I have seen hordes of rural goodfolk, pillars of their communities, churchgoing Christians and advocates of the Protestant Work Ethic, who devoutly enjoyed watching a geek. Stand behind the tent flap. Watch. You’ll learn more about human nature than you ever wished to know.
The geek and I were thrown in the drunk tank, a holding pen, together. He wasn’t sprung because he wasn’t really “carny,” he was a pickup, and there were skids all along the road, so why spend hard cash on a slob so beneath notice that he couldn’t even be thought of as human? I wasn’t sprung because I wouldn’t give the cops my real name; I didn’t want to go home.
So the gilly took off, minus their geek, minus their gopher.
I spent three days in the K.C. slam with that old man, that subhuman geek.
I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since 1947, in that cage in Kansas City, that I haven’t thought of that old drunk.
Three days we were locked together. The hacks, the guards who shepherded us, even they didn’t want to get near us. The smell and look of that geek made them want to puke. They used to slide our food through the bars on the floor, at the end of a pushbroom, I was scared, and ill.
Because they wouldn’t give him anything to drink, and he started having convulsions. He whimpered all through the night, and in the mornings his face was bloody and his lips bitten clean through. Along about the second day he went crazy from delirium tremens, and he climbed the bars of the free-standing cage where we were penned, and he began smashing his face against the metal ceiling. He fell and screamed, and lay on his back on the metal floor, moving his legs and arms idly like a turtle on its shell. His face looked like a pound of raw hamburger. And he smelled. A special smell. Not just his pants full of shit, and his clothes stinking from the dirt of his carny pen and garbage; he was sweating sour alcohol. A special smell. I’ve never forgotten it. I can’t describe it to you … it smelled like such and such … there is nothing to compare. A million dead bodies turned up in a communal grave, maybe. But I’ve never forgotten that smell.
I don’t drink. I have never drunk.
Finally, on the third day, they took me out. They had to. The Pinkerton Agency men my family had hired to find me had contacted the K.C. police. There had been missing persons flyers sent out on me, dodgers they were called; and someone in K.C. had matched a dodger with my description, even though I wouldn’t tell them my real name or where I was from. And the Pinkertons sent an operative and he came and took me back on the train to Ohio.
I had spent three months with the carny.
And there was very little of romance or adventure or swashbuckling about it. All I came away with was the smell of rotten liquor sweated out through gray, dead skin … an even greater hatred of cops than I’d had to begin with … and the cynical, deadening, utterly inescapable knowledge that if one stands behind the tent flap and watches, one learns more about the darker side of human nature than any kid should ever know.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Author, besotted with humility, would like to take this opportunity to thank all the little people whose support and assistance made his climb to the top possible: Lemuel Gulliver; Billy Barty; General Tom Thumb; Barbie & Ken; Dr. Miguelito Loveless; the representative of the Lollipop Guild; Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; Scott Carey, the Incredible Shrinking Man; Tattoo; and all the gang over at Dr. Cyclops’s.
But seriously, folks. I couldn’t’a done it widdout’cha, friends:
Diana Adkins, Sid Altus, Isaac Asimov; Richard Fontaine, Dale Hardman, Bobbie J. Kroman and Willie Wilson of B. Dalton Bookstores; Greg Bear, Alex Berman, Arthur Bernhard, Ben Bova, Mayer Alan Brenner, Jeff Bridges, Edward W. Bryant, Jr.; Sharon Buck, Mark Carlton, Alan Chudnow, (Ms.) Marty Clark, Jon Clarke, Ed Coffey, Catherine Crowell; Arthur Byron Cover, Lydia Marano and Linda Mayfield of the Dangerous Visions Bookstore in Sherman Oaks, California; Buzz Dixon, Clint Eastwood, Audrey and Edward L. Ferman, Charles Garcia, Mel Gil-den, Joanne Gutreimen, Burt Handelsman, C.E.; James Haralson, Joe L. Hensley, Walter Hill, Richard Hoagland, Michael Hodel, Nancy Hodel, Terry Hodel, Stephen King, Steve Kirk, T.E.D. Klein, Cele Goldsmith Lalli, Shelley Levinson, Barry R. Levin, Tim Lewis; Jane Mackenzie in a class by herself; Elinor Mavor, Jon R. McKenzie, Larry McMurtry, Joyce Muskat, Sharon O’Hara, Frank Olynyk, Jerry Pournelle, Eric Protter, John Ratner, Mary Riordon, Jeff Rubenstein, Bonnie Sue Russell, Jared Rutter; John Sack, W.W. Scott, Larry T. Shaw, Robert Silverberg, Judith Sims, Tad Stones, William Stout, Genadie Sverlow, Leslie Kay Swigart, the impossible-to-locate Mike Taylor; Emily Boxer and Tom Brokaw and Jessica Savitch of the NBC Today Show; Dan Turner, (Ms.) Randall Warner, and my former editor at Future Life, the long-suffering Bob Woods.
For each and all of you, a blessing of the 18th Egyptian dynasty: “God be between you and harm in all the empty places you walk.”
PHANTASIA PRESS
Huntington Woods, Michigan
STALKING THE NIGHTMARE
Published by Phantasia Press,
13101 Lincoln, Huntington Woods,
Michigan 48070
Copyright © 1982 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
Published by arrangement with the Author. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without explicit permission in writing from the Author or the Author’s agent, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper, or electronically transmitted on radio or television.
For information address Author’s agent:
Richard Curtis Associates, Inc.;
340 East 66th Street;
New York, New York 10021.
All persons, places and organizations in this book—except those clearly in the public domain or used with permission—are fictitious; and any resemblance to actual persons, places or organizations living, dead or defunct, is purely coincidental. With the exception of four essays of non-fiction labeled “Scenes From The Real World,” these are works of fiction.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Foreword copyright © 1982 by Stephen King.
Cover art copyright © 1982 by Jane Mackenzie.
“The Cheese Stands Alone” appeared in Amazing Stories. Copyright © 1981 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Blank …” appeared in Infinity. Copyright © 1957 by Royal Publications, Inc. Copyright reassigned to Author 18 September 1959. Copyright © 1979 by Harlan Ellison.
“The Outpost Undiscovered by Tourists” appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Copyright © 1981 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“The 3 Most Important Things in Life” appeared in Oui. Copyright © 1978 by Playboy Publications, Inc. Copyright reassigned to Author 20 March 1979. Copyright © 1979 by Harlan Ellison.
“Visionary” (written in collaboration with Joe L. Hensley) appeared in Amazing Stories. Copyright © 1959 by ZiS-Davis Publishing Company. Copyright reassigned to Author 6 January 1981. Copyright © 1981 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. This work has been completely revised for this publication; copyright © 1982 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Djinn, No Chaser” appeared in The Twilight Zone magazine. Copyright © 1982 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Invasion Footnote” (pseudonymously-bylined “Cordwainer Bird”) appeared in Super-Science Fiction. Copyright © 1957 by Headline Publications, Inc. This work has been completely revised for this publication; new version copyright © 1982 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Saturn, November 11th” appeared as Installment 6 of the Author’s column An Edge In My Voice in Future Life magazine (March 1981). Copyright © 1981 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. Subsequent publication in Astronomy magazine (August 1981). Copyright © 1981 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Night of Black Glass” appeared in Beyond. Copyright © 1981 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Final Trophy” appeared in Super-Science Fiction. Co
pyright © 1957 by Headline Publications, Inc. This work has been revised for this publication; new version copyright © 1982 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“l!!The!!Teddy!Crazy!!Show!!!” appeared in Adam magazine. Copyright © 1968 by Knight Publishing Corporation. Copyright reassigned to Author 23 March 1970. Copyright © 1970 by Harlan Ellison.
“Grail” appeared in The Twilight Zone magazine. Copyright © 1981 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Somehow, I Don’t Think We’re In Kansas, Toto” (in a shortened version) appeared in Genesis magazine. Copyright © 1974 by Harlan Ellison. Subsequent publication as the introduction to PHOENIX WITHOUT ASHES (Fawcett Gold Medal Book) by Edward Bryant & Harlan Ellison, also in a shortened version). Copyright © 1975 by Edward W. Bryant, Jr. and Harlan Ellison. This work has been restored to its original form and expanded for this publication; new version copyright © 1982 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Transcending Destiny” (under the title “School for Assassins” and pseudonymously-bylined “Ellis Hart”) appeared in Amazing Stories. Copyright © 1957 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Copyright reassigned to Author 6 January 1981. Copyright © 1981 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. This work has been revised for this publication; new version copyright © 1982 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“The Hour That Stretches” appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Copyright © 1982 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“The Day I Died” appeared as Installment 10 of the Author’s column The Harlan Ellison Hornbook in the Los Angeles Free Press (5-15 January 1973). Copyright © 1973 by Harlan Ellison.
“Tracking Level” appeared in Amazing Stories. Copyright © 1956 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Copyright reassigned to Author 6 January 1981. Copyright © 1981 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. This work has been revised for this publication; new version copyright © 1982 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Tiny Ally” appeared in Saturn, Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Copyright © 1957 by Candar Publishing Co., Inc.
“The Goddess in the Ice” appeared in Adam Bedside Reader. Copyright © 1967 by Knight Publishing Corp. Copyright reassigned to Author 23 March 1970. Copyright © 1970 by Harlan Ellison. This work has been revised for this publication; new version copyright © 1982 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
“Gopher in the Gilly” appears here for the first time. Copyright © 1982 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation.
The following stories included in this volume previously appeared in substantially different form in the Author’s 1970 collection OVER THE EDGE:
“Blank …”; “Final Trophy”; “!!!The!!Teddy!Crazy!!Show!!!”; “Tiny Ally.” This previous volume is out-of-print and will not be reissued by the Author’s intent. These stories are available only in the present title.
Harlan Ellison, Stalking the Nightmare
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