Things Beyond Midnight

“Saturday’s Shadow” appeared in
Shadows 2
©1979 by Charles L. Grant.

“The Pool” appeared in
Horrors
©1981 by Charles L. Grant.

“Starblood” appeared in
Infinity Four
©1972 by Lancer Books, Inc.

“Into the Lion’s Den” appeared as “The Strange Case of Mr. Pruyn,” in
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
©1956 by FI.S.D. Publications, Inc.

“A Real Nice Guy” appeared in
Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine
©1980 by William F. Nolan.

“Death Decision” appeared in
Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine
©1981 by Renown Publications, Inc.

“Fair Trade” appeared in
Whispers
©1982 by Stuart David Schiff.

“He Kilt It With a Stick” appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
©1967 by Mercury Press, Inc.

“Violation” appeared in
Future City
©1973 by Roger Elwood.

“The Partnership” appeared in
Shadow 3
©1980 by Charles L. Grant.

“Dead Call” appeared in
Frights
©1976 by Kirby McCauley.

“The Underdweller” appeared as “Small World,” in
Fantastic Universe
©1957 by King-Size Publications, Inc.

“Something Nasty” appeared in
The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror
©1983 by William F. Nolan.

“Lonely Train A’ Comin’” appeared as “The Train,” in
Gallery
©1981 by Montcalm Publishing Corporation.

“The Zürich Solution” appeared in
Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine
©1982 by Renown Publications.

“One of Those Days” appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
©1962 by Mercury Press, Inc.

“Dark Winner” appeared in
Whispers
©1976 by Stuart David Schiff.

“Kelly, Fredric Michael: 1928” appeared in
Infinity
Five ©1973 by William F. Nolan.

“Coincidence” appeared in
The Berserkers
©1973 by Roger Elwood.

“The Party” (A Teleplay) ©1984 by William F. Nolan.

First, I want to thank Art Cover, and Lydia Marano for making this new edition a reality. Plus special thanks to Lydia for her expert cover design.

Things Beyond Midnight was
my first major collection in the horror genre. Most of the stories in the book date from the mid-1970s into the mid-1980s. Prior to the 1970s I was not really into horror-suspense. Sure, I’d written “The Party” for
Playboy
back in 1967, and I had a few other scare tales to my credit, but “Dead Call,” which I wrote for Kirby McCauleys 1976 anthology,
Frights
, was my first calculated entry into the genre. Positive reader reaction to this story (plus the fact that it was selected for a national reading tour) convinced me to explore this genre on a serious level.

The stories in this book prove that I made the right decision. Three of them were selected for
Year’s Best
volumes. Two were adapted for television, and one earned a World Fantasy Award nomination. The book itself was highly rated in Neil Barron’s influential
Horror literature: A Reader’s Guide
, with critic Keith Neilson citing the stories as “crisp, ironic, often humorous, and... provocative” He went on to state that “At his best, Nolan puts a likeable character into a terrible crisis and watches him squirm until a surprising conclusion is reached. The brevity of his stories intensifies their impact. Notable... entertaining [and] brilliantly nasty.”

Happily, I’ve received very favorable comments on my work from a host of peers in the genre, including Joe Lansdale, Stephen King, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles L. Grant, Dennis Etchison, and Peter Straub.

In his Introduction to my second collection of terror tales,
Night Shapes.
Straub called me “one of horrors best storytellers” and went on to state: “Nolan is writing this kind of story... as well as anyone that ever did... He has brought a form that has an immensely distinguished tradition to a perfection that matches that of the traditions finest examples... No one has ever done it better.”

Hey, thanks Peter! Praise such as this keeps me coming back to the field.

I’m going to close with a poem that sums up my feelings about this genre. It first appeared in a “Special Nolan Issue” of
Weird Tales:

THE HORROR WRITER

   Shadow shapes,

swimming in fogged darkness,

razored teeth,

   slicing deep, releasing

   crimson heart tides.

   Prowling beasts,

within a scything moon,

wild of eye,

   lust-hungry for the kill.

   Demonic fiends,

claw-fingered, eager

to rend flesh,

   in blood-gored midnight feasts.

   Specter spirits,

summoned from gloomed grave, risen

from dank coffined earth

   to fetid life.

   Witch, devil, ghoul,

the tall walking dead,

night companions all,

   who join me at the keys,

   Welcome!

Welcome to my world!

Remember lava lamps?

You know, those goopy volcanoes that lived in ajar and spouted random parabolas to the tune of a 75-watt Sylvania?

Well, I do. And with great fondness.

When I was seven years old, my parents bought one of these sleazy masterpieces, set it on the bar, plugged it in and waited for the orange wax to grow irritable and rebel.

And then—now, pay close attention—they invited Bill Nolan over. Very significant choice, that. See, Bill was just about the funniest adult I knew when I was a kid. Everything he said or did absolutely killed me. A simple hello was enough to make me pop a valve. Yet, I’d never been around Bill and my Dad when they really cut loose. Never actually had the chance to witness their mutual madness at close range, one might say.

But the lava lamp changed all that.

As I recall it, I was invited to sit and have a drink with the “big guys” before being exiled off to bed. So, perched on a barstool in droopy pj’s, swigging a Coke and munching Fritos, I wedged seven-year-old small talk between Bill’s maniacal gags. Gags which, as usual, had me collapsing with laughter, Coke jetting from my nostrils, Fritos exiting my mouth as if my head were a huge party popper.

And then a rather magical thing happened.

The lava lamp was starting to get hot and the wax began to stretch and bubble like a geyser under glass. In a couple of minutes, its Boschian tentacles were lifting. As the globules hit the top and headed back down in free-fall, Bill casually assumed a Hanna-Barbera cartoon voice and spoke for one of the globules. No... scratch that. He actually
became
the globule.

His
globule, which was roaming inside the lava lamp on the right, struck up a conversation with another tubby globule on the left: “Hey, Sol, see who’s in the back room will ya?”

Immediately my Dad (captured instantly by the demented premise) became the other globule. He said, “Don’t tell me what to do, you putz! You’re going nowhere in this organization. You’re on the way
down!
”

Bill’s globule shot back an angry retort as the two stretched like taffy and argued bitterly with one another. When they had finally drifted to the bottom of the lamp, like that pearl in those nifty Prell Shampoo commercials, the conversation was over.

Over, that is, until two
new
globules were formed in the primal ooze of this strange little lamp and they, too, took on life, slithering upward in molten birth.

Instantly, Bill and my Dad were at it again, verbally scribbling in more insanely funny captions for this kinetic
New Yorker
cartoon they alone perceived.

Talk about your weird memories... all I can tell you is that it was a very powerful epiphany for a seven-year-old boy. Here, before my glittering eyes, were two full grown guys toying around with the most preposterous absurdities as if discussing the best way to lube a lawn-mover.

It made a sizeable impact. Say, something equal to the dents asteroids make in the Arizona desert. I never saw adults the same way again. Bill and my Dad had made me realize, with the help of a truly kitschey lava lamp, that adults were just children who wore bigger clothes and kept more desirable hours.

It was my most memorable lesson in the sanity of fantasy.

I learned it was really okay think wildly. Even crazily. I mean, that’s how we all start anyway, isn’t it? Children place no restrictions on their thinking. They just coast along with the pure joy of invention as their sail.

Well, so do really fine fantasists. And William F. Nolan is one of the finest. The stagnant, glued-down process of most adult thinking does not apply to this man. His thinking has a kind of symphonic lunacy which transcends all rules and conventions. If the human mind is just one long road which we travel with our thoughts, Bill Nolan is running all the stop signs.

Bill violates the parameters of reality again and again, yet makes you accept his incredible premises without hesitation. How does he do it, you ask?

Simple. He’s incredibly talented.

And whether his created reality be barbarous or sublime, he fashions it so meticulously and artfully that it is quite simply, unimpeachable. It isn’t just something that Bill Nolan thought up during an afternoon at the typewriter. It actually seems to
exist.

Read “Lonely Train A’Comin’” and try to convince yourself you don’t believe it. It’s a beautiful piece of storytelling that absolutely violates reality. Yet, it’s so convincing, it may well have happened to your skeptical uncle.

Maybe that’s what fantasists like Bill and my Dad are telling us—that it’s really okay to go with our imaginations. That it’s okay to dream our own three-ring circuses, complete with lions and tigers and men in gold tights flying out of cannons.

Sometimes I think life has a way of cheating the human heart. Losses of all variety seem inevitable and constant. But a few lucky souls manage to avoid the inevitable. At least in the way they experience it. These enviable folk have a kind of playfulness about them; they laugh more easily and most often dream in Technicolor. And no matter how many years sneak by, their imaginations keep them young forever.

Well, that’s Bill Nolan.

Read “One of Those Days.” You’ll be laughing right to the last line. And then a split second later, it’ll dawn on you how dead on the money this story really is. It goes far beyond a comically inspired narrative; it makes a meaningful point about the human condition.

But then, that’s really nothing special for Bill.

He seems to have this uncanny knack for doing that very thing over and over again. Each of his stories is like a psychiatric session from which the reader comes away knowing more about the human condition.

No easy trick.

In fact, no trick at all. It’s actually the startling by-product of remarkable observation and a prose style refined enough to dine with royalty.

Read “Starblood” or “Saturday’s Shadow” or “The Partnership” and you’ll know what I’m talking about. These stories have an elegance and pace. Each is written with an exquisite poetry, with music to the language. Yet, each is wonderfully
unsettling.

Like Stephen King or Peter Straub or Roald Dahl, Bill is expert at seizing the reader with a blend of humor and horror; he understands the complexities of both. If you’ve never tried it, let me clue you in: it’s a nearly impossible balance to achieve. But Bill pulls it off without a quiver of the tightrope.

I sometimes wonder if Bill had it all to do over, if he’d rather come back as Groucho Marx or Bela Lugosi. I think he’d have been just as happy whether wearing a cape or a cream pie. That’s the peculiar dichotomy of the man. And not so incidentally, it makes him one hell of a lot of fun to be around.