Grimdark Magazine Issue #13
119
Grimdark Magazine Issue #13
119eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780648178415 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grimdark Magazine |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2017 |
| Series: | Grimdark Magazine |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 119 |
| File size: | 248 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Like a Curse
David M. Hoenig
The dream's always the same.
She's got her back to me, but I know her from the curve of her shoulder, the sheen of her hair. I'm reaching for her shoulder with my right hand, but before I get there she spins around and she's holding a Smith & Wesson New Model Number 3 pointed at my chest, its barrel as big as a Union cannon. There's blood at the corner of her lips, and her wintry blue eyes are pinched with pain. There are dark bruises on her left cheekbone; with her free hand she clutches her torn dress up to her throat.
In that moment, I see the feeder I've never seen awake, latch onto my soul, and begin to suckle on a regret so complete my chest aches like her bullet's already lodged there.
"Don't touch me, not ever again," she says in a shaky voice.
"I'm sorry, so very sorry." I sound as if my own voice is coming from somewhere far away.
"It's too late for 'sorry', you bastard!"
I see her finger begin to pull the trigger. Everything moves slow, like I've got all the time in the world to either duck or pluck justice from her hand, but all I can actually do is watch her face and feel sad that I only ever see her like this, all broken and bloody, since that last time we were together. I stand there praying that I'll finally weep this time, and wait with something like hope for the kick in my chest that'll mean I finally paid for my sins.
But I don't cry, because the damned, hungry thing that's kept me alive through a dozen desperate scrapes has got its hooks so deep into me that I can't muster enough regret to shed a goddamn tear before the feeder's draining it away to satisfy its own hunger.
I wake all at once. Before I even open my eyes, I register the light, snoring sound next to me, a horse's whinny out in the dusty street downstairs, and the wind knifing through the town of Kingdom Come, Wyoming.
And I'm still one of the Ridden.
I know something's not right, but it doesn't sound like it's in my room so I slit my eyes and look around. Nothing looks out of place in the predawn light. Becky Sue Wickham is still asleep next to me, the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes visible even now. There's not much sadder than an old whore, but she still likes her work, least when she can get it these days.
Of course, I ain't exactly wet behind the ears myself, and Becky Sue and I got what you might call an understanding. Hell, maybe she thinks there ain't much sadder than an old gunslinger.
Considering the thing that's bent on keeping me alive, she might even be right.
But even without knowing what, something's very wrong, so I slap her hard on her ample hip.
She wakes with a curse and a venomous look. "You bloody, fuckin' Haunt!" she snarls at me. "What in Hell's wrong with you?"
I give the mean stare right back at her for maybe two seconds before it's just too much work to keep up and I look out the window at a patch of Wyoming sky instead. "Go on, Becky Sue," I tell her. "Git. Before one of us regrets it."
She takes a hard look at me and then her eyes go wide when she realizes I can't feel regret because of what's Riding me. She shuts her yap so fast that her teeth click together. Guess she smells the killing in the air, because she's out from under the covers and through the doorway with nothing more than a flash of her flabby ass in the pale light of early morning.
It seems a powerful irony that whores got some of the best survival instincts, when you wouldn't think it from their path in life.
And then I'm wondering if I've got it all wrong. Maybe Becky Sue and her like have got it figured better than I ever did: if you never let yourself feel too much, you never run much risk of attracting a feeder.
I get up and finally notice what's off. My rig and the pearl-handled Colt — my constant companions since I fled Kentucky a whole lifetime ago — are hanging off the chair by the window where they're supposed to be, but where in the hell are my damn pants?
"Steely-eyed Tate," a woman's voice calls from outside. "Time to get out here and die!"
Sheee-it.
I sidle up to the side of the window and take a careful look. She's out there, spitting image of the woman who shoots me night after night in my dreams.
And she's wearing my pants.
"Looky looky," I yell out, playing for time. "If it ain't little Abigail Price, all growed up."
"They call me Dust Devil now, old man!"
"Uh huh." Young as she is, she ain't going to make the same mistakes she made last time. And if she's been in and out of my room with me sleeping, she'll also have everything else covered already: my horse down at the stable, the exits out of town, all of it.
"You got nowhere to go, Tate. I coulda ended you in your sleep, but I want you awake and knowin' it was me that done it, you sumbitch! I want everyone to see you finally get what you got comin', fair and goddamn square!"
And if you ask me, it'd be about fucking time. "I'll be down directly," I call out the window, and wonder if she can do it.
What the hell, there's no rush now, so I buckle on my gun over my drawers and tie it down around my thigh, then put on my hat and look in the mirror. I still can't see the thing from my dreams, but what I do see reminds me that there are old gunslingers, and bold gunslingers, but there ain't no old, bold gunslingers.
I glance around the room and it feels as empty as the years since Kentucky. At least without Becky Sue in it, I think, and that unexpected thought makes me let out a low whistle through my front teeth. It's a realization that doesn't fit in my life, but for this moment it feels like it should, so I go get my poke out from under the mattress and weigh it in my palm. It's heavy, and it jingles. I've been counting on it lasting a while, but I toss it onto the bed and forget about it before I'm even turned back to the mirror. I comb my mustache with my fingers and adjust the brim of my hat one more time, then go out.
Every step down the stairs jars my hip where I was shot a few years back, and I clench and unclench my right hand, hearing clicks and clacks from the knuckles as I try to loosen them up. At the bottom, Becky Sue's got a blanket clutched around her, and she stares at me from a too pale face. I stop and look at her, then tip my hat, all gentleman-like. It takes her a moment or two to decide what she's going to do, but she finally nods back at me just as if we actually liked each other or something. It makes me smile for the first time in a long while.
I put my hand on the right-hand batwing, but turn back to her before I go out into the street. "I know I ain't exactly been good for you, Becky Sue."
"You're such a bastard, y'Haunt, that you know all the lizards by their first names." Only she says it without the bite that's part of her usual speech, like her heart ain't quite in it.
But now my smile's for real, and you know what? It feels right fine, like there isn't a pretty little killer with a grudge as old as she is outside waiting to draw down against me. "You're some special kind of lady, Becky Sue. You're tougher than you know."
She looks as suspicious as a banker with a phony note, but eventually decides I mean it. "We both are, y'ornery old cuss." Becky Sue jerks her chin to indicate outside. "Who is she anyway?"
"Another woman I ain't done right by."
Abigail's voice calls from outside, impatient now. "Get out here, you bastard!"
I'll get to her soon enough, I reckon, so I stay with Becky Sue. It seems like she's looking for something in my eyes, but I can't tell if she finds it before she speaks in a low voice. "Can you take her?"
I shrug. "She wouldn't be here if she didn't think she could put me down."
"You're still fast, Tate."
"Slowed some over the years, Becky Sue."
She walks up to me and she puts a hand lightly on my cheek. "Listen: you ain't been all that bad for me, you old Haunt." There's a tenderness in her gaze which belies the words and this part of me that's wound up tight inside loosens like a rawhide knot coming undone.
"Left you something on the bed, Becky Sue."
Her eyes widen just a bit.
"My poke. Yours, now. All of it."
When she speaks her voice is a mite rough. "You ain't been all that bad for me," she repeats.
I nod, then I'm through the batwings, which squeal louder than a hog on butchering day.
I mosey out into the bone-dry street, a good ten strides from Dust Devil, and we face each other as the wind keens past us. She looks good against the backdrop of mountains off in the distance: straight blond hair under a light brown Stetson, pert nose between sunburnt cheeks, and icy blue eyes.
Her mother's eyes.
"You ready to die, old man?" she says, a curl of contempt on her lips, her hand hovering over the gun at her belt.
"Not really." I lower my hand down to the same position she's got, and exhale slowly. The moment stretches out into that no-time that's got a familiar, bitter taste to it, sort of like my favorite tobacco. It's been with me for so long that I can almost feel the thing Riding me feasting like a glutton; that it somehow knows I can't muster enough regret to stop me doing what I must to survive.
Except that it's something unfamiliar I'm feeling just as I go for the draw that makes me drop my hand past my waist so that my big iron stays in its rig. Then I find out just how fast Dust Devil is when I feel like I been kicked in the chest by a mule.
When I open my eyes, I'm lying in the street and she's standing over me. Her blue eyes seem softer now somehow, and she looks confused. I can almost see the thing sucking at her recoil in disgust and flee.
"Why didn't you draw, you sumbitch?" she says with a hitch in her voice.
I can barely make a sound. "You know why," I whisper.
She kneels over me, her breathing ragged, and says nothing.
I look at her face set against that sharp Wyoming sky and see a drop fall from her lashes to her cheek, and suddenly I'm free of the thing that's been making a meal of me since Kentucky. Twenty goddamn years of bitter rue start from my eyes like a dam broke; without the feeder latched onto me, I know that she's my daughter up in the front of my head. Her face blurs into something even more beautiful than I can remember. "Guess you're the one gonna wear the pants in the family," I whisper to her. I hear her sob, and just like that I'm okay with dying.
The only thing that spoils the moment is that I finally see my feeder for the first time, and I'm helpless to stop that fucker as it moves from me to her just as my heart stops beating.
The pain from seeing that is more than any gunshot, and what's worse is there ain't a blessed thing I can do about it. Maybe there is one thing sadder than an old gunslinger, I reckon, but at least I ain't going to get any older. "I'm sorry, so very sorry," I mouth, because I just can't move enough air to make a sound.
Anyway, I'm finally free of everything except my daughter: though it's out of focus, I watch her face until I can't see anything anymore.
CHAPTER 2
An Interview with Nicholas Eames
Tom Smith
We meet again denizens of the grimdark. This issue I track down the King of the Wyld himself — Nicholas Eames.
For anyone that has been under a rock this last year, he is probably best known for his previously alluded to Kings of the Wyld featuring a down and out group of retired rogues who call their band Saga and are called to action by a new threat. If you haven't read it, I recommend you rectify that immediately.
[TS] Nicholas, thanks for joining us.
[NE] Thank you for having me.
[TS] You have mentioned in other forums that you based this book largely on the dynamic of a rock band, where did you come up with that concept?
[NE] I wish I knew! It's one of those ideas you and your fantasy-loving friends might come up with while extremely high (not the case), or after consuming too many cups of coffee (probably the case). With something as kitschy as 'mercenary bands as an allusion to rock bands' you'd normally laugh and say, "Imagine that," and then move on to something else. Instead, I grabbed my laptop, sat on my back porch, and wrote the words, "You'd have guessed from the size of his shadow that Clay Cooper was a bigger man than he was."
After that I was pretty much doomed to write the rest.
[TS] If you made this into a mini-series or movie, what songs would you put on the soundtrack?
[NE] Funny you should ask! I have a tentative chapter-by-chapter soundtrack on my website. There are a few songs on there that will always and forever remind me of Kings of the Wyld. The Who's Baba O'Riley is the song I'd pick to open things up. Wild Horses, by the Rolling Stones, will always invoke memories of Clay sitting beside his daughter's bed. Besides those, there's a lot of Rush, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, and pretty much anyone who was making progressive rock in the 1970's.
[TS] This book in addition to being a great dramatic read was also incredibly funny. Did you set out to make it that way, or was it just something that happened organically as you were writing it?
[NE] Firstly, thank you for saying so. It's actually the other way around. I set out to write a book that was funny, irreverent, and didn't take itself too seriously. I mean, if you'd told me ten years ago I'd ever write a book with goblins (let alone orcs, trolls, kobolds, and owlbears) in it I'd have called you crazy. For a few decades now the fantasy genre has been more about people, culture, religion, war — a lot of pretty heavy stuff. I wanted to write something that was a celebration fantasy's somewhat embarrassing roots, and so I deliberately used tropes like magic swords, ancient immortal races, and a 'horde' of evil monsters.
Along the way, however, the characters just sort of got away from me. They deserved better than to be used as fodder for humour, as corny as that may sound. By the time I was halfway done the book I could bring myself to tears over the thought of Clay's love for his wife and daughter, or Moog's hopeless plight against the disease that killed his husband. Don't get me wrong, the story was still goofy as hell when it landed me an agent (and was eventually bought by Orbit). Luckily, I was blessed with both an agent and an editor who loved the lighter side of the book, but helped me hone those parts into something that didn't undermine the more serious aspects of the book.
[TS] Many grimdark forums these days discuss tropes and their overuse. In this book you've managed to mock them but still take them seriously at the same time. How much of that was planned? How much of it just kind of happened during the writing of the book?
As I mentioned above, they were very deliberate. Having recently read Ready Player One, which was sort of a love letter to everything Ernest Cline thought was awesome about the 80's, I wanted to do something similar with my love of old-school fantasy, D&D, video games, music, and movies.
This could be an unpopular opinion, but I tend to think that you should tell your story as if no story has ever existed before it (hey, it worked for Avatar!). I'm not saying you should copy what others have done, but you shouldn't be afraid to tread the same ground, or tackle familiar themes in your own way. What you end up with (hopefully) is something fantasy lovers can appreciate, and that those new to the genre can enjoy for the first time.
[TS] While reading this book and seeing the many different types of beings and creatures Saga encountered, it couldn't help but make me think that there must have been some serious Dungeon & Dragons campaigning in your past. Did you play much or did you draw on mythology and other literary Classics to build your monster list?
[NE] A ton! I've played D&D off and on since I was 13, and a monster manual was never far from my side while writing this book. Although there's a few new faces sprinkled throughout, I wanted readers who shared my love of roleplaying to recognize a few old friends. A few of my personal favorites are in there — most notably, the ettercap, and ettin, and the owlbear!
[TS] To what do you attribute the rise in popularity of the darker fictions (dystopian, post-apocalyptic, grimdark) in recent years?
[NE] I'd attribute it to two things. First is the success of authors who write that sort of stuff (i.e. Martin, Abercrombie, Lawrence). If something is popular, then publishers are more likely to seek out similar voices.
Second, and probably more relevant, is that a lot what we might call old-school fantasy wasn't at all relatable. It was fun, and there were dragons aplenty, but the characters were too static and their circumstances too unreal for anyone but hardcore fans to enjoy. With the rise of authors like Martin, however, we suddenly had characters that were flawed, and fallible, and very obviously imperfect. Like us.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Grimdark Magazine Issue 13"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Grimdark Magazine.
Excerpted by permission of Grimdark Magazine.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
From the Editor By Adrian Collins,
Like a Curse By David M. Hoenig,
An Interview with Nicholas Eames Tom Smith,
Review: Kings of the Wyld Author: Nicholas Eames Review by Matthew Cropley,
How to Land a Rockstar Agent in Ten Excruciating Steps By Deborah A. Wolf,
The Heavens Fall By S. Andrew Swann,
An interview with Anna Stephens Tom Smith,
Barbarians or Philosophers? By Matthew Cropley and Victoria Bridgland,
Review: Under the Pendulum Sun Author: Jeannette Ng Review by malrubius,
Black City Shadows by Richard A. Knaak,