Thu 16 Jun 2016
JONATHAN LEWIS: Stories I’m Reading — ROBERT WEINBERG “Three Steps Back.”
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[4] Comments
ROBERT WEINBERG “Three Steps Back.” First appearance: Dial Your Dreams & Other Nightmares, DarkTales Publications, softcover, August 2001.
If you were to ask me for an example of a solidly constructed horror story that doesn’t touch upon the mystical, the supernatural, or the weird, Robert Weinberg’s “Three Steps Back†would immediately come to mind. Originally published in Dial Your Dreams, a collection of Weinberg’s short stories, the tale can be found within a sub-section of the collection simply entitled, “Nightmares,” in which Weinberg contends that he “always felt the most frightening horror stories are those that don’t feature any element of the supernatural … The real horrors of the world surround us.â€
Set on a university campus, the plot of “Three Steps Back†revolves around the desire of a graduate student by the name of Jake Edwards to unravel the mystery of the Gray Ghost of Illinois University. But the ghost in question here isn’t a supernatural entity. No, he’s just an older man with an extremely bizarre habit: he doesn’t seem to want anyone to be behind him. It’s as if he fears some sort of presence behind him.
Soon Jake comes to realize that the Gray Ghost is all-too-human. He’s a veteran named Chet Williams who has a severe case of what we now call PTSD. Williams’s fear of people lurking behind him, as it turns out, stems from a particularly heinous experience in a Viet Cong POW camp.
But that can’t the extent of the story, now can it? Weinberg skillfully builds the suspense, raising it up a notch until the ultimate revelation. As he so rightly notes in his introduction, horror doesn’t need to be supernatural to be mightily effective.
June 16th, 2016 at 9:08 pm
Illinois University? Was the writer referring to Illinois State or the University of Illinois (ISU actually has its own ghost)?
June 16th, 2016 at 10:44 pm
Bob is not only one of the foremost experts on supernatural fiction and fantasy and one of the great booksellers in all genre fiction, he is a talented writer of the stuff who manages to be thoroughly modern while still echoing the best of the pulp era.
His novels and short fiction are all well worth a read, and his non fiction writing extremely informative on the genre.
I recommend to anyone the intros and afterwards he wrote for Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin stories from WEIRD TALES when they were collected in six paperback volumes. In addition he is a fine editor in the field as well.
A Robert Weinberg catalogue was always something to celebrate.
June 17th, 2016 at 12:26 am
I believe Illinois University may have been fictional stand-in for University of Illinois-Chicago or University of Chicago given how there is a brutal would-be mugging in the story which seems to be an inner city type of situation.
June 17th, 2016 at 12:49 am
David
All the things you say about Bob as a writer are true, and even more so as an anthologist. And how I miss those days when the monthly Weinberg catalog came in the mail. Long before the Internet, there was absolutely no other way I could have have purchased the tons of stuff I did.