PRAISE FOR JOHN R. FULTZ
“John R. Fultz is a powerful and creative writer very much in the Weird Tales tradition. He is well worth your attention.” —Darrell Schweitzer, former editor of Weird Tales
“…a master of his craft.” —Don Webb, Author of Building Strange Temples
“Fultz delivers the goods.” —Howard Andrew Jones, Author of The Ring-Sworn Trilogy
“…an author with an exceptional talent for characterization and world building.” —The Library Journal
“Fultz has rapidly matured into a major fantasist.” —Laird Barron, Author of Black Mountain
“His world-building is in a class by itself.” —RT Book Reviews
“This is fantasy of the Dunsany, Smith and Vance school, where breathless wonders spill off the page in spendthrift profusion.” —John Hocking, Author of Conan and the Emerald Lotus
Also by John R. Fultz
Seven Princes (2012)
Seven Kings (2013)
Seven Sorcerers (2013)
The Revelations of Zang (2013)
The Testament of Tall Eagle (2015)
Son of Tall Eagle (2017)
Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021)
Darker Than Weird
Fourteen Tales of Horror
John R. Fultz
Illustrations by Dan Sauer
Copyright © 2023 Jackanapes Press
www.JackanapesPress.com
Darker Than Weird: Fourteen Tales of Horror
All stories copyright © 2023 by John R. Fultz
Foreword copyright © 2023 by Don Webb
Cover and interior art and design © 2023 by Daniel V. Sauer
www.DanSauerDesign.com
First Electronic Edition
ISBN 978-1-956702-13-2
All characters and other entities appearing in this work are fictitious or are used in a fictitious way. Any resemblance to real persons, dead or alive, or other real-life entities, past or present, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
For my lovely Aunt Deb, who introduced me to horror with Night Gallery, Chiller Theatre, and tales of Ol’ Bloody Bones…
Contents
Darker Than Weird
Copyright
Dedication
A Need for Newer Boxes
THE WEIRDNESS
The River Flows To Nowhere
Behind the Eyes
The Man Who Murders Happiness
Love in the Time of Dracula
I Do the Work of the Bone Queen
The Taste of Starlight
WELCOME TO THE URBILLE
The Key to Your Heart Is Made of Brass
Flesh of the City, Bones of the World
The Rude Mechanicals and the Highwayman
SHADES OF LOVECRAFT
Anno Domini Azathoth
The Thing in the Pond
The Lord of Endings
This Is How the World Ends
The Embrace of Elder Things
About the Contributors
Also from Jackanapes Press
A Need for Newer Boxes
Foreword by Don Webb
People outside of the book biz are (blissfully) unaware of its truths. So, on the off chance you’ve bought a small press volume (this one) and are not a writer/publisher/artist I am going to lay Truth upon you. First Truth. Nobody reads introductions and forwards first. At best after you have read the contents of the book and picked it up off the bathroom floor you will read the introduction as you sit and — er — meditate. Hey, it doesn’t bother me. I have (by now) cashed my large check for introduction writing and spent it all on gold futures, champagne, and cocaine. But there you sit wanting to read something until you can stand and go buy a copy of my Building Strange Temples because you’re enchanted with my wit and deft prose. Your expectation is that I’ll talk about the stories in this volume and in my remaining time speak about… what’s his name?
Oh yes, John R. Fultz.
We’ll certainly I’ll get around to that, but I want to explain Dan Sauer, the publisher, and his many errors. Firstly, it is well known that book buyers, including you, spend more money on non-fiction than fiction. Then if fiction is purchased (perhaps by misreading the Amazon product description) novels outsell short story collections by a great deal. I mean, it could have been worse. He could’ve published a poetry collection. But that leads to his second error. Short story collections are generally bought by completists. That means something like, “I’ve read John R. Fultz’s fantasy novels. He has a deft hand with fantasy. I will buy a collection of his fantasy stories and be entertained thereby whilst waiting for him to do his job and crank out another fantasy novel for me.” But, as you are aware — having read this volume (and turning in despair to this introduction) — only one or two of the tales herein could be called fantasy. Now as you know the reason Dan Sauer published the volume is because he likes to draw macabre pictures and this book gave him an excuse to do so. Having created the great cover, he now sits back and waits for the money to roll in. Of course, since he committed the unpardonable sin of publishing a collection of hard-to-categorize tales, it will be a long and dismal wait.
He had hopes that by titling the collection Darker Than Weird it will attract the “horror” reader. Some of the tales could be said to fit that description. The brilliant first story with its chilling description of a nightmare city (drawing equally from the horrors of living in a decaying metroplex, the fears of a parent seeing their innocent child destroyed body and soul, and a survey of trends in modern horror) certainly meets the bill. But most of these tales are much harder to classify. Horror, as we know, is the notion that the chaotic forces of imagination will invade the safe bubble of our homes, our livelihoods, our flesh. Although that note is hit in most of these tales, other ideas wander in. Some of the tales, such as “The Man Who Murders Happiness,” are deft Kafkaesque fables that show Fultz as a mature writer that can reveal the nihilistic side of existence, as well as a master of his craft. Others take on a Dante theme but match it perfectly with Kafka, in one of most nightmarish after-life scenes you will encounter.
The big questions for humans now — the questions of identity and purpose — are dealt with in the tales collected in the “Welcome to the Urbille” section. I am sure that the average reader would label these as science fiction, but you (as I have come to know in the short time we’ve been hanging out) are beyond the average reader. These stories deal with three philosophical notions. If we replace our corporal selves with mechanical parts are we us? (The problem of the ship of Theseus invades the safe bubble.) If medical technology is an expensive commodity, is quality of life to be seen entirely as a manifestation of class? Will God/Nature resent our stealing of the divine fire to make (or counterfeit) Life itself? Fultz deals with these questions not with the endless speculation of excited freshmen taking Philosophy 101, but with images both gorily grotesque and ideas clothed in emotional context — in this case the love/hate relationship we have with medical science. Come for the horror story, leave with deep ontological questions.