Things Beyond Midnight (2 page)

I remember something my Dad once told me. He said a good piece of writing should make the reader do half the work. In other words, if the writer provides every detail, the reader isn’t being truly invited into the story. The reader should be able to contribute, to fill in the details. A good story should be a
shared
experience.

I like that idea very much.

And as the stories in this book prove, Bill Nolan strikes just the right balance. There is economical perfection in what he does as a writer. Not too much. Not too little. He invites you inside. And then he makes you feel like a plate of glass hit by a hammer when he decides to send you into a panic. Read “The Pool” and test your heartbeat after the last line. This guy Nolan can make your veins curl.

Read “Into the Lion’s Den.” Now, there’s a story that will confuse the hell out of you emotionally. It absolutely offends
and
it totally ingratiates. Nolan is at it again, working his special magic, creating his own three-ring circus. And very likely shooting people out of cannons who’d rather just stand by and watch.

As a fellow fantasy writer, I read a great many stories in the field and most fail to excite me. Either they have a terrific concept and weak writing, or the reverse.

Not Bills work. His ideas are gems and his writing always does them justice. It’s not surprising, given his talent, that he’s been able to work in so many fields of writing. His scripts for television and films are lean, powerful extensions of his prose talents. Check out his teleplay of “The Party” in this collection, as an example. From his classic
Logan’s Run
, a novel which still echoes its poignant morality like fine Greek Tragedy, to the baleful menace of his screenplay for
Burnt Offerings
, Bill’s imagination is as evocative on a screen as on the printed page. His fascination with the topography of emotional torment, his infallible rendering of the troubled psyche mark a sensitivity to the human condition.

The man sees things. He hears things.

Things which are around all of us, all the time, unseen. Unseen, that is, unless one has Bill’s prismatic bent of mind. He perceives what is commonly thought to be invisible, As fellow practitioners, Bill and I often talk about the short story as an art form. We both love it. I have a particular fondness for short fiction because my Dad wrote so many stories while I was growing up. I dearly love them to this day. When I began to write and sell my own short stories and see them published, I felt a surge of enthusiasm that has never lessened.

There’s something very exciting about writing a short story. And if you write the first draft of the story in one sitting, as I often do, it can be an out-of-the-body experience. You live through it in a compressed time span which can only be described as surreal. Novels are very different. I’ve written five so far and the writing and reading of the longer form is governed by more tranquil rhythms. A novel builds the mood slowly, over a long period of time.

But a short story, particularly in the horror genre, often impacts like the bullet of a sniper during a sunny day at the beach (and yes, there’s a Nolan sniper in this collection. Check out “A Real Nice Guy”)

In any case, I’ve said enough...

Bill’s stories are getting restless.

I can hear them screaming and pleading like the inmates of a burning madhouse, faces pressed against the windows.

It’s time to let them loose. The lava lamp in Bill Nolan’s head is now turned on and the brilliant parabolas of this man’s extraordinary imagination are about to rise up from their primal base:

You won’t be needing a reading light.

The incandescent stories in this disturbing collection will light up your room, your mind and your heart. But be warned before blithely wandering in. I’ll make you a guarantee in writing: just when you’re feeling cozy and warm and secure, the occasionally sadistic Mr. Nolan will likely flip that light off, plunging you into howling darkness.

Maybe a flashlight at hand wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

What exactly constitutes terror on a screen or in the pages of a book or magazine? What actually frightens us? What combination of elements merge to cause a chill along the spine, a quickened beating of the heart, a gasp of sudden shock?

Terror has to be built. It has to be constructed as carefully as an office skyscraper or a fine automobile. Terror is mood. Texture. Detail. Character. All must be orchestrated in the proper combination before the chill settles upon our bones.

Let me demonstrate what I mean. In 1977 I wrote a television outline in which a really Awful Creature stalks through Los Angeles in human form. This scabrous fellow had already called upon an unfortunate young lady and left her floating, facedown, in her patio swimming pool. Now he is loose again, creeping about in the brush-covered hills of the San Fernando Valley, looking for fresh victims. As an example of how I build terror, here is the scene:

FADE IN
:

Cricket-sounding night darkness.
CAMERA MOVES IN
to an open tennis court in the hills. Two young women,
MISH
and
ELLEN
, are playing a vigorous game under the overhead lights. A chain-link fence, covered with green canvas, surrounds the court. They are the only players on the large double court and seem small and fragile in the wide complex of fence and concrete, weirdly-lit by the overhead neons.

The whack-whack-whack of the tennis ball sends lonely echoes through the area as
CAMERA MOVES CLOSER
.

Ellen winds up the set. “Look, I
know
I can beat you! Got time for one more?”

“Doubt it,” says Mish. “The lights go out at eleven.”

“Well, let’s play as long as we can.” Ellen whacks the ball, but her serve is too strong—bouncing over the fence into the night bushes.

“Damn! Can you get it?”

Mish frowns. “Hey,
you
knocked it over, so
you
go chase it.”

Ellen puts her racquet aside, opens the gate, goes scrambling down the steep hillside to find the lost tennis ball.

CAMERA
is with Ellen in the bushes when, suddenly, above her, all the overhead lights
go out.
The courts are thrown into heavy shadow. Now the only illumination is provided by a row of dim green bulbs spaced at 10-foot intervals along the exit passage between the fenced courts. Their green glow is ominous.

“I can’t see a bloody
thing
down here,” Ellen yells.

We are now back on the shadowed court with Mish, who is gathering up their tennis gear. She calls down to Ellen: “Just forget that dumb ball. It’s time to head home, okay?”

But there is
no
reply from the dark mass of tangled brush on the hillside.

“Elly... Ellen!...
Answer
me, you goon!”

She walks to the fence, peers downward. “You tryin’ to scare me?” No sound. No movement. Just the mournful dirge of night crickets.

Mish is getting nervous. She calls Ellen’s name again—without a reply Mish stands tensely at the cold metal fence, her eyes probing the gray-green dimness.

Then, loud and piercing, a
SCREAM OF TERROR
from the hill, Ellens scream. The sound is abruptly cut off—and there is only silence again.

Then, a rustle of movement. The soft crackle of brush.

Mish can hardly allow herself to breathe; terror fills her body, shines from her round eyes as she sees:

A pair of rotted, mud-clotted feet, half-bone, half-flesh, visible in the shadows under the stretched green canvas—moving
toward
her along the fence on the opposite side.

Mish jerks back from the fence and pushes a knuckled hand into her mouth, biting flesh to stifle the sounds in her throat. Her eyes shift to:

The court gate.

It stands open where Ellen left it.

Mish suddenly breaks for the gate—but
just as she reaches it
the fence canvas in front of her is
ripped aside
with tremendous force—and we see
(CAMERA ZOOMING IN)
a demented face that is older than that of any human being. Not 100... not 150... but
vastly older.

With a strangled sob, Mish plunges through the gate, runs wildly along the exit passage under the glowing green bulbs, half-falls, drags herself up, plunges forward, gasping, almost out of her senses with fear.

The creature behind her moves fast, closing the space between them. Rotted bits of flesh fall from its body as it pursues her... and it is brandishing what
seems
to be a club.

She reaches the parking lot. Jumps into her car. Fumbles in her purse for keys. Can’t find them. The creature is
almost
to the car. She rolls up the window and the creature’s rotted hands scrabble at the glass. He batters the window with his bony club... Mish finally locates the ignition key. Stabs it into the dash. Engine ROARS. She punches the gas. Too much—as her car
whips
around in a tire-churning circle on the night-damp pavement. The engine dies. The creature continues to batter at the window, smashing the glass. Mish grinds the starter; the engine fires up again. She floors the pedal, blasting away in a spume of gravel.

We see the car fishtailing down the court road.

We hear the soft
CRUNCHING
of pebbles as the creature moves forward
CLOSE INTO FRAME
. His back is to us, but his hunched figure
FILLS THE SCREEN
as he watches the tail lights of the car fade into the darkness.

We hear the wet, bubbly
SOUND
of the creature’s breathing.

CAMERA SLOWLY PANS DOWN
to his hand, in which he still holds the club.

But it is not a club.

It is Ellen’s left arm.

FADE TO BLACK

Beyond knowing how to build terror and suspense, there is another element that must be present.

A strong affection for the genre.

In order to write really well in any field, the author must love the best work in that field. And I’ve had that love—from childhood.

As a boy in Kansas City during the 1940s, I shuddered over Mr. Lovecraft and the works of Clark Ashton Smith—and I listened avidly to radio’s
Lights Out
and
I Love a Mystery.
(I can still remember falling from the sky into the horrific blubbery depths of Arch Oboler’s immense chicken heart as it spread over the earth—and I was
there
, crouching on a high ledge in total blackness with Jack, Doc and Reggie in the “Temple of Vampires”) I shared cinema horrors at the local movie palace with Karloff and Lugosi, and carted home the latest issue of
Weird Tales
each month, devouring the lurid melodrama in its wood-pulp pages. And one of the highlights of this period was discovering the dark joys of August Derleth’s edited anthology of horror,
Sleep No More.
At 18, I edited my own collection of favorite terror tales,
You Can Never Tell.
I even provided a handwritten Introduction. (I never sent this collection to market, but it exists today as part of the Nolan manuscripts at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.)

As a professional, I wrote the Bette Davis shocker,
Burnt Offerings
, and scripted such fright films for television as
The Norliss Tapes, Trilogy of Terror The Turn of the Screw
. But the collected horror fiction in this book best reflects my deep commitment to “things beyond midnight.”

I built each story with love.

I hope they scare you out of your socks!

00:01
SATURDAY’S SHADOW

First, before I tell you about Laurie—about what happened to her (in blood) I must tell you about primary shadows. It is vitally important that I tell you about these shadows. Each day has one, and they have entirely different characteristics, variant personalities.