Classics Mutilated (56 page)

I was still on that side of the circle, cutting people loose, and soon as I did, a bunch of them just ran wildly, some right into the storm. They was yanked up, and went out of sight. All of the island seemed like it was wadding up.

Brer Rabbit grabbed my shoulder, said, "It's every man for his self," and then he darted along the edge of the Sticky Storm, dashed between two whipping Cut Through You legs, and leaped right into that briar patch, which seemed crazy to me. All the while he's running and jumping in the briars, I'm yelling, "Brer Rabbit, come back."

But he didn't. I heard him say, "Born and raised in the briar patch, born and raised," and then he was in the big middle of it, even as it was starting to fold up and get pulled toward the sky.

Now that we was free, I didn't know what to do. There didn't seem no place to go. Even the shoreline was starting to curl up.

Jim was standing by me. He said, "I reckon this is it, Huck. I say we let that storm take us, and not Cut Through You."

We was about to go right into the storm, 'cause the side of it wasn't but a few steps away, when I got my elbow yanked. I turned and it was Tom Sawyer, and Joe with him.

"The lady," Tom said. "This way."

I turned and seen the shorthaired lady was at that silver boat, and she was waving us to her. Any port in a storm, so to speak, so we run toward her with Tom and Joe. A big shadow fell over us as we run, and then a leg come popping out of the sky like a whip, and caught Joe around the neck, and yanked his head plumb off. His headless body must have run three or four steps before it went down.

I heard Tom yell out, and stop, as if to help the body up. "You got to run for it, Tom," I said. "Ain't no other way. Joe's deader than last Christmas."

So we come up on the silver boat with the wings, and there was an open door in the side of it, and we rushed in there and closed it. The lady was up front in a seat, behind this kind of partial wheel, looking out through a glass that run in front of her. The silver bug was humming, and those crosses on the wings was spinning. She touched something and let loose of something else, and we started to bounce, and then we was running along on the grass. I moved to the seat beside her, and she glanced over at me. She was white faced, but determined looking. 

"That was Noonan's seat," she said.

I didn't know what to say to that. I didn't know if I should get out of it or not, but I'll tell you, I didn't. I couldn't move. And then we was bouncing harder, and the island was closing in on us, and Cut Through You's rope legs was waving around us. One of them got hit by the crosses, which was spinning so fast you could hardly make them out. They hit it, and the winged boat was knocked a bit. The leg come off in a spray of green that splattered on the glass, and then the boat started to lift up. I can't explain it, and I know it ain't believable, but we was flying.

The sun was really starting to brighten things now, and as we climbed up, I seen the woods was still in front of us. The lady was trying to make the boat go higher, but I figured we was gonna clip the top of them trees and end up punched to death by them, but then the boat rose up some, and I could feel and hear the trees brush against the bottom of it, like someone with a whisk broom snapping dust off a coat collar.

With the island curing up all around us and starting to come apart in a spray of color, being sucked up by the Sticky Storm, and that flying boat wobbling and a rattling, I figured we had done all this for nothing. 

The boat turned slightly, like the lady was tacking a sail. I could glance up and out of the glass and see Cut Through You. He was sticking his head out of a pink morning sky, and his legs was thrashing, but he didn't look so big now; it was like the light had shrunk him up. I seen Tar Baby too, or what was left of him, and he was splattering against that big gourd thing with the writing on it, splattering like someone was flicking ink out of a writing pen. He and that big gourd was whipping around us like angry bugs.

Then there was a feeling like we was an arrow shot from a bow, and the boat jumped forward, and then it went up high, turned slightly, and below I seen the island was turning into a ball, and the ball was starting to look wet. Then it, the rain, every dang thing, including ole Cut Through You, who was sucked out of his hole, shot up into that Sticky Storm. 

Way we was now, I could still see Tar Baby splashed on that gourd, and the gourd started to shake, then it twisted and went as flat as a tape worm, and for some reason, it blowed; it was way worse than dynamite. When it blew up, it threw some Tar Baby on the flying boat's glass. The boat started to shake and the air inside and out had blue ripples in it.

And then— 

—the island was gone and there was just the Mississippi below us. Things was looking good for a minute, and then the boat started coughing, and black smoke come up from that whirly thing that had cut off one of Cut Through You's legs.

The boat dropped, the lady pulling at that wheel, yanking at doo-dads and such, but having about as much luck taking us back up as I'd have had trying to lift a dead cow off the ground by the tail. 

"We are going down," she said, as if this might not be something we hadn't noticed. "And there is nothing else to do but hope for the best."

Well, to make a long story short. She was right.

Course, hope only goes so far.

She fought that boat all the way down, and then it hit the water and skipped like it was a flat rock. We skipped and skipped, then the whirly gigs flew off, and one of them smashed the glass. I was thrown out of the seat, and around the inside of the boat like a ball.

Then everything knotted up, and there was a bang on my head, and the next thing I know there's water all over. The boat was about half full inside. I suppose that's what brought me around, that cold Mississippi water.

The glass up front was broke open, and water was squirting in around the edges, so I helped it by giving it a kick. It come loose at the edges, and I was able to push it out with my feet. Behind me was Tom Sawyer, and he come from the back like a farm mule in sight of the barn. Fact was, he damn near run over me going through the hole I'd made.

By the time he got through, there wasn't nothing but water, and I was holding my breath. Jim grabbed me from below, and pushed me by the seat of my pants through the hole. Then it was like the boat was towed out from under me. Next thing I knew I was on top of the water floating by Tom, spitting and coughing.

"Jim," I said, "where's Jim?"

"Didn't see him come up," Tom said.

"I guess not," I said. "You was too busy stepping on my head on your way out of that flying boat."

Tom started swimming toward shore, and I just stayed where I was, dog paddling, looking for Jim. I didn't see him, but on that sunlit water there come a big bubble and a burst of something black as the tar baby had been. It spread over the water. It was oil. I could smell it.

Next thing, I felt a tug at my leg. I thought it was one of them big catfish grabbing me, but it wasn't. It was Jim. He bobbed up beside me, and I grabbed him and hugged him and he hugged me back.

"I tried to save her, Huck. I did. But she was done dead. I could tell when I touched her, she was done dead."

"You done what you could." 

"What about Tom?" Jim said.

I nodded in the direction Tom had gone swimming. We could see his arms going up and down in the water, swimming like he thought he could make the far shore in about two minutes.

Wasn't nothing to do, but for us to start swimming after him. We done that for a long time, floating some, swimming some. And I'm ashamed to say Jim had to pull me along a few times, 'cause I got tuckered out.

When we was both about gone under, a big tree come floating by, and we climbed up on it. We seen Tom wasn't too far away, having gotten slower as he got tired. We yelled for him, and he come swimming back. The water flow was slow right then, and he caught up with us pretty quick, which is a good thing, 'cause if he hadn't, he'd have sure enough drowned. We clung and floated, and it was late that afternoon when we finally was seen by some fishermen and pulled off the log and into their boat.

There isn't much left to tell. All I can say is we was tired for three days, and when we tried to tell our story, folks just laughed at us. Didn't believe us at all. Course, can't blame them, as I'm prone toward being a liar. 

It finally got so we had to tell a lie for it to be believed for the truth, and that included Tom who was in on it with us. We had to say Joe drowned, because they wouldn't believe Cut Through You jerked his head off. They didn't believe there was a Cut Through You. Even the folks believed there was a Dread Island didn't believe our story.

Tom and Becky got together, and they been together ever since. Five years have passed, and dang if Tom didn't become respectable and marry Becky. They got a kid now. But maybe they ain't all that respectable. I count eight months from the time they married until the time their bundle of joy come along. 

Last thing I reckon I ought to say, is every year I go out to the edge of the Mississippi with Jim and toss some flowers on the water in memory of the lady who flew us off the island in that winged boat.

As for Dread Island. Well, here's something odd. I can't see it no more, not even when it's supposed to be there.

Jim says it might be my eyes, 'cause when you get older you lose sight of some things you used to could see.

I don't know. But I think it ain't out there no time anymore, and it might not be coming back. I figure it, Brer Rabbit and Cut Through You is somewhere else that ain't like nothing else we know. If that's true, all I got to say, is I hope Brer Rabbit is hid up good, far away from Cut Through You, out there in the thorns, out there where he was raised, in the deep parts of that big old briar patch.

Authors' Statements

Nancy Collins

"When I was in the second grade, I was taken to see John Huston's classic film adaptation of
Moby-Dick
, the one with Gregory Peck as Ahab. It made an immense impact on me— to the point I wanted to become a whaler when I grew up. I quickly outgrew the desire to hunt sea mammals, but I have always found Captain Ahab to be a compelling character, and one it would not be hard to imagine condemned to the same supernatural fate as Coleridge's Ancient Mariner."

Nancy Collins is currently working on the second book in her new Golgotham urban-fantasy series. The first book in the series,
Right Hand Magic
, is scheduled for a December 2010 release by Roc.

Rick Hautala

"I always thought I would have fit right into the literary scene in Concord, Massachusetts, in the 1840s ... You know, when Hawthorne, Thoreau, Emerson, and the Alcotts were kicking around. Of all the folks in Concord, I believe Bronson Alcott and I would have seen eye-to-eye on most things, so I was only too happy to rework Louisa May Alcott's
Little Women
. I'd like to think Louisa and her father would get a kick out of what I did to her story ... I hope so, anyway. Otherwise, there will be hell to pay in the literary afterlife."

Rick Hautala's most recent short story collection is
Occasional Demons
, from CD Publications, and he's finishing up a novella titled
Indian Summer
. 

Marc Laidlaw

"Odd juxtapositions are rocket fuel for a writer's imagination.  One inadvertent swap of unrelated concepts, one irresistible pun, may give instantaneous rise to an entire universe.  Thus it was with ‘Pokky Man,' which emerged full-blown from the title—a vision of filmmaker Werner Herzog trapped in a shallow cartoon world he would certainly consider unworthy of his time and energy. This cartoon world was inspired by a popular kids' videogame, especially the version where you're a nature photographer, drifting through a dynamic yet unchanging landscape of cartoon creatures fixed in Dantesque tableaux."

Marc Laidlaw, writer of the popular Half-Life series of videogames, is currently at work on several secret projects at Valve Software.

Joe R. Lansdale

"I wrote
Dread Island
based on my love for Mark Twain, which collided with my interest in Lovecraft, and the fact that the Uncle Remus tales may have been the first stories I ever read. And then there were comics. I always saw
Dread Island
as a kind of comic book in prose, the old Classics Illustrated look. That's how it played out in my head."

The trade paperback edition of Joe R. Lansdale's latest Hap and Leonard novel,
Vanilla Ride
, is forthcoming from Vintage Books.

Mark Morris

"British punk rock captured me body and soul in 1977. It gave me an identity, influenced the way I felt and thought and viewed the world. At the time, Sid Vicious seemed like the ultimate punk; all image and caricature, yes, but dripping with genuine attitude and aggression and seedy glamour. The most rewarding and fascinating aspect of writing this story has been the opportunity to try to untangle the myth and get under the skin of the real Sid. He was a simple, sensitive kid, totally screwed-up, but horribly manipulated and exploited. During the process of researching and writing this story I grew to really like him, and I genuinely hope that I've managed to do him justice."

Mark is editor of the recently-published
Cinema Futura
, a follow-up to the award-winning
Cinema Macabre
. Forthcoming work includes a new short story collection,
Long Shadows, Nightmare Light
, for PS Publishing, a novella entitled
It Sustains
, for Earthling Publications, and a number of Doctor Who audio dramas for Big Finish Productions.

Tom Piccirilli

"I always wanted to do a dark fantasy tale focusing on a mafiosa hitman running across witches.  It seemed a natural match-up: all those bad guys who used to be altar boys, plied with Catholic doctrine and surrounded by priests and nuns and old country iconography.  I figured if a hitman ever did run into the supernatural he'd probably be ready for it, having been raised with all that heavy, spooky symbolism.  Add to it the naughty draw of a sex symbol like Jayne Mansfield and you've got enough Catholic guilt to fuel a guns blazing novella."

Tom Piccirilli's next crime novel,
The Last Kind Words
, is due out in early 2011 from Bantam Books.

Mike Resnick

"I wanted to do something totally off the wall, a funny Heinrich Himmler certainly fills the bill. He had to be opposed by Good Guys that most readers would know. The best-known woman of the 1940s was Eleanor Roosevelt, always dignified, always dressed to the hilt—so I saw her as a half-naked warrior princess. And I absolutely loved the notion of Albert Einstein, Master Sorcerer, chanting mathematical formulas instead of spells. I hope the readers have half as much run reading it as I had writing it."

Mike Resnick's
Blasphemy
is an October release from Golden Gryphon Press, and his
The Buntline Special
comes out in December from Pyr. 

Lezli Robyn

"When I was a pre-teen I was given the L. M. Montgomery books for Christmas. It was my first introduction to her most famous character, Anne Shirley, and I was hooked. Like me, Anne wanted to be a writer, and she had such a zest for life; such an infectious imagination. I jumped at the chance to write an Anne story for this mashup collection, mixing the classic story of a young orphan girl proving her worth and finding a place to belong, with the popular Steampunk genre. Thus, ‘Anne-droid of Green Gables' was born."

Lezli Robyn is a nominee for the Campbell Award for best new writer in 2010, and has just sold a collection of her stories to Ticonderoga Publications, to be published in 2012.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

"I've loved Emily Dickinson ever since I saw
The Belle of Amherst
starring Julie Harris in London.  I was seventeen. I went home, studied the poems, and realized this poet is really morbid.  I liked that at seventeen; still do, if truth be told. And not even one terrible English prof who made us sing her poems to "The Yellow Rose of Texas" (try it; it works) discouraged me from Dickinson. No one but me ever seemed to notice how fascinated this woman was with death, and how—it seemed—death courted her.  Very Gothic in a
Wuthering Heights
kinda way.  So I thought: why not?"

Kristine Kathryn Rusch short-story collection
Recovering Apollo 8 and Other Stories
was recently issued by Golden Gryphon Press, while WMG publishing has started the large project of putting entire backlist into electronic editions, including her short fiction.  

Chris Ryall

"I grew up loving Norse mythology much more than its more popular counterpart, the Greek myths— I credit Edith Hamilton and Stan Lee equally for that—so the idea of contemporizing Norse legends through the filter of one of today's more popular prose melodramas was irresistible to me. And if I was able to also mildly tweak said melodrama just a bit while doing so, well, we all have a little bit of Loki the Trickster God in us, don't we?"

Chris Ryall is the Eisner-nominated writer of dozens of comic books, and a prose book about comics,
Comic Books 101
. His latest projects, a new
Zombies vs Robots
series, and IDW's first-ever event, "Infestation," both launch in early 2011.

John Shirley

"I've always been drawn to the old west—and to horror. I did considerable research about Billy the Kid, and there were in fact rumors of his having survived into the 20th Century. But what most inspired the story were the famously-bad low-budget films
Billy the Kid Versus Dracula
and J
esse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter,
made back-to-back in 1966 by the prolific "One Shot William" Beaudine. It just seemed to me that placing Billy the Kid in the midst of that low-rent film setting was fraught with fun...especially if we involved a "Victor Frankenstein" and Frankensteinian horror. The convergence of these curious elements took me into a nice fusion of drama, horror and humor."

John Shirley's newest novel is
Bleak History
from Pocket Books; his new story collection is
In Extremis
from Underland Press, and eReads  is re-releasing eleven of his books, including
Wetbones
and
The Other End
.

John Skipp & Cody Goodfellow

"We all grow up watching monster movies and funny animal cartoons. And yet we're wired not to conflate the two, or ask: why are anthropomorphic animals scary here, and adorable there? Somewhere between the timeless questions "Are we not men?" and "Why is that dog wearing pants?", 
The Happiest Hell on Earth
 was born."

2010 saw the release of four Skipp books: the mammoth anthology
Werewolves and Shapeshifters;
 
Spore
(with Cody Goodfellow); 
The Emerald Burrito of Oz
(with Marc Levinthal); and
The Bridge
(with Craig Spector).

Cody Goodfellow's latest novel
, Perfect Union
, is now available from Swallowdown Press, and his noir scifi novella
The Homewreckers
just came out in The Bizarro Starter Kit (Purple).

Sean Taylor

"This story began when I was on a long drive to a comic convention and it dawned on me from out of that both
Through the Looking Glass
and
Snow White
were stories based on mirrors, and wouldn't it be oh so much fun to combine them. I've always loved the grim versions of the fairy tales, and that combined with a recent interest in the works of Lovecraft triggered the onset of the surprise villains in this little tale."

Sean is currently working on an original graphic novel sequel to HG Wells'
The Invisible Man
and
The Time Machine
, as well as a crime thriller graphic novel, and a prose short story collection containing every one of his tales for the Writer Digest Zine Award winning iHero Entertainment/Cyber Age Adventures.

Tom Tessier

Senator Joseph McCarthy was a fascinating figure in postwar American history, cartoonish and laughable but also dangerous and destructive.  He was a master at creating fear in the public mind and then using it for his own purposes.  I couldn't resist putting him in a classic horror situation and seeing what would happen. McCarthy is long dead, but McCarthyism, sad to say, is still very much alive in the land. 

Thomas Tessier is working on a new novel,
The Lives of the Banshee.

Rio Youers

"So I had this idea—a spark, really: a mash-up of Jim Morrison and Edgar Allan Poe, two American icons with esoteric tendencies. Naturally, I wanted to see what would happen, so I let concept dance in my mind … and before long had the story's blueprint. In writing, I found the elements (the darkness) melded seamlessly—an exciting, organic process fueled by my passion for the subjects' work."

Rio Youers was recently nominated for a British Fantasy Award for his novella
Old Man Scratch
. He has just completed his new novel,
In Faith
, and his short story collection,
Dark Dreams, Pale Horses
will be released by PS Publishing in early 2011.