Regular readers of Fantasy Tales will know that we’ve been going through some changes recently, and this latest metamorphosis takes the magazine a step further towards being a fully-fledged bi-annual anthology. The addition of extra pages means we are able to offer readers twice as many stories as we used to publish in each issue, plus there’s the added bonus of our usual high quality illustrations to complement the mix of fiction.
Since we are now reaching many more readers, especially in the United States, it is probably timely to give a brief review of the history of Fantasy Tales. FT began in 1977 as a small press magazine with three aims in mind: to publish contemporary and traditional fantasy and horror fiction; to illustrate the stories with some of the best artwork around; and to encompass both those ideas within a design that was a tribute to the old science fiction and horror pulp magazines of the 1930s and ’40s, particularly Weird Tales.
The magazine did extremely well. It attracted the top names in the writing and illustrative fields, as well as showcasing material by up-and-coming talents. FT has won both The World Fantasy Award and The British Fantasy Award, and a number of stories published in the magazine have gone on to win awards or have been subsequently published in “Year’s Best” anthologies.
Our tenth anniversary issue (number 17) was the last of the semi-professional issues. Since then, Robinson Publishing in the UK and, more recently, Carroll & Graf in the USA, have published Fantasy Tales as a trade paperback, giving the title a wide distribution on both sides of the Atlantic.
For those of you interested in the magazine’s history, this seems like a good time to plug our hardcover anthology The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales, recently published to rave reviews in America by Carroll & Graf at $17.95 and still available in Britain from Robinson for £11.95. Drawing on fiction and artwork originally published during our small press incarnation, and featuring work by Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber amongst others, you can order copies of this hefty collection of twenty stories from your local bookstore or direct from the publishers.
Meanwhile, for those readers who want to catch up with our earlier editions, check out the back issue information in this volume. Many numbers are already out of print and some are in very short supply, so this could be your last chance to fill those gaps in your collection at a reasonable price.
Earlier this year we were delighted to learn that we had been nominated in two categories in the Small Press Awards at Readercon 3, the conference of imaginative literature, held in Lowell, Massachusetts. We made the final nomination lists in both the Fiction and Design categories, so we must be doing something right.
Within the following pages you will discover heroic fantasy, grim horror, the darkly sinister and bizarre humour—in short, the mix of material that Fantasy Tales has always built its reputation upon. Enjoy!
The Editors
Roberta Lannes has been a teacher of English, art, journalism, creative writing and photography. She lives in Los Angeles,where she also works as a designer and graphic illustrator. Although she has been writing since the age of eight, her first professionally published horror story, “Goodbye, Dark Love”, appeared in Dennis Etchison’s acclaimed anthology Cutting Edge (1986). Since then she has sold her highly disturbing fiction to such anthologies as Lord John Ten, Alien Sex and Splatterpunks. We are proud to present the following original story, which marks her debut in Fantasy Tales.
Rake coasted his bicycle down the dirt incline to the edge of the pond. Red-brown dust billowed up and around him. He squinted under the noonday sun to see if Hollis or Doug had arrived yet. He spotted their bikes poking out from under a mass of scrub brush lining the bottom of the gully, lying on their sides like work-weary animals.
As he approached the old gnarled oak on the other side of the brush, he smelled the sweet metallic scent of marijuana. He didn’t know why he didn’t want to try it, but he didn’t, and he dreaded Doug’s usual chiding. Christ, he smoked cigarettes like all the rest of the guys. He wasn’t a complete pussy.
“Hey, look! It’s our buddy, Rake. Howyadoin’?”
Doug leaned against the oak tree. He wore his uniform of black sleeveless t-shirt with a MegaDeath imprint on the front and faded black jeans. He was barefoot, his motorcycle boots out of sight somewhere. Rake fought the urge to stare at Doug’s slightly withered leg and club foot, but his eyes betrayed him. Doug pulled his foot up behind his knee.
“Hey, yeah. I’m okay. Hotter’n hell, though. The ride over here was a bitch. Shit. I just wanna get wet.” Rake peeled off his sweat-matted t-shirt and stepped to the water’s edge.
The pond was a thirty foot expanse of dark murky water, runoff from the aqueduct just over the hill. The calm mirror surface hid the refuse of hundreds of parties and, to hear some tell, a dead body. It was a place the local kids called their own. The sheriff carefully guarded the concrete waterway above, keeping its fenced area free from vandalism, but left the pond alone.
Doug held out the stub of a joint. “Don’t you want a hit before you go in?“ He sniggered.
Rake stared at the waves of heat rising from the concrete on the hillcrest. “Naw.” He waited for Doug to start in on him.
Hollis drew all six foot two inches of himself up from the ground, as if he were weighted down, and interjected. “Wow, I’m so totally wasted. I gotta get wet, too. C’mon, Rake. Let’s hit it.”
Rake smiled up at Hollis. Rake had never had a better friend in his life. He could count on Hollis. They shared secrets they told no one else. That made it easy for Rake to forgive him for all his irritating qualities, like always interrupting, stooping so that he walked like a flamingo with a broken neck, an awkward shyness, and a total lack of class. Hollis had a good heart, and never laughed at Rake’s dreams.
She put the glass to his cheek. He could feel its razor sharp edge slide over his skin. (Art: Tony Todd)
They looked back at Doug, Doug’s fingers gesturing his disdain at what they might do without him. Rake pushed Hollis in, Hollis making a successful grab for Rake’s shorts, pulling him in, too.
They shrieked, “Dead body!”, scattering apart, and howled with laughter.
The water was dirty cool soup. Rake floated as best he could, his holey high-top tennis shoes bobbing in the mud-colored sea. He knew Doug would say something about what a chickenshit Rake was for wearing protection on his feet, but hell, Rake wasn’t going to let the same accident happen to him twice. No more slashed feet from broken beer bottles needing fourteen stitches and a tetanus shot that made his arm ache for a week. No, he’d let Doug play his tough guy act on his own.
Suddenly Hollis was on him, forcing him under. They mock-struggled just long enough for the lack of air to get serious, then they both burst up through the coffee brown surface, gasping, dirt striping their faces, running down their lean tanned chests.
“You shithead, you nearly drowned me!” Rake splashed Hollis.
“Aha! And you didn’t try to get me? Bull!” Hollis laughed.
“Will you two pussies shut up? You sound like you did in third grade.”
Doug stood at the bank, the water lapping at his ankles. He was in his undershorts. Doug didn’t care if everybody in Reedly saw him butt-naked. He was built like a man in every way, and proud of it. Still, Rake thought, it didn’t seem necessary to show it off.
Hollis cleared his throat in the obvious way he sometimes did to get Rake’s attention. Rake followed Hollis’s eyes as they looked past Doug up to the roadway. It was just Deanna Praeger and Jenni Davis on their way to the smaller pond around the bend; the one the guys called the “sissy” pond.
“You wanna call them down here to keep us company?” Rake knew Hollis’ shyness would spare them all the possibility
“Nope. Just lookin’ at her is enough. She’s so hot.” Hollis slunk into the water as the girls spotted them and waved.
Rake puffed out his chest and waved back. “Yeah, Jenni is pretty good.”
“Shit, she’s better than pretty good.” Hollis splashed Rake.
Doug waded in, watching. “You guys are hopeless. I bet neither one of you’s ever laid a chick.”
Hollis swam away. Rake shrugged. “It’ll happen.”
“Not with your equipment it won’t.” Doug lunged at Rake, his hand curling around Rake’s balls and squeezing, hard.
“Get your fucking hands off me, you fag!” Rake pushed Doug back, holding his aching testicles. He hated Doug’s assaults on him. “You asshole. Fag!”
“Fag? You calling me a fag?” Doug came forward, pushing Rake, then swung at him. He missed when he slipped on bottom slime.
Rake backed off further. They seemed to get in some kind of fight Doug started every weekend, now. Rake was sick and tired of it.
Doug spit a stream of water and went after Rake. There was blood in his eyes. Rake twisted away and fell, Doug covering him, fists flying.
Rake flailed under water, unable to catch a breath. He felt the water-muffled punches keep coming as his strength ebbed. Doug would not quit. It wasn’t like him.
Rake wanted to give up, let Doug have the damned fight, but his struggle to get air made it seem to Doug that Rake wasn’t through with it. Rake could feel his body near bursting, ready to suck the coppery water into lungs. In a second that felt more like a minute, he felt the fear of dying, and found a last cache of energy to wrench free, kicking Doug in the chin as he swam off.
“You fucker1 I almost bit my tongue off.” Doug held his tongue between two fingers, maroon dripping down his arm.
Hollis waded over to Doug. He awkwardly attempted to comfort Doug, reached over too quickly and Doug swung wild, clipping Hollis on the nose. They stood waist deep in the pond, blood running in rivulets over their lips, chins, laughing hysterically.
Stoned. Rake had to remind himself that they always got weird when they smoked that stuff.
As he turned to walk back up to his bicycle, he saw her up on the roadway.
Mariah.
She wore a man’s white dress shirt that hung too long over a red string bikini. She had a straw bag over her shoulder, and her long blond hair, the color of her bag, shone gold in the sun. She had on oversized sunglasses and hot pink lipstick. As she set one long perfectly shaped leg in front of the other, the shirt parted and he could see her wonderfully tanned breasts jiggling beneath red triangles. She adjusted her sunglasses as she looked down on them. She didn’t wave. She never did.
She lived next door to Hollis on Red Bluff. She spoke to no one and no one either Rake or Hollis knew had ever spoken to her. Doug once bragged he slept with her, but she ignored him the same as everyone else. He eventually stopped insisting it happened. Rake never believed him anyway.
Rake watched her disappear behind the hill. He ached to climb to the hillcrest and stare down on her as she lay in the sun, but he wasn’t in the mood for Doug’s razzing him. He went to his bicycle and reached into the worn pack attached to the seat for a cigarette.
He sat in the tangle of roots beneath the oak tree and smoked his first Marlboro of the day. Hollis and Doug splashed at each other screaming “Dead body!”, and swimming about in a stoned frenzy. Their laughter pealed up into the summer’s bone gray sky.
Rake thought only of Mariah. She was two or three years older than he. He first saw her when he had just turned eleven. Then she seemed like a grown woman. He had an utterly hopeless crush on her. He dreamed she might smile at him. Say hello. He dared not dream of more, back then. Now that he was fifteen, she didn’t seem so unattainable, distant. He knew in a few years their age difference would seem like hardly any time at all. At least not enough to keep them apart. It was just a matter of getting to know her. It wasn’t impossible.
In fact, as he got older, the more certain he was anything was possible. Like going invisible. Unseen. He found through experience that he was getting better at it. He imagined that the time would come soon he could actually control it.
He first noticed this ability when he was eight years old. He was at his cousin’s birthday party in Dinuba when he realized no one could see him sitting there in the middle of the party scratching his butt. They all looked through him. He was invisible. He tested it by sticking his finger in his nose, an act that would surely have received a stern admonition from his mother. Nothing. And she was looking right where he sat. It was at that moment he vowed he would someday learn to use the ability and refine it into an art. His first sacred vow.
That was the beginning of Rake’s sacred vows. There were many small ones, long since acted upon, but only three he still had yet to fulfill. At thirteen he vowed one day to get his sister’s room with the door to the backyard, and at fourteen, he vowed Mariah would be his first-last-and-forever lover. The vows were serious. Mariah’s case was not purely or necessarily romantic. No. Pragmatic, maybe. The vow came about from his philosophical position that one shouldn’t live one’s life without what one wants, or even only half-way wants. A man without a purpose was no man at all. And Rake burned with purpose.
There were things that disturbed him, clouded his fantasies about Mariah. He heard talk. Rumors. People said horrible things about her; that she was a prostitute, that her father or step-father sold her to his business clients, that she hung out on Fuller Avenue at night, leaning into car windows from the sidewalk, sometimes getting into the cars, driving off, only to reappear in the same spot later.
Rake’s older sister, Corinne, was in the same classes with Mariah at Reedley High. Though he wouldn’t dare ask a direct question about Mariah, he listened well when Cori spoke with her friends about her. They all thought Mariah was stuck up, weird, screwed up, or trashy. Though none of them had ever spoken to her, they talked about her as if they had.
Cori’s friend Liz said, “She gets beaten if she gets below a ‘B’ on any test, so she cheats. I even saw the bruises once.”
And Nancy Lyn remarked, “She thinks she can get any guy on campus she wants. No one wants to be her friend if she can steal your boyfriend away just like that.”
It was possible Mariah was just a victim of vicious lies, of jealous gossip, that she was truly a good person no one really knew. Yet, sometimes, when Rake passed Mariah in the halls at school, he saw a hardness about her, a rage in her eyes. She seemed older and more sophisticated than the girls he knew quite well. She was so different, yet he sensed she was very much the same. Or he wanted her to be. If only everyone didn’t say the same things. Well, everyone but Hollis. Rake didn’t want to believe any of it, and Hollis reserved his opinion. He wouldn’t betray Rake.
Hollis told Rake it was like the stuff they read about aliens coming from other planets. People were afraid so they said aliens didn’t exist, couldn’t exist. The public was waiting for hard evidence, like a photo, or a piece of metal that was obviously not of this Earth. Then they might believe. Yet the lack of evidence didn’t stop some folks from believing. It was like that with Rake’s invisibility. Hollis had never seen Rake go invisible, but he believed it. He said, “You just have to have faith in things you can’t explain. You could go around thinking only stuff you can see or touch is real and then you’d miss a whole world of other shit . . .” Rake liked Hollis’ philosophy. It made sense. He wasn’t going to let other people’s fear make him believe Mariah wasn’t all right. He. . .
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