Futile Efforts Read Online Free PDF Page B

eventually find you.   Ophelia sits next to me, whispering her encouragement and gratitude.
    Of all of us, I'm still the quietest one.

Introduction for "Voice C"
     
    By Edward Lee
     
    T om Pic is one of my most vital friends in this bizarre professional coterie known as the "horror" genre. But that friendship didn't come first. Personally, I didn't know Tom from Adam when I began reading him, but I sure as shit DID know his name as a writer. Over ten years ago, his stuff was all over the place, and he was one of the few writers I DIDN'T know personally whose fiction I'd always pursue. Why? Because it kicked ass. It wasn't just good, it was extraordinary good, a benchmark for the genre. Tremendous short stories that rose up above most of the field's material, novels that stepped out in ways that made me jealous, and poetry so good it makes me want to throw in the towel. The oddest thing is the fact that I’m friends with this paramount writer––it just seems weird to read his outstanding work or simply see it on the stands, and then realize, "Wait a minute––I KNOW this guy!" Read this to believe him. Everything Pic writes makes me feel honored to exist in the same field with him.
    In this day and age, America loves buzzwords and acronyms, and today the business in question is called "EVP" which, if you watch Sci-Fi Channel, you know stands for electronic voice phenomena. It used to be called "remote recording," however, and it's been around for a long time. Sort of like the Atkins Diet...Anyway, it's kind of a big deal now, popping up on all these new ghost-hunter shows and Hollywood extravaganzas like WHITE NOISE. Tom Piccirilli was kind enough to include a selection of my verse in his poetry anthology THE DEVIL'S WINE, and one of my pieces wasn't a poem at all but an oddment of sorts that I thought appropriate, called "Four Female Voices in an Empty Room."   It's merely a transcription of a remote recording––an EVP––that I made with some friends on, of all nights, the Eve of Beltane (April 30, 1981), at a house in Maryland that was supposedly haunted. To me, though, there's no "supposedly" about it. The place is haunted. Period.
    I won't say the name of the house because that would be potentially libelous; it still stands and is now a recreation center at a very upscale and high-buck residential community in Maryland. (Yeah, that would really do wonders for the property values, huh? "Who's this fucking horror writer who just defamed our beautiful rec center? Sue him!") To make a long story short, my "poem" is true. It really happened, and those voices really were recorded. I was the night watchman for this rec center; hence, I had full access, and on the given night in 1981, I let my friends in, then we began our little ghost-hunt. It was me and another guy and two girls. (The "house," by the way, wasn't really a house; it was a big-ass mansion––which I borrowed from in my novels THE CHOSEN and FLESH GOTHIC.
    Seriously, the place looked like the joint in HELL HOUSE: sprawling, garrets, high arched doorways, narrow windows, and old brick walls with ivy growing in the seams. Cool. I’m not sure what it used to be, but I think it was some sort of seminary or religious school.) Back to the story: my friends and I brought three tape recorders. Two were cassettes and one was a big reel to reel with, like, four hours of tape on it. Were merely placed the recorders in strategic locations, turned them on, and retreated to a back room and fooled around with an Ouija Board for a few hours. (The mystical oracle yielded no results.) Then, later on, we collected the tapes and recorders and left the house. The reel to reel and one of the cassettes had absolutely nothing on them but the second cassette did indeed record some voices. These are the voices in my poem, and one of them, the one we labeled "Voice C," is what gave Tom the idea for his excellent story. It was a wan female voice that sounded distant yet