Halloween and Other Seasons

The Silly Stuff

By Al Sarrantonio

“No, I tell you I’m on to something, Bill. You have to keep printing them!”

The voice on the other end of the line said something nasty.

“Oh, yeah? And the same to you!” Nathan Halpern slammed the wall phone back into its cradle. Instinctively he checked the coin return to see if anything had dropped into it. “Damn,” he said, and walked back to the bar.

The bartender smiled. “Almost never works.”

Halpern waved him off, taking a sip of his beer. “That’s not what I’m mad about,” he said. He pulled a crumpled newspaper clipping from the pocket of his equally rumpled sports jacket and pushed it across the bar. “Here,” he said, “look at this.”

It was a slow Wednesday afternoon in the Golden Spoon Tavern, in the dead center of a killing August heat wave. The lunch crowd, what little there was of it, had long gone, and besides Nathan Halpern the only other customers the bartender had to worry about were two regulars at the other end of the bar, each of whom, like clockwork, drank one scotch on the rocks every half-hour; and since it was nearly twenty minutes until the next round was due, the bartender could afford to socialize. He took the clipping and read:

~ * ~

FISH FALL FROM SKY

Copanah, NY (Aug. 12)—Residents of the small town of Copanah, ten miles northeast of Albany, reported a rain of dead fish yesterday. The creatures, which allegedly resembled cod in appearance, were scattered over an area two miles square, and local residents insist that they dropped from the heavens.

One elderly resident of the town, Sam Driller, whose integrity was vouched for by several neighbors including Copanah’s mayor, stated that he had gone out to move some trash cans to the street for pickup when “a whole barrelful of fish dropped right on top of me. I looked up, and the sky’s full of ‘em—they was dropping right out of the clouds. It ain’t natural, but I swear I saw it.”

Two local policemen and the daughter of the town librarian also witnessed the event, and local authorities could offer no explanation. A spokesman for Margolies Air Force Base, thirty miles away, reports that none of its aircraft were in the air at that time.

~ * ~

The bartender folded the clipping and handed it back to Halpern. “So?” he said. “Silly stuff like that turns up in the papers every summer.” He cocked his head toward the telephone on the wall. “I heard part of your conversation. You wrote this?”

“Yeah.” Halpern nodded glumly. “And you don’t think there’s anything to it either?”

The bartender drew Halpern another beer, setting it down in front of him. “That one’s on the house. To tell you the truth, no.”

Halpern leaned across the bar and tapped his finger against the wood. “I checked every one of those witnesses myself.”

The bartender shrugged. “Doesn’t mean a thing. All those people could easily have been lying.”

Halpern nearly knocked his beer over. “No way!” he said excitedly. “I know it’s supposed to be the dog days and all that, but this stuff is for real. I’ve checked it out. It goes on all the time, all over the place. Little clusters of reports here, little clusters there. The only reason you see more stuff in the paper in July and August is because there’s nothing else to print. But these things actually happen all the time, since before newspapers existed. And this time they’re happening here in Albany County.”

The bartender still looked skeptical.

“Look—” Halpern took a sip of beer and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “—have you ever heard of Charles Fort?”

The bartender scratched his head. “Wrote a bunch of paperbacks, right?”

Halpern nodded. “Something like that. Fort was a kind of journalist. Spent over twenty-five years in the New York Public Library and the British Museum collecting stories from newspapers and scientific journals—stories like the one I showed you. He had thousands and thousands of clippings and articles, and he put them into books like Lo! and The Book of the Damned. He documented all kinds of weird things—wolf children, devil sightings, flying saucers, volcanic eruptions spewing out human limbs instead of lava—you name it. He didn’t take all of it seriously, but he was convinced that everything that happens is somehow connected; that there is only one unified reality that everything is tied to. One of his favorite quotes was, ‘I think we’re all property.’”

The bartender laughed. “We are,” he said. “We’re all owned by the IRS.”

Halpern didn’t smile. “Charles Fort was no nut. Hell, after he died back in the thirties, a bunch of people like Theodore Dreiser, Ben Hecht, and Alexander Woollcott got together and started the Fortean Society to continue the work he was doing. It still exists.”

The half-hour chime sounded on the cuckoo clock over the cash register, and the bartender mixed and delivered two more scotches to the regulars. When he came back, he looked thoughtful.

“So you really think there’s something behind it?”

Halpern nodded. “I’ve checked out too many of these stories to think they’re all baloney. I swear there’s a pattern to it all, just like Fort believed.”

“Well, I’m still unconvinced. From what I’ve seen behind this bar, you can find patterns wherever you want to.”

Halpern leaned close, and a conspiratorial tone came into his voice. “Do you know someone named Rita Gartenburg?”

“Sure,” the bartender replied. “I’ve lived down the block from her for twenty years.”

“She a drunk? Or a nut?”

“No way!” said the bartender. “Never seen her in here or any other gin mill in town. And she’s no kook. She’s a nice, steady lady who grows prize roses in her backyard.”

“Well,” said Halpern, “prize-winning or not, she told me she saw a bunch of those same rosebushes get up off the ground and walk around.”

The bartender’s jaw dropped. “You must be kidding.”

“That’s what she told me,” said Halpern, “and that’s the way I’m going to report it. She even took a couple of pictures, but the damn things didn’t come out.”

The bartender shrugged. “I don’t know what to think.”

Halpern downed his beer and prepared to leave. “You know,” he said, “I used to be a hotshot columnist, weekdays and in the Sunday supplement. Political reporter.” He shook his head. “But I never believed anything as strongly as I believe this stuff. I’ve been at it two months now, ever since the Fourth of July, when a bunch of kids near my house said they saw a skyrocket land back on the ground and run away.” He gave a short laugh and held two fingers a quarter-inch apart as he backed through the door. “I’m telling you, there’s something there, and I’m getting closer to it all the time.”

~ * ~

SKY GOES BLACK AT NOON

ON SUNNY DAY

~ * ~

Sumptersville, NY (Aug. 20)—According to residents of Sagerstown, four miles east of Sumptersville, the sky suddenly turned black at twelve noon yesterday. Local weather charts showed that the day was cloudless and sunny, with north-northwest winds at six to eight miles per hour, but an affidavit signed by nearly all of the seventy-six residents of the tiny community, known statewide for its annual cornbread festival each September, swore that at exactly twelve o’clock “the sky went completely dark, as if God Himself had pulled a light switch off.”

There were no stars visible during the occurrence, which lasted approximately five minutes, and an eerie silence seemed to come over the town. Then suddenly, according to the statement, it was bright daylight again.

Witnesses and signers of the affidavit included six members of the local town council, as well as retired weatherman Jed Burns, who worked for local TV station WWWM for twenty-three years. Reached for comment, Burns said that he was “still in a stunned condition” and had no idea what had happened. He said he has tried to get the U.S. Weather Bureau involved in the matter, but that so far they have shown no interest.

~ * ~

“I tell you, Bill,” Halpern yelled into the phone, “I’m real close.”

There was silence on the other end for a moment, and then a squawking sound that lasted for a minute and a half.

At the end of it Halpern waited a few seconds. “No, Bill,” he said calmly, “I have not been out in the sun too long. I’ve told you from the beginning of this thing that you should just let me run with it, and I’m telling you again. When I break it open, I’ll come back to Albany and be a good boy.”

There was another short squawk on the other end.

“That’s right, a good boy. Cover the state legislature and everything. I promise. But you have to let me follow this through.”

Another squawk.

“That’s right. Six-headed chickens and all. But that was yesterday, editor mine. Today it was ball-point pens dropping through the ceiling of a supermarket.”

Another squawk—actually, more of a screech this time, louder and more insistent.

“Didn’t you hear me at all? I said I’m beginning to see a pattern to all this. This could be my chance to be Woodward and Bernstein, Bill.”

Squawk.

“No, I haven’t actually seen any of it. I always seem to be one town behind, and when I guess where the next thing will occur, I always guess wrong. But I’ll break the code. And yes, the chicken could have been fake, but it wasn’t. Believe me, it’s beginning to click.”

Silence on the other end; then a low, rasping sound.

“That’s right, Bill—Woodward and Bernstein. Sure you got that whole story? Okay, call you tomorrow.”

~ * ~

COW GIVES BIRTH TO

TWO DOGS

Pokerton, NY (Aug. 23)—Bill Gainesborough, a small farmer in this dairy farming community, swears that one of his cows gave birth to two puppies earlier this week. Gainesborough, who was upset by the event and hesitant to talk about it to reporters, stated that his cow Ilse, one of thirty milk cows on the farm, gave birth to two dogs “right in front of my eyes.”

The puppies are cocker spaniels, and there are no cocker spaniel owners within ten miles of the Gainesborough property. Neighbors, who urged the farmer to talk about what had happened, swore that Gainesborough was not the kind of man to pull a hoax. The puppies were given to a local foundling home.

~ * ~

Halpern didn’t call his editor back the next day. On Wednesday the twenty-fifth he found himself in Lolarkin, where a group of schoolboys claimed to have seen three moons in the sky. Thursday the twenty-sixth found him in Crater, where two grandmothers and twelve of their kin swore that their house had lifted itself off its foundation, turned around 180 degrees, and set itself back down again. On Friday he was in Peach Hollow, just missing a rain of black tar. Saturday he spent in Cooperville, arriving a scant three minutes after two hamsters had talked in a crowded pet store; he’d guessed right on that location, but had miscalculated as to time. Sunday morning the twenty-ninth he sat in a diner in Reseda, staring at a horribly creased map of the state, when suddenly the pattern rose before his blurry eyes.

He shoved the map under his arm as he dialed the phone. His hands were shaking. He stared back across the room at his eggs getting cold while the phone rang.

“Bill, it’s me.”

This time there wasn’t squawking, but rather a high and steady whine.

“I know it’s Sunday morning. No, I didn’t know it was six o’clock. I’ve been up all night.”

His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Shut up, Bill,” he said into the phone as the whining started up again. He fumbled the map up to his eyes. “It’s simple as hell. Crisscross, crisscross. These things have been making little x’s all over the county. And you know what that means? Something, some single source, is behind it all.”

Silence.

“Did you hear me?”

Silence again. Then a carefully phrased question.

“No, I won’t tell you where I am. Wait for me to phone in my story. But I’ll bet you even money that I’m in the place where the next thing happens. Just another day or two, Bill. That’s all I need.”

Silence. Then a sigh.

“Thanks, Bill. If you were here I’d kiss your ugly face.”

~ * ~

BOY TELEPORTED FROM

OWN HOUSE TO NEIGHBOR’S

~ * ~

Grafton, NY (Aug. 30)—Ten-year-old Bobby Milestone, who vanished into thin air while playing quietly in his own front yard today, was found an hour later in the home of Grafton neighbor Mr. Fred Warbling. The youth claimed to remember nothing that happened to him between the time he vanished and reappeared. “I was out front one second,” he stated, “and the next second I was on top of Mr. Warbling’s car in his garage.”

The youth vanished before the startled eyes of his uncle, Mr. Eugene Milestone, who was looking out the window when the incident occurred. “It was like somebody yanked him out of the air,” Mr. Milestone said.

This reporter was on hand and participated in the massive hour-long search, which was mounted immediately after young Milestone vanished. No explanation has been offered for the youth’s disappearance and subsequent reappearance.

~ * ~

Halpern called in the Milestone piece on Monday afternoon over Bill Greener’s loud protestations. All the rest of the day he double- and triple-checked his calculations, readying himself for the next day’s sighting. He rented a car and was on the road before nightfall, munching periodically on a bucket of fried chicken as he drove. Before leaving he sent a cable to Greener which read: I WAS RIGHT, YOU SUCKER. HAVE REACHED END OF SEARCH. WILL KNOW ALL TOMORROW. BRACE FOR BIG STORY.

He drove for four hours, pulling to a halt well before dawn at his calculated site. There was no moon and the visibility was bad, but he seemed to be on a road at the edge of a vast, rolling valley in the middle of nowhere. He shrugged and went to sleep for a couple of hours, awakening just as dawn broke. When he looked out the window, his eyes widened.

“My God,” he gasped, “I was right.”

There, a scant fifty yards off the dusty road, sat a machine. It looked like nothing so much as an airship, a dirigible-like structure with a long cabin slung underneath. It bore no identifiable markings.

As Halpern drew closer, he saw that his first impression had been a bit mistaken; the thing was not quite as rickety as it had first appeared. It was smoothly metallic and resembled a conventional cigar-shaped flying saucer.

And as he crept even closer, he saw that there was a doorway in the cabin underneath, and a figure leaning against it with his arms folded. Just as Halpern reached the ship, the figure waved languidly and turned away, disappearing inside. Cautiously Halpern poked his head through the opening—and heard someone say, in an even tone, “Please come in, Mr. Halpern.”

He entered the craft, stepping as if he were walking on eggs.

Inside, the cabin was a cluttered mess; stacks of papers and charts lay everywhere. A man was at the front of the structure, bending over a control panel composed of antique knobs and a huge bronze steering wheel. Two globes, one celestial and one terrestrial, were mounted on either side.

The man turned, and Halpern at once thought he looked vaguely familiar. He was strongly built, taller than average, and bore a slight resemblance to Teddy Roosevelt, with a bushy moustache and curling hair parted a bit left of center. He wore a pince-nez, and Halpern was at once taken with the calmness of the gray eyes behind it. He also wore a three-piece woolen suit with a watch-chain and fob attached.

“Please sit down, sir,” the man said, indicating a camp stool off to the right. “I’ll be with you in a moment.” He turned to the control panel, and Halpern spun around to see the door to the craft closing with a smooth hiss. Moments later there was a nearly undetectable bump. They were airborne.

With a sigh the man turned from the control board and confronted Halpern with those calm gray eyes.

~ * ~

“I must congratulate you,” he said, “on your perseverance. I was happy to see you’d found my little pattern. And that you were clever enough to notice that the last little x in my grid of x’s would be completed today.” The corners of his eyes wrinkled upward—in mirth or perhaps something else. “Very resourceful. You thought there might be something at the end of my rainbow of crisscrosses, eh?”

Halpern nodded cautiously.

The stranger suddenly thrust out his hand. “Well, you were right, of course. My name is Charles Fort, sir.”

The man paused a moment to watch Halpern’s jaw drop, then went on: “You’ve become something of a pest these last few weeks, you know. But I must say you’ve been an interesting pest.” Once again his eyes seemed to twinkle.

“You can’t be Charles Fort,” said Halpern. “Fort died fifty years ago.”

The other’s eyebrows went up. “Did he? I suppose you need a bit of explanation, eh?”

Halpern said nothing.

“First of all,” the man said, “I really am Charles Fort. Or was, anyway, for a time. Actually, you might call me a kind of ‘overseer.’ I was sent here to Earth a very long time ago, Mr. Halpern. My life here as Charles Fort, from 1874 to 1932, was an enjoyable sidelight to my real task, and so to amuse myself I decided to document some of my own doings.”

Halpern’s eyes widened. “You mean you made all the strange things happen? The trees flying around, the puppies—all that?”

Fort smiled modestly. “That’s right. Beautifully ironic, isn’t it? That Charles Fort not only documented all sorts of bizarre phenomena, but actually caused them all!” Laughing, he gestured toward the controls. “I do it all with these little knobs. Flying frogs, double suns, night for day, day for night, invisibility—all the silly stuff.”

“I can’t believe it!” said Halpern. “Why?”

Fort’s laughter ended in a sigh. “Well,” he said, “I’ve been here a very long time. Doing a job.” He yawned, then glanced behind him out of the port windows, pushing at the rudder wheel a fraction. “Not a very exciting one, I’m afraid. Let’s just say my job was to start things rolling on this planet, as far as civilization was concerned, and then to—” A hint of a smile touched his lips. “—help things along, so to speak. Not to interfere,” he added hastily, “but rather to keep you moving, evolving, keep you on your toes. We’re not allowed to interfere directly, you know.” He smiled dreamily, fingering his lapel. “I always liked the clothes from the turn of this century best.”

Halpern was getting impatient. “But why did you invent Charles Fort?”

“Boredom, Mr. Halpern. Flying around in this ship all the time, causing mischief here and there—it all gets exceedingly tiring. So I decided to live among you for a while. I made up a being named Charles Fort. Gave him birth records, a family history, everything he needed. Granted, I was bending the rules a bit. But if all I did was chronicle my own doings, I wasn’t directly interfering, was I? And my job at the same time—doubly so, since I was not only perpetrating all those ‘unexplained phenomena,’ but bringing them to your attention at the same time. As I said, beautifully ironic.”

“But what’s all this ‘overseer’ stuff? You mean to say you came here just to play tricks on us?”

Fort sighed heavily. “For better or for worse, Mr. Halpern, somebody a long time ago decided that this was the way to bring young civilizations along. The object is, quite simply, to make you think. To make you look at the world as a strange and beautiful place with mysteries still not fathomed—which, of course, it is.” He gave the rudder another touch. “And the more you wonder about what’s behind this weird, wonderful universe you live in, sooner or later you’ll begin to realize that everything is rather neatly tied together—that it’s all a unity. And the sooner you come to understand that unity, the sooner you can, well, join the club, so to speak. While I was Charles Fort down below I cheated a little by sneaking some of that monistic philosophy into my books. But what’s a little cheating in a good cause, eh?” He smiled. “So you see, all my hijinks are really just a teaching tool.” Suddenly he came over to Halpern and put his arm around his shoulder. “I bet you can’t wait to get back and tell your story, eh?”

“Yes…” said Halpern cautiously.

“Well, you must let me show you a few of my little tricks first, and then we’ll get you back to your office, safe and sound. You see, I know what it’s like to be a newspaperman.”

Once more the limpid gray pools of Fort’s eyes sparkled as he led Halpern toward the back of the airship.

“I have a little confession to make,” he said, smiling paternally. “You’re the first human being I ever let catch me in the act. That’s really bending the rules, isn’t it? But since I’m getting you back to your office, I guess I’m not interfering all that much.”

“Sure, why not?” said Halpern, suddenly buoyant, thoughts straying once again to Woodward and Bernstein. He laughed. “That really was a clever line of yours, by the way. ‘I think we’re all property.’ Very clever.”

“It was at that, wasn’t it?” Fort smiled.

~ * ~

VIOLENT INCIDENT

AT DATA TERMINAL

~ * ~

Albany Complex, NY (Aug. 31, 2082)—An intruder dressed in pre-Millennium clothes and claiming to be an employee of the

Albany Sun

caused minor damage at this station’s mid-Complex terminal earlier today. The man, who identified himself as Nathan Halpern, stated in loud terms that he was a top

Sun

“columnist,” demanded a “typewriter” (such devices have not been used at the

Sun

since it was computerized over forty years ago), and further demanded to see one Bill Greener, whom he identified as his “editor.”

The lone operator at the terminal at the time of the incident, Rupert Popkin, attempted to calm the intruder down, but as Popkin stated later, the man “went into a wild fit, repeating the names Woodward and Bernstein over and over and claiming he had been kidnapped by a UFO and put into suspended animation.”

According to Popkin, who suffered minor cuts and bruises, the man then became violent and had to be taken into custody by security personnel, but somehow managed to escape while en route to Albany Complex Psychiatric Center. Witnesses at the scene reported that he ran off shaking his fist at the sky and shouting, “I’ll find you if it’s the last thing I do!” As of this time, he remains at large.

Curiously, a check of files shows that an individual named Bill Greener did work at the

Sun

in the late twentieth century. However, no record of anyone named Nathan Halpern has been found.