Fornax Halloween 2019

Formax - Halloween Special Issue 2019 Fornax is a fanzine devoted to history, science fiction & gaming as well as other areas where the editor's curiosity goes. It is edited/published by Charles Rector. In the grand tradition of fanzines, it is mostly written by the editor. This is the Halloween Special Issue 2019, published October 2019. If you want to write for Fornax, please send email submissions to crectorATgmxDOTcom, with a maximum length of 20,000 words. For now, the same length requirement applies to fiction submissions as well. No poetry or artwork please. Any text format is fine. The same goes if you want to submit your work in the form of text in the email or as an attachment. There is no payment other than the exposure that you will get as a writer. Of course, Letters of Comment are always welcome. Material not written or produced by the Editor/Publisher is printed by permission of the various writers and artists and is copyright by them and remains their sole property and reverts to them after publication. If you want to read more by the editor/publisher, then point your browser to: http://omgn.com/blog/cjrector. FICTION – Short Story The Thing Which Fell From The Heavens by Gerd Maximovič (Translation: Isabel Cole) It was on the 25th of April of the year 1502, near Lorsch on the Rhine, that a curious apparition fell from the heavens. Peasants who had been working in the fields told of a strange blue radiance which appeared in the cloudless sky. The peasant Söderlin related that the blue star had seemed to him like the halo of the Virgin Mary on the high alter of Iffezheim. Another peasant said that the radiance had rapidly grown in intensity and magnitude, and that - and this was the only reason they had noticed it - it had been accompanied by a shrill, whistling noise. The statements, which the Mayor of Lorsch noted, also agreed consistently that for a time, as the radiance had still been at a great height, a veil, pale red, as if burning, had hung about it, trailing away behind like that of the star of Bethlehem. The apparition had fallen to the earth, far from the observers - they had been scattered within a radius of several hours - in a grove which belonged to the possessions of the Castle Herrenhausen. At the moment when the apparition fell, Peter Schmidt, a swineherd, had been with his herd at the edge of the grove, dozing instead of attending to his charges. He was woken by the roaring which hung in the air, then by the din which the thing sent before it; at last, he had fled before the light and the grinding noise of toppling trees. It was some time - for he was extremely excited and out of breath - after his ears had been boxed more than once for the neglect of his duties, before the people in the farmstead where he had fled understood his initially confused story. Then a troop of serfs and maids armed with scythes and cudgels set forth, promising that, if the swineherd were merely telling a story, as he had done once before, there would not be much left when they were finished with him. The place where the apparition had landed could be seen even from the meadow which ran up to the grove. The trees which, shortly before, had stood on the summit were toppled far in every direction. Through the remaining trunks which raised their naked, black arms into the air, an enormous breach could be seen, a thin black column of smoke rising over it. Even below the summit, there was a smell of burning, and some already knew, as one could later hear in the village inn, that the smell of sulfur had come from the grove. The miller of Brand, known as the bravest serf in the entire region, was the first to enter the grove. He made his way with some difficulty, for the trees toppled by the apparition had fallen every which way. As he climbed over the last trunks and stepped out into a wide, bald, black-charred space, he glimpsed, at the center of the hill's summit, a brown damp crater whose inner rim gleamed as if glazed green. Boldly, now that the rest of the serfs had approached, seeing the miller of Brand before them, he stepped up to the rim of the crater. Here the stench which hung over the hill was so powerful that the bold serf first took the tail of his tunic as a handkerchief. After wiping his eyes, he looked down into the crater, which reached perhaps ten yards into the earth. Its walls were dark green and black and as if made of glass. But it was not this wonder which made the miller of Brand catch his breath. It was the thing which he glimpsed at the bottom of the crater. At first, the miller of Brand thought what had fallen into the wood was only an intense blue radiance. But then, as he stared down for a while in silence, and the serfs joined him, one after the other, the powerful blue glow began to fade, revealing a brown figure which seemed covered by a milky bell, at first lying completely motionless below, its surface, covered with great cracks and pores, twitching only occasionally. To the miller of Brand, it seemed that the surface of the thing consisted of a kind of leather, like that which one could see in its raw state in the tannery of the nearby town. Lore, a bold maid, picked up a piece of charred wood from the ground and threw it into the crater at the brown thing. In the same moment, the serfs and maids who stood around the rim of the crater jumped back, for the thing in the hole had begun to move. It seemed that an itch was crossing its leather skin, beginning where its head must have been and ending in back, and making it turn slowly in the hole. At the same time a high, scratchy sound emerged from the hole, so unarticulated, however, that one could not have called it speech. Again, the thing in the crater moved, this time, as it seemed, upward. Now they could clearly see how it floundered in its hole, which left it little room to maneuver, could see it move back and forth as its skin twitched, and, as it clung to the walls of the crater and grew longer and longer, the last of the blue radiance which had just surrounded it faded. Again, the onlookers, grown uneasy, heard the shrill sound which rose into the still, silent forest. Although it was a fair, warm April day, some now seemed to shiver. The swineherd was the first to leave the crater, saying that the pigs were now scattered far and wide and that if he did not see to them soon, they would begin to ravage others' land. Striezel, visiting from Saxony, retreated, shaking his head and remarking that there was nothing of this kind in his homeland. A maid declared under her breath that the Devil had fallen from the sky and that he could only be gotten the better off with holy water, which she would fetch from the village church when she warned the pastor. At last a servant from the castle, Jörg Ratgeb, withdrew with the remark that this was a matter for the squire. In the end, the miller of Brand was left alone with his courage and the thing. At Castle Herrenhausen the servant was met with curses and kicks. Hardly had he stepped through the gate into the inner courtyard, where two lounging knights began to thrash him, when the lord of the castle, Squire Tobias, alerted by a commotion unusual at this hour, appeared at the window of the great banqueting-hall, his face flushed with wine, and looked down at the scene which was playing itself out for the edification of the menials gathered around Ratgeb. What was going on, the squire called down into the courtyard in a loud voice, and in the windows alongside him appeared several gentlemen with whom he had been holding the midday meal. How did he come to leave his work; to bring Jörg Ratgeb, whose name he knew as that of one of the most refractory servants, back to work he would have to loose the dogs upon him, which indeed, circling Ratgeb with growls and whimpers, had to be restrained by one of the knights. It was some time before Jörg Ratgeb could make himself understood to the drunken servants. At first, he reaped mockery and further kicks, but as he continued to insist on his story so stubbornly, the squire, who had helped himself to the wine-jug more than once, grew thoughtful. And from the side windows came the voices of several gentlemen, saying that they had had enough fun with Jörg Ratgeb now, and that, as he was unwilling to yield, there might become truth in his story. The squire said: "If you're lying, I'll have you beaten to a jelly!" At the prompting of drink and mood the knights galloped straight across the fields, trampled the first sprouting seeds and were unable to compose themselves until they saw the wood before them, where the trees reared up like spears. At the edge of the grove, beneath the hill, they dismounted from their horses and climbed over the fallen trunks.

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