FLESH WELDER

By Ronald Kelly

Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital Edition

Copyright 2010 by Ronald Kelly & Macabre Ink Digital Publications

This story originally appeared in Noctulpa: Journal of Horror #4 (1990)

NOT JUST WHISTLING DIXIE

An Exclusive Interview with Ronald Kelly

Copyright 2007 by Mark Hickerson

Cover by Zach McCain (2007)

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FLESH-WELDER

“Who is it?” asked Nurse Taylor. The woman in the drab white uniform jacked a shell into her sawed-off shotgun and stood beside the warehouse door.

“It’s me… Owen,” came the voice of a child.

“Let him in,” allowed the kindly doctor.

After the rolling steel door had been hoisted, letting in the sweltering dragon’s breath of a high noon gust, a bizarre procession entered the cavernous building; a battered and rusty red wagon -- an ancient Radio Flyer -- pulled by two harnessed curs and the boy. The dogs, one a Doberman, the other a mutt of indeterminate parentage, were a sorry pair. Both were ravaged with mange and parasites, and the effects of malnutrition showed in their bloated bellies and sharp, serrated ribs.

A small, black boy led the dog-drawn wagon. They knew him only as Owen, one of the doctor’s regular scavengers. The child was a seasoned survivor at the tender age of nine. His dark face bore the battle scars so common in that brutal day and time; horizontal slashes from a razor fight, as well as a bullet-punctured lower lip. But the most noticeable disfigurement appeared in the form of raw radiation burns which covered the right side of his face and neck like brilliant pink islands on an ebony sea. He was well-armed for a child, toting a .38 snubnose on one hip and a long-bladed butcher knife on the other.

Doctor Rourke waited until the door had again been lowered and secured before he emerged from his darkened office and approached the child.

“So, Owen, what have you brought me today?”

“Lot’s of good junk, Doc.”  Owen smiled up at the big man with the air of a true wheeler-dealer. “The fighting has been hot and heavy down on the southern limits this morning. Right after the SA’s began pulling back and our boys started mopping up, I snuck in with the wagon and took my pick of the casualties. Real fresh stuff today. No day-old crap like last time.”

“Excellent,” said Rourke, crouching beside the bed of the wagon. “Let me see what you have.”

With the flourish of a stage magician, Owen whipped back the olive drab tarp, revealing his store of merchandise. The doctor examined each item carefully, nodding his approval. “Yes,” he agreed, “yes, I do believe this is your best batch yet!”

Owen beamed proudly. “It’s been a whole lot easier since you lent me the scalpel and bone saw, Doc. Now I can work faster, get what I need before the disposal crews come to clean up.”

“Shall we retire to my office and conduct our business, my friend?” The bearded physician ushered the boy inside a partitioned room.

Then came the bartering. Doctor Rourke brought out a crate of assorted post-war canned goods and firearm ammunition and set it on the desk beside the goods to be bargained for. Like two Indians trading over a campfire, boy

with courtesy and respect. The doctor examined each body part meticulously, checking for freshness, muscle tone, and size. Those that did not meet his standards, due to irreparable damage, disease, or rigor mortis, were discarded. The trading was done diplomatically: a box of .38 ammo for a man’s arm, a can of beans of the leg of a child. As each transaction was haggled over and completed, the food and ammo were placed in Owen’s wagon while the human limbs were stacked neatly like cord wood on a gurney to be carted into the warehouse deep-freeze for proper preservation.

The last item was a healthy human heart floating in a quart mason jar of fresh blood. The doctor was interested, as he already had a potential customer for the organ. “How about a couple of cans of halved peaches, along with a box of shells for your father’s twelve-gauge?” he offered, figuring it to be more than a fair trade.

Owen’s face suddenly grew sad and angry. “I ain’t got no use for shotgun shells no more, Doc. My dad…. he’s dead.”

The physician laid a sympathetic hand on the child’s shoulder. He had noticed that the boy had been somewhat nervous and preoccupied, especially during one period of bartering. Now he knew why. “I’m terribly sorry, Owen. When did this happen?”

“Three days ago… before the big counterattack. The army came to Ruin Town looking for men to fight. Any man able to hold a gun they armed and herded into trucks headed for the front. They came for my dad, but he’d been awful sick with that new plague that’s going around. They dragged him out of bed and, when he wasn’t able to stand, they pushed him out into the street and put a bullet in the back of his head.”

“Who was it, Owen? Do you know who was responsible?”

The boy nodded, near tears now. “It was him, Doc. It was the General.”

Rourke’s normally serene eyes now darkened into angry pits. Jeremiah Payne, also known as the General, was a ruthless looter and murderer who performed wholesale injustice and horrid atrocities under the protective guise of military authority. He and his band of roving mercenaries fought the enemy when a battle presented itself. But, when the hostility died down, they were back to their old tricks, descending upon the meager population like hungry wolves. Cowardly bushwhackers with automatic weapons, that’s what they were; sadistic thieves who preyed without conscience on the weak and helpless.

“What about you and your mother?” Rourke asked.

A single tear of rage trickled the length of Owen’s scarred face. “I was hidden… but, Mom, she tried to stop them. The General knocked her down and tore off her clothes. He hurt her real bad, Doc… down there.”

Silently, the doctor rose and went to the safe in the corner of his office. After a moment, he returned. “A new deal for the heart, Owen. The peaches and this.” It was one of the last surviving cans of National Defense spam, bulky and rectangular and with its own turn-key for opening.

“Meat!” piped the boy excitedly. He picked up the can as if it were some priceless treasure. “Gee, I’ve never had real, honest-to-goodness meat before.”

“Well, tonight you and your mom are in for a big treat. How about it? Is it a deal?”

“Deal!” agreed the child enthusiastically. They shook on it, Rourke’s huge hand engulfing Owen’s smaller one.

After everything had been squared away, Nurse Taylor cranked the door open. The howl of the western wind almost deafening in its ferocity. Owen covered the lower part of his face with a bandanna to filter away the swirling dust and began to lead the two dogs back out into the crumbling ruins that had once been the proud metropolis of Houston, Texas. He turned back once before the sandy haze swallowed him.

“So long, Doc,” he said, waving. “And thanks a million!”

“Anytime,” shouted the doctor over the wind. “Keep bringing me quality goods like these today and you’ll have a steady customer.”

Owen grinned and stared at Doctor Hamilton Rourke with an expression akin to awe. The man towered like a giant in the warehouse doorway, huge and powerful beneath the long drop of his white lab coat. His face was warm and friendly, the eyes sparkling blue, the full beard dark with a hint of gray.

The only peculiarity about his face was the forehead, which protruded slightly from the rest of his features. That was the result of the heavy-gauge steel plate that had taken the place of his frontal skull bone. The bumpy impressions of Phillips-head screws could be detected just beneath the skin. The cerebral replacement had been made many years before Owen’s birth, before the land gave way to chaos and nearby Dallas had disintegrated, becoming a thirty-mile wide hole in the earth.

The nine-year-old scavenger regarded Rourke as though he were some sort of god. In a way, to many people in Ruin Town, he was one. For Hamilton Rourke was the man with the ability to make one’s body whole again, no matter how severe the damage. He was the healer supreme, the medico grande.

He was the Flesh-Welder.

~ * ~

Evening came and, with it, the unnatural hues of nuclear sunset and the choking smoke of distant funeral pyres. The most recent bout of fighting had proved devastating for the western boundary of Ruin Town. An enemy mortar attack had battered a populated area of civilians, bringing much death and injury. The doctor and his nurse had been busy most of that afternoon and, as the shadows of evening grew long, the gathering of injured had slowly dwindled and only a few now remained.

Rourke was examining a Navajo woman with severe abdominal wounds, when a roar of vehicles sounded outside and a commotion broke out as those who had been waiting were pushed roughly aside.

“Out of the way, you sorry sons-of-bitches!” shouted a familiar voice. “We’ve got wounded coming through!”

“It’s him!” said Nurse Taylor, her expression more severe than usual.

Rourke nodded grimly. “Yes… I know.”

The band of soldiers, sweaty and reeking of blood and cordite, shouldered their arms and carried a single stretcher into the warehouse’s cavernous chamber. Rourke exchanged a weary glance with Nurse Taylor as they set the stretcher directly across from the Indian that the doctor was attending to. He ignored the intruders and called to his assistant. “Nurse, prepare the operating room for surgery.”

“Over here, Doc!” called the man on the neighboring stretcher. “Me first!”

Rourke regarded the man clinically. His only injury was a leg severed just above the knee, a serious wound to be sure, but not one that was critical at the moment. “I must take this woman first. She has some very serious wounds and she will die if I don’t tend to them immediately.”

The other cursed, drew a 9mm pistol from his hip and, placing the muzzle against the Navajo’s temple, pulled the trigger. Gunfire and brains shot across the room, rebounding off the cinderblock wall. “Now, like I said before… me first.”

His eyes cold, Doctor Rourke left the dead woman and turned his full attention to his murderous patient. General Jeremiah Payne reholstered his Beretta and grinned smugly around the stump of a confiscated Havana. The commanding officer was a perfect example of the old redneck term “lean and mean”, being as wiry as a weasel and twice as crafty. He wore a stained gray Stetson with a gruesome hatband constructed entirely of shriveled human ears… ghoulish trophies of the many battles he had won. Most were swarthy in color, Cuban and South American more than likely, but a few were black and Indian in origin.

“How bad is it?” asked the General. “A freaking SA grenade took it off at the knee. Right the hell off! Can you fix it for me? Have you got the part in stock?”

“Yes, a supplier brought a suitable replacement earlier today. But it will cost you.”

“Sure, Doc. You name it. Guns, grub, gasoline… I even have some gold I filched from the Bank of El Paso. Just get the show on the road, will you?”

Doctor Rourke motioned for Payne’s men to carry him into the room that adjoined his office. A gas generator ran noisily, providing a battery of fluorescent lights overhead. “Nurse, prepare two pints of type A positive blood,” the doctor said, then started toward the freezer for the appropriate limb.

“Yes, sir.” Nurse Taylor emptied a packet of what looked like cherry Kool-Aid into a container of distilled water. It was a unit of synthetic plasma crystals, “instant blood”, which had been developed when 95% of the world’s blood supply became contaminated with the AIDS virus.

Ten minutes later, the IV had been hooked up and Payne was sedated. The other soldiers in the General’s group waited uneasily outside as the doctor and nurse donned heavy canvas gowns, neoprene surgical gloves, and bulky welding helmets. After both ends of the host and replacement bones had been prepped, Rourke connected a stainless steel clip to each end. They were cellular stimulators, designed to generate growth and healing by way of delicately administering charges of electricity. He then opened a sterilization box and brought out a synthetic bone rod. An equally sterilized electrode was produced. Holding the electrode in one hand and the bone rod in the other, Rourke lowered them to the primed sections and pressed a pedal switch with his foot, generating the necessary voltage.

Carefully, he began to weld the two halves of the femur together. A hissing crackle from the union of rod and electrode spat blue-white sparks of flaming bone splinters into the air like fireworks and, slowly, the two ends began to fuse into one. Fifteen minutes later the first step of the procedure was completed. Lifting his mask, Rourke took a long mill bastard and began to file away most of the excess flash and globules of molten bone.

Then, taking a soldering iron and a spool of synthetic nerve filament, he began to carefully hot solder a few key nerve endings in place to ensure proper motor function. The operation drew to a close when the helmets were again lowered and the muscles of the leg were welded together using a special flesh-fiber rod. After the melding of muscle tissue had been completed, the epidermis was closed with a staple gun that injected skin sutures into the upper layers.

An hour later, Jeremiah Payne awoke from his anesthesia. “Hurts like hell!” he grumbled, but he was thankful to see the new limb.

“It will hurt for a couple of days,” informed the doctor. “There will be a few little problems to work out – muscle coordination, stress and weight adjustment, perhaps possible tissue rejection.”

“Well, let’s hope that don’t happen.” The General caressed the pearl handle of his pistol for emphasis.

Payne’s men carried him from the recovery room into the open warehouse. The injured who had been waiting had been taken care of and sent on their way. One of Payne’s flunkies lit him a cigar and the commander pointed to the rear of the transport truck outside. “Go ahead, Doc. I’m ready to pay my tab. Pick out anything you want.”

“I want none of your pilfered goods, General Payne,” he told him. “There is only one thing I want in return for my services.”

“Name it.”

Rourke regarded him gravely. “I want you to leave those poor people in Ruin Town alone. I’ve heard of the heinous crimes you’ve committed, the awful acts you’ve performed there. Just give it a rest, at least for a month or so. Find fresh territory to conquer.”

The General began to laugh heartily, as if someone had just told him an obscene joke. “Now, why would I wanna go and do something like that? Hell, it’d be like butchering the goose that laid the golden egg! Ruin Town and every other providence hereabout are ours for the taking. Besides, what are those people to you? They’re nothing but a bunch of niggers, wetbacks, and redskins. They’re not even your own kind! What do you care?”

“So you refuse to pay up as promised?”

“You got it, sawbones. I’m not about to strike such a foolish bargain – even if you did give me a new leg.”

“Then get the hell out of here!” shouted Rourke in an uncharacteristic burst of emotion. “And don’t bother coming back. I’ll not have anything more to do with you or your men!”

The soldiers in the General’s unit carried their superior out the open door and into the cool twilight, placing the stretcher across the back of a jeep. “Oh, we’ll be back alright… any time we please. And you’ll have no choice but to patch us up… or die if you refuse.”

Rourke and Taylor stood in the gathering darkness and watched as the convoy of jeeps and supply trucks headed west toward Ruin Town. From their hooting and hollering and discharging of arms, the doctor knew that his harsh words had riled something terribly dangerous in the General’s men that night. Something that would plunge the poor citizens of that settlement into a hell of fear and humiliation until the soldiers moved onward at the crack of dawn.

~ * ~

“I’m sorry, but you can’t go in there. The doctor can’t be disturbed.”

“But we must see him, senorita. It is urgent, a matter of life and death!”

Rourke opened his eyes. He had been napping at the desk of his darkened office. Frantic silhouettes appeared in the light of the open doorway. The physician reached for the switch on the desk lamp, while his free hand clutched the .44 Magnum he kept holstered beneath his coat at all times.

He relaxed his grip on the weapon when he realized there was no violent intent to the sudden intrusion, only desperation.

Rourke knew the Mexican couple; Eduardo and Naida Guevara. He had repaired the man’s hand once when a wild dog had torn it from the wrist. Eduardo now stood with his hysterical wife, his arms wrapped around a blanket-bundled child. The face of the small girl, perhaps four years of age, stared glassy-eyed at Doctor Rourke, her skin as deathly pale as candle wax.

“Please… oh, please, Senor Doctor, you must help us!” pleaded Nadia, her face damp with weeping. “You must help our poor Maria!”

“I told you before,” insisted Nurse Taylor, looking strangely near tears herself, ”there is nothing the doctor can do.”

Rourke stood and motioned for the man to bring the child closer. He peeled back the bloodstained blanket with gentle hands. The sight of physical mutilation had never bothered the doctor before, but what confronted him now filled him with revulsion and horror.

“Who, in God’s holy name, did this horrible thing?” he asked.

Eduardo’s face twisted into a mask of agonized grief. “It was the General and his gringos, Doctor. They came this night to wreak havoc upon us all. Our poor daughter, Maria, she was chosen from among many children and brought into the street of Ruin Town. He said that he wanted to show us who was truly the King of Houston. Then he pulled his machete, senor … the bastardo pulled his machete and hacked off our little Maria’s arms!”

Naida wailed in grievous recollection. “Oh, please, Senor Rourke… you must do something! Take little Maria into your room of wonders and make her whole again!” With that, the woman emptied the contents of an old shopping bag on the desktop before him.

Two tiny severed arms, pale and bloodless, lay upon his desk blotter. The miniscule fingernails were painted bright pink, perhaps with a bottle of nail polish the parents had discovered somewhere in the ruins.

“I’m sorry… but I can do nothing,” muttered Rourke, feeling utterly helpless in the presence of those tiny limbs. “Your daughter is dead.”

“But you must do something!” screamed the mother, grasping at the lapels of the doctor’s white coat. “It is your duty! You are --!”

“I am not God!” bellowed Rourke, breaking from the woman’s claw-like hands. “Now, please… just go. And take this poor child from my sight.”

Silently, Nurse Taylor ushered the man and wife from the office. They took the child and her tiny appendages with them. Outside, the nurse gave the grieving parents her condolences and, in the gentlest way possible, convinced them that some good could come from their daughter’s senseless demise. They agreed and, instead of surrendering their child to the flaming pyres, donated the girl’s body, knowing that some other child might benefit from that which Maria had unwillingly forfeited in death.

Nurse Taylor escorted them to the warehouse door and, upon returning, found Rourke pouring himself a shot from a vintage bottle of Jim Beam.

“Are you alright, Hamilton?” she asked from the doorway.

“No,” he answered truthfully. He emptied the glass in one swallow and tipped the bottle for a refill. “No, I’m far from being alright.”

“I’m sorry I let them in… it was my fault…”

Rourke lifted haunted eyes to his loyal assistant. “No, my dear, it most certainly was my fault. I was the one who sent Payne on his murderous rampage. And that’s not all. I’ve let this whole thing get out of hand, you know, this precious service I provide. I’ve allowed these poor people to think that I’m something more than a man… that I’m some great healer sent down from the heavens to repair their crippled bodies. I let them believe that!”

Nurse Taylor regarded the doctor with an ache deep in the pit of her soul. She could remember a time, before the social and economic unrest, before the random nukes, when Hamilton Rourke had been considered an exceptional man by those around him. A great man, to be sure, but not some divine healer. He had been a respected surgeon and professor of anatomy at Rice University back then. All that changed, however, during a mass assassination attempt at an international medical symposium. Half of the great minds of the world had been mowed down by terrorist bullets. All died, except for Rourke. Only an experimental procedure known as “brain-grafting” could salvage his injured mind. A team of able surgeons had deftly joined Rourke’s cerebral cortex with the frontal lobe of the only available donor; a blue-collar welder who had perished from a fall off a five-story scaffold. Rourke’s recovery had gone slowly and, during that time, the world as he knew it crumbled in chaos and nuclear annihilation. Eventually he began to practice again in the ruins of Houston, but using a new kind of medicine from an entirely different perspective. The melding of the two minds – surgeon and arc welder – had brought about the development of the highly specialized procedure known as “flesh-welding”.

The doctor spoke, breaking Nurse Taylor’s train of thought. “You know, I’ve been seriously considering moving our operation elsewhere. It seems as though we have lost our purpose here in Texas. Maybe we should move on to the Southern states. There is much resistance in Florida and Georgia… many injured who could benefit from our knowledge. I hear that the South Americans are burning Atlanta… again.”

Taylor gave him a tired, little smile. “Anywhere you want to hang up your shingle is fine with me.”

The doctor capped the bottle of liquor and stared at the nurse with sad affection. “Louise… I don’t feel like I can make it through this night alone.”

“Neither can I,” she whispered. She removed her starched white cap, let her long dark hair fall to her shoulders, and came to him.

And, when they kissed, their tears mingled with a mutual bitter-sweetness.

~ * ~

A week had passed since the hellish assault on Ruin Town. After a grueling seven day session of mending and repairing Jeremiah Payne’s hideous handiwork, Rourke and Taylor had had enough. They were on the verge of packing their equipment and possessions, when the steel door reverberated with a furious pounding. It was Payne and his men and, from the ferocity of the commander’s swearing and threats, it sounded as though he was in great physical pain.

“Are you game for one final operation?” Rourke asked his assistant after the threat of blowing the door with C-4 had been issued.

The nurse was about to protest, but was silenced by a strange look in the doctor’s eyes. “What have you got in mind?”

“Just trust me.”

When the door was raised, Payne’s unit was in like a flash, faces mean and enraged, the ugly muzzles of their weapons covering the two. A couple of soldiers carried a bloody stretcher that bore the devastated remains of what had once been a human body. It was the agonized, but still living body of  General Jeremiah Payne.

“What happened to him?” the doctor asked indifferently.

“We were heading down to the southern limits,” said Colonel Walker, Payne’s right-hand man. “The Cubes and the SA’s are joining for a major offensive, planning to take Houston by storm. We were out recruiting manpower when the General’s jeep hit an IED. It killed the driver instantly and the General – well, he’s a real mess as you can see.”

Rourke crouched beside the stretcher, secretly gloating at the extent of the man’s injuries. The General had been literally blown in half, his intestines and abdominal organs hanging below the ribcage where his pelvis and legs should have been. The left arm had been torn away at the shoulder, leaving only the right one to grip the stretcher pole in white-knuckled agony. He checked Payne’s pulse. It was weakening by the moment, but perhaps there was still time to do something for him.

“Fix me up, Doc,” croaked the General through bloody lips. “My body, it’s all screwed up. You gotta give me a new one. You hear me? You’ve got to… or else my men have orders to kill you and your pretty nurse right here and now.”

“A head-to-torso graft is a very tricky procedure. I’m not sure I can pull it off successfully. Besides, due to your little show of authority last week, the body parts I have in stock are extremely limited as far as quality is concerned. I would have to make do with what I have handy.”

“Damn the quality! Just do it… fast!”

The General was carried into the operating room and laid upon the table. Nurse Taylor fired up the generator and Rourke began to gather his welding equipment.

“Walker! Get over here!” shouted Payne. The colonel approached his leader’s side. “I want the defensive to go on as planned. Take the unit down to the southern limits and really kick some ass!”

“But what about you?”

“Don’t worry.  Leave me Lackey over there, just to make sure things go straight with this body job the Doc’s going to give me. After the battle, come back for us. If there has been some foul play on the part of the good doctor here, then you have orders to terminate both him and his nurse. Got it?”

“Yes, sir!” Walker saluted and ordered the men to return to the convoy. The only one who remained was Private Lackey, a swaggering youth with a garish neon green mohawk, an Uzi, and a chest covered with stolen medals, one of them a five-pointed star proclaiming WACO SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT.

“No funny stuff now,” warned the soldier, snapping back the bolt of his submachine gun. “You fix up the General real nice and you’ll be just fine. Screw it up and I’ll grind you and Florence Nightingale into hamburger meat.”

As Rourke proceeded to administer the anesthesia, Payne glared up at him threateningly. “Do it right!”

“Don’t worry, General… I will.”

After the patient had slipped into a state of drug-induced slumber, Rourke turned to the young private. “Would you mind accompanying Nurse Taylor to the freezer? She will need some help carrying the replacements to the thaw bath for final preparation.”

Lackey shrugged. “Sure, I guess so.” He shouldered the Uzi and followed the nurse out of the operating room. Taylor pushed a gurney toward the deep-freeze and, after opening the heavy steel door, entered the dark interior. The soldier tagged along, his right hand resting on the butt of his holstered .45.

“There they are,” said the nurse, pointing. “On the shelves at the back wall.”

Lackey took a flashlight from his utility belt and walked to the rear of the freezer. Clouds of frosty breath billowed from his mouth and nostrils. When he reached the shelves, he studied the plastic-wrapped parcels in the pale beam of his light.

He turned, his mouth open, his brow creased in genuine puzzlement. He didn’t see the half-moon blade of the scalpel rising in Nurse Taylor’s hand, chromed and deadly. Neither did he feel the flesh of his throat part cleanly or the rasp of honed steel against his neck bone. All he saw was the shocking amount of blood that splattered across his shiny medals – before darkness swiftly overtook him.

~ * ~

“He’s coming to, Doctor.”

Payne began to open his eyes, then screwed them shut against the blazing brilliance of the overhead fluorescence. He laid there for a moment, gradually growing aware of nagging pain and discomfort. He tried to lift his head, but the numbing effect of the anesthesia made that simple action impossible.

“Lackey…” he whispered. His voice sounded slurred and muffled, as if his head was stuffed with thick wads of cotton. “Dammit, Lackey! Where are you?”

He received no answer, but could definitely detect the presence of two people in the room. Painfully, he again opened his eyes and squinted against the white glow. Doctor Rourke and his nurse stood to either side of the recovery table. They looked exhausted, their canvas gowns heavily stained with blood. Satisfaction crept through Payne’s sluggish thoughts. The grueling session of surgery had certainly left its mark on them.

“Well, Doc,” asked Payne, “was the operation a success?” He fought to break through the grogginess that weighed him down and slowly felt himself gaining ground.

“We did what had to be done.”

Payne felt his new limbs gradually begin to regain sensation. Throbs of dull agony flared at the joints where Rourke’s unique procedure had fused limbs to torso and torso to head. “Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

“I don’t believe you’ve grasped my full meaning,” Rourke told him

Payne stared at the two. Both merely stood there, looking at him peculiarly. A strange feeling hit him then, one he was more accustomed to dishing out than experiencing himself. A feeling of dark, gut-sinking dread. “I don’t follow you, Doc.”

Rourke regarded him for a long moment, his face emotionless. “We are both very powerful men, General Payne. You possess the qualities of leadership and military might, while I have the knowledge of science and medicine. Both are good things, precious things, when used within reason. But the abuse of either can destroy their practicality and lead to chaos. That is what has happened around us. That is why the great nations of this world have ground to a halt and the earth lies in ruin and decay.

“In the face of such a devastating situation, we were both given rare opportunities. Both of us were allowed to survive, whether by divine providence or sheer dumb luck, I have no idea. What it all boils down to is that civilization hit rock bottom and we were two out of a handful who had the abilities to make a significant difference. I have tried my best to do my part, to ease the suffering of the people of Ruin Town and offer them a semblance of hope for the future. You, on the other hand, have brought them only pain and despair. We have been caught up in a vicious cycle, you and I.  I put them together, you take them apart… the process is unending. And your crimes have not merely been physical in nature. Your burning hatred for those not of your race has become infamous. You and your men have stripped those poor people of any lingering trace of ethnic pride and replaced it with fear and doubt. You have gravely abused and misused them, turning them into targets for your bigotry and unwilling instruments for your own selfish gains. And I’m certain that you would have continued your vicious reign without the knowledge of how they suffered, without the opportunity of experiencing what they have endured – if that improvised explosive device had not twisted the course of events and brought you here to me today.”

“What are you trying to say?” growled Payne. His new heart pounded within his alien chest as he struggled to lift himself. His alarm was compounded when he felt the weakness and instability of his new limbs.

“What he is saying, General,” replied Nurse Taylor, “is that abuse begets abuse. That atrocity, by the willingness of its commitment, demands an equal share.” She turned to the physician. “Doctor, I believe we have some packing to do.”

The nurse could hear the distant staccato of artillery fire and knew that it would not last forever. After the battle had been fought, the victors would be arriving in search of their illustrious General. It would be best for her and her employer if they took their leave before the General was discovered.

Rourke nodded solemnly. “I have learned to live with your abuse for a very long time, General. Now you must learn to live with mine.”

As the two left the recovery room, confusion gripped the commanding officer. Frantically, he lifted himself on trembling arms, intent on demanding that Rourke explain himself. But the sight that suddenly confronted him brought stark reality crashing down upon him. He felt an uncontrollable surge of wild revulsion grip him, but this time it was not directed toward those at whom he had made a career of loathing. No, this time the powerful hatred was directed at his own, newly-constructed body.

For instead of the sturdy limbs of an adult male, the slender brown arms of a Mexican child supported him. The girlish nails were bitten to the quick and painted a brilliant pink. A choke of mounting terror rose in his throat as he examined the rest of his patchwork physique. The upper torso was undeniably male and muscular, yet it was the ebony hue of its black-skinned donor. Finally, as the crowning coupe de grace, the good doctor had supplied him with the lower torso and legs of a female, the reddish-bronze skin identifying it as that of an American Indian.

His screams of horror echoed throughout the cavernous warehouse, bouncing off steel and concrete walls, amplifying his emotion a hundredfold. They lingered briefly in the presence of the healers, then resumed alone as the heavy steel door rolled slowly closed.

Not Just Whistling Dixie

An Interview with Ronald Kelly

By Mark Hickerson

Ronald Kelly is back, folks, and he’s not just whistling “Dixie”. No, in fact, he’s bristling with new tales of Southern terror. After more than 10 years of silence from this master yarn-spinner, he’s back and hungrier than ever with several new projects in the wings. The first one is the chapbook you now hold in your hands, the first official release from Croatoan Publishing, who has even more frightening Kelly goodness coming soon. You don’t dare miss any of ‘em, as well as some other upcoming releases from other presses.

I first met Ronald Kelly in 1995, after a brief correspondence which began when I wrote him a fan letter. We only lived about an hour’s drive apart at the time, so we figured that we and our wives should get together. We did just that and thus began a strong and highly-valued friendship that has endured all of these years. Now, Carletta and I have a 10-year-old daughter, and Ron and Joyce have two daughters and a third child on the way. These days, we don’t get together nearly as much as we once did, or as much as we’d like to, but our clans still remain close and we constantly stay in touch.

I met Ron about the same time that the first leg of his literary career came to a close. You may remember the dreadful Horror crash of the mid-nineties. Ron was one of many casualties of this disaster. He even had a couple of novels slated to be released by his publisher, Zebra Books, a month or two after they decided to pull the plug on their horror line. This was devastating to Ron and Joyce, as well as Carletta and I, seeing as how Ron was dedicating one of those novels to us. Seriously, I felt terrible for him, but I also sensed that the days were numbered until he would arise from the ashes and soar back into the spotlight.

Like most people, I love being proven right, and the proof is in. Ron’s

name has been mentioned often on various message boards across the internet. There was no shortage of horror fans who wondered what had happened to this genuinely talented voice. These murmurs finally caught the ears of some small press publishers, and now we all have much to rejoice about. Ronald Kelly has, at long last, returned to the printed page.

Words fail me in expressing the pride and pleasure I felt when Ron requested that I conduct this interview. He told me that he wanted to pull out all of the stops, and really uncover the workings that make Ronald Kelly tick. We hope that all of your questions will be answered after you’ve read this.

Now, sit back, but don’t get too comfortable, and enjoy.

MH: First of all, it’s great to see you back behind the keyboard, Ron. I, myself have been hoping for your return for a very long time, and I know your many fans have as well.

RK: Thanks, Mark. It’s great to be back… thanks to you and other fans and friends who urged me to give this writing gig a second turn. So far, it’s really been an incredibly positive experience.

MH: Let’s start from the beginning. Was your interest in the macabre something that developed in your adult life, or did it stem from your childhood?

RK: You might say that I was born with it. My mother once told me that she read alot of horror comics during her pregnancy with me. My father was overseas in the Army and she was renting a little house in the town of Dickson, Tennessee. She discovered a whole stack of old EC horror comics in the attic… you know, Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear. She read them ravenously during the entire nine months she was expecting, so, unlike other babies, I reckon I developed under the influence of rotting corpses and flesh-eating monsters, instead of lullabies and nursery rhymes.

During my grade school years, I began to watch alot of horror and science fiction movies. After school, one of the local Nashville stations had a program called The Big Show, which showed every old Universal monster movie and scary B-movie ever filmed. Later on, when I was eleven or twelve, another station began a Saturday night creature feature hosted by a fella named Sir Cecil Creep, presenting more fearsome fodder for my young imagination. And, of course, I loved reading the horror comics… you know, House of Mystery, Swamp Thing, and Werewolf By Night. And then there were the Warren magazines, titles like Creepy, Eerie, and my favorite monster mag of all time, Famous Monsters of Filmland edited by Forrest J. Ackerman. I got the rare privilege of meeting Mr. Ackerman at one of the World Horror Conventions. It was one of the high-points of that weekend.

MH: So where did it lead to from there? I’ve heard that you were a pretty good artist back in high school. How did an interest in art change into a passion for writing?

RK: Yes, I had aspirations of becoming a comic book artist when I was a junior in high school. I collaborated with a guy named Lowell Cunningham, who just happened to create Men in Black years later. Small world, isn’t it?

Anyway, I drew the comics and he wrote them. Then I started creating my own superheroes and writing scripts of my own. I even submitted some work to DC Comics when I was a senior and got some encouraging feedback. Then I took a few Creative Writing classes and gradually gravitated toward fiction alone. By graduation, I’d been bitten by the writing bug and decided that was what I wanted to do for a living.

MH: Did it come easy to you?

RK: (Laughs) I had no earthly idea what I was getting myself into! Since I didn’t go to college, I worked in factories and welding shops, and wrote in my spare time. I wrote in every genre imaginable – mystery, suspense, and western mostly. I had a great interest in Civil War and Old West history back then and very seriously wanted to be a western writer in the vein of Louis La’mour or Zane Grey for two or three years. I reckon it was good practice. It gave me the opportunity to hone my writing skills and search for the genre that was right for me.

MH: And that turned out to be horror?

RK: Yeah, I guess I came full-circle and returned to what I loved when I was a kid. I started reading alot of horror fiction and buying some of the small press magazines that were plentiful in those days. I began writing and submitting short stories and it all just sort of clicked. At the same time I wrote my first novel, The Tobacco Barn, and had a New York agent sending it out to the mass market publishers. Apparently, he started with the letter A and went through the entire alphabet, because it ended up at Zebra Books, where it was picked up for publication and released as Hindsight in 1990. By then I’d had several short stories published in the small press.

MH: Who were some of the writers that inspired you during that time?

RK: Well, of course, Stephen King was probably my biggest influence. I cut my teeth on novels like Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and The Dead Zone. I also read some of the older masters of horror like Poe, Bierce, and Lovecraft. Richard Matheson was one of my favorites and remains to be a major inspiration. I was also heavily into authors like Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, and Joe R. Lansdale. One author that really did it for me, though, is Robert McCammon. His down-home style and use of Southern themes sort of mirrored the type of fiction that I hungered to write and told me that “Yes, it’s okay to write about the South and be proud of it”.

MH: I know you’ve told me many times that two of your major influences, both in your writing and in your personal life, were your mother and grandmother. Could you tell us why that is?

RK: Well, on a personal level, they were both excellent role models and, together, helped raise me into the person that I am today. I carry alot of them around inside me and a day never passes that I don’t apply something from my upbringing to my life. As far as being an influence in my interest in horror, both had a fascination and love for the strange and the bizarre. My mother loved to read both gothic and horror, although she only indulged in those genres toward the end of her life. She once told me that she refrained from reading alot of scary literature in her younger years because, back then, paperback books were considered “trashy”, which, of course, was a false misconception. I remember that she took me to quite a few horror movies when I was in my preteen years. Two that stood out was Let’s Scare Jessica to Death and House of Dark Shadows. I recall that during the latter film, she tried to cover my eyes with her hand because she hadn’t realized how gory the movie actually was. Here someone was staking Barnabas Collins in the heart and blood was gushing from his mouth and I was like “Come on, Mama, I want to see it all. It’s not gonna warp my brain or anything.” (Laughs) But, who knows… maybe I was wrong about that.

As far as my maternal grandmother is concerned, her love and proficiency for the art of storytelling has greatly influenced me in my writing. She could sit and tell story after story for hours on end and never repeat herself. Most were about her childhood and her life as a young adult, but the majority of her tales had bizarre and scary elements to them. She told me strange stories of the peculiar country folk she grew up with; how her childhood friend had fallen off a stone wall and into a thicket of ‘devil’s ear’ cactus and how that little girl had died after many days of suffering, when dozens of quills had slowly worked their way into her internal organs. She told me of a simple-minded boy who had been kept, naked and wild, in a cage by his parents for loss of anything better to do with him, and how he later grew up to roam the country roads carrying a pine casket across his back, always ready for his death and burial. She told me of haunted houses she had lived in or near, about a ghostly procession of Confederate calvary that passed regularly on a rural road in a town where she once lived. And she told me of Green Lee, a deranged handyman who terrorized the children of the farming camp she grew up in. A crazy individual with a fleshless crippled hand and a fetish for honed steel. It was that scary tale that lingered with me the most and still does after all these years. In fact, it inspired one of the creepiest stories I’ve ever written, “Midnight Grinding”.  So I reckon it isn’t all that strange that being exposed to such things at an early age would influence me to someday pursue a career in horror literature.

MH: So, in the late eighties and early nineties, you finally saw publication of your work. Out of curiosity, could you tell us about the feeling you had when your first piece of fiction was published? How about your first novel?

RK: Well, since I’d tried to break into publication for so many years, to finally sell that first short story was incredibly surreal, but satisfying. It was like “Wow, is this actually happening? Did this editor send me an acceptance letter instead of a rejection slip by mistake?” My first sell was a tale titled “Breakfast Serial” to a small press magazine called Terror Time Again. I think I got paid a whopping twenty buck for it. (Laughs)  Anyway, I remember it was a snowy afternoon in 1988 when I returned home from work – after driving several hours from Nashville in what seemed to be a blizzard – to find an envelope in my mailbox. It was my story in print! All my disgust and exhaustion from sitting in snowbound traffic that afternoon dissolved into elation. I’ll never forget it.

I felt the same feeling when my first novel, Hindsight, was accepted for publication. When my agent called me at work to tell me that Zebra wanted to publish it, I thought someone was pulling a cruel prank. I talked to the guy, then turned around and called back to New York to confirm that it was actually for real. I must admit, when Hindsight was finally released in early 1990, there was a bitter-sweet element to the entire experience. The novel was loosely based on my mother’s psychic experiences as a child growing up during the Great Depression. Sadly, she died after a courageous battle with cancer only a couple of months before Hindsight hit the bookstores. I urged her to read it before her death, but she was determined to read it as a published book. Her condition worsened, however, and she passed away in November of 1989. Hindsight came out in January of 1990 and I remember feeling a strange mixture of euphoria and profound grief at the same time; I didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad. My first published novel had come out, but the one I had written it for wasn’t there to enjoy it with me.

MH: After the release of Hindsight, your career took a sudden upswing. You were pretty active and well-respected in the horror community between 1990 and 1996. Could you tell us what you had going on at that time?

RK: That was an exciting period for me. I’d worked hard at reaching a stable point in my writing career and, for several years, everything seemed to go well. Along with Hindsight, Zebra published seven other novels: Pitfall, Something Out There, Moon of the Werewolf, Father’s Little Helper, The Possession, Fear, and Blood Kin. I had alot of short fiction appearing in the small press magazines and stories in major anthologies like Shock Rock and Hot Blood. And Spine-Tingling Press put out an audio collection of my short stories called Dark Dixie: Tales of Southern Horror, which was included on the nomination ballot for the 1992 Grammy Awards. So, during that seven year period, the ball was really rolling and I felt like I was accomplishing what I’d set out to do.

MH: Then, in 1996, the Horror market imploded, putting yourself and many of your peers literally out of business…

RK: You’ve got that right.

MH: I know how difficult a time that was for you, Ron. Would you mind sharing your feelings about those dark days?

RK: Well, I guess I was pretty naïve back in those days, because I was blindsided by the whole ordeal. Sure, there were rumors of mass market writers being blatantly cut from their publishing houses; writers who had been popular fixtures in the horror industry for years. There were also many publishers who were down-sizing and cutting their horror lines completely due to flagging sales and a downturn in consumer interest. Still, I just plugged along, thinking that I was okay, that it wouldn’t happen to me.

Then I got the call from my agent. It was October 8, 1996… funny, how I remember that date. Anyway, I had a couple of new novels scheduled for release and was awaiting news on a new three-book deal, when I was informed that Zebra had cut their horror line without prior warning. Not only was I suddenly out in the cold, so to speak, but they wouldn’t be publishing the two novels I’d already finished. He also gave me a piece of advice that I reckon I took way too much to heart. “From now on, write anything but Horror.” And, for a while, I tried that. But, hey, I was a horror writer. That was what I was good at and where my heart and soul was firmly entrenched. Oh, I tried my hand at other genres… children’s books and even romance novels… Heaven forbid! But nothing worked for me the way horror did and I simply couldn’t get published. And none of the mass market publishers were even considering taking on new authors at that point, particularly anyone with ties to horror. It was like I’d been black-listed or something.

I remember when it happened, Mark, you said that it felt, even to you, like there had been a death in the family. That’s exactly how it felt to me. My horror career had been a great love of mine and suddenly it was dead and buried. I grieved over that loss for a very long time and generated a genuine bitterness toward the publishing industry at that time. The way I’d been treated, I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone in the business during that period.

MH: So, at that point in time, you decided to put an end to it. You decided to stop writing completely?

RK:  Given my circumstances, I didn’t really see any other alternative. Here I had made writing a profession for nearly eight years and, suddenly, my full-time job was gone. I had no choice but to go back to work in the factories… the sort of work that I’d aspired to leave behind forever. I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with that sort of work, not by a long shot. Hard and honest work of any kind is honorable work, be it digging ditches or cleaning toilets. I reckon I’m just like anyone else… you simply aspire to do better in life, for yourself and for the sake of your family.

Anyway, I returned to the ol’ nine-to-five and put that lost career behind me. Joyce and I had been married for five or six years by then and we decided to raise a family. First we had our daughter, Reilly, then, in 2004, Makenna, who we affectionately call “Chigger”. Now we have another on the way, although we don’t yet know what gender it is. I’m hoping for a boy this time around, but if it’s a third girl, I’ll be just as happy. In that respect, I’d never trade that ten year period for anything in the world. The responsibility of being a father has proven to be one of the biggest blessings of my life.

During that time, however, my passion for writing dwindled down to nothing. For the most part, I thought any chance of making a comeback were non-existent. Sure, I considered it from time to time, but figured the effort of having to go back and start all over again simply wasn’t practical, especially as busy as I was working and raising a family. As you know, Mark, I pretty much distanced myself completely from anything related to horror at that time. I reckon it was kind of painful to deal with, seeing the genre move onward without me in the picture.

MH: Then came the summer of 2006. What happened that made you decide to return?

RK: You know, I can’t really say for sure. It all happened so suddenly and fell into place so perfectly, that I’m still a bit bumfuzzled by what took place. Personally, I believe the good Lord had a hand in it. It was like He said “Okay, I took it away for a while, so you could raise a family and get some things straight, and now I’m giving it back to you, with my blessings.”

At least, in my mind, that’s how it felt.

I reckon it started in July of last year. Of course, Mark, for years you’d been suggesting I make a comeback, although I pretty much said “No, that’ll never happen.” For your loyalty and tenacity in that respect, man, I’ll always be grateful. Anyway, you told me that a whole lot of folks had been discussing my novels on the internet message boards and wondering whatever happened to me. I remember feeling a glimmer of hope, that perhaps maybe there was a chance that no one had totally forgotten me or my work. Then things started moving at a mind-boggling pace. I showed interest in returning and things got stirred up on the McCammon board. Shoot-fire, I was totally out of the picture cyber-wise; I didn’t even own a computer at that time and was unaware of the impact the internet had. My good friend, Shannon Riley, way back from my small press days, contacted some of the leading small press publishers and they seemed very receptive toward the possibility of publishing my work again. I went out and bought a computer and, by the end of July, I was back behind the keyboard again. Before the next month had passed, I’d made a deal with Cemetery Dance for the publication of Hell Hollow and my first short story collection, Midnight Grinding & Other Twilight Terrors. Since that point, everything has been moving steadily forward. It’s just so weird how it all came about… not that I’m complaining, though. (Laughs)

MH: Did you have any concerns upon returning? After being away from the industry and the writing game for so long?

RK: Truthfully, Mark, it scared the living crap out of me! Here I’d decided to come back and committed myself to take up writing again, and I wasn’t even sure I could still do it or not. After all, I hadn’t actually written anything in ten years! I had some very strong doubts about whether I could write as clearly and effectively as I once did.

MH: So, how has the writing been going so far?

RK: Surprisingly, it’s been going wonderfully. I reckon it’s like riding a bicycle… you never forget. Actually, I believe I’m writing better than I did before, but I reckon I’ll let my fans be the judge of that.

MH: Have you found any disadvantages to making a sudden comeback? Advantages?

RK: Well, the biggest disadvantage when I first decided to come back was my total lack of new material. Oh, I had a few trunk stories, but very few

that I wanted dust off and put into circulation. But once I got back into the groove of writing, the ideas started coming, another thing I was initially worried about. Lately, they’ve been coming so fast, that I have to write them down to keep from forgetting them. I look forward to the day that I can devote myself to my writing full-time again, so I can complete all the projects that I have on the drawing board right now.

As far as advantages are concerned, I did come back with a previous body of work which was pretty extensive. The majority of folks who are reading horror today have never read any of my novels or short fiction, which makes it entirely fresh and new to them. That’s one reason my reprint projects with Croatoan have got me so excited. With great artwork and excellent design and production, my former work is being presented in a way that I only dreamed of when it was first published.

MH: I know that during your absence from the literary scene, you devoted your life to Christ. What effect does religion have on your writing now? Does it render some subjects taboo for you?

RK: During my childhood, I grew up in the church. My parents took me every time the doors were open, but I never actually made that soul-saving commitment to God. I returned to my religious roots around the time that my career went in the dumper and became a Christian. I believe my faith played a big part in erasing the bitterness I felt and helping me accept how things were progressing in my life at that time.

As for what effect religion has on my writing, I’ve always implemented a strong moral conscious in my fiction, particularly in my novels. After all, horror is the ultimate battle between good and evil, in my opinion.

As far as taboo subjects, I honestly came back to writing believing that I would write differently because of my faith. I thought “Well, I’m going to clean up my act and not do this and not do that.” But when I actually started to write again, I found that altering my work in such a way would only do an injustice to my fans and to myself as well. To create effective horror fiction, you must be realistic and brutally honest. To sanitize it is to bleed away its energy and impact.

I do exercise restraint in some aspects. I don’t use excessively vulgar language and refrain from using the Lord’s name in vain. I don’t feel that’s necessary to convey the emotions and dialogue that I use in my fiction. I do include mild sexual content sometimes, but nothing overly perverse.

MH: Personally, I feel more and more jaded as a reader when it comes to being genuinely frightened by horror fiction these days. I’ve heard from several others who have the same views. Is this true for you as well? How do you deal with that intangible when it comes to writing for an audience?

RK: Currently, I don’t feel that way when I read horror, mainly because I’ve had such a long vacation from the stuff that most of it seems fresh and effective to me. I did feel that way back in the mid-nineties, when the market had become so saturated that it seemed like most writers were just rehashing the same subjects and thrill points. I think that’s why horror has such a cruddy reputation sometimes. It is a genre that has to constantly deliver without letting up… and that’s difficult to do on a regular basis.

As for how I manage to write effectively, I try to approach every project more as a reader than a writer. I ask myself “What would I enjoy reading? What would scare me or make me uneasy? What sort of characters, locations, or situations would press my ‘fright buttons’? That’s where I tend to play the role of “storyteller”, rather than horror author. If you can spin a yarn effective enough to keep your readers enthralled, with characters they truly care for and creepy elements that they are normally unaccustomed to, then you have a better chance of providing them with a memorable novel or short story.

MH: What other genres do you enjoy reading? And are there other genres that you would like to try your hand at professionally?

RK: As I mentioned before, I’m a great fan of westerns. In fact, my first western novel, Timber Gray, will be released by Croatoan in the next year or so. Also I enjoy suspense and mystery. I’ve already got an unpublished mystery novel on my shelf that I’m considering submitting, but I’ll have to do a bit of research on potential publishers first.

MH: Upon returning to the horror fiction scene, what was your impression of its present state? Was it better or worse than when you left it? And are there any new writers that you enjoy reading?

RK:  The first impression I got of the genre when I came back was just how healthy it seemed to be. Back in the mid-nineties, the horror genre had an IV in one arm and one foot in the grave, or so it seemed. It was one sick puppy.

But, now, it appears to have survived and thrived. Also, back then, horror fiction seemed to be gravitating toward suspense-oriented stories, but now a renewed interest in the supernatural seems to have emerged, which is encouraging.

I admit when I decided to return, it sort of felt like I’d awakened from a coma. (Laughs) I mean, I hardly knew who anyone was in the industry. Some of my old pals were still around, but the majority of those working in horror today are new folks. I was extremely pleased to find some new talents that have really rocked the ol’ haunted house on its foundation. Brian Keene has made a huge splash and revived the zombie genre. And I was surprised to find great writers like James Newman, Jason Brannon, Scott Nicholson, and Deborah LeBlanc on the scene… all Southerners. Now ain’t that encouraging to an ol’ Dixiefied writer like myself?

Also, I was glad to find some really first-rate horror artists working on the scene, like Alex McVey and Zach McCain. It’s even more of a blast having them do work for my upcoming publications, both with Croatoan and Cemetery Dance. Alex’s work, in particular, seems to meld incredibly well with my prose. Like James Newman told me recently, our stuff goes together like “gravy and biscuits”… which is a Southern thing, if ya’ll don’t get it.

MH: If you could take only 10 novels with you to a desert island from which you could never leave, what would they be?

RK: Hmmm… good question. Let’s see, it’d probably be in this order:

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Stand by Stephen King, Boy’s Life by Robert R. McCammon, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Animosity by James Newman, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, The Magic Wagon by Joe R. Lansdale, Deliverance by James Dickey, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, The Dead Zone by Stephen King, and The Memory Tree by John R. Little. Yeah, I reckon that would do me just fine.

MH: Let’s talk about your past novels. Which one is your favorite of the bunch? How about your least favorite?

RK: My favorite, hands down, is Fear. That novel was a truly great experience for me. I mean, it was so fun to write and it flowed so effortlessly, which is rare during the course of such a lengthy novel. The characters seemed to write themselves, as far as motivation and dialogue is concerned, and it was incredibly satisfying as a horror writer to be able to inject as many nightmares into one book as I could muster. Also, I enjoyed setting the story in the post-World War II era, which was a departure for me. Just a very pleasant writing experience all around.

As for my least favorite, that would definitely be Father’s Little Helper. I started that novel out intending it to be one thing and it mutated into something else entirely. I didn’t intend for it to turn out to be as dark and violent as it did, but sometimes a piece of fiction does that during the course of its construction; it takes on a life of its own and oversteps the boundaries of your intended outline. That’s what FLH did. It kind of snickered at me and said “No, hoss, let’s do it my way. Let’s get a little nasty with this one.”

And that’s just the way it turned out. Oh, it’s a fine book, I reckon. Just not at the top of my list, that’s all. Also, I wasn’t all that thrilled with the title change Zebra gave it. It was originally called Twelve Gauge. Father’s Little Helper sounds like a children’s book, rather than a horror-suspense novel.

MH: I’ve noticed that not only do you like to set your stories in various Southern settings (mountains, small towns, swamps, etc.), but also in other eras in time. Do you do much research when you write in a timeframe other than present day?

RK: Strangely enough, no, I don’t. It’s always come naturally to me and I can’t really say why. I guess it goes back to all those stories that my grandmother and mother told me as a child. They talked about the times they grew up in with such detail and passion that it made me feel like I had actually lived in those times myself. I reckon I’ve carried that sense of alternate time around inside me to a point where I can write about other eras pretty accurately. It’s uncanny sometimes.

Of course, I used to be quite a scholar of Civil War and Old West history and that’s helped me tremendously when setting my tales in those eras. And, if I do need to do some research, I still have alot of reference works to refer to.

MH:  Who are some of your favorite characters that you’ve created?

RK: I’d say two of my favorite protagonists are Jeb Sweeny from Fear

and Cindy Ann Biggs from Hindsight. Both are kids and I believe horror

is most effective when experienced through the eyes of a child. Also, there is alot of myself, personally, in Jeb… alot of the way I thought and acted when I was growing up. And there is alot of my late mother in the character of Cindy Ann. Also, both Fear and Hindsight can be considered “coming-of-age” stories, which I love to write.

Other characters that I have a soft spot for are Bowie Kane from Pitfall and Boyd Andrews from Blood Kin. Both were men who fought the odds; men who had to rise above adversity and injustice to get the job done and fight the monster. And, in the end, they accomplished that.

One of my favorite protagonists was the Dark’Un in Something Out There, which was actually a monster itself. The bad guy in that story was man himself and his willingness to destroy the environment for his own selfish gain.

MH: How about favorite villains?

RK: As far as memorable antagonists, I’d say characters like Bully Hanson from Hindsight, Crom McManus in Undertaker’s Moon, and Grandpappy Craven in Blood Kin. If I can jump the gun a bit, I’d include Doctor Augustus Leech from my upcoming novel, Hell Hollow, since he is pretty much an earthly incarnation of the Devil himself.

As far as non-human villains go, I’d add the Tasmanian devils from Pitfall and the snake-dog critter from Fear to the list.

MH: Have you ever had a hard time writing a death scene for any of your characters?

RK: There have been several times when killing off a character was hard to do, mainly because I was emotionally attached to them,.. if that doesn’t sound too weird. After all, they are your creations and, in a literary sense, you are their parent.

Three stand out more than others. One was Johnny Biggs in Hindsight. Johnny’s murder, along with his two pals, was based on a true triple-murder that took place on my mother’s side of the family back in the 1930’s, so it actually had basis in fact. A couple of others were Tammy Craven and Caleb

Vanleer in Blood Kin, two main characters who didn’t survive the wrath of Grandpappy Craven.

One character that was particularly difficult to do away with was Roscoe Ledbetter in Fear, who was lynched by satanic klansmen. I reckon it was the

manner in which he was murdered that bothered me the most, although it was necessary for the sake of the plot. Sometimes you have to sacrifice valuable characters to send a storyline in the direction you want it to go. To refrain from doing so can upset the applecart, so to speak, and totally alter the outcome of the story that you have in mind.

MH: I know that you’ve written a sequel to your debut novel, Hindsight. Do you think there is any chance that we’ll see it published soon?

RK: I certainly hope so. I’ve currently got the sequel, Restless Shadows, circulating among the small press publishers. So far it’s been a hard row to hoe trying to get someone interested in the project. That’s probably because I’m insistent that both Hindsight and Restless Shadows be released together, either as two separate books or one volume containing both the original novel and its sequel. I know that’s a tall order to ask of any publisher, but it just seems like the right thing to do. Alot of new readers have never read Hindsight and, since it’s no longer in print, it just seems logical to re-release it along with the sequel, which takes place seventy years after the first story.

But I’m bound and determined to stick with my guns until I find someone who’s willing to take a chance on the project. I’ve got more patience now than I did ten years ago and I’m sure it’ll be well worth the wait, especially for my fans.

MH: Are there any of your other novels which you’ve considered writing sequels for?

RK: Yes, I’ve got ideas for sequels for Pitfall and Something Out There. I reckon some folks might wonder why I would want to continue storylines that I’ve already explored, but it has to do alot with the characters. If you develop characters that you really care about, you want their lives and adventures to continue. I’d really like to write a solid sequel to Blood Kin. I have a feeling there are still some nasty bloodsuckers hiding out, somewhere up there in the Smoky Mountains.

MH: Ron, you’ve had numerous short stories and novels published, but Flesh Welder is your first chapbook, isn’t it?

RK: You’re right, Mark. This is my first chapbook. I never had the opportunity to put one out during my first career, but then they seem to be more popular now than they were back then. And what a humdinger of a chapbook it’s turned out to be! I couldn’t be more pleased with the production and design, and the audio recording by Wayne June… well, I didn’t expect such an appealing package for my first publication since coming back. Flesh Welder is a story from years back, first published in Noctulpa: Journal of Horror in the early nineties, but the magazine had a very limited circulation and I wanted folks to have another chance to read it. It’s a tale of post-apocalyptic horror; a subject that is rarely explored these days.

Incidentally, re-releasing FW has primed my imagination and I’ve come up with a couple of post-nuclear novellas and three or four short stories which I may turn into a small collection sometime in the future. If it comes to pass, Zach McCain has agreed to do the cover artwork and interior illustrations, which would be terrific, since he did such a wonderful job with the Flesh Welder cover.

MH: I’ve known Steven Lloyd for awhile and I’ve always found him to be a solid, dependable guy with tons of enthusiasm for writing and publishing fiction. How have your experiences of working with him and Croatoan Publishing been so far?

RK: Lordy Mercy… it’s been first-rate from the beginning! I couldn’t be happier with my association with Steven and his new publishing venture. When I returned to writing, I genuinely hoped to find a publisher that was receptive to my work and the passion I have for telling my tales of Southern horror. I’ve found that respect and enthusiasm with Croatoan. Steven knows the business thoroughly enough to know his strengths and limitations, as well as what the reading public hungers for. I couldn’t be more pleased being connected with such a promising publishing house at this point in my career.

MH: As we wrap this up, Ron, could you tell us what we can expect from you in 2008? From what I understand, you have quite a few things lined up

for your fans.

RK: Oh, I’ve been pretty danged busy during the past year, that’s to be sure.

I’ve got several projects coming from Croatoan Publishing… the Flesh Welder chapbook that you hold in your hands, as well as the limited edition of Undertaker’s Moon, my novel of Irish werewolves in a small Tennessee town, which was formerly released under the title Moon of the Werewolf. It’s shaping up to be quite a volume, containing the original novel, a “behind the scenes” article on how I came up with the idea for the story, and an unpublished prequel novella titled The Spawn of Arget Bethir (The Silver Beast), as well as some other special features. The cover and interior illustrations will be provided by Alex McVey, which will undoubtedly make this one of the most unique werewolf editions ever published. I’m so stoked about this… and for good reason!

Also, I have several releases coming from Cemetery Dance Publications, namely my first unpublished novel in ten years, Hell Hollow, as well as my first full-fledged short story collection, Midnight Grinding & Other Twilight Terrors. I also have various short fiction and another chapbook or two coming out from other small press publishers.

MH: Then it looks like fans of Southern horror – and simply horror in general – have alot to look forward to. Thank for taking time to do this, bro. It’s been a blast.

RK: It’s been my pleasure, Mark. Thanks for picking my brains… just give ‘em back when you’re finished with ‘em, okay?

About the Author

After a ten year hiatus from the horror genre, Ronald Kelly returns with his distinctive brand of Southern horror fiction. He is the author of such novels as Hindsight, Pitfall, Something Out There, Father’s Little Helper, The Possession, Fear, and Blood Kin. He has penned over a hundred short stories, many appearing in major anthologies like Borderlands, Shock Rock, Dark at Heart, and Hot Blood. His audio collection, Dark Dixie: Tales of Southern Horror was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1992 for Best Spoken or Non-Musical Recording. His first short story collection, Midnight Grinding & Other Twilight Terrors, was published by Cemetery Dance Publications in 2009. His upcoming publications include Undertaker’s Moon, Hell Hollow, and the Essential Ronald Kelly Collection.

He lives in Brush Creek, Tennessee with his wife, Joyce, and three young’uns, Reilly, Makenna, and Ryan.

You can check out his website of Southern-Fried Horror at http://www.ronaldkelly.com.