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Hoaxbreaker

by S.J. Byrne

217 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0717; ISBN 1-4120-0348-2; US$22.00, C$26.00, EUR18.00, £12.50

A twisted genius plays Satan but is opposed by a master hoax-breaker in a black magic gamut of horror that unexpectedly runs into the real thing . . .

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She only noted that Karl had lowered his rifle and was staring southward, and then she ran, snatching up her robe as she rushed to the bedroom door. She was hardly conscious of running down the stairs and through the great hall to the open entrance. When she reached the veranda she saw the immediate crowd surrounding Rocky and Ella and heard their shouts to Karl.

"She must have fallen off the bluff!"

"No wonder we couldn't find her!"

"But did somebody push her off? - that's what the police aregoing to find out!"

Red lights from several police cars were now visible across the meadow, emerging from the forest.

"We came to tell you!" shouted Rocky. "Ernst and some of the hippies found her down in the creek!"

Karl ignored them all and started toward the approaching rescue group, followed by Rocky. Bea moved forward, but was suddenly stopped by Ella, who put her arms around her and held her.

"Bea, don't go!" she said. "You belong in bed! We got through to Cassman last night, and Rocky organized a search party!"

She was only aware of pushing away from Ella and following the crowd toward the approaching group, trying to disregard yet hearing the voices around her.

"Well, at least the sheriff's coming!"

"He can't fight the devil!"

"Now it's two deaths in a week up here. The place is cursed, all right!"

She sensed that Ella was close beside her, pleading with her to turn back. But now ahead she recognized the tall, gaunt figure of Ernst, who carried a woman's body in his arms. For some reason, Cathy's face was covered with somebody's bloodied T-shirt. She pushed forward, psychotically impelled to see her aunt's body. The siren sounds behind her were subsiding as the police drew near. The crowd voices were all around her.

"Took all night to find her!"

"That's one body, but where is Lisa Schonau?"

"It's demon's work, I tell you!"

She even overheard Rocky explaining to Karl that Ernst must have gone out looking for her on his own. When she was close, and Ernst seemed to be signalling a warning to her, Ella grasped her in desperation.

"Honey, you're in no condition - "

Somebody said, "Her face was in the creek all night, crushed by her fall from the bluff!"

Ernst was bareheaded, weary, breathing hard, sweating, his awful facial disfigurement gleaming in the light of the rising sun. He came to a stop, facing Karl and Rocky, but his worried look was focused on Bea as she came pushing through in spite of Ella.

Somebody else warned her. "You won't like it, Miss!"

And Ernst pleaded, "Madchen, bitte! Don't look at her!"

Before anyone could stop her, she pulled away the T-shirt, just as somebody said, "The crabs got to her face!"

All she could recognize of the body was Catherine's torn clothing, and her water-soaked auburn hair. The face was gone . . . . .

About the Book During some decades of writing science-fiction, especially in what I prefer to call the "Roaring Fifties" (Prometheus II, Colossus, The Golden Guardsmen, The Naked Goddess, Power Metal, etc.), by chance I also wandered into the related but separate genre of fantasy. The editor of Amazing Stories gave me a house pen name, John Bloodstone, to ghost write a feature story to go with an art cover (Land Beyond the Lens). To his chagrin, this led to a reader demand for a sequel, and still more. All of which gave birth to the fairly famous "Flannigan Trilogy," but this event also served to flesh out the ersatz identity of Bloodstone, which developed its own following (The Golden Gods, Last Days of Thronas, Thundar, etc.). During the Sixties and Seventies I was getting into the Hollywood scene and garnering a few small TV and screen credits, with plenty of near misses on major script sales. But I was also getting serious about the actual art of writing, in fact dabbling with the idea of teaching writing, since I did have my UCLA M.A. and teaching credentials. In fact there were times when my services were sought for script doctoring, since I had had extensive tutoring in story structure and dramatization. Meanwhile, I had been watching the meteoric rise of a close friend of mine (Robert Bloch) in the genre of gothic horror mysteries (Psycho), and the burgeoning triumphs of Steven King. So I came to wondering - might a science-fiction/ fantasy writer accept the challenge of yet another genre? Aside from any considerations of possible profit (if any), what intrigued me as a wannabe teacher of writing was the challenge itself. Were the sacred principles of plot and story structure reliably applicable to any genre? Moreover, there was a further challenge here on the subject of P.O.V. (point-of-view). The catechism of fiction writing was to avoid the omniscient style, wherein the author tells the reader what is happening. To provide the reader with a vicarious experience, a story - particularly a suspense mystery - must be told very strictly from the main character's P.O.V. If other characters experience separate events, all P.O.V.s must be consistent throughout (i.e., the author must absent himself or herself as much as possible). To add extra weight to the challenge, could a male writer adequately handle a female P.O.V.? As a result of all this premeditation, the first experiment in modern gothic horror suspense came out as The Visitation, using the female pen name, Rothayne Amare (Major Books, 1977). During my "Show Biz" days (Jaffe Agency, and several years in association with Robert Cohen of Columbia Studios), I began to see the TV and motion-picture potentials of the story - but all those sancrosanct top studio story chiefs almost invariably wanted to see a bestselling novel before considering a production script. So I decided to prepare both packages -the updated and revised gothic novel, now titled HOAXBREAKER, and a two-segment TV mini-series script of same title. What you have in hand is the product of a deliberate story experiment, both in terms of genre, and the female P.O.V. More than this, what was included in the experiment was a test of an ageless principle which was best defined by the inimitable Joseph Campbell in his The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The archetype story involves the classical hero of all legends -the champion who accepts the challenge of entering the "region of dread," but with a secret talisman or charm to defend against the "dragon." This, coupled with the mandatory basic elements of plot (story plant, pit of despond, surprise twist, etc.), seems to complete the requirements for a valid mystery suspense story. As to the horror part, certain of the demonology sources have warned that an actual practice of the rituals here depicted "might not be without practical results." In other words, "Don't try this at home!" Meanwhile, I trust that some of you will fall in love with our haunted heroine, Beatrice - as I did ... -S.J.Byrne (AKA John Bloodstone, Rothayne Amare, et al) May, 2003

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About the Author

Stuart J. Byrne (AKA John Bloodstone) was born before World War I and lays claim to being an eye witness to the 20th century. Indeed, it appears that he would need a near millennium to encompass the virtual kaleidoscope of events and life experiences that colored his variegated career. Therefore we feel that, as a former National Executive VP of Science-Fantasy Writers of America and author of numerous science-fiction and fantasy tales, Stu Byrne is best qualified to tell his own story, which is fantasy enough in itself:

What may help to explain some of this is the fact that at the age of three I was struck on the head by a falling brass flower pot. Maybe you can figure out the rest of it (I'm not sure I can!)

As a Scotch-Irish French Norwegian, I was born before World War I in the neutral German-Swede country of Minnesota (St. Paul), which branded me as a WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) - although I turned out to be a maverick. Knowing nothing about triskaidekaphobia, I was incautious enough to be born in 1913, thus bringing upon the world the witches' brew of war politics in the Balkans, and the back room machinations of certain gentlemen in midnight session in Washington who thrust the 16th amendment upon an unsuspecting populance.

Whether I deserved it or not, I enjoyed a blissful childhood among Minnesota's 10,000 lakes. I was a tanned waterbug under the enchantment of those boyhood forever days of summer. My only recollection of the first war was the shattering discovery at the horse-drawn popcorn wagon that a big slab of apple pie, a la mode, was no longer a nickel! (War inflation had upped it to 7 cents.) What I'm pointing out here is that I did come in at the beginning of things, because over these 89 years I was priveleged to embrace the gamut of changes and discoveries which transformed the world of Yesterday into Tomorrow. I was in there early enough to see magic lantern slides instead of movies, to watch the little man in the black suit climb his ladder to light our gas lamp out front, and in the early twenties I was excited by awed whisperings about a thing called radio! Then came the talkies, radar, television, computers, nuclear power, satellites, moon walks, ice cubes, hula hoops, seran wrap, and the Internet. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Dreams and imagination. My father read me Grimm's Fairytales, and I graduated solo into Alice in Wonderland, and to L.Frank Baum's marvelous tales of Oz. Which led to the Rover Boys and the Boy Allies and finally to a schism - between Gernsback science-fiction and the life-changing impact of the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. By the time I moved to California at the impressionable age of twelve, my eyes felt as big as the Rockies. I was Tarzan and John Carter (if not also Doc Savage, Hairsbreadth Harry, and the Green Hornet) all rolled into one, ready to take on the world. (The Gray Lensman and Prince Valiant also came to claim a piece of my psyche.) I was victim and product of the impossible (?) idealism of those never-to-beforgotten halcyon days. (I came to call them the sunlit yesteryears.)

So as a starry-eyed country bumpkin I came to sudden new horizons, vision-blinded by the soaring Sierra Nevadas, miles of gleaming orange trees, and early access into the silent film studios (remembering especially Mary Pickford patting me on the head! - 1926). In my earliest teens, thanks to science-fiction, I was so deep into astronomy that a buddy and I had access to the old Clark observatory on West Adams, and many a summer night (after visiting hours) were spent in awe out there in the Pleiades and the great Orion Nebula, or surfing the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. In fact at fifteen I ground a 4-inch parabolic mirror for my amateur telescope.

The depression years brought me certain blessings, such as a lifetime wife (Joey), two beautiful children, and an M.A. and teaching credentials from UCLA. Then came WW II and I went into aerospace and tech training (computerology and some programming - in the days of radio-tube bistable multivibrators, punched cards, wireboarding, and octal/hexadecimal inputs), all culminating in 7 years abroad - 5 years in South America, 2 1/2 years on Guam, trips to Belgium and Germany (NATO bases), mostly in international management (airlines, procurement) due to my German, Spanish, and fractured French. I gave 18 years of my life to Litton Data Systems, partly as administrative assistant in Operations, but mostly as Principal Engineering Writer on major weapons systems for the Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force.

All the while, Tarzan was my role model, and I was fairly athletic, finally winning an intercollegiate West Coast Senior AAU gymnastic championship, and there were also those years on Guam, scuba diving and getting some experience in shark psychology (not recommended as a community hobby!) Strangely, I ended up residing 14 years in Tarzana, almost within walking distance of the famous ERB landmark on Ventura Boulevard.

But that's only one side of the story. I was always drawn to the mysterious and mystical elements in fantasy fiction (Abraham Merritt, Rider Haggard, etc.) - and indubitably the unresolved mystery of La of Opar an Issus of Barsoom had to be tied together. (How I came to write Tarzan on Mars - a 40-year "collector's item" in the ERB underground - is related in the intro to my John Bloodstone book, Thundar - Man of Two Worlds.) I lived the fantasies and probably became a part of them, as events developed. I fellowshipped in Lima (Peru) with Thor Hyerdahl when he was building his Kontiki raft in Callao.

I had explored Inca country in the Andes, covered a lot of Daenikin territory, and had interested Hyerdahl because I was the only one around who had read all the volumes of Inca Garcilasso de la Vega's Comentarios Reales (Royal Commentaries) in the archaic Spanish, before the Catholic Church allowed a modern version. (Too much to tell!) A near death experience got me into scientific astrology and I became a hosted-in member of the AFA.

But this led onward into metaphysics, culminating 30 years later in a Doctorate in Metaphysical Science. I had gone through everything that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had to teach about TM, went through the training of Paramahansa Yogananda's Fellowship, absorbed everything the authentic Rosicrucians of Mt. Ecclesia had to offer, became a 2nd Degree Lama Yoga in the 5000-year-old Astarian Brotherhood, spent 8 years with the Builders of the Adytum (B.O.T.A.) in Western Hebraic kabalism and alchemy, then discovered the whole Esoteric Tradition (Secret Doctrine) of the theosophists - ending in a 3-volume world concordance of the main streams of esoteric knowledge (my A.N.S.W.E.R. Series - Alliance of New Seekers of Wisdom, Ethics, and Reason).

It went on and on. Allegorically, I have disguised the buildup of my Star Man series stellar empire expansions using what I learned to be actual (but unmentionable) structures and hierarchies of the universe - so Masters, Adepts and demigods were masked as World Watchers, Star Wardens, Overlords of the Nebula, etc.

Well, somebody opened my chatter box, and I'd better quit before this really gets started, because the whole subject takes off into Infinity (and we might get lost - which is where I probably am today!)

Whether or not this last statement might prove to be prophetic may one day be decided by readers of Byrne's major non-fiction work, now long in progress, entitled Truth Shock - A Millennium Challenge. In this project he invites the scientific community to join him in probing the "nature and purpose of Man and the Universe." (We rest our case!)