Interlude: VanderMeer News

I have enjoyed reading Jeff VanderMeer’s writings about writing for a long time. Here is a recent Facebook post by Jeff.

Jeff begins:

I’m sure many people have seen the Publisher’s Weekly article about my editor, Sean McDonald, leaving Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and his imprint, MCD Books, being shuttered. I have a lot of feelings about this, including gratitude for ten years of stability with one editor. Before Sean, I had a trilogy where each novel was taken by a different publishing company. It sold well enough that I was still in the game, but I never had anything approaching a settled situation. I never had any assurance from book to book that I could relax or get comfortable.

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Tamper II, Chapter 3 continued…

The end of my previous posted “Chapter 3” has been modified and extended.

Wallace Breen’s aunt Rhonda swung open the front door and stood in the doorway. She was a tall biker in a black leather jacket and blue jeans, fit and slender at sixty years old. She removed her helmet with one hand, and with her other hand, pulled a hairpin from the back of her head and waved her silvery hair around once. Evie stood up at the far end of the bar and pointed one finger into the air. Rhonda saw it and walked toward us, high-fiving three bartenders on the way as one of them handed her a bottle of beer. I stood up as she approached.

“Keep your seat,” she said, and slid into the booth beside me.

“Hello, Evie,” she beamed with a winning smile.

“Hello, ma’am,” said Evie.

“Ma’am? Just call me Rhonda. Some of Wally’s friends call me Aunt Wanda.”

“Oaky, then. Well, this is Heavy Turner I told you about, and this is Whit.”

    “I know Heavy’s dad,” said Aunt Rhonda.

    “You know my dad?”

    “Well, he may not remember me. Is he still a union rep for the mechanics at the racetrack?”

“Among other things,” said Heavy.

“Wally, or Wallace as you call him, respects the union because they helped his family when his dad got laid off. That’s why he is willing to meet with your little group.”

“Where’s Wally?” asked Heavy.

“All in good time.” She held her cigarette between her thumb on one side, and three fingers along the other side, pinky out. “It’ll be worth it,” and she put the cigarette to her lips. The fire burned brightly.

Up close, Rhonda conducted herself like someone familiar with social events and mannered conversation. It was an abrupt change from her catwalk by the bar.

“Whit,” she said, “I understand you publish a newspaper dedicated to the paranormal.”

“Yes. The Astral Beat. We’re working on increasing circulation.’

“And how is that going?”

“Not well. I’m not sure whether to advertise or what.”

“I would like to discuss that with you. You know, my nephew Wally saw something that still cannot be explained. I think there is a story in it.”

“Well, look,” said Heavy. “Evie wants to get some fresh air, and you two have a lot to talk about, so we’re going out back with the band.”

“We’ll be back,” said Evie. She and Heavy went around the corner to join the band outside for a smoke.

Rhonda said, “Say, Whit, I don’t suppose you’re interested in some bennies?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You ever done bennies before?” she asked.

“No.”

She laughed and said, “Here’s one. No charge.”

I thought one pill couldn’t possibly kill me, or else they would find dead people outside of the Propeller every Sunday morning. I swallowed the pill with a gulp of beer from my Coke cup.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. As I was saying, my nephew’s story is legendary, but only locally. If we do it right, we may finally identify the axe murderer and his accomplice.”

“So you do think somebody was murdered,” I said.

“Why? Don’t you?”

“I… I believe in things that can’t be explained by science. So, yeah, I’m coming with an open mind.”

“Science can certainly explain a chopped-off head,” she said, and returned her cigarette to her mouth, under-handed, and the fire glowed like a little sunburst.

I was taken aback. Was she criticizing my approach?

“I mean the running,” I said. “The body running.”

“Yes, he saw that too,” said Rhonda. “But how can he prove it? Makes a great story either way.”  

I noticed that the nightclub had become darker, and very crowded, but my vision seemed more focused and scattered small lights connected the plasma trails of half-hidden nightlife, the dartboard, some ruckus from one of the bathrooms quickly shut down by bouncers. The pinball judder.

“Right,” I said, “Wow, this whole scene feels like synchronicity!”

“Don’t you mean déjà vu?” asked Rhonda

“No. Well, that too, maybe. But I mean synchronicity.”

“Explain?”

“In other words,” I said, “it is a meaningful coincidence. I knew Evie was a librarian, because I go to the library a lot. But I didn’t know her and rarely spoke to her. I didn’t know anything about the old Gregg house. Heavy never went to the library. But then Heavy met Evie because he came to the library with me on a whim, and he arranged to see her again, and he learned from her about the house, and you, and Wally. Wallace.”

“How intriguing,” said Rhonda.

She looked at me strangely and lit a cigarette with a Zippo lighter. Stretching around me for an ash tray near the wall, she smelled like patchouli and lighter fluid. She brushed across my chest more than I expected. Then she straightened up, gulped down the rest of her beer, and set the empty bottle on the table.

“Here’s the thing,” she said. “Wally doesn’t like to talk about what he saw that night. For one thing, it’s a terrible memory. For another thing, he’s been ridiculed in the past, so he hasn’t spoken about it for years. But he wants to tell the story. He feels more comfortable with me as a kind of agent.”

I couldn’t believe this was happening. This was good news. Did she know my paper was printed at home, on a used mimeograph machine, by a teenage high school nerd? I guzzled down the rest of my beer.

“I’m honored that you and Wallace trust me with your story,” I told her.

“I read your piece on the woman whose mother’s ghost came to her door, late at night, but the mother had died at the same time in another city!”

“Mrs. Mullins,” I said. “She had a ring of truth about her.”

I really wanted another beer. I wondered if I should ask Aunt Rhonda to get me a beer, I mean, if I gave her the money. Otherwise, I would need to find Heavy or maybe Lee the drummer. Suddenly the din of talking was overpowered by a quick clean drum roll and the band launched into Grand Funk’s Are You Ready.  

Those three ascending chords: E     F#     G!     E     F#    G!    and LOUD.

It sounded great.

I snapped out of my musical reverie at the sight of Evie and Heavy bounding in through the front door and hustling toward us through the darkened path between people at the bar and people in booths. They slid back into our booth, across from Rhonda and me, and squeezed up against each other, cuddling.

“We’re freezing to death!” said Evie.

“It’s not cold outside,” I said.

 “Been to the arctic?” asked Evie. “See any snowshoe hares?”

Evie had two empty Coke cups in her handbag, slid together, one inside the other. She separated the cups and passed one to Heavy, who held it under the table while pouring beer. He handed me the cup, with a big head of suds looking conspicuous as hell. I pressed the foam against my eyes and nose, guzzling the cold hops & barley nectar.

Wiping my face, I handed my empty cup to Heavy.

“Slow down, boy,” he said, handing a cup of beer to Rhonda. “Evie, you ready for another one? Hey, ya’ll, they have the best home-made fries here.”

I wasn’t hungry at all.

“Why was the evidence van at the scene?” I asked.

Evie and Heavy looked surprised. Heavy shook his head “no” but it was too late.

Rhonda was silent for a few seconds, all the while looking polite and reserved.

“I’m ready for a boilermaker,” she said, and reached into a pouch on her belt, producing a miniature bottle of whiskey. She unscrewed the cap and dropped the open bottle into a full cup of beer. Taking a sip, she smiled and said, “Would you like to meet Wally tonight?”

“Sure,” I said.

“He lives in the house in the woods. The one where the murder happened. Heavy, you driving?”

Tamper II, Chapter 3: The Propeller

Copyright 2026 by Bill Ectric

(still 1969)

Heavy Turner had a key that could open almost any padlock. I called it a skeleton key, but he said it was properly known as a bump key.

“On a bump key,” he said, “all the notches are cut equally deep as allowed by regulations. You insert the bump key into a padlock and tap on it with a hard object, all the pins line up and the lock pops open.” He used it to open the beer cooler behind The Propellor nightspot. We didn’t want to steal the beer, but we weren’t old enough to be served at the bar.

The Propeller was a cool nightspot, four miles outside the city limits, on the road to Radford. It catered to a combination of students from Radford College and youngish blue-collar workers, known collectively as hippies. If you were over 18, you could buy 3.2% draft beer. If you were over 21 you could buy beers with 5% alcohol or more. Heavy and I weren’t supposed to be there at all, but the owner knew Heavy’s dad.

Heavy drove Evie and I to the Propeller on a Friday night. Evie sat in front with Hev, of course, and I sat in the back. After he parked the car, Heavy turned to look back at me and said, “If anyone offers you bennies, just say I’m good, thanks.”

“I don’t think they walk right up to you,” I said.

“I’m good, thanks,” he repeated.

Getting out of the car, Heavy moved fast for his bulk, rounding the car to open Evie’s door, bowing like a maître de. Evie stepped out of the car holding Heavy’s left hand. He led her out, still bowing, and released the back seat adjuster with his right hand. I pushed the passenger seat forward and climbed out of the two-door. A local band played Jimi Hendrix’s Hey Joe inside. No one else was outside to see us, so Evie went into the Propeller through the usual front door while Heavy and I darted around back to the beer cooler.

The beer cooler was like a walk-in refrigerator with a padlock on the door handle. Hev popped the lock deftly with his bump key and opened the door. Stacks of cases of cold beer greeted us. Budweiser, Carling Black Label, and Miller High Life. We each chugged a can of Carling, but Heavy finished his first and started on another one. He took a frothy gulp from the second can and set it on a convenient stack of cold boxes. He loaded the bulky pockets of his red jacket with more cans. I finally finished my beer. We re-locked the cooler and headed for the far side of the building, where metal double doors opened behind the stage, so bands could bring in drums, amps, and other equipment.

In the meantime, Evie ordered three large Cokes that came in paper cups with straws. They gave her a cardboard thing to carry the drinks. When the band finish playing “Hey Joe” Heavy opened one of the metal doors behind the band, just a crack, and whispered, “Lee…Lee.”

Lee the drummer turned around and recognized us. He smiled.

“Come on in guys.”

Anyone paying attention would have figured Heavy and I were just two more of the band’s cronies or roadies or whatever. Most of the employees couldn’t see us because the building was L shaped with the smaller section where the band played and the larger section for the bar. Both sections had booths. Heavy and I sat with Evie in a booth near the band. She had a full cup of Coke for herself and two empty Coke cups. Heavy stealthily poured two beers from his pockets into the Coke cups so we could drink beer without being noticed.

“We’re going to take a moment to tune up,” said the guitar player.

The place erupted with applause and cheers.

“The place is really hopping tonight,” said Heavy enthusiastically.

He was right. The Propeller was packed, with loud competing conversations, darts hitting a dart board, laughter. People coming and going. Cold beer. A young woman brought us a large basket of french fries. Salt and pepper shakers were on the table, and ketchup in a red squeeze bottle. Hev and Evie sat on one side of the booth and I had the other side to myself. Heavy picked up a big glistening fry, squirted a line of ketchup the entire length of it, sprinkled pep per on it and popped it into his mouth. “Nom nom, eat up.”

Wallace Breen’s aunt swung open the front door and walked in. She was a tall Biker in black leather, one who had kept in shape even as she became a grandmother at age 55. She held her helmet in one hand and high-fived the bartenders with her other hand. Evie caught her attention by waving, and I stood up as she approached.

“Keep your seat,” she said. I slid back into the booth and she sat beside me.

“Hello, Evie,” she said with a mannered smile.

“Miss…” said Evie.

“Call me Rhonda. Or Aunt Rhonda. Lots of people call me that.”

“This is Heavy Turner, who I told you about, and this is Whit King.”

“Pleased to meet you both.”

Up close, Rhonda conducted herself like someone familiar with social events and mannered conversation. It was an abrupt change from her catwalk by the bar.

“Whit,” she said, “I understand you publish a newspaper dedicated to the paranormal.”

“Yes. The Astral Pages. We’re working on increasing circulation.’

“And how is that going?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what to do.”

“I would like to discuss that with you. You know, my real nephew Wally Brean, saw something that still cannot be explained. I think there is a story in it. It is legendary. And if we do it right, we may finally identify the axe murderer and his accomplice.”

“That sounds good to me.”

“Say, Whit, I don’t suppose you’re interested in some bennies?”

To be continued

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Tamper II, Chapter 2

Tamper II: Dark Evening Wings

Chapter Two: Evie the Librarian   Copyright by Bill Ectric

Evie the librarian told Heavy Turner about the axe murder, and he told me. Evie was a recent high school graduate. She wore those Harlequin eyeglasses with little rhinestones lining the frames, and the corners pointed up like horns. She worked at the Hansbury Public Library, a two-story wood frame house, on the corner of Main and Poplar, converted into a library in 1957. The building was painted white with blue trim. It had a porch with an overhanging roof supported by two white columns. Inside, beyond the front desk and white oak card catalog were several interconnected rooms full of books on shelves. Books labeled “mature” were on the second floor, and the stairs creaked.

In 1969, Evie hung an egg-shaped wicker chair from the porch roof. She sat in the egg every day, reading magazines and books, eating apples, and drinking Fresca. Sometimes she folded her legs comfortably inside the egg; other times, she swung them out and down, primly together, until her black & white saddle shoes almost touched porch floor. People walked in and out of the library on the honor system. When somebody rang the call bell, Evie sprang nimbly from the wicker egg chair and click-clacked inside to serve the patron.

Heavy’s flat black ’67 Camaro rolled past the library, went around the block, rolled by again more slowly, turned left onto Poplar Avenue, and into the parking lot behind the library.

Heavy and I got out of the Camaro. Heavy always wore a red nylon windbreaker, which he called a racing jacket, with an STP patch over the breast. We walked around to the front and climbed the three steps up from the sidewalk onto the porch.

“Those shoes are perfect,” said Heavy.

“Beg your pardon?” she said.

“My sister had to wear those at the school she went to,” Heavy said, “and now she hates them, calls them square. But you wear them well.”

“Ironic,” she said, stretching her whole body until her feet made contact with the floor.

“After you, gentlemen,” she gestured with her hand.

Evie followed us inside.

We followed her into a back room.

Eight musty stacks of old newspapers covered most of the surface of a wooden table.

“We’re having all these microfilmed,” she said. “It’s called microfiche. Our little library is getting modern. The 1949 stack is right here.”

“You haven’t looked at it?” said Heavy.

“I’ve already seen it.”

I like the smell of old books and magazines but unfolding the aged newspapers made me sneeze.

“God bless you,” said the librarian. “Please don’t sneeze on the papers.” And then she told Heavy, “Not so rough, you’ll tear them.”

“Here it is!” said Hev.

He spread the newspaper on another table and carefully turned the pages.

Evie and I leaned in. A black & white photo of a smiling cop, made pale by the flashbulb, and a single column of newsprint. The article, “Police Find No Murder at the Gregg House,” told about a drunken homeless man who claimed to see a beheading. He had stumbled into the police station, scared out of his wits. But the policeman on the scene looked like he was enjoying himself. “Just another night on the beat,” he was quoted, joking, “I would call it the graveyard shift but we got no bodies.”

“There was nothing to it,” I said, disappointed.

“But look,” said Evie. “Look behind him.”

The corner of the house was visible in the left of the photo, lit by the residual light of the camera flash. The trees in the background were dark. Directly behind the officer we could clearly see a vehicle with a police logo. It was a black van with high walls and smooth corners, but silvery in the camera flash.

“That is a 1948 Ford Mobile Crime Lab,” said Evie. “One of the first evidence vans.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“I read and I listen,” she said. “But the real question is, why was forensics there if they didn’t find something?”

“Maybe they drove it, just in case,” I said.

“No,” she said. “They didn’t have an evidence van here in Hansburg. Somebody drove that thing all the way from Roanoke, fourteen miles away. Roanoke was the only city in the county that had a mobile crime unit.”

“Then the evidence van must not have found anything,” I said.

“But why were they there?” asked Heavy. “It’s like Evie says. Why were they there?”

“You know,” said Evie. “the guy who saw the murder it is still alive.”

“The drunk guy?” I asked.

“Well, he says he wasn’t that drunk, but yeah. His name is Wallace Breen. I know his aunt, sort of.”

“She told you about it?” asked Heavy.

“The beheading story is not such a big secret to the older folks in town. They just don’t care. Nobody knows for sure what really happened, and the whole thing just faded away, like everything, with time.”

“It hasn’t even been that much time,” I said.

“I told Evie about your paper,” said Heavy.

“Your newspaper sounds neat,” said Evie. “The Astral Beat? I want to read it. Would you like to meet Wallace Breen’s aunt?”

Tamper II: Dark Evening Wings

Copyright 2026 by Bill Ectric

Chapter 1: Owl, 1969

I’ll never forget the sight of that big brown owl in the black of night, perched on a limb over a dirt road, illuminated by the headlights of Heavy Turner’s flat-black ’67 Camaro. It was the night Heavy told me about the man who jumped up and ran into the woods after someone cut off his head.  

I was fifteen years old. Heavy Turner was sixteen. He showed off his driving skill and his extensive familiarity with back roads winding through the woods late at night in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The dashboard lights glowed like a spaceship console. Loud swamp rock, Green River by Credence Clearwater Revival, surged from the crooked 8-track tape deck designed to fit a different dashboard. My exhilaration bordered on fright as we peeled through barely visible woods, no moon, no streetlights, and tree branches whipping against the windshield.

The road carried us up a steep hill until our headlights beamed upward onto the owl, perched on a limb, brown feathers mottled with white, yellow eyes set in great fanning discs and sternly arched forehead, watching us intrude into its dark territory.

“Did you see that?” shouted Heavy, turning down the music with his right hand.

“That was a big owl!” I said.

“It was a great horned owl, I’m pretty sure,” said Heavy, dashboard lights reflecting from his glasses when he glanced at me. “There’s one in the barn on my dad’s farm. He says it chased away the barn owls.”

The road levelled out. We drove past a row of rickety mailboxes and Hev jerked the Camaro into a hard right turn. No matter how sharp the turn, Hev’s considerable bulk kept him unmovable and unflappable in his bucket seat, while my boney frame struggled to keep from tilting and sliding with every twist of the road. I thought we were running into a ditch, but no, we were now bouncing along on a dirt road that had been virtually hidden. Hev hit the brakes and steered into a sideways skid, flinging dirt and gravel. The car stopped sideways in the road, facing an old house set back in a clearing. It was a modest, unadorned wood-frame two-story house. A wide gable served as the roof of a boxy second-floor balcony. Heavy killed his headlights, but not the engine. He was always ready for a fast getaway. The house was completely dark except for a single light shining through yellow curtains like a Van Gogh sunflower. The light in the window suddenly went dark.

“That’s the opposite of what usually happens when I drive up to a house in the middle of the night,” said Hev. “I’m surprised. I didn’t think anybody lived here. This will be a great story for your paper.”

“What’s the story?” I asked.

“Back in the 1940s, a man was beheaded in the back yard by a broad-axe.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, and it gets better,” he said. “There was a bet. A wager on whether or not a body could run after the head was cut off. Not a chicken. A human person. These two guys invited a homeless guy to this house. That night, one of the men pulled a gun on the homeless guy, took him to the back yard and forced him down, head on a tree stump.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, and one of the men said, this broad-axe might not be sharp enough to cut through your neck. I’m only going to swing this heavy ass thing one time. If it only wounds you, you’re free to run away if you can. But you better run fast, they said, or we’ll start shooting.”

“The axe was dull?”

“No! The thing was sharp as hell! They just told him it was dull to prepare him for running! They wanted to know if, when the blade hit the back of his neck, a fraction of a second before it severed his spinal cord, the last nerve impulse rushing from his brain to his body was a command to run!”  

“Did he run?”

“Hell, yes. As soon as that blade came down, his head rolled onto the ground and his body jumped over the stump and ran into the woods!”

“Who says? That can’t be.”

“They never found the head, but they found the headless body a mile away.”

“The body couldn’t have run that far,” I said. “It should have fallen down in a heap, just a little way into the woods.”

“Exactly.”

“Who are the people who supposedly saw this? Are they still alive?”

“That’s what we look into next,” said Hev. “Miss Evie has the newspaper archives and city records.”

The Camaro’s engine was still rumbling quietly.

“Why are we still sitting here?” I said, glancing around. “It’s a wonder someone hasn’t come out here with a shotgun.”

“Yeah,” said Heavy. “It’s time to go.”

He turned the wheel, hit the gas, and flicked on his headlights. Driving back over the hill, something fell with a thud onto the windshield. It was the severed head of a rabbit, oozing blood from the neck. Great wings flapped away in the dark sky.

“Ahhhh!” we both shouted.

The rabbit’s dead eyes were open, like it was looking at us through the windshield.

“Holy shit,” said Heavy. He hit the brakes on the downhill slope, so the head rolled and slid off the front of the hood. “That was freaky!”

“Did somebody throw that at us?” I asked.

“The owl dropped it. They do that sometimes.”

“Drop bloody heads on cars?!”

“Sometimes they decapitate their prey.”

“I never knew that.”

“Evie the Librarian says so. It’s a fact.”

Doug Skinner’s Latest

WHERE’S PAPA? PAPA IS HERE!

Doug Skinner has contributed to The Fortean Times, Fate, Weirdo, Nickelodeon, Cabinet, Typo, and other fine publications. His many books include Music From Elsewhere (Strange Attractor Books), The Potato Farm, and Nominata (both from Black Scat Books). Black Scat has also published his translations of Alphonse Allais, Alfred Jarry, Luigi Russolo, Isidore Isou, Claude-Sosthène Grasset d’Orcet, Caroline Crépiat, and Corinne Taunay. 

Doug zez:

Perhaps you lie awake at night, your mind racing with questions. Why did Yolanda hang a flotation device from the ceiling? What happened to the Butler Bullion? Can a duck teach a dog to fly? Will Dover and Larson explore that mysterious door? What typos are most prized by collectors? Will Thyrsis and Gallus escape the wolf? And what will Bach’s 37 children do when they’re kicked out of the house?

These, and many other questions not mentioned here, will be answered by the stories in Papa Bach. You might be too amused and stimulated to go back to sleep, but your life will be richer, and, above all, more enjoyable. And you’ll never know what these stories are about unless you read them. Dig in!    

PAPA BACH & OTHER STORIES
Doug Skinner
Trade paperback; 146 pp., $12.95
ISBN 979-8-9932444-7-1

Symbolic Play Chapbook Preview

Lover’s Night Drive

Down from a hammock in a socket wire attic,
he sped through the waterfall shower, both faucets.
Clean behind the bulkhead of the outside world,
for a lovers’ night drive under satellite magic.

He lifted the garage door open to a vision
of her standing in the rising frame of light to her expression
and they kissed when they hugged feeling words inside, 
for a lovers’ night drive under satellite magic.

The Flying Saucer Church

I’m driving, John is rolling, when the Interstate highway sign says gas and coffee next exit.

My lead foot swings us around and through the off the ramp and John trying to hand me a hot missile.

“I said roll it, not light it.”

So we drive past three gas stations, further into this little a town, you dig, a hidden hamlet of houses and I hand it back.

We slow to a crawl beside this round church, dig, retro-future design lines and out-of-this world-stained glass window cascade geometry.

“You know that Sister Rosetta Tharpe?” asked John.

“Black lady, plays Gospel and Blues on a white Gibson SG electric guitar. Man, her riffs would lift this church like a flying saucer!”

The Flying Saucer Church takes off and we follow it through a wooded area to a lodge or clubhouse. But we must get gas, coffee, and use the restroom so we turn back and continue our trip.

This has been a preview of The Symbolic Play Chapbook, available at Amazon.com

Amazing Stories Magazine

One of my favorite blogs is Wormwoodiana. They recently hosted a wonderful two-part guest post by John Howard on Amazing Stories magazine.

Mr. Howard begins:

For me 1977 was a great time to up my game as a serious reader of science fiction. I was 16 that year and in the summer left school for my first job. I considered myself rich at £96 per month. I was living at home and had few expenses after I had paid my father for ‘board and lodging’. The remainder of the money I earned was my own to spend. And because in those days saving towards a pension never entered my mind, most of my free cash went on science fiction.

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