Ray Bradbury - Darker Masques

TALK RADIO

Suddenly, there was the sound of a door banging in the background. Then the clatter of something falling over. A muffled voice said, "Get out of here, you can't come in here, we're recording!" Then another shout and a blurt of thick static as if somebody had knocked the microphone.

At first, Martin thought this must be part of the plot. But the shouting and struggling were so indistinct that he realized quickly there must be an intruder in the radio studio, a real intruder, and that the actors and technicians were trying to subdue him. There was another jumble of sound and then an extraordinarily long-drawn-out scream, rising higher and higher, increasingly hysterical.

Then the most terrible thing Martin had ever heard in his life. He turned away from the open door to stare at the radio with his eyes wide and his scalp prickling with horror.

"Oh God! Oh God! John! John! Oh God hel p me! He's cut me open! Oh God! My stomach'sfalling out!"

A noise like somebody dropping a sodden bath towel. Then more shouts and more thumps. A nasal, panicky voice shouting, "Ambulance! Get an ambulance!" Then a sharp blipand the program was cut off.

from The Heart of Helen Day, by Graham Masterton

ISBN-10: 0786015055

ISBN-13: 978-0786015054

DARKER

MASQUES

Edited by

J.N. Williamson

PINNACLE BOOKS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

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Copyright 2002 by J.N. Williamson

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Previously published as Masques III copyright 1989 and Masques IV copyright 1991.

First Pinnacle Books Printing: December 2002

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

DRIFTER

REFLECTIONS

THE HAPPY FAMILY

DEW DROP INN

REFRACTIONS

THE SPELLING BEE

BETTER THAN ONE

EVER, EVER, AFTER

PROMETHEUS' DECLARATION OF

LOVE FOR THE VULTURE (poem)

LONG LIPS

SINNERS

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

THIRD RAIL

COOCHIE-COO

THE WULGAROO

THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE WORLD

THE BONELESS DOLL (poem)

THE SKULL

ON 42ND STREET

SAFE

ALL BUT THE TIES ETERNAL

POP IS REAL SMART

WHEN THE WALL CRIES

RETURN TO THE MUTANT RAIN

FOREST (poem)

THE WILLIES

THE DRINKING PARTY

CHOSEN ONE

THEM BALD-HEADED SNAYS

MOTHERSON

KILL FOR ME

SHAVE AND A HAIRCUT, TWO BITES

THE ORCHID NURSERY (poem)

OF ABSENCE, DARKNESS DEATH:

THINGS WHICH ARE NOT

THE PACK

CHILDREN

SEA GULLS

THE COMING OF NIGHT, THE PASSING OF DAY 345

PLEASE DON'T HURT ME

SPLATTER ME AN ANGEL

UNTITLED STILL LIFE WITH INFINITY

PERSPECTIVE

PRATFALL

THE HEART OF HELEN DAY

NOTHING BUT THE BEST

SOMEWHERE

MILESTONE'S FACE

JULIA'S TOUCH

SAVAGES

THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION

ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

SOUNDS

WHISPERS OF THE UNREPENTANT

OBSCENE PHONE CALLS

THE CHILDREN NEVER LIE

THE OTHER WOMAN

LOVE, HATE, AND THE BEAUTIFUL JUNKYARD 523

SOURCES OF THE NILE

COLLABORATIONISTS

MY PRIVATE MEMOIRS OF THE HOFF553

STIGMAYA PANDEMIC

And a Classic

THE SECRET

In his introduction to Raymond Van Over's MONSTERS YOU NEVER HEARD OF (Tempo Books, The Berkley Publishing Group, N.Y., 1983), Colin Wilson observed that the author had tried to "open creaking doors into other dimensions of life that show us other realities, as they terrify

UK."

And so, the versatile British writer-thinker concluded, Van Over's book was far more than

"nasty." It is, said the creator of THE OUTSIDER, MYSTERIES and BEYOND THE

OCCULT, "the myths and fairy tales of fear that symbolize the deepest problems of human existence." As if anticipating the authors of the present book, Wilson noted we never fully outrun "the horrors" of our childhood frights; "we have merely learned to look the other way."

Although your present writers created fiction, not analyzed our "five-year old self" (in psychological parlance), many have enabled MASQUES, by this combined third and fourth volume, as though creating credible myths and fairy tales for adult readers. Some such authors, I believe, include John Maclay (twice herein), Diane Taylor, Gary A. Braun-beck, Mort Castle, (again, twice here), Stanley Wiater, the poets Boston, Frazier, Ray Bradbury and Denise Dumars, Dan Simmons (in two appearances in this book), Kristine Rusch, John Keefauver, Ed Gorman, Kathryn Ptacek, F. Paul Wilson and the late Steve Allen. As editor, I am pleased with all the contributions but those wordsmiths elevated the horror/supernatural genre to new, different heights. Simultaneously, because of or despite connections to some painful realities, they are rediscovering the element of our race's eldest concerns.

We must throw open those ancient, creaking doors to see useven those we pray are little like us at allin order to experience the "wonder and excitement," as Wilson put it, of what we have come to recognize from time to time is the reality of our individual and collective existences. So I say as I have said before in introducing these collections ... let the masque begin!

J. N. Williamson Indianapolis, Indiana April 2002

Drifter

Ed Gorman for Michael Seidman

The Denver rig driver dumped me fast when he caught me trying to stuff a pint of his whiskey down the front of my pants. I'd figured that with the dark and the rain and the way even this big mother was getting blown around on the two-lane blacktop, he'd be too busy to notice. He flipped me his middle finger as he pulled away.

So I landed around seven o'clock that night in some town named Newkirk ten miles south of the Nebraska border, with half a pack of Luckies, two Trojans, and maybe three dollars in change to my name. I had a pocketknife, one of those babies that will do the job but that the law can't bust you for in most states, and a backpack filled with my one change of clothes, which was exactly like the ones I was wearing except they were more or less clean.

Newkirk had a single main street three blocks long. In the October night only two lights glowed, one for a DX station, one for Chet's cafe. No doubt about which one I needed first.