Best New Horror #26, page 45
Knowing he must, he turned to face the bed.
Katrina sat with her back to him. She was facing the old woman, slightly bent forward, forearms on thighs, wearing her Dorothy Perkins raincoat. He could see in harrowing clarity dark, mercury rivulets beading down it, lines chasing each other.
“You were quick,” he said, forcing a lightness into it that stuck in his throat.
Katrina did not reply. Nor did she turn.
She extended a hand to rest gently on Bronwen’s and it was not the hand he last remembered as Katrina’s. Of course he had not examined it, not had occasion or need to, but Katrina’s had been soft and white, and now the skin was—what?—brown, if not grey, and he was sure if anything her fingers had been rather dainty, but these? These were too long, surely—far too long, and the knuckles too many…The most appalling thing of all was he now saw that the figure’s back was hunched quite notably, the head sinking low to its chest as the hand with palpable urgency squeezed and shook the old woman’s.
Almost paralysed, yet feeling the sac of his testes prickle and tighten, Rees knew that the object was to wake her and that Bronwen knew this with unique and horrible certainty. He could see that she had her eyes so tightly shut that her entire face was a route map of wrinkles pointing at a central point. Her lower lip shook in her non-babble, shining with rogue spittle as the oxygen mask misted in bursts. She resisted. She resisted. Weak as she was, enfeebled as she was, mute as she was, she was defying the night with every ounce of her embattled being. But the night was relentless. It persisted. It was waiting, predator at the water hole, with its filthy, lank, coal-black hair for her to give in, as it knew she must.
It was waiting with immoral, sickening patience for her to open her eyes.
“No,” Rees said, voice his own again, not his father’s, not on tape, not artificial or an electromagnetic reproduction but alarming real. Knowing that more than almost anything he’d had in life, or wanted in life, he wanted Bronwen’s eyes to stay closed.
“Not her,” he breathed. “Not yet.”
In bemusement or arrogance the hunched figure did not respond, and Rees knew what he had to do. Seeing past it the flickering eyelids that tried so hard to keep shut, he grabbed its shoulder and yanked it round to face him, tearing its gaze from its victim.
Two swishing curtains of thickly-matted hair fell long either side of its Geronimo cheeks, the face framed by them hard to reconcile as human. It filled his vision, riddled with warts, Neanderthal brow sloping above a bony ridge overhanging holes dug into putty. In the same instant the lips of a jutting jaw, ancient and simian, pulled back from a mouth with frightening elasticity to display gums blackened and rotten as it emitted a sound he failed to define even as it consumed him.
Strangely, he remembered seeing a programme about the making of a monster movie of the 1950s which showed the roar of a dinosaur ravaging New York created by the amalgamation of recordings of a bear, an elephant and a howler monkey. His brain tried to deduce, to codify, oddly, some similar recipe for what was assaulting his ears, but the task defeated him. Even in that grasping moment of lucidity, on another level, he understood completely that he was lost in the all-encompassing trap of it. There was no escape but to succumb, and the burden of resistance was shockingly easy to divest. He let it bathe him, that strange manufacture of the vast, insouciant yawn of a lion, the manic glee of a chimpanzee and the plaintive top C of a mezzo-soprano singing La Cieca’s aria from La Gioconda—the first opera he had seen that had made him weep. It—all of it—rose, transporting and yet holding him like a claw.
Perhaps he found beauty in that sound because he knew that if he was hearing it, Bronwen was not.
And even as the noise coursed through him, he knew that the only scream they’d hear on the tape would be his own, torn from him now as a crippling fire exploded in his chest, fissures of agony snaking down one arm. Pain choked him as he tried to blot out the inhuman howl of the Gwrach-y-Rhibyn with his own. But he was doubled, quartered, falling, fallen, as the polished floor raced to hit his splayed hand then, as it twisted, his forehead.
Hiroshima whited him back to the world. Faces? Faces he didn’t know. Demons. Saviours. Making him afraid. Fishermen hauling him back from drowning. But drowning felt best.
Two hundred joules. Stand back please!
The kick again. Cold. Shirt ripped open. Paddles descending.
Not responding. Nothing happening. One more time. Stand back please! Stand back!
“She’s coming for me,” he could hear somewhere in the room. “She came for him, and next she’ll come for me.” And he knew Katrina, upside-down Katrina, returning now from outside, would comfort the old woman in her madness.
He didn’t care. What mattered was that she was safe. That she had time. Time enough to see her son. Time to make a difference. And the light was bright. And he didn’t mind that, either. He didn’t mind anything very much at all.
And the last thing he listened to was his own voice in his own head.
“To the folklorist, nothing must die. There is life every time a mouth opens to tell a story.”
Now I am a story, he thought.
Tell me.
PETER STRAUB
THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF FREDDIE PROTHERO
INTRODUCTION BY TORLESS MAGNUSSEN, PH. D.
PETER STRAUB’s first supernatural novel, Julia, appeared in 1975. Since then he has published If You Could See Me Now, Ghost Story, Shadowland, Floating Dragon, Koko, Mystery, The Throat, The Hellfire Club, Mr. X, Lost Boy Lost Girl, In the Night Room, A Dark Matter and two collaborations with Stephen King, The Talisman and Black House.
His short fiction has been collected in Houses Without Doors, The Ghost Village, Magic Terror, 5 Stories, The Juniper Tree and Other Stories and the forthcoming Interior Darkness: Selected Stories. He has also edited the anthologies Poe’s Children and two volumes of American Fantastic Tales.
Julia was filmed in 1977 as Full Circle (aka The Haunting of Julia) starring Mia Farrow and Keir Dullea, while the 1981 movie of Ghost Story featured an impressive cast that included Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and John Houseman.
Amongst many literary honours, Straub has won multiple World Fantasy Awards and HWA Bram Stoker Awards, along with the International Horror Guild Award and the British Fantasy August Derleth Award.
“I liked the idea of a story about a great writer who died in childhood,” recalls the author. “For subject matter, this great writer would have been restricted to his house, his parents, his back yard, school, trips with parents, meals at home, ordinary small-boy material.
“His language would have to be that of childhood, with misspellings, odd syntax, unintended mistakes and moments of blurriness. I like that all of this means it would have to look weird.
“What got the story off the ground for me was the idea of writing an Introduction by a literary scholar convinced that our boy author was a great modernist.”
THE PRESENT VOLUME presents in chronological order every known short story written by Frederick “Freddie” Prothero. Of causes that must ever remain obscure, he died “flying solo”, his expression for venturing out in search of solitude, in a field two blocks from his house in Prospect Fair, Connecticut. His death took place in January, 1988, nine months before his ninth birthday. It was a Sunday. At the hour of his death, approximately four o’clock of a bright, cold, snow-occluded day, the writer was wearing a hooded tan snowsuit he had in fact technically outgrown; a red woollen scarf festooned with “pills”; an imitation Aran knit sweater, navy blue with cables; a green-and-blue plaid shirt from Sam’s; dark green corduroys with cuffs beginning to grow ragged; a shapeless white Jockey T-shirt also worn the day previous; Jockey briefs, once white, now stained lemon yellow across the Y-front; white tube socks; Tru-Value Velcro sneakers, so abraded as nearly to be threadbare; and black calf-high rubber boots with six metal buckles.
The inscription on the toaster-sized tombstone in Prospect Fair’s spacious Gullikson & Son Cemetery reads FREDERICK MICHAEL PROTHERO, 1979-1988. A NEW ANGEL IN HEAVEN. In that small span of years, really in a mere three of those not-yet seven-and-a-half years, Freddie Prothero went from apprenticeship to mastery with unprecedented speed, in the process authoring ten of the most visionary short stories in the English language. It is my belief that this collection will now stand as a definitive monument to the unique merits—and difficulties!—presented by the only genuine prodigy in American literature.
That Prothero’s fiction permits a multiplicity of interpretations supplies a portion, though scarcely all, of its interest to both the academic and the general reader. Beginning in 1984 with childish, nearly brutal simplicity and evolving toward the more polished (though still in fact unfinished) form of expression seen in the work of his later years, these stories were apparently presented to his mother, Varda Prothero, nee´ Barthelmy.(Baathy, baathy, momma sai.) In any case, Momma Baathy Prothero preserved them (perhaps after the fact?) in individual manila files withinin a snug, smoothly mortised and sanded cherry wood box.
As the above example demonstrates, the earliest Prothero, the stories written from his fifth to seventh years, displays the improvised variant spelling long encouraged by American primary schools. The reader will easily decipher the childish code, although I should perhaps explain that “bood gig” stands for “bad guy”.
From first to last, the stories demonstrate the writer’s awareness of the constant presence of a bood gig. A threatening, indeterminate figure, invested with all the terrifying power and malignity of the monster beneath a child’s bed, haunts this fiction. Prothero’s “monster” figure, however, is not content to confine itself to the underside of his bed. It roams the necessarily limited map of the writer’s forays both within and outside of his house: that is, across his front yard; down Gerhardie Street, which runs past his house; through the supermarket he, stroller-bound, visits with his mother; and perhaps above all in the shadowy, clamorous city streets he is forced to traverse with his father on the few occasions when R(andolph) Sullivan “Sully” Prothero brought him along to the law office where he spent sixty hours a week in pursuit of the partnership attained in 1996, eight years after his son’s death and two prior to his own unexplained disappearance. The commuter train from Prospect Fair to Penn Station was another location favoured by the omniscient shadow-figure.
Though these occasions were in fact no more than an annual event (more specifically, on the Take Your Son to Work Days of 1985-86), they had a near-traumatic, no, let us face the facts and say traumatic, effect on Prothero. He pleaded, he wept, he screamed, he cowered gibbering in terror. One imagines the mingled disdain and distress of the fellow-passengers, the unsympathetic conductor. The journey through the streets to 54th and Madison was a horrifying trek, actually heroic on the boy’s part.
A high-functioning alcoholic chronically unfaithful to his spouse, “Sully” was an absent, at best an indifferent father. In her role as mother, Varda, about whom one has learned so much in recent years, can be counted, alas, as no better. The Fair Haven pharmacists open to examinations of their records by a scholar of impeccable credentials have permitted us to document Varda’s reliance upon the painkillers Vicodin, Percodan, and Percocet. Those seeking an explanation for her son’s shabby, ill-fitting wardrobe need look no further. (One wishes almost to weep. His poor little snowsuit too tight for his growing body! And his autopsy, conducted in a completely up-to-date facility in Norwalk, CT, revealed that but for a single slice of bread lightly smeared with oleomargarine, that Prothero had eaten nothing at all that day. Imagine.)
In some quarters, the four stories of 1984, his fifth year, are not thought to belong in a collection of his work, being difficult to decode from their primitive spelling and level of language. Absent any narrative sense whatsoever, these very early works perhaps ought be considered poetry rather than prose. Prothero would not be the first author of significant fiction to begin by writing poems. The earliest works do, however, present the first form of this writer’s themes and perhaps offer (multiple) suggestions of their emotional and intellectual significance.
Among the small number of we dedicated Protherians, considerable disagreement exists over the meaning and identification of the “Mannotmann”, sometimes “Monnuttmonn”. “Man not man” is one likely decipherment of the term, “Mammoth man” another. In the first of these works ‘Te Styree Uboy F-R-E-D-D-I-E’, or ‘The Story About Freddie’, Prothero writes “Ay am nott F-R-E-D-D-I-E”, and we are told that Freddie, a scaredy-cat, needs him precisely because Freddie is not “Monnutmann”. “Can you hear me, everybody?” he asks: this is an important truth.
This precocious child is self-protectively separating from himself within the doubled protection of art, the only realm available to the sane mind in which such separation is possible. Ol droo, he tells us: it is all true.
It should go without saying, though unhappily it cannot, that the author’s statement, in the more mature spelling and diction of his sixth year, that a man “came from the sky” does not refer to the appearance of an extraterrestrial. Some of my colleagues in Prothero studies strike one as nearly as juvenile as, though rather less savvy than, the doomed, hungry little genius who so commands all of us.
1984
Te Styree Uboy F-R-E-D-D-I-E
Ay am nott F-r-e-d-d-i-e. F-R-E-D-D-I-E nott be mee
Hah hah
F-R-E-D-D-I-E iss be nyce, tooo Cin yoo her mee, evvrrie
F-r-e-d-d-i-e iss scarrdiecutt fradydiecutt, nott mee Hee neid mee.
Mannnuttmonn hah scir him hah hah
Bcayuzz Monnntmonn hee eezzz naytt
BOOOO
Ol droo
Ta Sturree Ubot Monnnuttmonn
Baathy baathy momma sai baathy mi nom mommnas sai in gd dyz id wuzz Baaaathy
Monnoittmoon be lissen yz hee lizzen oh ho
Tnbur wz a boi nommed F-r-e-d–d-i-e sai Monnuttmon he sai evvrwhy inn shaar teevee taybbull rug ayr
F-r-e-d-d-i-e un Monnuttmin
Monnuttmoon sai gud boi F-r-e-d-d-i-e god boi
En niht sai SKRREEEEAAAKKKK her wz da bood gig
SKREEEEAAAAKK mummay no heer onny F-r-e-d-d-i-e
Ta bood gig smylz smylz smilez hippi bood gig SKKRREEEEEAAAAAKK att niht
Hi terz mi ert appurt id hertz my ertmi ert pur erzees
Bugg flyes in skie bugg waks on gras
Whi nutt F-r-e-d-d-i-e kann bee bugg
oho ha ha F-re-d-d-i-e pur boi pour boi
Ta Struuyrie Abot Dadddi
Wee go in trauyhn sai Dudddi wee wuk striits sai Duddi noon ooh sai F-r-e-d-d-i-e
Bood gig lissen bood gig lisen an laff yu cribbabby cri al yu went sai Mannuttmon
Daddi sai sit heir siitt doon sunn and te boi satt dunn onb triyn wiff Mannnottmonn ryt bezyd hum te biu wuzz escayrt att nite nooo hee sai nooo mummma nut trayn
Hah hah
Dyddi be nutt Mannuttmon F-r-e-d-d-i-e be nott Mannuttmon Mummna be nott Mannuttmon hah no Cus Mannotttmon izz mee Aruynt de Kernerr duywn de strittt ever evverweaur
Deddi sai Wak Faysterr Wak Fayster Whatt ur yu affraitt ovv WhATT
De kerner de strett F-r-e-d-d-i-e sai
1985
The Cornoo
The boy waz standing. He waz standing in the cornoo. There waz a man who caym from the sky. The sky was al blakk. I ate the starz sed the man around the cornoo. The boy cloused his eyz. I ate the stars I ate the moon and the sunn now I eat the wrld. And yu in it. He laft. Yu go playe now he sed. If play yu can. Hah hah he laft. Freddie waked until he ran. That waz suun. I waz in my cornoo and I saw that, I saw him runn. Runn, Freddie. Runn, lettul boy.
Wher iz F-R-E-D-D-I-E ??
He waz not in the bed. He was not in the kishen he was not in the living roome. The Mumma could not find littl Freddie. The man from the blakk sky came and tuke the boy to the ruume in the sky. The Mumma calld the Duddah and she sed are you takng the boy??? Giv him bakk, she sed. This iz my sunn she sed and the Duddah said cam down ar yu craazie?? Becus rembur this is my sunn to onnlee I doin havv him. I saw from the rome in the sky. I herd. They looked soo lidl. And small. And teenie tinee downn thur small as the bugs. Ar you F-R-E-D-D-I-E ?? ast the man of the ruume. No he sed. I waz nevrr him. Now I am the blakk sky and I waz alws the blakk sky.
F-R-E-D-D-I-E Is Lahst
The Mumma the Duddah they sed Were Culd Hee Bee? It waz funnee. They cri they cri OUT hiz namm Freddie Freddie you are lahst. Cann you here us?? No and yes he sed you woodunt Now. The Onne who cumms for mee sum tymes is in Feeldss somme tymes in grasse or rode or cite farr awii. He sed Boi yuu ar nott Freeddie an Freddie iz nott yuu Hee sed Boi Mannuttman iuz whutt yuu cal mee Mannuttmonn is my namm. Mannuttmonn ius for-evv-err.
The boi went dun Gurrhurrdee Streeyt and lookt for his fayce. It waz thurr on the streyt al ruff. The boi mad it smuuf wuth hiz ohn hanns. Wenm hee treyd ut onn itt futt purfuct onn hiz fayce. Hiz fayce fiutt onn hiz fayce. It waz wurm frum the sunn. Wurm Fayce is guud it is luyke Mumma Baathy and Duddah Jymm longg aggoo.
I luv yuur fayce Mumma sed your swite faycce thuer is onnye wann lyke itt in the wrld. Soo I cuuyd nott staye inn mye huis. Itt waz nutt my huis anny moire. It waz Leev Freddiue leeve boi for mee. Thenn hee the boi cam bayck and sed I went Nooweehre Noowehre thads wehre. Noo he sed I dudd nott go to the Citty no I did nutt go to the wood. I went to Noowehre thats wehre. It waz all tru. Aall tru it was sed the boi whooz fayce wuz neoo. He waz Mannuttmann insydde. And Minnuttmann sed Hah Hah Hah menny timnes. His laffter shook the door and it filldup the roome.
1986
Not Long Leftt
The boy lived in this our world and in a diffrent one too. He was a boy who walked Up the staiurs twice and Down the staiurs only once. The seccondd time he went down he was not him. Mannuttmann you calld me long ago and Mannuttman I shall be. The boy saw the frendly old enymee hyding in the doorwais and in the shaddowes of the deep gutter. When he took a step, so did Mannuttman his enymee his frend. The Mumma grabbed his hand and she said too loud Sunny Boy You are still only seven years old sometimes I swear you act like a teenager. Im sorry Mumma he saiud I will never be a teenager. Whats that I hear she said Dud you get that from your preshioys Minutman? You dont know hisz name. When they got to the cornoo at the end of the block the boy smild and told to his Mumma I have not long left. You will see. I have not long left? she said. Where do you get this stuf? He smyled and that was his anser.
