Aftershock & Others Read Online Free
Author: F. Paul Wilson
limp form against me. It’s only a dream, I know, but still I hurt inside. I stand there for a long time. Until I hear a voice behind me.
“Hello? What’s happened here?”
I turn and see one of the townsfolk approaching. The sight of him makes my blood boil. He and his kind chased me to that mill on the hill and tried to burn me alive. I toss Karl’s remains aside and charge after him. He is too fast for me and runs screaming down the street.
Afraid that he’ll return with his neighbors, I flee. But not before setting fire to Maria’s cottage. I watch it burn a moment, then head into the countryside, into the friendly darkness.
Awake once more.
I have spent the entire day thinking about last night’s dream. I see no reason to skulk around in the darkness any longer when I’m dreaming. Why should I? The townsfolk realize by now that I’m still alive. Good. Let all those good citizens know that I am back and that they must deal with me again—not as poor Eva Rucker, but as the patchwork creature from Henry Frankenstein’s crazed experiments. And I will not be mistreated anymore. I will not be looked down on and have doors shut in my face simply because I am a farm girl. No one will say no to me ever again!
I will be back. Tomorrow night, and every night thereafter. But I shall no longer wander aimlessly. I will have a purpose in my dreams. I will start by taking my dream-revenge on the university regents who denied me admission to the medical college. I shall spend my waking hours devising elaborate ways for them to die, and in my dreams I shall execute those plans.
It will be fun. Harmless fun to kill them off one by one in my dreams.
I’m beginning to truly enjoy the dreams. It’s so wonderful to be powerful and not recognize any limits. It’s such an invigorating release.
I can’t wait to sleep again.
“THE NOVEMBER GAME”
In September I was banging away on Nightworld when dat ol’ debil Marty Greenberg pulled me away with an offer I couldn’t refuse: He and Bill Nolan were editing The Bradbury Chronicles, an anthology of stories in tribute to Ray Bradbury—would I like to contribute? Like, duh.
I knew immediately that I’d have to write a sequel to Ray’s “The October Game.” It’s a masterpiece of subtly growing menace, and one of the most perfectly focused short stories ever written, as effective today as it was when it appeared in Weird Tales.
I discovered it on a summer night in 1959 in Hitchcock’s 13 More Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV. I consider reading “The October Game” one of the pivotal moments in my life. Just thirteen at the time, I found the last line (“Then…some idiot turned on the lights.”) confusing. I sat there, book in hand, puzzled, wondering at that crazy closing sentence. Why on earth—?
BLAM!
It hit me. I got it. And it blew me away, utterly and completely. Left me gasping. Lowered the temperature of the room by twenty degrees. And made me decide that someday, some way, I would write a story that would do unto others what this one had done unto me. I’m still trying.
Ray seems ambivalent about “The October Game.” I’ll bet he still appreciates the finesse of his younger self’s technique, but I think the subject matter appalls the older Ray. But the lesson this story pounds home is how less can be so much more. The oblique descriptions in the dark throughout the “game” are never visually realized by the author. The reader is left to construct them after the lights come on.
“The November Game” picks up shortly after Ray’s story. It’s lurid where Ray’s is subtle, but over the years I’d been unable to let go of the need to balance the scales. What goes around, comes around. And now…it’s Daddy’s turn.
I was so psyched I knocked out the first draft in one day.
The November Game
Two human eyeballs nestle amid the white grapes on my dinner tray. I spot them even as the tray slides under the bars of my
“Hello? What’s happened here?”
I turn and see one of the townsfolk approaching. The sight of him makes my blood boil. He and his kind chased me to that mill on the hill and tried to burn me alive. I toss Karl’s remains aside and charge after him. He is too fast for me and runs screaming down the street.
Afraid that he’ll return with his neighbors, I flee. But not before setting fire to Maria’s cottage. I watch it burn a moment, then head into the countryside, into the friendly darkness.
Awake once more.
I have spent the entire day thinking about last night’s dream. I see no reason to skulk around in the darkness any longer when I’m dreaming. Why should I? The townsfolk realize by now that I’m still alive. Good. Let all those good citizens know that I am back and that they must deal with me again—not as poor Eva Rucker, but as the patchwork creature from Henry Frankenstein’s crazed experiments. And I will not be mistreated anymore. I will not be looked down on and have doors shut in my face simply because I am a farm girl. No one will say no to me ever again!
I will be back. Tomorrow night, and every night thereafter. But I shall no longer wander aimlessly. I will have a purpose in my dreams. I will start by taking my dream-revenge on the university regents who denied me admission to the medical college. I shall spend my waking hours devising elaborate ways for them to die, and in my dreams I shall execute those plans.
It will be fun. Harmless fun to kill them off one by one in my dreams.
I’m beginning to truly enjoy the dreams. It’s so wonderful to be powerful and not recognize any limits. It’s such an invigorating release.
I can’t wait to sleep again.
“THE NOVEMBER GAME”
In September I was banging away on Nightworld when dat ol’ debil Marty Greenberg pulled me away with an offer I couldn’t refuse: He and Bill Nolan were editing The Bradbury Chronicles, an anthology of stories in tribute to Ray Bradbury—would I like to contribute? Like, duh.
I knew immediately that I’d have to write a sequel to Ray’s “The October Game.” It’s a masterpiece of subtly growing menace, and one of the most perfectly focused short stories ever written, as effective today as it was when it appeared in Weird Tales.
I discovered it on a summer night in 1959 in Hitchcock’s 13 More Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV. I consider reading “The October Game” one of the pivotal moments in my life. Just thirteen at the time, I found the last line (“Then…some idiot turned on the lights.”) confusing. I sat there, book in hand, puzzled, wondering at that crazy closing sentence. Why on earth—?
BLAM!
It hit me. I got it. And it blew me away, utterly and completely. Left me gasping. Lowered the temperature of the room by twenty degrees. And made me decide that someday, some way, I would write a story that would do unto others what this one had done unto me. I’m still trying.
Ray seems ambivalent about “The October Game.” I’ll bet he still appreciates the finesse of his younger self’s technique, but I think the subject matter appalls the older Ray. But the lesson this story pounds home is how less can be so much more. The oblique descriptions in the dark throughout the “game” are never visually realized by the author. The reader is left to construct them after the lights come on.
“The November Game” picks up shortly after Ray’s story. It’s lurid where Ray’s is subtle, but over the years I’d been unable to let go of the need to balance the scales. What goes around, comes around. And now…it’s Daddy’s turn.
I was so psyched I knocked out the first draft in one day.
The November Game
Two human eyeballs nestle amid the white grapes on my dinner tray. I spot them even as the tray slides under the bars of my
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