Phantom
Authors: Thomas Tessier
Tags: #ghost, #ghost novel, #horror classic, #horror fiction, #horror novel, #phantom
by
A revised edition with a new introduction by
Bob Booth published by
Necon Ebooks
at Smashwords
Revised Edition Copyright 2010 Thomas
Tessier
Cover Art Copyright 2010 Kellianne Jones
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* * *
Thomas Tessier: A Man of Few Words
Thomas Tessier is a man of few words, in all
senses of that phrase. For his admirers, and I count myself among
them, he is not nearly prolific enough. Since 1970 he has published
three slim poetry collections, one collection of short fiction and
ten novels. That’s a book every three years or so, in an age when
genre writers produce at least a book a year, sometimes more.
On top of that his books are usually on the
short side. You won’t find any grand epics from Mr. Tessier, nor
any trilogies.
I’m not the only one who
feels this way. The eminent genre critic Don D’Amassa said:
“Tessier’s fiction comes only at unfortunately long intervals. Even
his lesser works have interesting elements, and his better stories
are beautifully written and hard to forget.” (
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror
Fiction
, Checkmark Books, 2006)
Tessier doesn’t just write
succinctly, he speaks that way. Long time genre observer Stan
Wiater has produced a whole shelf of books that depend on author
interviews. I’ve just proof-read one of them,
Dark Dreamers on Writing
(forthcoming
from Necon E-Books). The book is a collection of advice and
commentary by “fifty masters of fear and suspense” arranged by
topic. Some of the writers take the opportunity to go on for
paragraphs (sometimes pages) to express their thoughts. Not
Tessier. Here are a few examples:
“
I don’t plan. I don’t
analyze, I write intuitively.” and “Resignation, not satisfaction,
sets in around deadline time.”
Doesn’t that tell you all you really need to
know about his writing process? I don’t picture him studying the
markets to see what’s hot. I don’t see him creating bulletin boards
full of index cards, or laboring over extensive outlines. Rather I
picture a writer, like Hemingway, alone with his notebook and No. 2
pencils, telling a good story he knows and then working with it,
shaping it, sculpting it, until he has to give it up.
His ideas on his chosen
genre are equally condensed. Wiater captured them in another
book,
Dark Dreamers: Facing the Masters of
Fear
(with Beth Gwinn). Typically,
Tessier’s contribution is the briefest of them all. Channeling
Hemingway again though, it is what Papa called “iceberg writing” —
you only see about one sixth of what the author knows. The rest is
there, under water as it were, and if you read carefully and think
about the words that are there you can intuit those the writer has
left out.
Tessier said: “I don’t worry about running
out of strange ideas, because what I try to write about is not so
much the mere strangeness but the people, the characters and what
happens to them. Life is full of terror and beauty, and they can’t
be ever separated, and in that conflict is our endless drama.”
Doesn’t that brief paragraph get to the
essence of why those who write horror fiction do it, and why those
who read it do so? A few words, carefully chosen, like a fine book
collection. Tessier only tells stories he knows and has fully
digested. As a reader you get the feeling that he has thought about
each tale a long time and only lets you have it when he is ready,
when he knows he can do it justice, when he believes it will mean
something.
Tessier was born in Connecticut in 1947, a
great year, producing Tom, Richard Laymon, Stephen King, and less
brilliantly, me. He went to University College, Dublin, after which
he spent several years in London. He was friends there with another
young poet who was to turn to horror fiction, Peter Straub. During
that period he produced three slim volumes of poetry as well as
three plays that were professionally staged (but not published)
before writing his first horror novel.
Phantom
, the book you are getting ready to read, was published in
1982, his fourth novel. Briefly, it is the story of Ned Covington,
a ten-year-old boy, who explores an abandoned building near his
home and what he finds there. According to D’Amassa it “is a quiet,
modernized ghost story that derives most of its impact from
descriptions of the boy’s reactions to what he discovers and his
growing isolation from the world of the living.”
The critical response was
immediate. Douglas E. Winter in
Faces of
Fear
(Berkley, 1985), published a mere
three years later, listed it as one of the books that he considered
“the best of the modern generation of horror fiction.” It was also
included on a similar list published as an appendix to Stephen
Jones’ and Kim Newman’s
Horror: 100 Best
Books
(Carroll & Graf,
1988).
Winter was also the author
of a justly famous article called “Writers of Today,” published
in
The Penguin Encyclopedia of
Horror and the Supernatural
(Jack Sullivan, ed., Viking Penguin, 1986). He said
“
Tessier, who had earlier written
The Fates
(1978), proved
himself one of the major new talents in horror fiction with a
little-known supernatural romance,
Shockwaves
(1982), and a compelling
humanist ghost story,
Phantom
(1982).”
In Neil Barron’s
Horror Literature: A Reader’s Guide
(Garland, 1990) the reviewer (Keith Neilson, Cal
State Fullerton) said: “A touching, scary book. The child’s point
of view is handled quite believably and sensitively, and Ned’s
final hallucinatory confrontation with the ‘woman’ is as harrowing
and imaginative as anything in current horror fiction. The
unanswered question of whether the phantom is real or a projection
of Ned’s emotional confusions adds additional ambiguity and tension
to this fine novel.”
Phantom was nominated for a
World Fantasy Award in a very tough year. I know. I was a judge. I
can tell you that one of the books we considered was Ray Kinsella’s
classic
Shoeless Joe
, the basis for the film
Field of
Dreams.
It didn’t make the final
ballot.
Phantom’s competition on
that final ballot was Charles L. Grant’s
The Nestling
, the book Charlie himself
considered his “breakout novel;” George R. R. Martin’s original
take on vampires,
Fevre
Dream
; Gene Wolfe’s
Sword of the Lictor
, third in his
groundbreaking “New Sun” series; and
Nifft
the Lean
, a highly original fantasy by
relative newcomer Michael Shea.
The judges (myself aside)
were as distinguished as the nominees. Alan Ryan and John Coyne,
two horror novelists themselves were joined by two acquisitions
editors Sharon Jarvis and Elizabeth Wollheim. We all met one
Saturday at a bar in New York (I think it was called The Brass
Rail). We drank, we ate, we drank some more, and we talked horror
and fantasy fiction for the better part of six hours. We all agreed
on most of the categories without much debate. Best Novel was the
exception. John, Alan and I argued strenuously for
Phantom
while Sharon and
Elizabeth pushed for
Nifft the
Lean
. The split was right along party
lines, as it were. The men, all with horror backgrounds, supported
the horror novel, while the women, both involved in fantasy
publishing, supported the fantasy novel.
Nifft the Lean
won, and it is a worthy
book, still, as a horror guy ....
I’ve gone on too long introducing a novel
that really needs no introduction. Such is my passion for this
writer, and particularly this book. Read it for yourself and marvel
at the economy of prose and the depth of insight it contains. Like
I said. Thomas Tessier is a man of few words, but they are always
well chosen.
Bob Booth
Publisher, Necon E-Books
September 28, 2010
* * *
For Sam
AND IN MEMORY OF
JOE CAVANAUGH
HUBIE HALL
DOUG SHAW
* * *
Table of Contents
12.
There Is Magic ... and Magic
17.
Straight Lines Breaking,
Becoming Circles
23.
On The Street Where You Live
* * *
The Supernatural experience always appears as
the transfiguration of Natural conditions, acts, states ....
—
BARON VON
HUGEL
If there is any place truly haunted, it is
one that men have discovered, lived in, left, and forgotten.
—
DONALD CULROSS
PEATTIE
The Road of a Naturalist
* * *
The Night They
Came
A child hears best what happens in the
night. He may be awake or asleep, or his mind may be roaming the
dreamy gray landscape in between, but his ears cannot fail to pick
up what takes place on the dark side of the day. Nor is it
necessary for a child to understand what is heard: things have
their own mysterious meanings beyond the realm of mere words. It
does no good to explain the Sandman when the Sandman will still be
there, waiting for the chance to sneak in and stop you dead by
filling your eyes and ears and nose and mouth with hardening
sand.
Ned Covington, not yet five years old, was
in his bed and almost asleep, but he was aware of the noises coming
from the other side of his bedroom door. Footsteps in the hallway.
Bare feet. Coming this way. But there was something wrong,
something about the way the sound moved, falteringly, that told him
it wasn't just his mother or father making a routine trip to the
bathroom. Ned turned toward the window but no light penetrated his
eyelids, so he knew it wasn't yet morning.