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Ed Gorman

Moonchasers and Other Stories

Introduction

These stories are, at least in an oblique way, a record of my time on the planet.

A lot of the people you’ll meet here, I’ve known in life.

The dwarf woman of “The Wind from Midnight,” for instance, is a dwarf woman I used to work with in a hotel. At day’s end we frequently pushed a pint of cheap bourbon back and forth, a forlorn pair of scared drunks. She died long ago, when we were young. I still occasionally visit her grave and talk to her. She was a lovely, endearing woman.

The hero of “Moonchasers” is a kid I grew up with, one who, at fifteen, knew more about honor and wisdom than I know today.

The old man in “Render unto Caesar” did in life what he does in my story — walk around the neighborhood looking for dead cats, which he then gave decent burials. A strange old guy, to be sure, but a profoundly decent soul for all his oddness. And, yes, the young woman existed, too, and her husband really was that violent with her.

What happens to the married couple in “Stalker” happened to friends of mine. Their daughter was murdered. The couple never recovered. That happens a lot, as people in the victims’ rights movement will tell you. Look at the face of Ron Goldman’s father sometime. I hope that someday he’ll find peace again.

“The Ugly File” is based on a woman I did a documentary film about. She gave birth to a terribly deformed baby. She felt estranged from the entire human race. She didn’t think even her husband could understand what she was going through, as perhaps he couldn’t.

The woman in “Prisoners” is based on a bright, elegant, talented young woman who used to work with me — and who spent several long sad years visiting her husband in prison.

And so on.

None of these stories is literally autobiographical, of course. I’m a storyteller, not a diarist.

But in choosing the tales for this collection, I tended to select those pieces that had personal meaning for me. I didn’t choose any that relied strictly on plot. The older I get, the less those stories interest me as either reader or writer.

A number of editors should be thanked here: Janet Hutchings, of Ellery Queen, who is not only an astute editor but one of the gentlest people I’ve ever known; Kris Rusch, of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, who knows how to get the best from me; Rich Chizmar, of Cemetery Dance, who helps me push against the constraints of the predictable; and Greg Cox, of Forge, who is a past master at handling writers. He makes you think that all those great ideas were yours, not his. Thanks for everything, Greg.

Finally, I’d like to thank my beautiful wife, Carol, for her patience, support and encouragement; and my beautiful mother for driving me to the library all those years ago when she probably had much better things to do.

I had a good time writing these stories. I hope you have a good time reading them.

Moonchasers

“THERE ARE MEN WHO CAN LUST WITH PARTS OF THEMSELVES. ONLY THEIR BRAIN OR THEIR HEARTS BURN AND THEN NOT COMPLETELY. THERE ARE OTHERS, STILL MORE FORTUNATE, WHO ARE LIKE THE FILAMENTS OF AN INCANDESCENT LAMP. THEY BURN FIERCELY, YET NOTHING IS DESTROYED.”

— NATHANAEL WEST, THE DAY OF THE LOCUST

For my son Joe from the old man with love and pride

And for Robert Mitchum

Yes, sir, it was just about the best sort of summer you could ask for, when you were fifteen, that is, and it was 1958 and you were living in Somerton, Iowa, which is forty miles due east of Waterloo, where just a month earlier I’d seen Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps all perform at the Electric Light Ballroom.

Of course, neither Barney nor I let on that it was a good summer because if there is one thing that Barney and I liked to do it was bitch about living our lives out in Somerton, Pop. 16, 438. There were maybe five pretty girls our age, none of whom would have a darn thing to do with us, and one mean and muscular seventeen-year-old named Maynard whom Barney and I had in some way offended (if Maynard wanted to be pissed at anybody, it should have been his parents for giving him that name). Fortunately for us, Hamblin’s Rexall had a good supply of science fiction magazines and Gold Medal suspense novels and Ace Double Books. And the Garden Theater likewise had the usual good supply of movies with monsters in them. And Robert Mitchum.

That was the big thing Barney and I had in common. Sure we liked Amazing and Fantastic with all those nifty Valigursky covers, and sure we liked all those teen monster movies with all those Southern California bikini girls, and sure we thought that Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift and the late James Dean were really cool, but the coolest guy of all was Robert Mitchum. The Garden brought back Thunder Road for a week and Barney and I went four days running. And the same for when the Garden brought back Night of the Hunter and Blood on the Moon. We were there because Mitch was there.

Anyway, that’s sort of the picture of how things were in our lives before that hot August night when Barney and I walked along the railroad tracks out on the east edge of town, smoking on a fresh contraband package of Lucky Strikes, and sipping at two ice-dripping eight-cent bottles of Pepsi.

Wey’sd pretty much decided that this was going to be the night we broke into the abandoned warehouse and found out just what was in there. According to most of the little kids in Somerton, the warehouse was home to various kinds of spooks. Older kids, who didn’t just have driver’s ed learner permits like ours, took a different slant. They said that the migrant workers from the next town over snuck their daughters in there at night and ran a whorehouse that put all others to shame.