The Mammoth Book of Terror (10 page)
Read The Mammoth Book of Terror Online
Authors: Stephen Jones
“Victor Ripon’s name derives from two waterfalls located on the River Nile, and Gezira, the fictional town in which he resides, refers to a point where the two Niles, the blue and
the white, come together, as well as to the school colours in my hometown, where my uncle Harold owned an ice cream parlour called ‘The Blue and White’ across the street from Stockton
High. The naive, painfully heartfelt words Victor writes to his favourite author, the imaginary Rex Christian, were inspired by actual letters sent to a very real horror writer, containing his
readers’ comments about a non-fiction book he had published, after he asked me to read and evaluate them in case there were any factual errors that needed to be corrected for the revised
edition.
“And the ending is obviously influenced by Nicolas Roeg’s
Don’t Look Now
, one of my favourite films from the 1970s. By the time my retrospective collection finally came
out in 2001 I had refilled it
Talking in the Dark,
after another part of the quotation by Kenneth Patchen that provided the title of this story when it was first published in Charles L.
Grant’s anthology
Shadows
7.
“I have since been told that this is a comic story rather than the tragic, heartbreaking metaphor I had intended. Perhaps so. Apparently I’m not the most reliable authority. You will
have to go to the source of the Nile, if you can find it, for the final word . . .”
IN THE DAMP BEDROOM
Victor Ripon sat hunched over his desk, making last-minute corrections on the ninth or tenth draft, he couldn’t remember
which, of a letter to the one person in the world who might be able to help. Outside, puppies with the voices of children struggled against their leashes for a chance to be let in from the cold.
He ignored them and bore down. Their efforts at sympathy were wasted on him; he had nothing more to give. After thirty-three years he had finally stepped out of the melodrama.
He clicked the pen against his teeth. Since the letter was to a man he had never met, he had to be certain that his words would not seem naive or foolish.
Dear Sir, he reread, squinting down at the latest version’s cramped, meticulously cursive backhand. He lifted the three-hole notebook paper by the edges so as not to risk smearing the
ballpoint ink. Dear Sir . . .
First let me say that I sincerely hope this letter reaches you. I do not have your home address so I have taken the liberty of writing in care of your publisher. If they
forward it to you please let me know.
I am not in the habit of writing to authors. This is the first time. So please bear with me if my letter is not perfect in spelling, etc.
I have been reading your Works for approximately 6 yrs., in other words since shortly after I was married but more about that later. Mr Christian, Rex if I may call you that and I feel I
can, you are my favorite author and greatest fan. Some people say you are too morbid and depressing but I disagree. You do not write for children or women with weak hearts (I am guessing) but
in your books people always get what they deserve. No other author I have read teaches this so well. I can see why you are one of the most popular authors in the world. I have all 6 of your
books, I hope there are only 6, I wouldn’t like to think I missed any! (If so could you send me a list of the titles and where I might obtain them? A S.A.S.E. is enclosed for your
convenience. Thank you.)
My favorite is THE SILVERING, I found that to be a very excellent plot, to tell the truth it scared the shit out of me if you know what I mean and I think you do, right? (Wink wink.) MOON
OVER THE NEST is right up there, too. My wife introduced me to your novels, my ex-wife I should say and I guess I should thank her for that much. She left me 2½ years ago, took the
kids to San Diego first and then to Salt Lake City I found out later. I don’t know why, she didn’t say. I have tried to track her down but no luck. Twice with my late
parents’ help I found out where she was staying but too late. So that is the way she wants it, I guess. I miss the kids though, my little boy especially.
In your next book, THE EDGE, I noticed you made one small mistake, I hope you don’t mind my pointing it out. In that one you have Moreham killing his old girlfriend by electrocution
(before he does other things to her!) while she is setting up their word processor link. Excuse me but this is wrong. I know this because I was employed in the Computer Field after dropping
out of Pre-Med to support my family. The current utilized by a Mark IIIA terminal is not enough to produce a lethal shock, even if the interface circuits were wired in sequence as you
describe (which is impossible anyway, sorry, just thought you might like to know). Also the .066 nanosecond figure should be corrected . . .
And so on in a similar vein. Victor worked his way through three more densely-packed pages of commentary and helpful advice regarding Rex Christian’s other bestsellers,
including
Jesus Had A Son, The Masked Moon
and the collection of short stories,
Nightmare Territory,
before returning to more personal matters.
If you ever find yourself in my neck of the woods please feel free to drop by. We could have a few beers and sit up talking about the many things we have in common. Like
our love of old movies. I can tell you feel the same way about such “classics” (?) as ROBOT INVADERS, MARS VS. EARTH and HOUSE OF BLOOD from the way you wrote about them in your
series of articles for TV GUIDE. I subscribed so I wouldn’t miss a single installment. There are others we could talk about, even watch if we’re lucky. I get Channel 56 here in
Gezira, you may have heard about it, they show old chestnuts of that persuasion all night long!!
If you have not guessed by now, I too try my hand at writing occasionally myself. I have been working for the past 1½ years on a story entitled PLEASE, PLEASE, SORRY, THANK YOU. It
will be a very important story, I believe. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to read it. (You are probably too busy, anyway.) Besides, I read WRITER’s DIGEST so I know
where to send it if and when I succeed in bringing it to a satisfactory stage of completion. But you are my inspiration. Without you I would not have the courage to go on with it at all.
He hesitated before the conclusion, as he had when first drafting it four nights ago. On the other side of the window pane the sky was already smoking over with a fine mist,
turning rapidly from the color of arterial blood to a dead slate grey. The sea rushed and drubbed at the coastline a mile to the west, shaking and steadily eroding the bedrock upon which his town
was built; the vibrations which reached the glass membrane next to him were like the rhythms of a buried human heart.
There is one more thing. I have a very important question to ask you, I hope you don’t mind. It is a simple thing (to you) and I’m sure you could answer it.
You might say I should ask someone else but the truth is I don’t know anyone else who could help. What I know isn’t enough. I thought it would be but it isn’t. It seems to
me that the things we learned up until now, the really important things, and I can tell we’ve had many of the same experiences (the Sixties, etc.), when it came time to live them, the
system balked. And we’re dying. But don’t worry, I’m a fighter. I learned a long time ago: never give up.
I live in my parents’ old house now, so we could have plenty of privacy. In my opinion we could help each other very much. My number is 474–-2841. If I’m not here
I’ll be at the Blue & White (corner of Rosetta and Damietta), that is where I work, anybody can tell you where to find it. I hope to hear from you at your earliest convenience.
Meanwhile, I’m waiting with bated breath for your book of essays, OTHER CEDENTS, they mentioned it on “Wake Up, America” and I can hardly wait! If you care to let me read
the manuscript prior to publication I promise to return it by Express Mail in perfect condition. (Just asking, hint hint.) In any event please come by for a visit on your next trip to the
West Coast. I hope you will take me up on it sometime (soon!), I really need the answer. We Horror Fans have to stick together. As you said in your Introduction to NIGHTMARE TERRITORY,
“It may be a long time till morning, but there’s no law against talking in the dark.”
Faithfully Yours,
VICTOR RIPON
He sat back. He breathed in, out. It was the first breath he had been aware of taking for several minutes. The view from the window was no longer clear. A blanket of fog had
descended to shroud all evidence of life outside his room. The puppies next door had quieted, resigned to their fate. Still a hopeful smile played at the corners of his mouth. He stacked and folded
the pages to fit the already-stamped envelope. There. Now there wasn’t anything to do but wait.
He stretched expansively, hearing his joints pop like dry bones, and his fingernails touched the window. So early, and yet the glass was chillingly brittle, ready to shatter under the slightest
provocation.
With any luck he wouldn’t have long to wait at all.
The days shrank as the season contracted, drawing inward against the approaching winter. Trees bared stiffening limbs, scraped the sky and etched patterns of stars as sharp
and cold as diamond dust above the horizon. Victor got out his old Army jacket. The main house became dank and tomblike, magnifying the creaking of dryrotted timbers. He took to sleeping in the
guest cabin, though the portable heater kept him tight and shivering night after night.
He pressed bravely ahead with his story, the outlines and preliminary versions of which by now filled two thick notebooks, reorganizing, redrafting and obsessively repolishing lines and
paragraphs with a jeweler’s precision.
But it was not good enough.
He wanted the pages to sing with ideas that had once seemed so important to him, all and everything he knew, and yet they did not, and no amount of diligence was able to bring them to life. The
story came to be a burden and weighed more heavily in his hands each time he lifted it out of the drawer. After a few weeks he was reluctant to open the desk at all.
He stayed in bed more and slept less, dragging himself up for work each day only at the last possible minute. Nothing except Rex Christian’s books held any interest for him now, and he had
read them all so many times he believed he knew them by heart, almost as well as his own stillborn effort. Channel 56 exhausted its library of late-night movies and sold out to a fundamentalist
religious sect peddling fire and brimstone. The nights lengthened and the long winter closed around him.
Each day
, he thought,
I die a little. I must. I get out of bed, don’t I
?
Mornings he walked the two miles along the creek into town, reexamining the last few years like beads to be memorized in his pocketed fists before they slipped away forever. He walked faster,
but his life only seemed to recede that much more swiftly across the dunes and back to the sea. He could neither hold onto nor completely forget how things had once been. Whether or not they had
ever truly been the way he remembered them was not the point. The spell of the past, his past, real or imagined, had settled over him like the shadow of giant wings, and he could not escape.
He submerged himself in his work at the shop, a space he rented for small appliance repair behind the Blue & White Diner, but that was not enough, either. For a time he tried to tell himself
that nothing else mattered. But it was an evasion.
You can run
, he thought,
but you can’t hide.
Rex Christian had taught him that.
Some days he would have traded anything he owned and all that he had ever earned to wake up one more time with the special smell of her on his pillow – just that, no matter whether he ever
actually set eyes on her again. Other days his old revenge fantasies got the better of him. But all that was real for him now was the numbness of more and more hours at the shop, struggling to
penetrate the inner workings of what others paid him to fix, the broken remnants of households which had fallen apart suddenly, without warning or explanation.
When not busy at work, the smallest of rewards kept him going. The weekly changes of program at the local movie theater, diverting but instantly forgettable; the specialties of the house at the
Blue & White, prepared for him by the new waitress, whose name turned out to be Jolene; and Jolene herself when business was slow and there was nowhere else to go. She catered to him without
complaint, serving something, perhaps, behind his eyes that he thought he had put to rest long ago. He was grateful to her for being there. But he could not repay her in kind. He did not feel it,
could not even if he had wanted to.
By late December he had almost given up hope.
The weekends were the worst. He had to get out, buttoned against the cold, though the coffee in town was never hot enough and the talk after the movies was mindless and did not nourish. But he
could bear the big house no longer, and even the guest cabin had begun to enclose him like a vault.
This Saturday night, the last week before Christmas, the going was painfully slow. Steam expanded from his mouth like ectoplasm. He turned up his collar against an icy offshore wind. There were
sand devils in the road, a halo around the ghost of a moon which hung over his shoulder and paced him relentlessly. At his side, to the north, dark reeds rustled and scratched the old riverbank
with a sound of rusted blades. He stuffed his hands deeper into his jacket and trudged on toward the impersonal glow of the business district.
The neon above the Blue & White burned coolly in the darkness.
The nightlife in Gezira, such as it was – Siamese silhouettes of couples cruising for burgers, clutches of frantic teenagers on their way to or from the mall – appeared undiscouraged
by the cold. If anything the pedestrians scissoring by seemed less inhibited than ever, pumping reserves of adrenaline and huffing wraiths of steam as if their last-minute shopping mattered more
than anything else in this world. The bubble machine atop a police car revolved like a deranged Christmas tree light. Children giggled obscenities and fled as a firecracker resounded between
lampposts; it might have been a gunshot. The patrol car spun out, burning rubber, and screeched past in the wrong direction.