Dr. Michael R. Collings - Chain of Evil: The JournalStone Guide to Writing Darkness

C HAIN OF E VIL

J OURNAL S TONE S G UIDE TO

W RITING D ARKNESS

By

Dr. Michael R. Collings

JournalStone

San Francisco

Copyright 2014 by Dr. Michael R. Collings

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Early versions of several essays in this volume have appeared in The Art and craft of Poetry (Wildside Press)

Toward Other Worlds: Perspectives on John Milton, C.S. Lewis, Stephen King, Orson Scott Card and Others (Wildside Press)

To some extent, all of the essays have been revised or edited for this volume.

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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-940161-64-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-940161-65-5 (ebook)

JournalStone rev. date: 8/29/2014

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014942906

Printed in the United States of America

Cover Design: Jeff Miller

Edited by: Aaron J. French

In memory of two great men

who helped me in the beginning:

Ted Dikty

Robert Reginald

C HAIN OF E VIL

It was late one August day, some sixty years ago.

The family had been in the dusty black Buick for hours, making their way from the city toward the grandparents distant farm for a two-week vacation.

They began the trip on new four-lane highways that extended for perhaps forty miles from the city before abruptly becoming roughly paved two-lane roads. Occasionally, a harvester or tractor-rig or combine would pull in front of them and slow traffic from 40 down to 10 or 15, until it reached the next intersection and turned off onto a dirt road toward the drivers farm.

For the first hour or so, the three children in the back seat paid attention to the father and the motherboth farm-bred and farm-grownas they pointed out small blotches in the increasingly numerous fields, identifying them as horses or sheep or cows or dogs. Soon, however, the children tired of this, especially since they could see no differences among the blotches, and started to nap.

Because this was before the days of mandatory seat belts, the father had placed some of their suitcases in the gap between the front seat (a single bench that ran from drivers door to passengers door) and the back seat. Then he had covered suitcases and back seat with several layers of quilts to make them more comfortable and tossed in three well-worn stuffed animals to serve as pillows.

While the children slept curled around each other in the back, the Buick continued on, then, at an otherwise undistinguished crossroads, turned onto a graveled road and started into the hills.

Half an hour or so later, the graveled road turned sharply at a small, bedraggled grocery store. That, and the nearby house already at least half a century old, constituted the small town named on a canting roadway sign.

The Buick left the graveled road and continued straight. The way gradually became rougher, clotted with potholes. Wild roses and sage pressed inward from both sides until the road encompassed little more than a single car-width.

One more sweeping turn at the base of a mountain, and the Buick entered the valley. It continued for another ten minutes or so, then turned south at the old stone church that had stood for three generationsand that would stand for only two more years before being dynamited to make way for a newer, more modern structure.

Just past the church, the roadway dropped abruptly, startling the children. The oldest glanced out the window and shouted, Were there!

A quarter of a mile further on, the Buick pulled into an open gateway in a white-plank fence, drove a bit further on, then pulled into a space between two log outbuildingsthe garage on one side, with barely enough room for the grandparents ten-year-old Nash; and the grandfathers machine shop on the other.

The father guided the big Buick into the narrow space, then stopped and set the parking brake.

Were here, he said. Lets go find Grandma and Grandpa.

But already the grandparents were making their way from the new house, past the old house where the mother had been born, through an arch in the white picket fence, and across the yard.

Weve been watching for you, the grandmother cried, tears in her eyes as she hugged her daughter and nodded toward her son-in-law. The grandfather didnt say anything, just stood there in his worn overalls, beaming.

The father helped each of the children climb over the drivers seat and out the door. Because they were antsy from the drive and already starting to vie with each other for attention, he boosted them onto the front of the carthe two boys on the fenders, the girl on the high-domed hood.

He reached inside and pulled out his brand-new camerahis first color camera.

Looking toward the sun setting across the fields, he fiddled with his light meter, spent a couple of minutes adjusting dials and knobs on the camera, then snapped a picture of the grandparents and the mother, and another of the three children perched on the car.

Then it happened.

Across a narrow creek that bisected the land between the outbuildings and the barn, something appeared.

The younger boy saw it first. His eyes bulged as the thing came nearer and nearer, but still safely on the far side of the creek. He almost began to cry. Tears welled in his eyes, and his face took on a reddish glow not entirely accountable to the setting sun. He was clearly in the grips of a strong emotion.

Fear.

For a moment, the tableaux held. Then the creature abruptly splashed across the creek and made its way through the low bushes toward the car.

It was huge! At least two, maybe three times as tall as the boy, with four legs that seemed to stomp on the muddy turf as it drew nearer. Great spiky thingsone, two of themstuck out from each side of its head and cut through the air as they moved in time with its cadenced pace. The boy had never seen anything like it before, had no name to call it, had never imagined that anything like it might even exist.

Tears squeezed out and down his cheeks as he began crying.

The thing kept coming, nearer and nearer, until its gigantic head was just on the other side of the peeled log barrier that separated it from the Buick.

It thrust its head toward the logs, searching for a gap between them. And the boy screamed. Fear had transformed into something else.

Terror!

Then, just as the mother began to move toward the far side of the Buick to rescue her son, the worst possible thing happened.

Something long and pink and glistening and slimy slipped from the monstrous mouth, found its way between two logs, and touched the boys foot.

He pulled his legs in so fast that it looked as if he had been burned. His scream took on a new pitch. His eyes widened until it seemed that they would pop from their sockets. Terror had been replaced by something far worse, by the ultimate.

Horror and revulsion.

The thing had touched him!

By then the mother was near enough to reach for him and pull him into her arms. On the other side of the Buick, the grandfather tore his beat-up old fishing hat from his head and slapped it three times against his thigh Whap! Whap! Whap!