Whispers: An anthology of Fantasy and Horror
For my Parents, who nurtured my love for the weird and fantastic, and my wife Susan, who puts up with it.
INTRODUCTION
This anthology is both a best of my Whispers magazine and an original anthology (with original art as well). I welcome the opportunity to place between hardcovers the choicest tales that Whispers has produced and, additionally, create another new outlet for fantasy and horror material. This was my reason for concocting my journal in the first place, and I have succeeded far beyond the dreams any little magazine editor is entitled to have.
People refer to me as the editor of Whispers magazine, but I like to think of myself as an alchemist, selecting from my unwholesome stores the proper ingredients to conjure up an irresistible volume of fantasy, terror, and horror. Whispers is a true little magazine, dedicated to the task of stimulating new and quality additions to the art and literature of our genre. I would like to think that the World Fantasy Award I recently won told me the recipe for the publication has borne fruit. It seemed quite appropriate that the trophy signifying that achievement was a bust of Howard Phillips Lovecraft whose story “The Unnameable” created a fictitious horror magazine titled Whispers, an entity I magicked to unholy life. But even an alchemist must start from somewhere and early 1973 saw my witches’ brew begin to bubble . . .
Whispers began with the premise that the fantasy and horror field lacked adequate outlets to induce talented writers and artists to make efforts toward the field. I came to the conclusion that offering money for material was the best way to draw qualified people’s attention to the genre and, thankfully, this spell was the proper one. By the time the first issue of the magazine appeared in July 1973, I had purchased original material by Brian Lumley, Joseph Payne Brennan, L. Sprague de Camp, Henry Hasse, Tim Kirk, Steve Fabian, Lee Brown Coye, and others, all of them noted talents who had created new gems for the field. Whispers was off to a great start.
Just as scary, though, as the terrors and horrors in the tales I published, were the incredible logistics of editing, publishing, and distributing a little magazine. Until one is actually forced to do it, it is difficult to comprehend the entire process of producing a “simple” magazine; it includes soliciting material, evaluating submissions, perfect typing for offset reproduction, paste-up, composition, proofreading, and the very careful packing of the irreplaceable manuscript for shipment to the printer. When that is accomplished, your immediate problem is selling the journal. There are many long hours of producing ads, addressing envelopes for direct mailings, and trying to sell your magazine to the seemingly uninterested dealers. When these tasks are accomplished and the magazine arrives back from the printer, it is time to mail out everything and perform all the physical tasks that entails. When I exhaustedly finished the first issue of Whispers, I paused briefly to rest, but then realized I was already behind on the next issue and began anew. Since that time, a dozen issues of Whispers have seen print, and I have yet to pause again.
While the magazine is basically a one-man operation, the eventual brew is the result of the efforts and talents of many people. Above all others, Dave Drake towers high. His professional expertise as a writer has made him invaluable as my assistant editor. Without his aid, the magazine just would not be as good. Other major ingredients in the Whispers concoction include: Don Grant, Lee Brown Coye, Willis Conover, Tim Kirk, Karl Edward Wagner, Fritz Leiber, Steve Fabian, Kirby McCauley, Manly Wade Wellman, and Dave Sutton. And let us not forget Dave Hartwell, Gahan Wilson, Jim Pitts, Alan Hunter, Hugh B. Cave, Robert Bloch, Henry Hasse, David Campton, John Linton, Charles Collins, Jon Lellenberg, William Nolan, Vincent DiFate, and Frank Utpatel. All of these gentlemen made vital contributions to the magazine that were above and beyond their duty as a contributor or supporter. I would like to personally thank them all for adding their individual spells to the Whispers magic. They certainly made this alchemist’s job an easier one.
Stuart David Schiff
Box 904
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514
STICKS
by Karl Edward Wagner
Of all the fiction that has appeared in Whispers, I am most proud of Karl Edward Wagner’s “Sticks,” which took a real-life experience of artist Lee Brown Coye and created from it a most exceptional tale. The British Fantasy Society awarded it an August Derleth Award for 1974 as the best short fiction of that year. Karl is also known as today’s best writer of heroic fantasy, his four (at last count) volumes relating the adventures of his Kane plus his excellent continuation of Robert E. Howard’s Bran Mak Morn saga bear this out. He is also editor of Carcosa, a small press that won a World Fantasy Award in 1976 for its Worse Things Waiting (by Manly Wade Wellman) and Far Lands, Other Days (by E. Hoffmann Price). In his spare time Karl is a licensed physician taking a residency in psychiatry.
The lashed together framework of sticks jutted from a small cairn alongside the stream. Colin Leverett studied it in perplexment—half a dozen odd lengths of branch, wired together at cross angles for no fathomable purpose. It reminded him unpleasantly of some bizarre crucifix, and he wondered what might lie beneath the cairn.
It was the spring of 1942—the kind of day to make the War seem distant and unreal, although the draft notice waited on his desk. In a few days Leverett would lock his rural studio, wonder if he would see it again—be able to use its pens and brushes and carving tools when he did return. It was goodby to the woods and streams of upstate New York, too. No fly rods, no tramps through the countryside in Hitler’s Europe. No point in putting off fishing that troutstream he had driven past once, exploring back roads of the Otselic Valley.
Mann Brook—so it was marked on the old Geological Survey map—ran southeast of DeRuyter. The unfrequented country road crossed over a stone bridge old before the first horseless carriage, but Leverett’s Ford eased across and onto the shoulder. Taking fly rod and tackle, he included pocket flask and tied an iron skillet to his belt. He’d work his way downstream a few miles. By afternoon he’d lunch on fresh trout, maybe some bullfrog legs.
It was a fine clear stream, though difficult to fish as dense bushes hung out from the bank, broken with stretches of open water hard to work without being seen. But the trout rose boldly to his fly, and Leverett was in fine spirits.
From the bridge the valley along Mann Brook began as fairly open pasture, but half a mile downstream the land had fallen into disuse and was thick with second growth evergreens and scrub-apple trees. Another mile, and the scrub merged with dense forest, which continued unbroken. The land here, he had learned, had been taken over by the state many years back.
As Leverett followed the stream he noted the remains of an old rail-road embankment. No vestige of tracks or ties—only the embankment itself, overgrown with large trees. The artist rejoiced in the beautiful dry-wall culverts spanning the stream as it wound through the valley. To his mind it seemed eerie, this forgotten railroad running straight and true through virtual wilderness.