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halfway out of it, he stopped movin ' and just hung there. I realized somethin' then. It was not only created by the garbage and the heat—it lived off of it, and whatever became its food became a part of it. That puppy and old Pearly were now a part of it.
    Now don't misunderstand me. Pearly, he didn't know nothin' about it. He was alive, in a fashion, he moved and squirmed, but like that puppy, he no longer thought. He was just a hair on that thing's body. Same as the lumber and wire and such that stuck out of it.
    And the beast—well, it wasn't too hard to tame. I named it Otto. It ain't no trouble at all. Gettin' so it don't come when I call, but that's on account of I ain't had nothin' to reward it with, until you showed up. Before that, I had to kind of help it root dead critters out of the heaps . . . Sit down! I've got Pearly's thirty-two here, and if you move I'll plug you.
    Oh, here comes Otto now.

Author's Note on Fish Night
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    "F ish Night" has echoes of Bradbury, but it was the first story I ever wrote that struck me as a complete story in the way I wanted to write a story. It had the obligatory twist ending, as many horror stories had, but it had a thematic depth and point to it that my work before had not possessed. It had more than one layer. It was evenly written. It had some style, if it was slightly borrowed in that department.
    I moved on rapidly from that story, began to write a series of stories that had more texture, and eventually my own style jumped out. It really didn't have far to jump. It had been there all the time. I just didn't know it. I moved out of the California school of horror (Bradbury, Nolan, Matheson, etc.) shortly after this story, and into the Lansdale school of . . . well, of whatever. But this story, at least in my mind, is one of the more pivotal stories in my career.
    It is a favorite of many readers. It was filmed once by the university here in Nacogdoches, but never edited to completion. It was optioned for a short film for a while, but nothing came of that either. It still gets reprinted quite a lot. Here, and abroad.
    It was inspired by a fish mobile my wife had. I fell asleep on the couch, where I could see it hanging, and when I woke up, I had dreamed this story. I was geared to write a story, and was subconsciously looking for ideas. Bill Pronzini was doing an anthology called Specter! and he wanted something from me. I decided to attack the ghost idea from a different angle.
    I hope you like reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It was written quickly, and came out pretty much as I envisioned. It's nice when that happens.
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Fish Night
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    I t was a bleached-bone afternoon with a cloudless sky and a monstrous sun. The air trembled like a mass of gelatinous ectoplasm. No wind blew.
    Through the swelter came a worn, black Plymouth, coughing and belching white smoke from beneath its hood. It wheezed twice, backfired loudly, died by the side of the road.
    The driver got out and went around to the hood. He was a man in the hard winter years of life, with dead, brown hair and a heavy belly riding his hips. His shirt was open to the navel, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. The hair on his chest and arms was gray.
    A younger man climbed out on the passenger side, went around front too. Yellow sweat-explosions stained the pits of his white shirt. An unfastened, striped tie was draped over his neck like a pet snake that had died in its sleep.
    "Well?" the younger man asked.
    The old man said nothing. He opened the hood. A calliope note of steam blew out from the radiator in a white puff, rose to the sky, turned clear.
    "Damn," the old man said, and he kicked the bumper of the Plymouth as if he were kicking a foe in the teeth. He got little satisfaction out of the action, just a nasty scuff on his brown wingtip and a jar to his ankle that hurt like hell.
    "Well?" the young man repeated.
    "Well what? What do you think? Dead as the can-opener trade