Dreamsongs 2-Book Bundle Page 3

  I wanted to be part of it, and I had a terrific original idea. Brains in jars like Garizan and masked crimefighters like Manta Ray were old hat, but no one had ever put a superhero on skis. (I had never skiied. Still haven’t.) My hero had one ski pole that was also a flamethrower, while the other doubled as a machine gun. Instead of fighting some stupid supervillain, I pitted him against the Commies to be “realistic.” But the best part of my story was the ending, where the White Raider met a shocking, tragic end. That would make the Texas Trio sit up and take notice, I was certain.

  I called the story “The Strange Saga of the White Raider,” and sent it off to Larry Herndon. As well as being one-third of SSC’s august editorial triad, Larry had been one of the first people I’d struck up a correspondence with on entering comicdom. I was sure that he would like the story.

  He did … but not for SSC. He explained to me that the Trio’s flagship fanzine had a full slate of characters. Rather than adding more, he and Howard and Buddy wanted to develop the heroes they had already introduced. They all liked my writing, though. They would be glad to have me write for Star-Studded Comics … so long as I wrote stories about their existing characters.

  That was how it happened that “The Strange Saga of the White Raider” ran in Batwing, Larry Herndon’s solo fanzine, while I went on to appear in SSC with text stories about two of Howard Keltner’s creations. The Powerman story came first. “Powerman Vs. The Blue Barrier!” was published in SSC #7, in August 1965, and was well-received … but it was “Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark,” my Dr. Weird story in SSC #10, that really made my name in comicdom.

  Dr. Weird was a mystic avenger who fought ghosts, werewolves, and other supernatural menaces. Despite the similarity of their names, he had little in common with Marvel’s Dr. Strange. Keltner had modeled him on a Golden Age hero called Mr. Justice. Doc Weird went my White Raider one better, dying halfway through his first story instead of at the end. A time traveler from the future, he had stepped out of his time machine right into the middle of a robbery, and was immediately shot and killed. By dying before he was born, however, he had unbalanced the cosmos, so now he had to walk the earth righting wrongs until his birth came round.

  I soon found I had an affinity for Doc Weird. Keltner liked what I did with him and encouraged me to do more stories, so when he spun the character off into his own fanzine, I wrote a script called “The Sword and the Spider” that a new, unknown artist illustrated handsomely. Jim Starlin also adapted “Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark” to comic form … but the text story came first.

  Comicdom had established its own awards by then. The Alley Awards were named after Alley Oop, “the oldest comic character of all” (the Yellow Kid might have disagreed). Like the Hugo Awards, the Alleys had categories for both professional and fan work; Golden Alleys for the pros, Silver Alleys for the fans. “Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark” was nominated for a Silver Alley for best text story … and to my shock and delight, it won (quite undeservedly, as Howard Waldrop and Paul Moslander were writing rings around me). Visions of gleaming silver trophies danced briefly in my head, but I never received a thing. The sponsoring organization soon collapsed, and that was the end of the Alley Awards … but the recognition did wonders for my confidence, and helped to keep me writing.

  By the time my Dr. Weird stories appeared in print, however, my life had undergone some profound changes. I graduated Marist High in June of 1966. That September I left home for the first time in my life, and rode the Greyhound out to Illinois to attend the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

  College was a strange new world, as exciting as it was scary. I lived in a freshman dorm called Bobb Hall (my mother kept getting confused and thinking Bob was my roommate), in this strange midwestern land where the news came on too early and no one knew how to make a decent pizza pie. The coursework was challenging, there were new friends to make, new assholes to contend with, new vices to acquire (hearts my freshman year, beer when I was a junior) … and there were girls in my classes. I still bought comics when I saw them, but soon I was missing issues, and my fanac dropped off precipitously. With so much newness to contend with, it was hard to find the time to write. I finished only one story my freshman year—a straight science fiction story called “The Coach and the Computer,” which was published in the first (and only) issue of an obscure fanzine called In-Depth.

  My major was journalism, but I took a minor in history. My sophomore year I signed up for the History of Scandinavia, thinking it would be cool to study Vikings. Professor Franklin D. Scott was an enthusiastic teacher who invited the class to his home for Scandinavian food and glug (a mulled wine with raisins and nuts floating in it). We read Norse sagas, Icelandic eddas, and the poems of the Finnish patriotic poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg.

  I loved the sagas and the eddas, which reminded me of Tolkien and Howard, and was much taken with Runeberg’s poem “Sveaborg,” a rousing lament for the great Helsinki fortress “Gibraltar of the North,” which surrendered inexplicably during the Russo-Swedish War of 1808. When it came time to write term papers, I chose “Sveaborg” for my topic. Then I had an off-the-wall idea. I asked Professor Scott if he would allow me to submit a story about “Sveaborg” rather than a conventional paper. To my delight, he agreed.

  “The Fortress” got me an A … but more than that, Professor Scott was so pleased with the story that he sent it off to The American-Scandinavian Review for possible publication.

  The first rejection letter I ever received was not from Damon Knight, nor Frederik Pohl, nor John Wood Campbell, Jr., but from Erik J. Friis, editor of The American-Scandinavian Review, who regretted “very much” having to return “The Fortress” to me. “It is a very good article,” he wrote in a letter dated June 14, 1968, “but unfortunately too long for our purpose.”

  Seldom has a writer been so thrilled by a rejection. A real editor had seen one of my stories, and liked it well enough to send a letter instead of a rejection slip. I felt as though a door had opened. The next fall, when I returned for my junior year at Northwestern, I signed up for creative writing … and soon found myself surrounded by would-be modern poets writing free verse and prose poems. I loved poetry, but not that sort. I had no idea what to say about my classmates’ poems, and they had no idea what to say about my stories. Where I dreamed of selling stories to Analog and Galaxy, and maybe Playboy, my classmates hoped to place a poem with TriQuarterly, Northwestern’s prestigious literary magazine.

  A few of the other writers did submit the occasional short story; plotless character pieces, for the most part, many written in the present tense, some in the second person, a few without the benefit of capitalization. (To be fair, there were exceptions. I remember one, a creepy little horror story set in an old department store, almost Lovecraftian in tone. I liked that story best of all those I read that year; the rest of the class hated it, of course.)

  Nonetheless, I managed to complete four short stories (and no poems) for creative writing. “The Added Safety Factor” and “The Hero” were science fiction. “And Death His Legacy” and “Protector” were mainstream stories with a political slant (it was 1968, and revolution was in the air). The former grew out of a character I’d first envisioned back at Marist, after developing an enthusiasm for James Bond (Ursula Andress had nothing to do with it, no sir, and neither did those sex scenes in the books, nope, nope). Maximilian de Laurier was intended to be an “elegant assassin,” who would jaunt about the world killing evil dictators in exotic locations. His big gimmick would be a pipe that doubled as a blowgun.

  By the time I got around to putting him on paper, only the name remained. My politics had changed, and assassination no longer seemed so sexy after 1968. The story never sold, but you can read it here, only thirty-five short years after it was written.

  The class liked the mainstream stories better than the SF stories, but didn’t like any of them very much. Our prof, a hip young instructor who drove a classic P
orsche and wore corduroy jackets with leather patches on the elbows, was similarly tepid … but he also thought that grades were bullshit, so I was able to escape with high marks and four finished stories.

  Though the class hadn’t liked my stories, I remained hopeful that some editors might. I would send my stories out, and see what happened. I knew the process: find the addresses in Writer’s Market, put a crisp new ribbon in my Smith-Corona, type up a clean doublespaced manuscript, ship it off with a brief cover letter and a stamped, self-addressed return envelope, and wait. I could do that.

  As my junior year at Northwestern was winding down, I began to market the four stories I’d written for creative writing. Whenever a story was returned by one magazine, I’d ship it off to another that same day. I started with the best-paying markets and worked my way down the pay scale, as the writers’ magazines all recommended. And I made a solemn vow that I would not give up.

  Good thing. “The Added Safety Factor” alone collected thirty-seven rejection slips before I finally ran out of places to send it. Nine years after I’d written it, when I was living in Iowa and teaching classes instead of attending them, a fellow teacher named George Guthridge read the story and said he knew how to fix it. I gave him my blessing, and Guthridge rewrote “The Added Safety Factor” into “Warship” and sent it forth as a collaboration. As “Warship” it collected another five rejections before finally finding a home at F&SF. Those forty-two rejections remain my personal record, one that I am in no rush to break.

  The other stories were all gathering rejections as well, though at a lesser clip. I soon discovered that most magazines did not share the enthusiasm of The American-Scandinavian Review for stories about the Russo-Swedish War of 1808, and returned “The Fortress” to the drawer. “Protector” was revised and retitled “The Protectors,” but that didn’t help. And “The Hero” came back from Playboy and Analog, went off to Galaxy …

  … and vanished. I’ll tell you what became of it in my second commentary. Meanwhile, have a look at my apprentice work, if you dare.

  ONLY KIDS ARE AFRAID OF THE DARK

  Through the silent, shifting shadows

  Grotesque forms go drifting by;

  Phantom shapes prowl o’er the darkness;

  Great winged hellions stalk the sky.

  In the ghostly, ghastly grayness

  Soul-less horrors make their home.

  Know they well this land of evil—

  Corlos is the world they roam.

  —found in a Central European cavern, once the temple of a dark sect; author unknown.

  Darkness. Everywhere there was darkness. Grim, foreboding, omnipresent; it hung over the plain like a great stifling mantle. No moonlight sifted down; no stars shone from above; only night, sinister and eternal, and the swirling, choking gray mists that shifted and stirred with every movement. Something screeched in the distance, but its form could not be seen. The mists and the shadows cloaked all.

  But no. One object was visible. In the middle of the plain, rising to challenge the grim black mountains in the distance, a smooth, needlelike tower thrust up into the dead sky. Miles it rose, up to where the crackling crimson lightnings played eternally on the polished black rock. A dull scarlet light gleamed from the lone tower window, one single isle in a sea of night.

  In the swirling mists below things stirred uneasily, and the rustles of strange movements and scramblings broke the deathly silence. The unholy denizens of Corlos were uneasy, for when the light shone in the tower, it meant that its owner was at home. And even demons can know fear.

  High in the summit of the black tower, a grim entity looked out of the single window at the yawning darkness of the plains and cursed them solemnly. Raging, the being turned from the swirling mist of the eternal night toward the well-lighted interior of its citadel. A whimper broke the silence. Chained helplessly to the marble wall, a hideous shape twisted in vain against its bonds. The entity was displeased. Raising one hand, it unleashed a bolt of black power toward the straining horror on the wall.

  A shriek of agony cut the endless night, and the bonds went limp. The chained demon was gone. No sound disturbed the solitude of the tower or its grim occupant. The entity rested on a great batlike throne carved from some glowing black rock. It stared across the room and out the window, at the half-seen somethings churning through the dark clouds.

  At last the being cried aloud, and its shout echoed and re-echoed down the miles and miles of the sinister tower. Even in the black pit of the dungeons far below it was heard, and the demons imprisoned there shuddered in expectation of even greater agony, for the cry was the epitome of rage.

  A bolt of black power shot from an upraised fist into the night. Something screamed outside, and an unseen shape fell writhing from the skies. The entity snarled.

  “Feeble sport. There is better to be had in the realm of mortals, where once I reigned, and where I would roam once more, to hunt again for human souls! When will the commandment be fulfilled, and the sacrifice be made that will release me from this eternal exile?”

  Thunder rumbled through the darkness. Crimson lightnings played among the black mountains. And the denizens of Corlos cringed in fear. Saagael, Prince of Demons, Lord of Corlos, King of the Netherworld, was angry and restless once more. And when the Lord of Darkness was displeased, his subjects were sent scrambling in terror through the mists.

  For long ages the great temple had lain hidden by sand and jungle, alone and deserted. The dust of centuries had gathered on its floor, and the silence of eons brooded in the grim, dark recesses. Dark and evil it was, so generations of natives declared it taboo, and it stood alone through the ages.

  But now, after timeless solitude, the great black doors carved with their hideous and forgotten symbols creaked open once more. Footsteps stirred the dust of three thousand years, and echoes disturbed the silence of the dark places. Slowly, nervously, with cautious glances into the darkness, two men sneaked into the ancient temple.

  They were dirty men, unwashed and unshaven, and their faces were masks of greed and brutality. Their clothes were in rags, and they each carried long, keen knives next to their empty, useless revolvers. They were hunted men, coming to the temple with blood on their hands and fear in their hearts.

  The larger of the two, the tall, lean one called Jasper, surveyed the dark, empty temple with a cold and cynical eye. It was a grim place, even by his standards. Darkness prevailed everywhere, in spite of the burning jungle sun outside, for the few windows there were had been stained a deep purple hue through which little light could pass. The rest was stone, a grim ebony stone carved centuries ago. There were strange, hideous murals on the walls, and the air was dank and stale with the smell of death. Of the furnishings, all had long decayed into dust save the huge black altar at the far end of the room. Once there had been stairs leading to a higher level, but they were gone now, rotted into nothingness.

  Jasper unslung his knapsack from his back and turned to his short, fat companion. “Guess this is it, Willie,” he said, his voice a low guttural rumble. “Here’s where we spend the night.”

  Willie’s eyes moved nervously in their sockets, and his tongue flicked over dry lips. “I don’t like it,” he said. “This place gives me th’ creeps. It’s too dark and spooky. And lookit them things on the walls.” He pointed toward one of the more bizarre of the murals.

  Jasper laughed, a snarling, bitter, cruel laugh from deep in his throat. “We got to stay some place, and the natives will kill us if they find us out in the open. They know we’ve got those sacred rubies of theirs. C’mon, Willie, there’s nothing wrong with this joint, and the natives are scared to come near it. So it’s a little dark … big deal. Only kids are afraid of the dark.”

  “Yeah, I … I guess yer right,” Willie said hesitantly. Removing his knapsack, he squatted down in the dust next to Jasper and began removing the makings of a meal. Jasper went back out into the jungle and returned minutes later, his arms laden with wood
. A small fire was started, and the two squatted in silence and hastily consumed their small meal. Afterward they sat around the fire and spoke in whispers of what they would do in civilization with the sudden wealth they had come upon.

  Time passed, slowly but inexorably. Outside, the sun sank behind the mountains in the west. Night came to the jungle.

  The temple’s interior was even more foreboding by night. The creeping darkness that spread from the walls put a damper on conversation. Yawning, Jasper spread his sleeping bag out on the dust-covered floor and stretched out. He looked up at Willie. “I’m gonna call it a day,” he said. “How about you?”

  Willie nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Guess so.” He hesitated. “But not on the floor. All that dust … could be bugs … spiders, mebbe. Nightcrawlers. I ain’t gonna be bit all night in my sleep.”

  Jasper frowned. “Where, then? Ain’t no furniture left in the place.”

  Willie’s hard dark eyes traveled around the room, searching. “There,” he exclaimed. “That thing looks wide enough to hold me. And the bugs won’t be able to get at me up there.”

  Jasper shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. He turned over and soon was asleep. Willie waddled over to the great carven rock, spread his sleeping bag open on it, and clambered up noisily. He stretched out and closed his eyes, shuddering as he beheld the carving on the ceiling. Within minutes his stout frame was heaving regularly, and he was snoring.

  Across the length of the dark room Jasper stirred, sat up, and peered through the gloom at his sleeping companion. Thoughts were running feverishly through his head. The natives were hot on their trail, and one man could move much faster than two, especially if the second was a fat, slow cow like Willie. And then there were the rubies—gleaming wealth, greater than any he had ever dreamed of. They could be his—all his.