Conscience Read online

  CONSCIENCE

  By John Skipp

  A Macabre Ink Production

  Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright 2013 / John Skipp

  Interior art for WELCOME TO HERE © Paul Springer, 2002

  www.springloaded.net

  Cover illustration © 2013 by Paula Rozelle Hanback

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  BOOKS BY JOHN SKIPP

  As author:

  THE LIGHT AT THE END*

  THE CLEANUP*

  THE SCREAM*

  DEAD LINES*

  THE BRIDGE*

  ANIMALS*

  FRIGHT NIGHT* (novelization)

  THE EMERALD BURRITO OF OZ**

  CONSCIENCE

  STUPOGRAPHY

  THE LONG LAST CALL

  OPPOSITE SEX (as Gina McQueen)

  JAKE’S WAKE***

  THE DAY BEFORE***

  SPORE***

  SICK CHICK FLICKS

  As editor:

  BOOK OF THE DEAD*

  STILL DEAD*

  MONDO ZOMBIE

  ZOMBIES

  WEREWOLVES AND SHAPESHIFTERS

  DEMONS

  PSYCHOS

  THE MAGAZINE OF BIZARRO FICTION #4

  HAUNT by Laura Lee Bahr

  I AM GENGHIS CUM by Violet LeVoit

  TRIBESMEN by Adam Cesare

  DIE, YOU BASTARD! DIE! by Jan Kozlowski

  HOUSE OF QUIET MADNESS by Mikita Brottman

  THE DEVOTED by Eric Shapiro

  THE DARK by Scott Bradley and Peter Giglio

  (* with Craig Spector)

  (** with Marc Levinthal)

  (*** with Cody Goodfellow)

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

  Visit our online store

  Subscribe to our Newsletter

  Visit our DIGITAL and AUDIO book blogs for updates and news.

  Connect with us on Facebook.

  Join our group at Goodreads.

  A Brief Author’s Note

  for the 2013 Edition

  It’s been ten years since I wrote Conscience. Nine since it came out, and marked my incautious return to the horror fold, after thirteen long years of largely self-imposed exile.

  Since then, I’ve published more books in this century than I did way back in the distant twentieth. That’s a pretty good feeling, for a guy who suspected his run on this Earth might be done.

  So even if this weren’t one of my personal favorite, most close-to-the-heart pieces of writing, I would still have a warm feeling for its place in my life.

  This is the book that brought me back, and let me know that my seat at the horror table was still waiting. For that, I am forever grateful.

  Hope you like it. And thank you so much.

  Yer pal,

  Skipp

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CONSCIENCE

  A QUICKEE

  FILM AT ELEVEN

  ALL THIS AND HEAVEN, TOO!

  EMPATHY

  SOUL MAGGOT JAMBOREE

  WELCOME TO HERE

  JOHNNY DEATH

  For my very good friend

  SCOTT BRADLEY

  who told me I should really write this book, long before I thought of that myself.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Because the first is not necessarily the best, nor the last automatically the least, I will fire out thanks as they come to me. Meaning every single one of them, every step of the way.

  First of all: THANKS, LOS ANGELES! You’re so fucking weird! Your depths run so deep, and your shallows so shallow. Yet here we are, swimming.

  I’m in love with your pool.

  I must confess: my deepest love goes to the secret L.A The one that exists between the cracks. It’s a distillate of everything wise and striving and true about this whole sweet spinning world. You wouldn’t believe how many super-fine people wind up in this place, from all over the map. So many kinds of super-fine people. From first-rate artisans to flat-out geniuses to just plain wonderful human beings.

  They pour in, from all over the globe. They take shot after shot after shot. Some start at the bottom. Some start at the top.

  However it winds up, excellence is its own reward.

  I wanna thank Los Angeles for how good the food is. How many fantastic conversations I have. How many cultures collide around me. How many great friends I’ve made.

  How many real people I share tiny moments with, on our mutual way to wherever we’re going.

  So THANK YOU, LOS ANGELES! And thank you, my friends: too numerous to mention, but you know who you are. You’ve kept me alive, in more ways than I can name. And I am forever in your loving debt.

  Next, I’d like to thank Paula Rozelle Bagnall: my ace book designer, cover artist, website genius, and all-around excellent friend. I can’t tell you how lucky I am that you thought I was cool when you were a kid. Sometimes it takes years and years to pay off, but I think we’ve finally found the thing we were meant to do together. And I’m almost unspeakably grateful.

  While I’m at it, I’d like to thank God. For absolutely everything. And I mean that, sincerely. From the highest, brightest light to the most smothering darkness, it’s all good, baby! And I could not love you more.

  Speaking of love, and God, I would like to give thanks for my most wonderful daughters, Melanie Rose and Mykel Jean. You are my two favorite humans, and that’s saying a lot. But you earn it, with your huge hearts and wide-open minds. Every day, I love you more.

  Thank you, Marianne, for making such great babies. And for raising them so well. If my life is a story, you are one of its great heroes. I’m so proud of you, I could never thank you enough.

  Which brings me, of course, to my own Mom: THE single greatest hero of my life story. Thank you for giving me life, for everything I know about kindness and grace, and for putting up with me as I’ve gone through my mad paces, backing me up even when you knew I was wrong.

  Without you, I would never have made it this far. THANKS, MAW!

  Past that, who’s left? The rest of my family! All my friends, throughout the years! And my enemies, too! THANK YOU ALL! Thank you all, for being mirrors of the soul, and companions on the trail, and just being who you are.

  And, finally: THANK YOU, READER. For picking up this book. For lending your eyeballs to these proceedings. I know I got a little mushy there, for a minute.

  But trust me: there’s a load o’ mayhem, comin’ right up.

  That’s my little way of saying that I love you, too.

  INTRO TO CONSCIENCE (2003)

  I wish more people would write short novels.

  There. I said it. Done, and done.

  I wish more people would write short novels, because maybe then I’d start reading ’em again.

  It’s not that I don’t love Big Fat Novels: rich, dense, immensely-canvassed, sprawlingly-epic and textured tales, which capture the breadth and depth of all creation, and blah blah blah. I’ve gleefully swallowed a ton of them, over the years, and taken multiple stabs at the form myself.

  (So if you’re wondering why the Big Fat Contemporary Novel seems to be suffering from multiple stab wounds… well, hell: it might be that the buck stops here. I mean, clearly, I didn’t kill it. But a crime w
as committed. And I did what I could.)

  And, yeah: it’s a fact that the Big Fat Novel – in the right hands – is a glorious thing. I mean, what would my life be like without CATCH-22, or THE STAND, or GEEK LOVE, or a good hundred others that I could name? Not nearly as cool, I can tell you flat-out.

  I’m sorry I stabbed them. I really am.

  I just don’t feel like reading them right now. And I sure as shit don’t want to write one.

  You know what I wish? I wish Jim Thompson and Shirley Jackson had lived a whole lot longer, and written another three dozen short novels apiece. I would suck down those puppies like 50 cent drafts at a white trash Happy Hour karaoke bar.

  I wish for more books like Joe R. Lansdale’s THE DRIVE- IN. John Gardner’s GRENDEL. Stephen King’s APT PUPIL, or THE BODY, or THE MIST. I thank God for Kathe Koja and Francesca Lia Block, pray for more future Richard Brautigans, Raymond Chandlers, and Nathaniel Wests.

  Even another nice FIGHT CLUB, or SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, or DANDELION WINE would hit the spot. They’re not too skinny, but they’re nice and lean.

  I think you get my point.

  I like short books. And I’d read more books if they weren’t all so fucking long.

  Which leads me, finally, to CONSCIENCE.

  This is a book that didn’t want to be long. Maybe that’s because I first imagined it as film. It was a movie I kept watching in my head, over a four-year period, which was periodically broken up by other dreams.

  I got the whole story in a second’s flicker-flash, one drunken night in Hollywood. One second, I was staring at my cigarette’s ash. The next second, I met this guy named Charley, and knew his soul, and his dilemma.

  (This was a time when I was immersed in film study: taking intensive courses on producing and directing at UCLA, HFI, IFP, and other great L.A. meccas-of-learning known best by their joyless yet potent initials. Not to mention reading lots of BIG FAT BOOKS on film, which I slogged through like Donald fucking Rumsfeld, because they were full of the technical info that I so desperately needed.)

  CONSCIENCE was a movie that I wanted to see made. So I took a lot of notes, and did a lot of location scouting. Thought about who I wanted to star, and how I wanted to shoot it, and how much it would cost.

  I had it all laid out in my head. But the script just wouldn’t come.

  Some call this writer’s block. I call it a suggestion to move on to something else. You bang away in vain for a while – and get lots of ideas, that don’t quite come together – and then you go, fuck it. I’ll just write something else. With the faith that, when the time comes, you will know what to do.

  As a result, I wrote six other scripts (one of which has been shot, two of which were picked up, and three of which will appear in my next book, SICK CHICK FLICKS).

  But still, no CONSCIENCE. Whatsoever.

  And then, one day, I was strolling through Dark Delicacies: L.A.’s premiere horror book store, and possibly the finest in the world.

  I don’t know why, but suddenly, I found myself thinking, you know what? I feel like writing some fiction.

  Half an hour later, I sat down at the computer. And that Charley guy started talking in my head.

  Four hours after that, the first chapter was done. Two months after that, there was a book called CONSCIENCE.

  As it turns out, Charley didn’t want me to make a Big Fat Movie about him. At least not until he’d told his story the way he saw it, and felt it, himself.

  I still think it will make a swell film. But I’m really glad

  Charley took me aside first. His oral history – as I’ve transcribed it – is, truly, the only authoritative source. And therefore, the one to read, if you care about what really went down.

  Which is where that whole ordeal about Big Fat Novels comes roarin’ back in.

  Because once I was done, it was time to go shopping. And what I kept hearing was, well, it’s awfully short. These days, publishing tends to frown upon novels that couldn’t also be used to choke a wooly mammoth.

  Which is why more people don’t write those books that I wish I could be reading, right now.

  So I tried to embellish on what Charley said. I tried to fill in the blanks, of which there were many. There were, theoretically, hundreds of pages about his life that could yet be disgorged.

  But every time I did it, it wasn’t as good.

  Then there were suggestions for subplots, and chase scenes, and flashbacks. But that wasn’t how it happened, so I didn’t even try.

  Finally, I said fuck it. It is what it is.

  Hence, this special edition.

  You’ll notice a number of other stories, filling out the page count here. Most are reprinted, from far-flung places. A couple have never seen print, until now. Each has its own tiny introduction, probably telling you more than you need to know.

  The ultimate result is to create the illusion that you might be reading a Big Fat Novel.

  You aren’t, of course. You’re reading something I’d want to read.

  But if it fends off the Big Fat Novel Police, cool.

  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think Charley wants to talk. In private.

  If I were you, I’d let him.

  He is not the nicest man.

  ONE

  See, here’s the thing.

  I used to have this dog, and his name was Rex, and he was fucking hilarious. I got him when he was a puppy, and so was I, maybe five at the time. So in dog years, we were even.

  But because my daddy was a violent man – a mean stinking drunk without a clue, much less a plan – our lovable puppy-style antics often found us somewhere on the frayed end of his patience.

  Which is to say that we both got the shit kicked out of us on a fairly regular basis.

  In that way, we learned to cry together. There is nothing more bonding than that.

  But I said he was funny, and here’s what I mean. We had the same sense of humor, with regards to our predicament. We both knew it was hopeless, but that was funny in itself.

  Rex, the absurdist German shepard. Charley Weber, the pale clown boy.

  Let me give you an example. I am eight years old. And he is three, which means fifteen. Making him the older brother I didn’t hate, as opposed to the one I had.

  And we are cutting through the vacant lot down Euclid St., ol’Rex and I - in the thinning glow of twilight, in Wisconsin, in the fall - and the other kids are playing ball, right up until the light runs out. Very soon, their wannabe Donna Reed moms will start yelling to come in for dinner.

  It is 1965, and Norman Rockwell is still the great midwestern ideal.

  I will tell you, in a minute, what I think about great ideals.

  But anyway, there we are – not a hair longer than a crewcut among us – and I am walking my dog; or, more to the point, he is walking me. And the neighborhood boys know better than to get too close – the Weber family pedigree is long and storied – but we have respect. We stay out of their game.

  And then Dave Marcus hits the ball our way.

  It’s a half-ass swing on a half-ass pitch. A foul ball is the best you can say for it. It dribbles toward us in a leisurely manner.

  Nonetheless, I feel an unexpected surge of excitement, automatically step into its path. But Rex is quicker, and lower slung. He catches it on the bounce.

  “Good catch!” I say.

  But now the boys from the infield are slowly approaching. And there is fear in their eyes. As Rex gnaws on the ball.

  And I say “Good boy!” as I kneel beside him, and pet him, squeezing powerful muscles over soft gray-black fur. The kids all fear him, understandably so. In the palm of my hand, I can feel his spine, solid. And I can see him smiling, as he slobbers and chaws.

  The closest kid is Donald Cobb, and he doesn’t like me. He never has. He has never felt the need. He’s the kind of kid who always seems to get what he wants. Friends. Parties. Grades. Respect. And wanting to like me has never come up.

  Until now, as this
sudden and newfound desire wells up with a purpose. In the shape of a smile.

  “Hey!” he says. And he leaves it at that. Like I know what to do.

  I just keep petting Rex.

  And Donald takes a step closer, his friends closing in behind. And all of them are trottin’out their tentative smiles now. Like life is fun, and we’re all in the game.

  And, of course, I’m just gonna give back the ball now, right?

  But instead, I press my cheek to Rex’s ear, feeling his laughter inside of me. And I hug him real tight, because I love him so much. And I don’t look at the boys, but I can feel their eyes.

  Not focused on me. Not even really on Rex. Focused on the ball.

  And you know what? I can smell it.

  Their smell is like a pheremone riptide, and they are all caught in the undertow. Want and fear. A delirious mix. Yanking them out of their worldview, and right into ours.

  And as I savor this rich confection, I look down into Rex’s eyes – full of more soul than the rest of theirs, combined – and I see how much he is enjoying this.

  And I know just what he’d like.

  So I reach down with my right hand – the left still massaging his spine – and I go for the ball. And he yanks away, growling. And I grab him by the scruff of the neck, so that when he pulls away, fighting, I am dragged to my knees.

  And I grab the slick portion of the ball that’s exposed, fingertips pressed against slick canine enamel, trying to pry the rawhide loose. And he fights me, pinwheeling, throwing me off balance, so I land on my butt, then my back, being dragged...

  ...and now all the kids are yelling – they are part of our game – and I feed on their excitement, as I grapple away...

  ...but, of course, I have no intention of freeing the ball...

  ...and Rex would rather die than give it up, for a second...