What do you know about vision? What do you know about empathy? What do you know about innovation? And, most importantly, what do you know about job creation? I would reckon that you know nothing about any of it, so if you feel the need to criticize the great Captain Clive and his sons, you’ll pardon me if I turn around and leave this bar, you’ll pardon me if I don’t listen to a damn thing coming out of your foolish mouth.
Now if you grew up in the 80s, you might vaguely remember hearing about Captain Clive, you might vaguely remember hearing about Captain Clive’s Dreamworld. Oh, it was a magnificent park, filled with laughter and happiness and dreams. But it wasn’t just the park! It was the town, too. Angels and Hope. Every Victorian house, water fountain, and green park conceived by Captain Clive himself. It was a place where neighbors greeted neighbors in the quiet of summer twilight. Where children chased fireflies. Where porch swings provided an easy refuge from the cares of the day. All the rumors about the accident, all the rumors about those girls gone missing are just that: rumors.
And what about Captain Clive himself? How much do you know about him? In my mind, he embodied the American ideal, the ideal that with enough hard work and determination anything is possible. A brief history: his father, a tired and stooped man, made a living picking tobacco. His mother died in childbirth, bled out on a dirt floor. As a child he lived in a dilapidated shack and considered himself fortunate if he got a single meal each day. But, as a young man, through his own innovation in the world of plastics (he developed a catalyst that enabled polymerization at room temperature), he became rich—very rich. He started his own company that produced, among other things, plastic flowers for export. By the time he was thirty years old, the captain’s net worth was estimated to be more than two hundred million dollars. He could have pocketed the money, used it to buy cars and mansions and small islands. But instead, he wanted to give to others. His vision was of a place where young and old could be exhilarated full time. A place where magic was around every corner. A place where we remembered to dream. And so the park. And so the town.
But you know what happens when outsiders show up? They begin poking around. They begin seeing blood where there is only red wine. First it was Deputy Stewart. Asking all those questions. Writing all those notes. We couldn’t have that. We took care of him but good. I don’t mean to suggest there was any violence. Only some well-placed emotional pressure. And so he left town, and things were like they used to be, like they were supposed to be. But then the next deputy came to town. Deputy Hardy. Don’t get me started on him. Self-righteous. Unduly suspicious. Downright rude. We did our best to treat him well, to make him feel at home. But it turned out that he was even naughtier than Stewart. He left us no choice, you see. No choice at all.
But enough of that. Let’s talk about Captain Clive again. God, what a man! You know those paintings of Jesus at the last supper? Well, I’ve got one of those hanging in my living room. Spreads across the entire wall. My wife thinks it’s obnoxious, but what does she know? And in my painting, do you know who’s sitting right next to Jesus, holding his hand? Captain Clive himself. Now you’re laughing. You think that’s ridiculous. You think I’m an idiot. I’m no idiot, at least not when I’m sober. I was the mayor of Angels and Hope, for Christ sake! I know what’s real, what’s fantasy. I know that Captain Clive never met Jesus. I know he wasn’t at the Last Supper. It’s an artistic representation, you see? What we call a metaphor. And metaphorically speaking, I do believe that Captain Clive sits next to Jesus. I do believe he went to battle with Washington and tended to Lincoln when he was shot and whispered the words for Roosevelt to say during his fireside chats. I do believe that Captain Clive is a hero of the greatest kind, a savior of the poor, a heeler of the wounded.
But nothing lasts forever. I recently returned to the park, to the town. It had been so many years since I’d been back, ever since they shut it down over those bogus claims. But I missed it so. I drove through a desolate two-lane highway surrounded by dirt and shrubs and tumbleweed, and eventually to Angels and Hope, to Captain Clive’s Dreamworld. It was a shame. The only thing left of the park were wrecked rides—a dilapidated Ferris wheel, a disintegrating skeleton of a roller coaster, bumper cars overrun with weeds. The only thing left of the town were rotted houses and empty asphalt. Heavenly Lake had been drained, and the people were all gone. Every single one of them. I’m not too ashamed to admit that I hung my head and cried.
But I know what I’ll remember. I’ll remember Captain Clive, beautiful Captain Clive, standing inside his palace (a two-story, six-thousand square foot glass structure with panoramic views of both Dreamworld and Angels and Hope), his face inches from the glass, gazing down at his creation, knowing that he’d created a masterpiece, knowing that he’d created heaven.
Title: CAPTAIN CLIVE’S DREAMWORLD
Author: Jon Bassoff
Publisher: Eraserhead Press (print & ebook) Blackstone Audio (Audio)
Pages: 234
Genre: Horror/Horror Literature
After becoming the suspect in the murder of a young prostitute, Deputy Sam Hardy is “vanished” to a temporary post as the sole police officer in Angels and Hope, an idyllic town located in the middle of the desert, miles from any other sign of life. Hardy soon learns that Angels and Hope was constructed as a company town to support a magnificent amusement park – one to rival Disneyland – known as Captain Clive’s Dreamworld. When he arrives, however, Hardy notices some strange happenings. The park is essentially empty of customers. None of the townsfolk ever seem to sleep. And girls seem to be going missing with no plausible explanation.
As Hardy begins investigating, his own past is drawn into question by the people in town, and he finds himself becoming more and more isolated. Soon his phone line mysteriously goes dead. His car’s tires get slashed. And he is being watched constantly by neighbors. The truth – about the town and himself – will lead him to understand that there’s no such thing as a clean escape.
Straddling the line between genre fiction and something more bizarre, Captain Clive’s Dreamworld is a terrifying vision of the collapse of the American mythos.
Praise
“Captain Clive’s Dreamworld winds its way through an eerie, Lynchian landscape, populated by Stepford citizenry, cursed lives, and all the bleak sensibilities of the most dire Cormac McCarthy tale. Bassoff’s latest is a must read for fans of the genre, or any reader who prefers their fiction with a sense of the off-kilter. Highly recommended!”
-Ronald Malfi, author of Bone White
“Jon Bassoff’s nightmarish bizarro novel Captain Clive’s Dreamworld reads like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone mixed with Twin Peaks mixed with Dante’s Inferno. Unremittingly dark, this roman noir is a trenchant attack on the empty promises of capitalism…a hopeless rebuke of the bright plastic flesh built around the broken, crumbling skeleton of the American Dream.”
-Jeffrey Thomas, author of Boneland
“Jon Bassoff mines an imaginative seam that remains unexplored by any other writer I know working today. I wish I knew his secret, but I’ll settle for reading Captain Clive’s Dreamworld.”
-Tony Black, author of Summoning the Dead
“Captain Clive’s Dreamworld is a masterfully rendered, very disturbing cautionary tale of pathological consumerism and nostalgia for a mid-century America that never was. Jon Bassoff’s vision is relentless and unsparing, his prose like a bone saw laying bare the corruption and perversion lurking beneath society’s superficial pieties.”
-Roger Smith, author of Dust Devils
“In Captain Clive’s Dreamworld, Jon Bassoff has created a haunting, suspenseful masterpiece that straddles the line between mystery and horror with expert skill.”
-S.A. Cosby, award-winning author of Blacktop Wasteland
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Jon Bassoff was born in 1974 in New York City and currently lives with his family in a ghost town somewhere in Colorado. His mountain gothic novel, Corrosion, has been translated in French and German and was nominated for the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, France’s biggest crime fiction award. Two of his novels, The Drive-Thru Crematorium and The Disassembled Man, have been adapted for the big screen with Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild; Once Upon a Time in America) attached to star in The Disassembled Man. For his day job, Bassoff teaches high school English where he is known by students and faculty alike as the deranged writer guy. He is a connoisseur of tequila, hot sauces, psychobilly music, and flea-bag motels.
WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: http://www.jonbassoff.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jonbassoff
Facebook: www.facebook.com/jon.bassoff
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