Mister October Read online

  Mister October

  An Anthology in Memory of Rick Hautala

  Volume 1

  Edited By

  Christopher Golden

  JournalStone

  San Francisco

  Copyright © 2013 by Christopher Golden

  Illustration by Clive Barker is © 2013 by the artist

  Illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne are © 2013 by the artist

  Illustrations by Morbideus W. Goodell are © 2013 by the artist

  “Feeders and Eaters” is © 1990 by Neil Gaiman. It first appeared as a comic book in Revolver Horror Special. First published in this form in Keep Out the Night (2002)

  “Under the Pylon” is ©1992 by Graham Joyce. It first appeared in Darklands 2, edited by Nicholas Royle.

  “A Guy Walks Into a Bar” is © 2013 by Matthew Costello. This is its first publication.

  "Hell Hath Enlarged Herself" is © 1996 by Michael Marshall Smith. It first appeared in Dark Terrors 2, edited by Stephen Jones and David Sutton, published by Victor Gollancz.

  "Figures in Rain" is © 2002 by Chet Williamson. It first appeared in the collection Figures in Rain by Chet Williamson, published by Ash-Tree Press.

  "As You Have Made Us" is © 2012 by Elizabeth Massie. It first appeared in her collection, Naked, On the Edge (Crossroad Press.)

  “Thoughtful Breaths” is © 2005 by Peter Crowther. It first appeared in Subterranean Magazine #1 ed. by William K. Schafer

  “Never Back Again” is © 2013 by Matti Hautala. This is its first publication.

  “A Girl, Sitting” is © 2013 by Mark Morris. This is its first publication.

  “Blood Brothers” is © 1997 by Richard Chizmar. It first appeared as a chapbook from Subterranean Press.

  Text for “Little Brothers – Portfolio” is © 2013 by Stephen R. Bissette. All rights reserved.

  Artwork for “Little Brothers – Portfolio” is © 1992, 2013 by Stephen R. Bissette. All rights reserved.

  "Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back" is © 1986 by Joe R. Lansdale. It first appeared in Nukes, 1986, Maclay Publishing, edited by J.N. Williamson.

  "Craving" is © 2005 by Yvonne Navarro. It first appeared in Outsiders, ed.

  by Nancy Holder and Nancy Kilpatrick

  “Ixchel’s Tears” is © 1994 by José R. Nieto. It first appeared in Christmas Magic, edited by David G. Hartwell

  "Life During Death" is © 1998 by Duane Swierczynski. It first appeared at Dark Planet webzine, ed. by Lucy Snyder.

  "After the Elephant Ballet" is © 1995 by Gary A. Braunbeck. It first appeared in Heaven Sent: 18 Glorious Tales of the Angels, edited by Peter Crowther.

  “Overnight Guest” is © 1985 by Craig Shaw Gardner. It first appeared in Midnight, edited by Charles L. Grant.

  "Springfield Repeater" is © 2013 by Jack M. Haringa. This is its first publication.

  “Conjurer – Book I: The Grieve” is © 2013 by Tom Piccirilli. This is its first publication.

  "The Years the Music Died" is © 1987 by F. Paul Wilson. It first appeared in WHISPERS VI (Doubleday 1987) edited by Stuart David Schiff

  “Property Condemned: A Story of Pine Deep” is © 2012 by Jonathan Maberry. It first appeared online in Nightmare Magazine.

  "Playing The Huddys" is © 2012 by John M. McIlveen. It first appeared in the collection Jerks and Other Tales from a Perfect Man (Necon ebooks)

  “Crashing Down” is © 2011 by Weston Osche. It first appeared in In Laymon’s Terms, edited by Kelly Laymon, Steve Gerlach, and Richard Chizmar.

  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.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  JournalStone books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

  JournalStone

  www.journalstone.com

  www.journal-store.com

  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: 978-1-940161-05-1 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-940161-06-8 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-940161-19-8 (hc—limited edition)

  ISBN: 978-1-940161-07-5 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013945701

  Printed in the United States of America

  JournalStone rev. date: November 8, 2013

  Cover Design: Denise Daniel

  Cover Art: Glenn Chadbourne

  Interior Art: Clive Barker, Glenn Chadbourne, Stephen R. Bissette, Morbideus W. Goodell

  Edited by: Christopher Golden

  Introducing Mister October

  On March 21st, 2013, I received a phone call from Holly Newstein telling me that her husband, Rick Hautala, had suffered a massive heart attack. That piece of information shocked me into a surreal sort of panic, so much so that at first I could not make the leap to the next thing she said…that he had died. It seemed impossible. Rick had been such a good friend, such a consistent and stable force in my life, that the idea of him being so suddenly removed from this world…I just couldn’t make sense of it.

  This isn’t the place for me to put my grief on display. Suffice it to say that Rick’s passing hit me hard. Not a day goes by that I do not feel the pain of his absence.

  Soon after his death, I remembered that he had told me—only weeks before—that his financial struggles had caused him to let his life insurance lapse. I thought it would be temporary, that in time he would get a new policy, but it was not to be. The timing of his death was the cruelest of ironies. Rick has left a fantastic legacy of wonderful novels and stories, but his wife and sons would have no financial help in dealing with the expenses related to his death and no insurance to help make the transition to life without him. Nothing could be done to alleviate their grief, but some financial assistance would help to ease the burden of that transition.

  Within days of his passing, I shot off e-mails to dozens of writers and artists who I knew were either friends of Rick’s or who had not known him but had admired his contributions to horror literature. I wanted to put together an anthology in Rick’s memory, the proceeds of which would go entirely to benefit his widow and his sons. I also wanted to do it as quickly as possible, which meant it would have to be a reprint anthology—I didn’t want to wait for people to find time in their schedules to write something brand new, and without pay.

  In the midst of my mourning, I sent out dozens of emails. Dozens. And I never stopped to consider that nearly everyone would say yes. Thus, what had been intended as a single volume quickly became TWO volumes, featuring an astonishing array of talent. And when the stories came in, many of the reprints were true rarities, including Kevin J. Anderson’s tale, which has only ever been published in ebook form. The real surprise, however, was that not all of the stories were reprints. I received unpublished stories from Mark Morris, Tom Piccirilli, JF Gonzalez, Stephen R. Bissette, and Matthew Costello. And Jeff Strand did something wonderful…he went off immediately and wrote “Hologram Skull Cover,” an original story written specifically for this anthology, a story that revolves around a teenage boy discovering Rick Hautala’s novels for the first time, and the evil that inhabits the boy’s copy of The Night Stone.

  And then, at the very end of my work on this book, I received the final story, also an original. Matti Hautala, Rick’s youngest son,
emailed to tell me that he’d written his first short story a while back and his dad had thought it wasn’t half bad. Did I have any interest in looking at it for potential inclusion in the anthology? Of course I did. Matti’s story, “Never Back Again,” is a fine piece of work—a lot better than my first effort—and it gives me great satisfaction to be able to present it to you.

  Rick would truly never have imagined that so many amazing people—wonderful writers and artists—would want to honor him like this. Those of us who loved him are not at all surprised.

  Perhaps the most startling bit of kindness related to Mister October, however, came on the part of its publisher. Only weeks before his death, Rick announced that he’d made a deal with JournalStone to publish what would end up as his last two novels, The Demon’s Wife and Mockingbird Bay. I’d been in touch with Christopher Payne from JournalStone about another project, and so when Mister October occurred to me, I emailed him to ask if he’d consider putting out the book…and donating all profits to Rick’s heirs. Publishing, my friends, is a business. As kind as many people who work in the industry are, it is still a business. JournalStone seemed the right home for this project, but I didn’t know Chris Payne other than through a handful of emails. When he agreed—emphatically—to publish this project and take only the actual costs of the project, not a penny of profit for himself or his company, I knew Rick’s final novels were in excellent hands.

  I have no doubt that readers will treasure this two-volume set. It is my hope that as you read, you will ruminate a little bit about the man for whom we all have come together within these pages. And I hope you’ll urge others to pick up their own copies of Mister October as well.

  That’s enough about the anthology.

  I want to share a little bit with you about the man who inspired it.

  In the aftermath of his death, I have written a great deal about him, but my thoughts on his passing and what it meant to him to be a writer are probably best expressed in the following piece, originally written for my (rarely updated) blog.

  ********************

  WRITERS AND PUNKS

  I have written about Rick Hautala many times over the years—his bio when he was Guest of Honor at our beloved Necon; the introduction to the reissue of his wonderful first novel, Moondeath; and the announcement of his HWA Lifetime Achievement Award, among others—but I never thought that I would be writing this. I hope I might be forgiven, then, for plagiarizing myself in these dark days, when words don’t come easily. The things I’ve written about him before are all still true—it’s just that they mean more to me, now.

  I’ve talked elsewhere about Rick as a friend and as a man—about his humor and his struggles and his love for his wife and sons. But in truth, if you’d asked him what he was, he wouldn’t have said a friend or a man or a father or a husband…he’d have said he was a writer. He believed more firmly than anyone I’d ever met that writers were born, not made, that he had no choice in the matter. His career had some breathtaking highs, but even at the lowest points, when others might have urged him to cut his losses and find some other vocation, Rick felt helpless in the face of his nature. He didn’t even truly understand the suggestion that there might be some alternative. He was a writer. How could he conceive of being anything else?

  I loved him for that.

  Rick liked unique and funny t-shirts and would always have a new one to show off at Necon every July. The best—the one that author Jack Ketchum and I recently agreed best represented the true Rick—was emblazoned with the following:

  What are you, a writer or a punk?

  That was Rick.

  No one wrote horror with as heavy a heart, or with as deep a sense of foreboding and sorrow, as Rick Hautala. His characters are ordinary people, so full of worry about mundane, human things that when the extraordinary begins first to invade and then to tear apart their simple lives, we feel the tragedy on a visceral level that so many who came after Hautala never achieved.

  Right from the beginning of his career, Rick achieved something that marked him out as a force to be reckoned with—he didn’t write like anyone else. When you crack the pages of a Hautala novel (whether under his own name, or his AJ Matthews pseudonym), there’s no mistaking that voice for anyone else. There’s an anguish in his characters and a terrible claustrophobia to even the most open of settings that indelibly mark his novels.

  With Rick Hautala and the modern ghost story, author and subject formed a perfect bond. The horror in Rick’s work is the sorrow of isolation and the fear of the unknown future that lies ahead, often laced with echoes of past mistakes. He didn’t go for the cheap scare, ever. Instead, he created a supernatural catalyst with which he deconstructed human frailties and the fragile ties that bind us.

  These themes are found everywhere in Rick’s work. Some of the best examples include the million-copy, international bestseller Night Stone, the milestone short story collection Bed Bugs, and the extraordinary novella Miss Henry’s Bottles, which may be Rick’s finest work. Fan favorites include the novels Little Brothers and The Mountain King. Hautala’s in top form in Winter Wake and Cold Whisper, as well as the novels he wrote as AJ Matthews, in particular Looking Glass and Follow.

  With The Demon’s Wife—the last novel he completed—he had begun a new phase in his writing career, written something truly unique. We can only wonder where his ruminations would have taken him next.

  The tragedy of Rick’s life was that he never knew how many people loved him, how many held him in high regard—or if he knew, he never quite believed it. He never knew how good a writer he was. Oh, he wanted you to read his novels, and he wanted you to like them, but even the books of which he was most proud he dismissed with comments like, “I think that one worked out pretty well.” That was the highest compliment he could give himself.

  Rick Hautala was the horror writer’s horror writer. He never looked down his nose at the genre but embraced it instead. Legendary for his kindness and his generous spirit, he influenced a great many young writers and exuded a sense of camaraderie that became infectious. In Rick’s view, we were all in the trenches together. Self-effacing and approachable, he combined a blue collar work ethic with literary sensibilities shaped by his love of Shakespeare and Hawthorne. His passion for the horror genre was second only to his love for writing, and all of those elements conspired over decades to transform him into a determined mentor, offering critical feedback and quiet encouragement to many new authors as they began their own careers. Despite the mark he has made on the genre and his quiet mentorship of other writers, Rick was rarely recognized for his work until 2012, when he received the HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. That honor meant the world to him.

  I worry that Rick Hautala and other masters are in danger of having their legacy forgotten. That can’t be allowed to happen. Go and pick up a copy of Winter Wake or Little Brothers or one of Rick’s fantastic short story collections. Connecting with readers, making them feel…that was the only reward that ever really mattered to him. So go and read some Hautala, and spread the word.

  Don’t forget.

  —Christopher Golden

  Bradford, Massachusetts

  Table of Contents

  FEEDERS AND EATERS

  Neil Gaiman

  UNDER THE PYLON

  Graham Joyce

  A GUY WALKS INTO A BAR

  Matthew Costello

  HELL HATH ENLARGED HERSELF

  Michael Marshall Smith

  FIGURES IN RAIN

  Chet Williamson

  AS YOU HAVE MADE US

  Elizabeth Massie

  THOUGHTFUL BREATHS

  Peter Crowther

  NEVER BACK AGAIN

  Matti Hautala

  A GIRL, SITTING

  Mark Morris

  BLOOD BROTHERS

  Richard Chizmar

  LITTLE BROTHERS—PORTFOLIO

  Stephen R. Bissette

  TIGHT LITTLE STITCHES IN A DEAD MAN’S BACK
>
  Joe R. Lansdale

  CRAVING

  Yvonne Navarro

  lXCHEL’S TEARS

  José R. Nieto

  LIFE DURING DEATH

  Duane Swierczynski

  AFTER THE ELEPHANT BALLET

  Gary A. Braunbeck

  OVERNIGHT GUEST

  Craig Shaw Gardner

  SPRINGFIELD REPEATER

  Jack M. Haringa

  CONJURER—BOOK I: THE GRIEVE

  Tom Piccirilli

  THE YEAR THE MUSIC DIED

  F. Paul Wilson

  PROPERTY CONDEMNED—A Story of Pine Deep

  Jonathan Maberry

  PLAYING THE HUDDYS

  John M. McIlveen

  CRASHING DOWN

  Weston Ochse

  About the Authors and Artists

  FEEDERS AND EATERS

  By Neil Gaiman

  This is a true story, pretty much. As far as that goes, and whatever good it does anybody.

  It was late one night, and I was cold, in a city where I had no right to be. Not at that time of night, anyway. I won’t tell you which city. I’d missed my last train, and I wasn’t sleepy, so I prowled the streets around the station until I found an all-night café. Somewhere warm to sit.