of you is Herr Professor Venables?’
After the briefest of pauses Storey said, ‘Why, I am.’
‘Then this,’ Weismann said, eyeing me doubtfully, ‘must be Herr Colonel Playfair. Men must be promoted to the rank of colonel at a surprisingly young age in your British Army.’
There was an uneasy silence. ‘Your papers, please, Herr Professor, Herr Colonel,’ Hackenschmidt said nastily.
Storey spread his hands out. ‘I can only offer my apologies, Herr Feldwebel,’ he said, lying as only a former public school boy can, ‘we lost our papers when we lost our way. Much of our baggage went missing after we were attacked by hostile natives…’
‘I don’t believe these are the explorers, sir,’ said Hackenschmidt, turning to his leutnant. ‘They have no proof of who they are, and besides, the Reverend Mother told us they had gone upriver in a paddle steamer. Where is their boat? Where is the pilot? Their bearers? I think they are spies.’
‘It looks suspicious, I admit,’ said Weismann. ‘I must apologise, Englishers, but for the moment, until we have proof that you are who you say you are, you will remain our prisoners.
‘Let us hope that this disagreeable episode has taught these primitives a lesson. We have certainly spent overlong here. It is half a day’s march to the river, and the sun will soon be setting. Time we were moving.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Bring the prisoners!’
With Weismann at the front, Hackenschmidt in the rear, Storey and I marched in the middle of the column as the Germans and their native troops moved out. The native soldiers had modern rifles, Mausers, I believe, and two men staggered under the weight of a Maxim machine gun. Some wore native dress, others had khaki uniforms and wide-awake hats that reminded Storey of his time in South Africa.
There had been a massacre here. As we left, I saw more corpses, in the street or in ditches of the fields. We must have been out of earshot at the time; I had heard no firing as we made our way up the jungle trail. And now we were prisoners, suspected of espionage.
I hoped that the Venables-Playfair Expedition, whatever that might be, was indeed lost, and that our imposture would never be revealed. But if Weismann was travelling upcountry, it would scotch our chances of getting to the coast and finding a way out of this colony. Rootless renegades as we were, Storey and I had no specific destination in sight, and survival was our only priority. As prisoners of belligerent German soldiers, our chances would be low.
It soon grew dark. After a quarter of an hour of blundering along by torchlight, Weismann called a halt, and some of the soldiers pitched tents and lit a fire, while others erected a thorn boma. Storey and I were kept under guard outside the main tent. Weismann stood for a while talking to Unteroffizier Mosoni, a tall, bearded native soldier in khaki, with a whip in his belt. The leutnant came up to us, his hand on the butt of his Luger.
‘Where the devil is Hackenschmidt?’ he demanded. ‘Have you seen him, Englishers?’
‘The Feldwebel was at the back of the column,’ Storey said, looking up from where we both squatted. ‘I have seen nothing of him since we left the village.’
‘Neither have I,’ I said. ‘We’ve been in no position to keep an eye out for him. Have you not asked the blacks?’
‘No one has seen him.’ Weismann looked anxiously out into the dark forest. ‘Where in heaven’s name is he?’
Something leapt from tree to tree high above us. It could have been a monkey, but it seemed too large. Some kind of great ape, I surmised. In the darkness, it was invisible.
I heard a chorus of shouts. ‘Herr Leutnant, Herr Leutnant!’
Mosoni rushed back into the relight, clutching his rifle. ‘Feldwebel Hackenschmidt, sah! Him seen!’
‘What a relief!’ the leutnant exclaimed. ‘Where is the devil?’
But Mosoni was shaking with fright. With his free hand, he patted at the crucifix he wore. ‘Him stand there, sah… in trees… Like ghost! The boys, they afraid.’
‘Superstitious primitives,’ Weismann sneered. ‘How many times must I tell you, there is no such thing as ghosts!’
Mosoni nodded his head jerkily. ‘Yes, Herr Leutnant,’ he said. I noticed that his teeth were filed to points. ‘Me Christian, sah. Me not believe in ghosts! But…’
‘Out of my way,’ said the leutnant, pushing past.
I followed him with my eyes, but out of the small circle of firelight he was soon no more than a dark form. ‘What did you see, Unteroffizier?’ asked Storey.
Filed teeth chattering, the negro turned to him. ‘The Feldwebel,’ he said. ‘We all see him! Him stand between two trees, him head drooping as if neck broken. Me speak to him but him not talk back.’
‘What do you reckon happened to the poor fellow?’ I asked Storey. ‘Did natives from the village attack him?’
Storey shook his head. ‘They would have killed him outright, and more besides. It sounds as if he has suffered some kind of traumatic experience. If these fools would stop holding guns on us…’
Weismann swept back into the relight, a disgusted expression on his face. He struck Mosoni. ‘What are these lies, Unteroffizier?’ he demanded. ‘There was no one there! If this is some kind of joke…’
‘No joke, Herr Leutnant!’ Mosoni protested, clutching at his cheek. ‘Me see him plain as me see you, sah! But maybe him ghost…’
Weismann was about to retort when several native soldiers charged up from the other side of the boma, yelling and pointing. The leutnant shouted them down. ‘You are soldiers of the German Empire!’ he cried. ‘Soldiers of the Kaiser! You will shew discipline, not run about screaming like little girls afraid of the dark!’
‘Herr Leutnant!’ wailed one soldier. ‘We see Feldwebel Hackenschmidt!’
‘Donnerwetter!’ Weismann cried. ‘How can he be over there if he was over here only seconds ago? Are you playing games with me?’
‘Ghosts, Herr Leutnant!’ Mosoni cried. ‘Ghosts!’ He clutched at his crucifix and muttered a heartfelt prayer.
Weismann crossed over to us. ‘I am setting you free,’ he said. ‘These blacks are out of control, unmanned by superstitious fears. Stand up, both of you, and take rifles. We’ll get to the bottom of this if it kills us.’
He seized a burning branch from the fire and led us across the boma. Native soldiers cowered by their tents, wailing. Outside the boma were two trees, and a figure in khaki stood between them, its back to us. As we approached, it whirled round in a strange, unnatural way reminiscent of a puppet.
It was Feldwebel Hackenschmidt, large as life and twice as nasty. His head rolled on his shoulders, and he did not look up at us. But it was him, clad in the uniform he had worn when last I had seen him.
‘Hackenschmidt!’ Weismann rapped. ‘What the devil are you doing? What happened to you?’
But Hackenschmidt made no reply. Slowly, in eerie silence, he turned until his back was to us. There was something altogether ghastly about the way he moved, as if he was floating rather than standing on his feet. Weismann strode forward, undeterred, to lay hands on the sullen Feldwebel. Then, with the strangest of movements, difficult to describe, Hackenschmidt leapt jerkily upwards, vanishing into the darkness of the forest canopy. I heard a crashing sound from up above.
‘Gad!’ I cried. ‘What was that?’
‘Tree leaper!’ Mosoni was shaking from head to toe. ‘They speak of them, the tribes. Dead men come back, leap through trees and prey upon living.’
Even as he spoke, a chorus of wild, wailing cries burst out from the boma. Weismann led us back inside.
The blacks were running around in terror. Hackenschmidt stood limply—in the middle of the fire itself! Flames charred his grey uniform, rose up to crisp his hair. His head still lolled insensibly on his shoulders.
‘Tree leaper!’ Mosoni shouted, and lifted his Mauser to fire. Before Weismann could seize the barrel and force it down, Hackenschmidt’s flaming form rose, up above the fire, shedding a light on the canopy… It jerked and wriggled for a moment, then plummeted down with a crash on the leutnant’s tent.
The canvas went up in flames. Native soldiers ran through the camp, screaming. The branches of the canopy swayed and I heard a noise from above, receding into the distance, as if an ape were swinging through the trees.
The soldiers ran for the exit. ‘Halt!’ shouted Weismann. ‘Halt or I fire!’
Some of them stopped, others kept running.
Ruthlessly, Weismann shot one down. ‘You two!’ he barked at Storey and I. ‘Shoot any man who runs! Unteroffizier Mosoni, help me extinguish this fire.’
Storey and I kept our rifles levelled on the soldiers who had stopped running, and they unwillingly remained within the thorn ring fence of the boma. A hush descended after the drama of the last few minutes, as Weismann flung much needed water on the burning canvas. Although I had done a better job of concealing my feelings than the native troops, I was shaking.
‘We should get away from here,’ I murmured to Storey. ‘This tree leaper, he’s here to get revenge on Weismann. This is no business of ours. We’ve got guns now, we should leave.’
‘Go into the forest at night?’ Storey jerked. ‘We’d not travel a mile ere some predator got our scent. We stay here. I don’t believe in native superstitions.’
His incredulity would be understandable in Grosvenor Square, where electric light and the C of E has relegated the supernatural to the province of parlour games. But out here, deep in the African bush, countless miles from anything remotely resembling civilisation, it was inexplicable.
‘You saw Hackenschmidt’s body,’ I said. ‘He’s dead but walking. What they call a zombie! How do you explain that except as some kind of foul native juju? A strange magic lingers in Africa. Magic works if you believe in it, you know, Storey, old chap. And in Africa they still believe. Curses, witchcraft, ghosts…’
‘I’m sure there’s a rational explanation,’ said Storey complacently.
Weismann joined us. He and Mosoni had doused the fire and Hackenschmidt’s charred form lay amongst the ashes. ‘Mosoni, take over here. Tell the boys to get back to their tents. Flog anyone who argues. We’ll still have a long march tomorrow. You two Englishers, come with me.’
We joined him examining Hackenschmidt’s body by the light of torches. The Feldwebel was stone dead, although the flames had done little more than char his limbs and blacken his uniform. There was no sign of his gun.
‘His neck is broken,’ Weismann stated clinically.
Storey crouched down and put a hand to the dead man’s skin. He looked up. ‘Cold, but for a lingering warmth that can be explained by the fire,’ he said. ‘And the body is beginning to stiffen. Leutnant, this man has been dead for hours.’
‘Why, it’s hours since anyone last saw him,’ I said. ‘He must have been killed not long after we left the village. He was bringing up the rear. Somebody from the village snatched him, then performed their unholy rites…’
‘Zur Hölle damit!’ Weismann snapped. ‘We don’t want any more of that superstitious drivel. It’s bad enough when the blacks fall prey to it, but you’re a white man, even if you’re not German!’
‘Then how do you explain it?’ I said. ‘Dead for hours, of a broken neck, and yet we all saw him standing there. And then he leapt up into the trees! Leutnant, there are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your German philosophy.’
‘Hamlet, Act One, Scene Five,’ Weismann sneered. ‘And it’s in heaven and earth. You English, you don’t even know your own Shakespeare.’
‘What would the Bard have to say about this?’ Storey had been examining the corpse’s neck with a magnifying glass. ‘Marks and contusions around the neck. By the look of them they were inflicted after death. They encircle the neck, you see?’
‘From Shakespeare to Sherlock Holmes,’ said Weismann wryly. ‘But what does it mean?’
‘A cord of some kind has been knotted around Herr Feldwebel Hackenschmidt’s neck,’ Storey mused, ‘after death. It’s very rough, so perhaps a grass rope or even a liana. In the darkness we did not see it, but I should say that was what they used to dangle the body down from the trees.’
‘Who?’ I asked. ‘The villagers?’
Weismann pursed his lips. ‘They would need to be as agile as monkeys. Hackenschmidt appeared in several parts of the camp. Even if the villagers had taken to the trees, they would be hard put to leap from branch to branch. Unless there was a whole host of them, but surely we would have heard something.’
‘I heard something,’ I ventured. ‘Something moving through the tree canopy. I thought it was an ape of some kind.’
Rising, Weismann held his flaming torch high to illuminate the branches above. They rose higher and higher, a crazily interlocked weave, vanishing into the darkness. Something, disturbed by the light, shrieked angrily, and went leaping away, but it was only a monkey of some kind. Too small to have been the perpetrator.
‘What now, Leutnant?’ Storey challenged him. ‘We have an enemy who can strike at any time, who is of unbelievable agility and lethal intent. And he has struck fear into the hearts of your soldiers.’
‘What now?’ Weismann echoed. ‘To begin with, I am conscripting you, Herr Professor, and you, Herr Colonel. You are now enlisted in the Schutztruppe, the German Colonial Army. You will help me with the boys. They need iron discipline. Even Mosoni has given way to the superstitions of his childhood. It is bad for morale. What we will do firstly is to bury Hackenschmidt and the native soldier I shot. Then we will strike camp and keep marching through the night. By morning we will have reached the convent, and the river, and left this forest of death behind us. And then we can continue on our mission. Quickly now! Schnell!’
Half an hour later and two shallow graves were all that remained within the boma. The tents had been struck, the native soldiers were marching down the jungle trail with flaming torches held high. Weismann, Storey, and I marched in the vanguard. Poor Mosoni had been elected to bring up the rear. I only hoped that his simple faith would give him the strength he needed.
Wearily we marched on through the night. From time to time my keen ears detected noises from the tree canopy high above. It could have been monkeys or other arboreal animals. Whatever it was, it seemed to be following us. But whenever I looked upwards, I saw nothing but the shadows thrown up by the torches.
It was an eerie journey, and my state of mind was little better than that of the negroes who marched behind us, white eyes rolling fearfully in black faces. Despite Storey’s assurances that there was a rational explanation for these uncanny happenings, I felt that only some kind of African voodoo could explain it.
And so it was with a sense of weight lifting from my weary shoulders that I saw the dawn. Animal and bird voices greeted the sun in a discordant crescendo of cries and howls, as the trail led out from the gloom of the jungle and into open veldt. A river wound through sere yellow grasses.
On a bend in the river, surrounded by trees and fields, stood a large, whitewashed building. Off to one side of it was a chapel, with a spire topped by a cross that seemed to glow in the morning sunlight.
The Mother Superior was a plump, plain, motherly looking woman with an Austrian accent. She greeted Leutnant Weismann with a smile as he led Storey and I, and Mosoni, into the welcome coolness of the convent refectory.
As we entered the whitewashed building, several other nuns fled through an interior door. I caught a giggle from one of them. A pair of saucy eyes in a coffee coloured face met mine briefly, before another nun urged their owner from the room.
‘Back so soon, Herr Leutnant?’ the Mother Superior trilled, glancing at Storey and I. ‘I don’t believe I’ve had the privilege… But where is Feldwebel Hackenschmidt?’
‘We lost him, Reverend Mother,’ Weismann told her grimly. ‘But surely you said that you had already met Professor Venables and Colonel Playfair.’
I shifted uncomfortably as the Mother Superior turned her deep blue eyes on Storey and I. ‘There must be some mistake, Herr Leutnant,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever seen these gentlemen before.’
Weismann arched an elegant eyebrow at us, but before he could speak, the Mother Superior added, ‘How did you come to lose your man? Was there trouble with the natives? Oh, but I am forgetting my manners. Please, take a seat, gentlemen, and refreshments will be served.’
Weismann, Storey and I sat at a wooden table while Mosoni crouched on the floor, gazing up at the Mother Superior as if she were some kind of tribal fetish. Two of the other nuns returned with cups of steaming coffee and we drank, while Mosoni shuffled outside to tell the soldiers to eat their rations.
‘There was trouble of a kind with the natives,’ Weismann told the Mother Superior. ‘I had to deal with them severely. On the journey back, there was further trouble. That was when we lost Hackenschmidt.’
The Mother Superior listened as he gave a suitably edited version of the ghoulish tale. When he finished, she glanced at Storey.
‘It was providential that you encountered your two companions,’ she said. ‘This attack… I have heard local legends that…’ She broke off. ‘But we haven’t been introduced.’
‘Well!’ said Weismann, with an embarrassed cough. ‘There has been some confusion. I’m not at all sure who my companions are. Perhaps you could introduce yourselves, gentlemen. And explain how you came to be in German territory.’
‘My name’s Storey, Ned Storey,’ said my friend, ‘and this is Rex Mundy.’
‘We’re explorers,’ I added, ‘which is why we had that little confusion about the Venables Expedition. But we became lost weeks ago and entered your territory unawares.’
‘We were exploring one of the backwaters of the Benue,’ Storey elaborated, ‘in the Niger Coast Protectorate…’
‘And after this attack by natives, you became lost,’ said Weismann slowly. ‘Yes, it’s all becoming clear to me.’ But something in his eye told me he doubted our word.
He turned to the Mother Superior. ‘Reverend Mother, you were saying something about local legends. Could they shed any light on our experiences?’
She raised her hands as if praying, and tapped them against her lips. ‘This is still a pagan land, gentlemen,’ she announced. ‘The natives bow down before idols and fetiches, while deeper in the bush dwell savage cannibals and terrible beasts. We have had very few converts—your man Mosoni being perhaps our greatest success. But the blacks visit us when they are sick, since they know that we will look after them. Even the most savage warriors come here when ill, and my nuns feel quite safe. Our hospital is very popular, and we have treated dengue fever and even yellow fever in our time, as well as malaria. While they are with us, the blacks are often very affable and talkative, and it is important that we learn of their native superstitions if we are to spread God’s Word. One tale I have heard time and again is that of the Great White Ape, or the Forest God.’
I felt a chill, remembering what I had heard last night. ‘Unteroffizier Mosoni spoke of the tree leaper,’ I commented.
The Mother Superior’s ice blue Austrian eyes turned in my direction. ‘That is a new story to me, Herr Mundy,’ she said, so I explained what the Unteroffizier had said. She listened carefully and even took notes in a notepad that appeared as if by some miracle from under her habit. ‘Very interesting, Herr Mundy,’ she said with a smile. ‘One day, if the good Lord permits, I shall write a book on native superstitions. Perhaps your tree leaper is another form of the same legend, of the Great White Ape.’
‘What of this ape?’ Storey asked.
‘The legends say,’ she went on, ‘that upcountry is a taboo land, the home of more than one strange being. But most feared of all is the Great White Ape, the god of the forest. It is said that he dwells in the treetops and snatches his victims from above in the manner you describe, Herr Leutnant,’ she added, turning to Weismann. ‘Had I heard this story from a native, I would have dismissed it as rank superstition.’
‘Perhaps there is some truth at the back of every legend, Reverend Mother,’ I said quietly.
We accompanied Weismann to the riverbank where several canoes had been moored. In them he and his soldiers had journeyed upriver from the coast.
‘But the real journey is still to come,’ the leutnant said after inspecting the canoes. He was looking upstream, where more jungle was visible. ‘I’m not sure whether to believe your story, but let me make a bargain with you. I need men I can trust when I go upriver in search of von Schaumberg, and that will mean depending on native troops. Apart from Mosoni, they are not to be trusted. While I had Hackenschmidt with me, they remained well disciplined, but I fear that without his steadying influence they will fail me—particularly if we are being stalked by a killer. However, reinforced by two more white men, I feel that the balance will be in my favour. It is vital that von Schaumberg’s whereabouts are discovered, whether he and his men are alive or dead.’
‘You want us to accompany you upcountry,’ Storey observed. ‘With all due respect, Herr Leutnant,’ he went on, ‘what precisely is in it for us?’
‘If you do this,’ the leutnant said, ‘in return I will take you back downriver to the coast, from which point you can find a ship to the Niger Coast Protectorate or British South Africa, or wherever it is you wish to travel.’
‘We could follow the river downstream,’ I pointed out.
‘You could,’ said Weismann, ‘and I could order my boys to shoot you as deserters. I won’t. But I must tell you that two white men alone will be unlikely to make it to the coast. Savage tribes and savage beasts infest the riverbanks and the river itself. It is worse further east, where we will be going, but there is safety in numbers.’
‘We’ve survived so far,’ I muttered, but Storey interrupted.
‘We will help you, Leutnant. Mundy, old man,’ he said to me in an undertone, ‘we can’t abandon this poor fellow.’
That evening, after a nourishing meal of good plain fare provided by the nuns, we were both slated for sentry duty. Soldiers had been stationed on each side of the convent compound, and Weismann gave us the job of overseeing them, with Storey taking first watch, me second.
When I went to relieve him and his boys, I asked him, ‘What’s your real reason for staying with Weismann?’
Storey grinned. ‘I’m still working for the Deuxieme Bureau, old chap,’ he murmured. ‘The French view Teutonic colonialism with a somewhat jaundiced eye. We’re not a million miles from their equatorial provinces.’
I shivered, and not with the night cold. ‘The French?’ I said. ‘We’re on the run from the Legion, remember.’
‘Our desertion and other crimes will be forgotten and forgiven,’ Storey replied, ‘if we have something to bargain with. Inside information on a German colony might just give us that.’
And how would Leutnant Weismann react if he learnt that he had indeed taken on two French spies? I changed the subject. ‘Has there been any sign of this forest god?’
Storey shook his head. ‘Not that I or any of the sentries have noticed. Now we’re out of the forest, it seems, we’re safe from the killer. Though I have heard sounds of movement from time to time. Probably animals, but it pays to be cau… What the devil was that?’
I heard a soft footstep behind me and whirled round, rifle at the ready. A dark figure stood in the shadows by the convent wall.
‘Who goes there?’ Storey rapped.
‘Only me,’ came a soft, feminine voice. My electric torch revealed a nun with the coffee coloured skin and large, liquid eyes of a mulatto. What she looked like without that starched white wimple I could not have said, but it made her extremely pretty.
‘I am Sister Veronika,’ she announced.
I had seen her before, I realised, in the refectory when first we came to the convent.
‘What do you want?’ Storey asked. ‘Does the Mother Superior have a message for us?’
As Sister Veronika trotted closer she gave a giggle. ‘Reverend Mother does not know I am out of the dormitory,’ she whispered, giving a cat-like grin. She reached out to run a long, slim finger down Storey’s cheek, and drew even closer. ‘I thought you might be… lonely out here, guarding us from the monsters.’
Storey and I exchanged glances. ‘I really think you had better return to your dormitory, Sister,’ Storey said, looking uncomfortable. ‘Mundy, will you escort this young lady back to bed?’
‘I’m on duty now, remember?’ I told him. ‘You’ll have to tuck her up on your way back.’
Sister Veronika giggled again. ‘You’re not as unfriendly as him, are you?’ She slipped a slender arm round my waist. ‘I could keep you company, big man.’
I grinned. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said. ‘Sentry-go is such a bore…’
‘Mundy!’ Storey glared. ‘You are forgetting yourself, man. You have your duty! If the killer returns… Dammit, girl, you’re a nun!’ he added, addressing Sister Veronika. ‘Remember your vows!’
She pouted her big lips. ‘I never said I wanted to be a nun,’ she whined. ‘My father packed me off here while he went on his trading expeditions into the interior. Said I would be safer here. But I am very bored. You will entertain me, won’t you? Maybe both of you could…’
‘Sister Veronika!’ A severe voice rang out. I shone the light round, revealing the Mother Superior standing there, her face like thunder. ‘I might have known! The moment men come within the convent walls… Gentlemen, my apologies. Sister Veronika suffers from a severe form of furor uterinus. She was left here under my care and tutelage in the hopes that it would help with her condition. I have clearly failed in my duties to instil discipline in the girl. Come with me, Sister! You must do penance for this offence!’
‘Oh no! No, Reverend Mother!’ the girl cried, dismayed. ‘Not the scourge! Not again! Please don’t make me do penance again!’
Heedless of her pleas the Mother Superior dragged the girl in the direction of the chapel.
I laughed. ‘Of all the terrors of the jungle I was expecting, a mulatto coquette was not one of them.’
Storey’s boys had already gone to their tents which had been pitched in the courtyard. As Storey marched to his own berth, which like mine was in the convent hostelry, I went to inspect my sentries. This took me past the chapel, and as I did so, I caught muted voices from within, followed by what sounded like the crack of a whip and an anguished shriek. The sounds faded away as I went to join my sentry on the east wall. I felt rather sorry for poor Sister Veronika.
The native soldier saluted me as I came out, but his attention was on the river that his position overlooked. He clutched his Mauser, trembling in fear and excitement.
‘Was ist es, Soldat?’ I asked him.
‘Das Boot, mein herr, das Boot!’ the negro shouted, pointing.
I wheeled. Ploughing through the moonlit water, paddles going like billy-o, chimney belching a long trail of smoke, was a paddle steamer. It was heading straight for us.
‘Why, they’re out of control!’ I cried. ‘If they don’t turn about, they’ll…’ Before I could say any more the steamer catastrophically fulfilled my expectations, ploughing into the mud flats below the convent. A shout of surprize drifted from the vessel. The smoke cut out, the paddles whirred to a halt.
I shouted at the soldier. ‘Get help! Hilfe erhalten!’
He ran, and I scrambled down the bank towards the stranded steamer. It was half buried in the mud, veering starboard at a crazy angle. The hull was stove in towards the stern, as if they had already suffered some kind of collision. I could hear shouting from the deck.
‘Ahoy, the boat!’ I yelled, hands cupping my mouth. ‘Ahoy there!’
A man staggered out of the cabin and lurched to the rail. He wore the cap of a pilot. ‘Ahoy down there yersel’!’ he shouted in an Irish accent. ‘How many of ye are there now?’
‘Just the one, old chap,’ I said, ‘but I’ve sent for help. How many of you?’
Two more joined the first at the rail, a stout, bearded man wearing a top hat and a tall, lean man in a pith helmet. Both wore knee length khaki shorts. ‘We’re a teensy bit undermanned, begorrah,’ lisped the Irish pilot, slurring his words. ‘Just us and the stoker and his mate, who are below.’ He broke off as the paddle steamer lurched worryingly. ‘We’d better be goin’ ashore, Oi’m thinkin’, gentlemen,’ he added with a hiccough.
He flung a rope ladder over the edge. I slithered across the mud to secure it as the men on deck were joined by two blacks. They began to descend one by one. Leutnant Weismann and Storey marched up, accompanied by soldiers.
‘What’s going on here?’ the leutnant asked. ‘Who are these people?’
The first of the white men, the stout man with the beard, had already reached the bottom of the rope ladder. He stepped off the bottom rung and slipped on the mud, almost falling. I grabbed him and steadied him, and he thanked me.
‘Good evening, old chap,’ he cried, thrusting out an unsteady hand. ‘Professor Charles Valiant Venables. Very glad to see a fellow white man in this benighted region.’
The pilot joined him, followed by the man in the pith helmet, both plastered in noisome mud. Greetings were exchanged, while the blacks chattered like excitable children. Weismann suggested we adjourn to the bank.
Shortly afterwards we were all in the convent refectory, with yawning nuns providing both food—I saw Sister Veronika, although she moved slowly, as if uncomfortable—and medical assistance to the crew and passengers of the paddle steamer. The Mother Superior welcomed them as old friends.
‘Herr Professor!’ she said warmly. ‘How good to see you again! And Herr Colonel Playfair,’ she added, addressing the man in the pith helmet, who had a monocle screwed into his left eye and sported a particularly fine moustache on his ruddy, hatchet face. ‘Herr Kapitan Gallagher,’ she added to the pilot, who had now doffed his cap to reveal a shock of carroty red hair. ‘When you went upcountry you had a whole train of bearers and crew. What happened? Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘Begorrah, we surely did,’ said Gallagher, blinking a watery pair of blue eyes. I caught a whiff of whisky on his breath. ‘Beggin’ yer pardon, Rev’rend Mother, fer me swearin’ jus’ den. But Oi said it wis a bad idea, goin’ lookin’ fer cratures o’ the Devil ‘im-self, and Oi was right!’
‘It was only a hippo, you dipsomaniac old leprechaun,’ said Colonel Playfair, ‘not this confounded prehistoric monster, more’s the pity. I got it with both barrels before it attacked.’
‘I’m really not sure that it was a hippopotamus,’ said Professor Venables in fussy, pedantic tones. ‘What I glimpsed in the twilight was reptilian, much as the stories say. And it was too large for hippopotamus amphibius. No, gentlemen, I am positive that it was the creature the natives term N’yalama!’
‘N’yalama, N’yalama,’ chattered the bearers who had crowded into the refectory, and I heard the soldiers in the courtyard repeating the name. Weismann bellowed for silence.
He sat down across from Professor Venables. ‘You’ve been upriver?’ he said. ‘How far? Did you see any sign of a patrol?’
Venables shook his head. ‘We have been upriver, lieutenant, naturally. That was the purpose of my expedition. But the only people we met were natives. I say met, but we seldom saw them. More often we heard the bush telegraph, the beating of drums from the riverbanks as the Wild Rover went upstream. We were not far from the lake that is said to be the haunt of N’yalama when we were attacked.’
‘Attacked by natives?’ Weismann asked.
Venables regarded the leutnant in wide eyed surprize. ‘No, indeed, lieutenant, we were attacked by a river animal. My colleague Colonel Playfair seems to be of the opinion that it was a hippopotamus…’
‘It certainly was, m’dear old pineapple,’ said Colonel Playfair, stroking his mustachios. ‘I’ve shot hundreds of the brutes. I know old man hippo well enough.’
‘…but I am certain that our encounter was with the very creature we set out to find,’ the professor continued as if the colonel had not spoken. ‘The creature whose existence was considered so doubtful by the Royal Society that I had to secure funding from other, more penurious, sources. The creature who many deem to be no more than a native myth…’
‘You don’t mean the Forest God?’ I said.
‘No, no, my man,’ he said, ‘although it is heartening to meet another student of native folklore. The Forest God, or Great White Ape, is undoubtedly a mythological beast, obviously harking back to primitive sun worship.’ I tried to query this assertion but the professor steamed on relentlessly. ‘The N’yalama, also called the blocker of rivers, is nothing less than a survival from the Mesozoic. It is a sauropod dinosaur.’
Silence greeted this earnest pronouncement. The Reverend Mother tutted. Playfair blew out his cheeks. Weismann leaned forward.
‘But surely, Herr Professor,’ he said as if reasoning with a lunatic, ‘the dinosaurs are extinct. Our primitive ape forebears may have encountered them, but…’
‘No, no, and for the third time no!’ Professor Venables cried in irritation. ‘By Jove, I should have expected better from a young man who, going by that duelling scar on your cheek, attended a German university. The fossil evidence tells us that the dinosaurs died out millions of years ere the evolution of Man…’
‘And yet, Herr Professor, you claim to have found a sauropod,’ Weismann said, ‘in the backwaters of this colony.’
Venables sat back. ‘There are exceptions to every rule, lieutenant,’ he said with an airy wave. ‘In the backcountry, little has changed since the Upper Cretaceous. Whatever natural forces were responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs have not yet reached those remote regions. Native legends speak of any manner of strange life as yet unrecorded by science. The natives describe N’yalama with almost scientific clarity: a large, smooth skinned, brownish grey or mottled herbivore with a long, flexible neck, a snake-like head, a thick thorax bigger than that of a hippopotamus, and a long tail; the creature is up to thirty feet in length from nose to the tip of its tail. He spends most of his time submerged in the river or lake but has been known to sink boats and canoes when irritated by such. It is the avowed intent of my expedition to capture a specimen of the animal, or preferably a breeding pair, and ship them back to England for scientific study.’
‘You seemed to have returned empty handed,’ Weismann pointed out.
‘A temporary setback, nothing more,’ Venables said. ‘Our encounter with the sauropod unfortunately resulted in damage to our vessel, which almost sank. Most of our native servants fell overboard, and no doubt drowned or were attacked by crocodiles. A superstitious reaction on the part of the more primitive of the survivors, and I include the Celtic element as well as the Negroid,’ he added, with a cutting glower at Gallagher, ‘led to a precipitate flight for several days and nights, with the obvious result that we ran aground.’
Gallagher’s face ushed as red as his hair. ‘Now, Professor, sorr, to be sure an’ all, ye’ll take dat back!’ he said, slapping the table and leaping to his feet. ‘Oi gave the command to turn back because we wis undermanned and needed repairs!’
‘That doesn’t explain why you got blind drunk and went full speed ahead without looking where you were going,’ drawled Colonel Playfair. Purpling, Gallagher glared from him to the professor and back again. He looked as if he was about to punch the colonel, but suddenly he sat down with a merry laugh.
‘Well, maybe Oi was a moite bit scared of that galumphing great sea serpent, or whatever it was we collided with, sorr. But it wis yersel’ who started blazing away wid yer rifle, yer bollix!’
‘Please, gentlemen,’ the Mother Superior said severely, ‘do not forget your manners. You will scare my nuns with your clamour.’ She appealed to Weismann. ‘This is a house of peace!’
‘My humble apologies, Reverend Mother,’ the leutnant said. ‘Herr Professor Venables and his companions have had a rather disturbing time. Hippopotami can be a verdammt nuisance, I know full well myself; I’ve seen gunboats sunk by them before. They are dangerous brutes and I would happily see the lot of them shot, along with most of the inhabitants of this cursed colony. In the morning we will take a good look at your steamer, and my boys will shift her from the mud and effect whatever repairs are necessary.’
‘Very kind of you, Herr Leutnant,’ said Professor Venables. ‘I apologise for my earlier outburst. As you say yourself, we have all had a rather trying time in this country. As soon as the boat is freed from the mud and repaired, we shall turn about and resume our expedition.’
‘No we shall not, Professor,’ slurred Gallagher. ‘And ye’ll be asking me why. And Oi’ll be tellin’ ye why.
‘Firstly, cuz we have lost most of our crew, and we’ll be needin’ a dhozen men at least to operate the Wild Rover proper-like. Secondly, Oi tell ye point blank, moi man, Oi am not goin’ back up dat river! Dat river, beggin’ yer pardhon Rev’rend Mother, is der river av hell, and any man spalpeen enough to sail up it will wind up wid de Devil himself as skipper, to be sure. I foretell me own death and the death av many others if this expedition goes ahead.’
‘But Captain,’ Professor Venables began.
‘And dat is final,’ said the Irishman stubbornly. ‘I will not be a-pilotin’ that there boat upriver for any money.’
‘I can double your wages,’ Professor Venables pleaded.
‘Come along, you silly old bogtrotter,’ growled Playfair. ‘It was only a hippo, dammit, man.’
‘It was not a hippo; it was not, it was not!’ said Gallagher. ‘Oi saw it, sorr, and it was a monster out av a tinker’s potcheen nightmare! I’ve not a doubt that it was this here dinosaurus the professor’s been a-talkin’ about, and if he’d explained it all proper-like when he hired me, I’d never have left working for the Cork to Liverpool ferries at all at all, not for any money. And I tell ye, Professor, I will not pilot the Wild Rover anywhere, except downriver, for all de gold at de end av the rainbow.’
He folded his arms obstinately. Professor Venables looked distressed. Colonel Playfair snorted contemptuously. I glanced at Storey, who had been listening with keen interest.
‘Look here, my man,’ said Professor Venables. ‘You fail to understand the importance of this expedition—to science! Do you not want to extend the boundaries of Man’s knowledge and understanding of this mysterious universe in which we live? That is science’s noble goal. Not for the sake of wealth or fame, but to add even just a little to our comprehension of the world and our place within it. I appeal to you, my man, in the noble name of Science; take us back upriver. And not only will you be paid handsomely, but I will guarantee that your name will be repeated amongst the highest in the land!’
‘To be sure, professor,’ said Gallagher, ‘at the day’s end all I want is nothing more than a little place o’ me own in Cork or in Killarney and a dhrap enough o’ the whisky to chase away me bad memories. All this speechifying ’bout science and nobility is just a bad case av de shart to me. I’ve got me little woman and our seven children to t’ink about, back in the Oul’ Sod, and if we’re goin’ to talk about dooty, tis me dooty to them to see dat Mrs Gallagher don’t wind up a widder woman, and dat all the little Gallaghers know dat their daddy’s comin’ back home for Christmas…’
Leutnant Weismann interrupted. ‘Herr Kapitan Gallagher, you will do precisely as Professor Venables says. Not for an increase in your wages, not for fame and wealth. Nein. Simply because I say so, Gott in Himmel; I, Leutnant Weismann of the German Colonial Army. In the name of his imperial majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II, I am commandeering your boat and conscripting you and your crew—I shall make up the missing members with my own soldiers—and we shall be going upriver.’
Professor Venables gaped at him. ‘Why… why, thank you, Herr Leutnant!’ he said, astounded. ‘I take back all I said about German universities! Your support of science is highly commendable.’
‘Your quixotic quest for a mythical monster is of no interest to me, Herr Professor,’ said Weismann. ‘I was sent upriver to locate my superior officer, and I shall find him all the faster by requisitioning your paddle steamer. I’m a reasonable man, and anyone who does not wish to accompany me may remain here, if the Mother Superior is agreeable.’ As I opened my mouth to nominate myself for this responsibility, the leutnant added, ‘By which I mean Professor Venables and Colonel Playfair. Everyone else is under my orders. And they will be coming with me.’
Hey hey, you know that band The Monkees? Most generations do from their 1960s music and self-titled sitcom, but how about the film and soundtrack Head from 1968? Very little gets said about Head, and considered to be a purposeful end to The Monkees’ high point of fame. I still consider them among my top 5 bands of all time, and jumped at the change to give my first-time viewing of this cult classic movie.
Head Soundtrack
In most cases, promo singles or soundtracks release earlier before the final project is published. Pretending it was my first listen like those in 1968, I chose to hear the music before watching the film. For 2 years, The Monkees’ recorded albums ranged in lighthearted pop, folk, ballads, and transitioned to psychedelic rock. The Monkees made 5 albums between 1966-1968, remains the only music act earning 4 #1 albums in one year: 1967. Like The Beatles, TV producer Bob Rafelson wanted to fabricate an American band matching close to the same success. After The Monkees’ NBC TV show won 2 Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy, why not try the movies like The Beatles did? Without watching Head’s film, you can already imagine what it’s like listening to the soundtrack: psychedelia, sound effects, escapism, philosophical advice. I couldn’t help thinking of Pink Floyd’s 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon while hearing it; deciphering subtle messaging expressionism. In The Monkees’ case, it’s clear all 4 members were getting older and wanted to break their busy cycle. “Porpoise Song” begins Head’s album as a closing chapter, singing “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.” (Porpoises are dolphin-like animals, which are symbolized lyrically and figuratively when watching Head.) “Circle Sky,” “As We Go Along,” and “Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again,” set the same tone referencing time passing, looking onto the future differently, and not as people have perceived them. Head wasn’t the end of The Monkees’ discography, but was a breaking point. Peter Tork (The Monkees’ bassist/keyboardist) quit the band next year, causing disbandment missing in The Monkees Present album. I also noticed another sure sign of The Monkees’ hiatus on Head’s record: each of The Monkees sing lead on at least one track. Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones sing “Porpoise Song,” Mike Nesmith wrote and sang “Circle Sky,” Micky solos “Can You Dig It” and “As We Go Along.” Davy sang “Daddy’s Song,” and Peter ends with “Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?” Part of me wonders if Head was a publicity experiment because Head’s soundtrack was released a month after the film: 12/1/68. Was that a ploy in trying to bounce back the low box office sales, or giving fans an insight of The Monkees keeping up with the times?
The main assumption is Head’s an acid trip. I analyzed the screenplay based on comments spoken on The Monkees’ second season, and emphasis they were done acting satires.
Head’s Film
Head’s theatrical release was 11/6/68, directed and written by The Monkees’ creator Bob Rafelson. What’s wild is the co-writer who collaborated with Bob as an acquaintance, was Jack Nicholson! He wanted to present the current outside world that The Monkees could experience without feeling boxed-in: free love, opposing the Vietnam War, commercialism, cleansing a new reputation as an individual, and living by your own beliefs. No matter what context, set backdrops, or scene premise, The Monkees keep getting trapped together. Other celebrities who make a cameo are Frank Zappa, Annette Funicello, Toni Basil and Teri Garr. “Porpoise Song” is Head’s movie theme song, and occasionally played as a memory piece for the film. It gets played in the beginning and ending, showing Micky Dolenz jumping off a bridge into water. Slow motion of him drowning alone, signifies the drastic way out to stop the chaos chasing him and his bandmates. Mike, Peter, and Davy, jump in after as well, though watercolor art appears onscreen while women rescuing Micky up to the surface like mythical mermaids. Being a complete turnaround musically, weirdly, and humor, Head wasn’t received well by media or majority of The Monkees’ fanbase. Some value its counterculture and representation of the 1960s psychedelic era. Ahead of its time, future musicians would release their own film adaptions of their music; we now call that visual film. Examples are The Who (Quadrophenia (1973), Tommy (1975), Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1980), Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1982)/Bad (1987), Beyoncé’s Lemonade (2016) / The Lion King’s The Gift (2019).
The Monkees’ TV Show Clues to Head
Airing 2 fall-spring TV seasons, The Monkees ran 58 episodes 9/12/66-3/25/68. Shadowing the band’s everyday life persona, each episode portrayed them as superheroes preventing villainous characters up to no good. Practically every episode played a song of theirs as entertainment, product placement, and performing. Season 1’s writing was comedic and incorporated a laugh track when funny lines were said on camera. In season 2, the laugh track disappeared mid-season, directed more cinematic than interactive for audiences. Head’s filming took place while season 2 wrapped up, warming up The Monkees’ acting skills. As more episodes took place off set, you can see how they enjoyed a break amongst society and not redoing storyline tropes. Lasting longer than the series, The Monkees would rerun on main TV networks in the 1970s, MTV – 1980s, Nickelodeon’s Nick at Nite – 1990s, and various cable channels since then. Reruns can be watched now on AXS-TV round the clock, Micky Dolenz is the sole survivor on tours and appearances.
My parents were toddlers when The Monkees came along, passed down their music with me and my brother in the mid-1990s. We saw Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith, and Peter Tork perform at Port Chester’s The Capitol Theater: 7/15/2013. It was moving having the audience end the show singing “Daydream Believer,” mourning a year gone without Davy Jones. I just finished re-watching The Monkees’ series on AXS, perfect timing to now critique Head. In a short period of time, The Monkees innovated the fun, media influence, and levels of art that music brings.
To hear and learn more of The Monkees, tune into my music podcast Music Notes with Jess on all major podcast platforms. Recently added to Buzzsprout, Deezer, Podcast Index, and Player FM. musicnoteswithjess@gmail.com; Social media pages: Facebook, Twitter / X, Instagram.
By Matt Lennox
In this horror short story from Matt Lennox, an ordinary Thanksgiving dinner turns into a terrifying encounter with the mysterious Black Eyed Children.
Just outside Baltimore Maryland was a town called Glen Burnie. Right along Marley Creek was an older couple named Ray and Mary. They had been married well over fifty years and had the perfect family. They had two children and several grandchildren. It was Thanksgiving and everyone was piled into their home for turkey dinner. The large family sat around talking, and laughing like a normal family does on Thanksgiving. After the meal the men all went and watched the Dallas Cowboys game, while all the women cleaned up and sat around the kitchen table drinking coffee. The youngest grandson Seth had come up to the table and asked his grandmother if she had ever heard of the Black Eyed Children. Mary looked puzzled because she was a big fan of the paranormal but had never heard of them. Seth went on to tell her that kids at his school were telling him about them and how they looked like normal kids but their eyes were completely black. Nobody knew who they were or where they came from but they say if they come to your house to not let them inside. Mary laughed it off and told Seth that his classmates were messing around with him and to go hang out in the living room. Mary’s oldest granddaughter Chelsea spoke up once he left the room and told her that she had heard of it but it was an old wise tale. The night went on normal as everyone left the house leaving Mary and Ray alone to enjoy the rest of the evening peacefully.
Mary had a spot outside on her porch where she played games on her iPad and smoked an occasional cigarette. Ray was fast asleep from all the turkey he had consumed. So Mary went outside to her cozy little spot and turned on the heater due to the cold fall. She made sure the porch door was locked, then lit a cigarette and started up her candy crush game on her iPad. An hour or so had passed and she saw someone walking up the driveway towards her porch. She was a little confused but she knew she had family living in the area so she figured it was a cousin or someone. She stood up and said “hello”. The figure stopped and looked up. She could tell it was a child and she said “hon are you lost? Are your parents with you?” The child said nothing but then continued to walk towards the porch but stopped at the steps. “Hon are you okay?” Mary asked. The little boy said softly “can I come in please?”. Mary looked very confused and had her hand on the lock of the porch contemplating whether to let him in or not. “Where’s your parents?” Mary asked once again. The little boy said nothing but got on the first step. Mary then said “hon I’m not letting you in here until you tell me where your parents are”. The little boy said “I don’t know where they are”. Mary began to get concerned because the boy looked to be about 10 years old. She couldn’t get a good look at his face but she could tell he was very pale. “Come more in the light, “Hon so I can see you,” Mary said. The little boy came up another step and asked again “can I come in?” Mary then caught a decent look at his face and she thought his eyes looked a little off. “Are you friends with my grandson Seth?” Asked Mary. The little boy said nothing as the two just looked at each other. Mary then said “hon I’m gonna have to call the police because I don’t know who you are. And you should not be out this late.” The little boy just stared back at her and then turned away and walked back up the driveway. Mary ran back into the house and startled her husband awake. “Ray there’s some little boy walking around out there. He didn’t have a parent with him and he kept asking to come in the house.” Mary hollered to her husband. Ray replied “you’re seeing stuff Mar! You’re always seeing stuff”.
Mary finally convinced Ray to go outside and check around. He got on his boots, and grabbed a flashlight and went outside as Mary waited on the porch. A few minutes had past and Ray came back to the porch and said “Mar I didn’t see anything. I even walked up to the road and I didn’t see a soul walking in the road”. Mary then began crying because Ray did not believe her. Ray decided to go back inside and upstairs to bed. Mary told him that she would be with him in a few minutes. She went inside and locked the porch door and the main door to the house. Mary began turning off the lights and then got startled at a figure standing at her back door. She turned the light back on and nobody was there. She then turned the lights back off and started making her way to the steps until she heard a knock at the main door of the house. Her heart immediately sank knowing that someone had gotten through the locked porch door. She refused to look through the windows on the door as the knocking got louder. She went to grab her cell phone but had forgotten she left it sitting on the porch with her iPad. “Ray!” Mary screamed up the steps. She then decided to look through the peephole on the door and she saw a child standing on her porch. He had an old style hat on, and was wearing a winter jacket. She couldn’t make out his face until she turned the porch light on. When she did she gasped as she saw a pale child with eyes as black as the night standing there looking at the peep hole as if he knew she was standing there looking at her. “Can I come in please?” The child said softly. Mary yelled “get the hell out of here! I’m getting my husband!” Mary ran as fast as she could up the steps and woke Ray up and told him what was happening. Ray was now becoming annoyed and agreed that he would take a look but only this last time.
The two walked back down the steps and Mary told Ray to look outside on the porch. He did and he saw nothing as he opened the door. “Mary this is getting ridiculous. I gotta be up a decent time tomorrow and you keep seeing shit.” Ray said annoyingly to his wife. “Ray I swear to god someone was out there. And his eyes were completely black! This wasn’t the same kid from last time. This one had a hat on! Ray we need to call the police.” Mary said frantically. Ray could see the fear in his wife’s eyes as he went into his closet and pulled out a hand gun. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll go out there one more time. Just keep the doors locked.” Ray calmly said. The two hugged as Ray went outside with a flashlight and his gun. Mary began to cry as she sat on her couch in the living room. A few minutes had past and Ray had not come back from outside. Mary was becoming worried as she got up and opened the door to the porch and called out for Ray a couple times but he wasn’t responding. She decided against her husband’s words to open the porch door and walk down the steps. “Ray! Where are you?” Mary hollered. She then decides to go back on the porch and call 911. She gets on the porch and now notices her phone is missing. She begins turning over furniture searching for it until she hears a faint giggle coming from outside. She looks around and sees that the porch door is unlocked and runs towards the door and locks it back up only to be face to face with an older child who looks to be about fourteen. He had semi long hair with a beanie hat on with completely blacked out eyes. The two stare at each other for a moment until he says “can we please come in?” Mary tells him to get the fuck off her property and that her husband is looking for them and he has a gun. The young man stands there for a moment and then blankly says “You mean this gun?” He holds up Ray’s handgun and drops it on the ground. “You guys don’t have to be so mean to us? We’re just kids. We’re cold. Please let us in. Please.” The boy says. Suddenly 3 other children emerge from the darkness standing at her porch door begging to be let in the house. Mary is now screaming as she runs in the house and slams the door behind her. She sobbing uncontrollably until she sees someone sitting at her kitchen table facing away from her. She realizes it’s her grandson Seth as she runs over to him and says “Seth how did you get here? We need to find help. Seth? Seth? I’m talking to you.” Seth turns to her and Mary lets out a shriek as her grandson Seth also has blacked out eyes. Seth tells his grandmother “All you had to do was let them in, Grandma. That’s all you had to do. Pop wouldn’t have died if you had just let them in. They wanted you, not him.” Mary is now panicking and goes to run away to the door but now the other black eyed children are standing on her porch. She is caught between them and her grandson. The older black eyed child looks at Mary and says “He’s right you know? Now it’s time to say goodbye”. Ever since that day Mary, Ray and their grandson Seth have never been seen again. Some say they’ve seen Seth hanging around the old Marley Station Mall but as for Mary and Ray; they completely vanished.
