Stories (2011) (126 page)

"Help me, White Rabbit," Carpenter said.
"I've done you no harm. You wouldn't hurt me, would you? Rabbits are by
nature gentle and timid creatures."

The rabbit held up one finger. (Odd, thought Carpenter, he
had not noticed that the fingers were clawed before.) Then the rabbit began a
rhyme.

"How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!"

The rabbit lowered his hand. His pink eyes went deathly dark and cold, like two
bright stars that had suddenly gone nova. Slowly, the rabbit walked toward
Carpenter.

Somewhere, from the darkness beyond the stone ring, came the
fluting of pipes, the slow cadence of drums.

Carpenter struggled against the ropes, but to no avail.
"God, it's not a dream. It's real!"

"Is it?" said the rabbit.

"A dream? Then it's a dream?"

"It is? My goodness, is it now? Did I say that?"

"You're out of Lewis Carroll's imagination, for
Christ's sake!" Carpenter screamed as tears began to run down his cheeks.

"Carroll was such a romanticist," the rabbit said.
"He could take the coldest truth and turn it into something sugar-cone
sweet. Just refused to see things as they are, you see. Made them out to be
fairy tales. A very reprehensible thing for a journalist to do."

The rabbit was very close now, and there was nothing cute
about the way he looked, about those skull-socket eyes, those ugly teeth.
Carpenter could smell the sourness of the rabbit's breath, a smell like
decaying meat.

"Do not the Japanese say," the rabbit said slowly,
"that we only live twice. Once in life and once in our dreams?" He
smiled broadly. There seemed to be an endless supply of teeth. "Tonight we
kill two birds with one stone."

"Jesus Christ!"

"Yes, yes indeedy. A very solid fact of Christianity's
belief is suffering. Remember Jesus on the cross? Stretched out there for all
to see, suffering for redemption. Christianity tells us that if we suffer
enough we get a prize, yes indeedy. Are you ready for your prize?"

"You're mad!"

The flutes had risen in tempo; the drums beat in a
heart-throb sort of way.

The Hatter said, "It really is time, sir."

"Is it now?" the rabbit said, taking out his watch
and examining the face in the moonlight.

"Why it is. Quite time, quite."

Carpenter began to laugh hysterically. Tears glistened on
his cheeks. "This is crazy! You can't hurt me. You're a dream. You're the
frigging White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. You're a dream. I'll wake
up!"

"Oh," said the rabbit, looking puzzled, and with
surprising deftness, produced from his waistcoat pocket a sharp bladed knife.
"Will you?"

And he cut Carpenter's throat.

Then they all sat down to the feast.

Where
does Mojo storytelling come from? How does a fella learn to spin over-the-top
yarns of any sort: horror, suspense, humor, science fiction, Western, what have
you? First you got to see the world, like Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R.
Lansdale, who has lived everywhere from Gladewater, Texas to Mount Enterprise,
Texas to Nacogdoches, Texas!

"Texas
is so wrapped up in myth and legend, it’s hard to know what the state and its
people are really about," says Lansdale. "Real Texans, raised on
these myths and legends, sometimes become legends themselves. The bottom line is,
Texas and its people are pretty much what most people mean when they use the
broader term ‘America.’ No state better represents the independent spirit, the
can-do attitude of America, better than Texas."

The
second ingredient to good Mojo storytelling is learning how to take a punch. Or
a kick. Or a poke in the eye. And then learning how to avoid them. Lansdale is
a student of the martial arts for more than thirty years. He’s a two-time
inductee into the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame, one such honor
bestowed upon him for his founding of
Shen
Chuan, Martial Science
. He holds belts in
Daito Ryu Aikijujutsu, Combat Hapkido, American Combat Kempo, and Aikido,
amongst others; in fact, his standard day is six hours at the typewriter, three
hours at Lansdale’s Self Defense Systems, the martial-arts studio which he owns
and at which he teaches.

With more
than thirty books to his credit, Lansdale is the Champion Mojo Storyteller.
He’s been called "an immense talent" by
Booklist
; "a born
storyteller" by Robert Bloch; and
The New York Times Book Review
declares he has "a folklorist’s eye for telling detail and a front-porch
raconteur’s sense of pace." He’s won umpty-ump awards, including sixteen
Bram Stoker Awards, the Grand Master Award from the World Horror Convention, a
British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award,
the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, the "Shot in the Dark"
International Crime Writer’s Award, the Golden Lion Award, the Booklist
Editor’s Award, the Critic’s Choice Award, and a New York Times Notable Book
Award. He’s got the most decorated mantle in all of Nacogdoches!

Lansdale
lives in Nacogdoches, Texas, with his wife, Karen, writer and editor.

SOURCE MATERIAL

In
creating this eBook, I used the following sources:

A Little Green Book of Monster Stories

A Fistful of Stories

By Bizarre Hands

High Cotton

Private
Eye Action As You Like It

Revelations

Sanctified & Chicken Fried

The
Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent

The Shadows,
Kith & Kin

Thirteen
Horrors

The author’s official website