Well, just in time for Halloween, the good folks at Fantasy Book Spot are giving away a signed hardcover of Chasing the Dead to some lucky winner.
And I'm a lucky winner too. Why? Well, a couple weeks ago I got my hands on Norman Partridge's excellent novel Dark Harvest -- and I decided to email him to tell him how much I liked it. Norm wrote back that same night to tell me how much he enjoyed Chasing the Dead, so I sent him a copy of Eat the Dark.
Then, I come home last night from my long weekend in Michigan and find a big heavy blue and white priority box in the mail. Turns out ol' Norm decided to send me a treasure trove of his stuff -- not paperbacks, mind you, but big deluxe signed and numbered editions of Mr. Fox, Wildest Dreams and The Man with the Barbed-Wire Fists. And if that's not enough, he throws in couple of the coolest, creepiest Halloween rock and roll compilations ever. Holy shit!
Is this a happy Halloween, or what?
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
It Sleeps Till Dark
Written this afternoon at the Portage District Library, in Portage, Michigan, looking out the window at the graveyard.
The reading was over. It had been a success, and he was glad. You could never tell who was going to turn out on a football Saturday to listen to some writer—even a local boy, whose mother still lived in the area, who appearance had been trumpeted in the Kalamazoo Gazette for the previous week. You just never knew.
But people had come, God bless them, twenty or more, and they’d asked questions and listened and laughed at the right times, and the emotion that Jerry Mathers realized he felt most about the last hour or so was probably relief. Walking back to the table where Kazoo Books had stacks of his last two books for sale, he sat down and signed copies, shook hands and chatted with his audience as they wandered over. Carrie and the kids were in the children’s section, probably getting antsy to leave, and he was getting ready too. There was at least one Bloody Mary waiting at his mother’s house, with his name on it, probably more. He usually drank too much when he was home—occupational hazard, he told himself. Blame Ernest Hemingway.
The room had cleared and he was getting ready to gather his family when the girl walked in. It sounded as though she’d been running, and even from here, he could hear her trying to catch her breath. She was tall and pretty, definitely familiar, with dyed black hair and dark-framed glasses.
“Jerry, I’m so glad you’re still here,” she said. “I thought you’d be gone. I was stuck in a conference with a parent, and I got out of there as fast as I could.”
"I'm sorry," he said, "I'm blanking on your name."
"Oh, come on. It's me, Beth Carver."
"Oh," he said. "Beth. Sure." He saw a yearbook picture in his mind, a girl on the volleyball team, smiling at the camera. He smiled at Beth and shook her hand and when she looked up at him, she had that quasi-distressed look on her face that people get when they can’t quite believe what time has done, added or taken away, from the fundamental elements of deep memory. That look was one of the reasons why Jerry had avoided his twentieth class reunion this summer.
“This is your book?” Beth said, holding up the newest one. “Will you sign it for me?”
“Sure, of course.” He sat down again, and without thinking, scrawled, To Beth, The prettiest girl I never had the guts to talk to, your friend, Jerry Mathers, and handed it back, hoping she wouldn’t read the inscription in front of him. She did, of course, and looked up at him, blushing slightly. He found himself blushing right along with her, and was glad that his wife had gone out to chase their son and daughter back to the library’s children’s section.
“That’s nice, Jerry. It’s not really true, though.”
He frowned at her, hoping it came off as pleasantly befuddled. “Sure it was. You were a volleyball superstar. I was on the debate team. You had your whole clique of friends—I was scared to come within ten feet of you back then.”
“Not in high school,” Beth said. “I’m talking about before that—back at Milham.”
Jerry blinked, and some of the pleasantness slipped from his scowl. He had gone to Milham Elementary School, of course, started there when his parents moved to the area when he was, what, eight years old? Nine? He didn’t remember much from back in those days except being nervous and having a stomachache most of the time, not fitting in at a new school, not liking the old playground with the field beyond it, and—
And Beth Carver.
Staring at her now, staring across the gulf of years—not just looking, but actually staring—he realized he had known her back then, when he’d first moved to the area.
“Before high school or middle school,” she said, “before I started volleyball or you were in debate, we knew each other. Back in fourth grade. And—”
“The well,” Jerry said, and now every trace of a smile had left his face, while the library conference room, which only moments earlier had been alive with voices and the smell of coffee and cookies, had fallen hushed and cold around him. It was as if all the noise and light and life of the October afternoon had been sucked out, leaving him and Beth alone in it, like two children who’d been locked in for the night.
“You do remember it,” she asked, “don’t you?”
He realized he did—a weed-covered pile of cobblestones in the corner of the field adjacent to old elementary school playground, cluttered with trash, old fast food wrappers and losing lottery tickets. The well had been boarded shut long ago, rusty chains padlocked across it to keep it closed up, but when he and Beth were kids…how could he have not remembered that?
All of a sudden Jerry felt vaguely woozy, as if he’d had too much to drink. His face was hot and his temples thudded heavy pressure in his ears. When he tried to speak, he found the roof of his mouth was plaster-dry, not a drop of moisture left in it.
“The thing in the well,” Beth murmured, leaning in close. “I think it’s still alive.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
A hand tapped his shoulder. “Jerry?”
He shot straight up, turned around to see Carrie standing there, startled by the severity of his reaction. She had both kids with her, clinging to either hand.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine, I’m—this is Beth Carver, I—knew her in high school.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Carrie said, and turned back to Jerry. “I’m sorry. The kids are getting a little restless.”
“Sure, I…” His eyes went back to Beth, and she was watching him carefully, gauging how he would react. “Give me a minute, okay?”
“Take your time,” Carrie nodded, letting the children swing her away, one on each arm, leaving the two of them alone.
“I need you to come back there with me,” Beth said.
He was sure he’d misheard her. “What?”
“We’ve got a couple hours before dark. I’ve been thinking, and I’m pretty sure that it stays down there in the well during the day. I’ve got chains in my car—I stopped and bought them at Home Depot this morning, along with some locks. We can lock it up for good this time, so it doesn’t get out again.”
“Beth …” He felt himself wanting to laugh, thinking if he could just get one little chuckle out, no matter how rusty and forced it sounded, the conversation might still turn itself around. Hell, she could come over to his mom’s house, sip some white wine and talk about high school. But when he tried to push the laugh out, all he felt was a little sour bile surging up from the back of his throat, like a half-swallowed penny.
Beth was gripping his wrist now, holding it almost painfully tight in her grip. “We didn’t do a good job the first time. We have to fix it.”
He closed his eyes—not an active choice, just let the heaviness of the moment press them down, feeling her there gazing at his shut lids, waiting, knowing Beth would still be there when he opened them again.
“It’s been down in that well for…” His brain almost refused to process it, “thirty years? What if it gets out this time while we’re still chaining the lid down?”
Beth didn’t look away, her voice cold and measured. “Did you read about what happened last week?” she asked. “They found a local woman’s body in the woods. She was so badly mutilated they had to use dental records to identify her. She’d been torn to pieces. Nothing human could have done that, Jerry.”
He felt all remaining color fall out of his face. “My God.”
“If we go now, I think it will still be down in there. It sleeps till dark.” Her hand was still clamped to his wrist. “We have to go now, Jerry. We can take my car.”
“Listen, my family—”
“I know you don’t live here anymore, but I do.” Now that deadly calm tension in her voice had taken on an additional note of desperation, and he saw her as he’d seen back in fourth grade, another small face on the other side of the wishing well where they’d been throwing rocks against the wooden lid, until one morning when they’d come out and found the lid torn off, the chains splayed in the weedy, garbage-strewn grass. They morning they’d first awakened it.
“Okay,” he said, the word seeming to fall from his mouth involuntarily. “I’ll tell her—” What? he thought. “—I’ll be back by dinner.” Now a weird, mirthless giggle did escape his lips, but it didn't help, in fact, it scared him a little. “We should be done by then, right?”
She nodded once, already turning, ready to go, and Jerry went over to talk to his wife, told her what was happening—“just going for a quick nostalgia trip around the old school”—and followed Beth out of the conference room and upstairs, neither of them speaking, out to the library parking lot where her Honda was waiting.
Jerry’s family drove back to his mother’s house, where they’d been staying over the long weekend he’d come back for the book reading. They waited until almost six o’clock, dusk sliding up hungrily to swallow the October landscape.
When darkness finally fell, they ate without him.
The reading was over. It had been a success, and he was glad. You could never tell who was going to turn out on a football Saturday to listen to some writer—even a local boy, whose mother still lived in the area, who appearance had been trumpeted in the Kalamazoo Gazette for the previous week. You just never knew.
But people had come, God bless them, twenty or more, and they’d asked questions and listened and laughed at the right times, and the emotion that Jerry Mathers realized he felt most about the last hour or so was probably relief. Walking back to the table where Kazoo Books had stacks of his last two books for sale, he sat down and signed copies, shook hands and chatted with his audience as they wandered over. Carrie and the kids were in the children’s section, probably getting antsy to leave, and he was getting ready too. There was at least one Bloody Mary waiting at his mother’s house, with his name on it, probably more. He usually drank too much when he was home—occupational hazard, he told himself. Blame Ernest Hemingway.
The room had cleared and he was getting ready to gather his family when the girl walked in. It sounded as though she’d been running, and even from here, he could hear her trying to catch her breath. She was tall and pretty, definitely familiar, with dyed black hair and dark-framed glasses.
“Jerry, I’m so glad you’re still here,” she said. “I thought you’d be gone. I was stuck in a conference with a parent, and I got out of there as fast as I could.”
"I'm sorry," he said, "I'm blanking on your name."
"Oh, come on. It's me, Beth Carver."
"Oh," he said. "Beth. Sure." He saw a yearbook picture in his mind, a girl on the volleyball team, smiling at the camera. He smiled at Beth and shook her hand and when she looked up at him, she had that quasi-distressed look on her face that people get when they can’t quite believe what time has done, added or taken away, from the fundamental elements of deep memory. That look was one of the reasons why Jerry had avoided his twentieth class reunion this summer.
“This is your book?” Beth said, holding up the newest one. “Will you sign it for me?”
“Sure, of course.” He sat down again, and without thinking, scrawled, To Beth, The prettiest girl I never had the guts to talk to, your friend, Jerry Mathers, and handed it back, hoping she wouldn’t read the inscription in front of him. She did, of course, and looked up at him, blushing slightly. He found himself blushing right along with her, and was glad that his wife had gone out to chase their son and daughter back to the library’s children’s section.
“That’s nice, Jerry. It’s not really true, though.”
He frowned at her, hoping it came off as pleasantly befuddled. “Sure it was. You were a volleyball superstar. I was on the debate team. You had your whole clique of friends—I was scared to come within ten feet of you back then.”
“Not in high school,” Beth said. “I’m talking about before that—back at Milham.”
Jerry blinked, and some of the pleasantness slipped from his scowl. He had gone to Milham Elementary School, of course, started there when his parents moved to the area when he was, what, eight years old? Nine? He didn’t remember much from back in those days except being nervous and having a stomachache most of the time, not fitting in at a new school, not liking the old playground with the field beyond it, and—
And Beth Carver.
Staring at her now, staring across the gulf of years—not just looking, but actually staring—he realized he had known her back then, when he’d first moved to the area.
“Before high school or middle school,” she said, “before I started volleyball or you were in debate, we knew each other. Back in fourth grade. And—”
“The well,” Jerry said, and now every trace of a smile had left his face, while the library conference room, which only moments earlier had been alive with voices and the smell of coffee and cookies, had fallen hushed and cold around him. It was as if all the noise and light and life of the October afternoon had been sucked out, leaving him and Beth alone in it, like two children who’d been locked in for the night.
“You do remember it,” she asked, “don’t you?”
He realized he did—a weed-covered pile of cobblestones in the corner of the field adjacent to old elementary school playground, cluttered with trash, old fast food wrappers and losing lottery tickets. The well had been boarded shut long ago, rusty chains padlocked across it to keep it closed up, but when he and Beth were kids…how could he have not remembered that?
All of a sudden Jerry felt vaguely woozy, as if he’d had too much to drink. His face was hot and his temples thudded heavy pressure in his ears. When he tried to speak, he found the roof of his mouth was plaster-dry, not a drop of moisture left in it.
“The thing in the well,” Beth murmured, leaning in close. “I think it’s still alive.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
A hand tapped his shoulder. “Jerry?”
He shot straight up, turned around to see Carrie standing there, startled by the severity of his reaction. She had both kids with her, clinging to either hand.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine, I’m—this is Beth Carver, I—knew her in high school.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Carrie said, and turned back to Jerry. “I’m sorry. The kids are getting a little restless.”
“Sure, I…” His eyes went back to Beth, and she was watching him carefully, gauging how he would react. “Give me a minute, okay?”
“Take your time,” Carrie nodded, letting the children swing her away, one on each arm, leaving the two of them alone.
“I need you to come back there with me,” Beth said.
He was sure he’d misheard her. “What?”
“We’ve got a couple hours before dark. I’ve been thinking, and I’m pretty sure that it stays down there in the well during the day. I’ve got chains in my car—I stopped and bought them at Home Depot this morning, along with some locks. We can lock it up for good this time, so it doesn’t get out again.”
“Beth …” He felt himself wanting to laugh, thinking if he could just get one little chuckle out, no matter how rusty and forced it sounded, the conversation might still turn itself around. Hell, she could come over to his mom’s house, sip some white wine and talk about high school. But when he tried to push the laugh out, all he felt was a little sour bile surging up from the back of his throat, like a half-swallowed penny.
Beth was gripping his wrist now, holding it almost painfully tight in her grip. “We didn’t do a good job the first time. We have to fix it.”
He closed his eyes—not an active choice, just let the heaviness of the moment press them down, feeling her there gazing at his shut lids, waiting, knowing Beth would still be there when he opened them again.
“It’s been down in that well for…” His brain almost refused to process it, “thirty years? What if it gets out this time while we’re still chaining the lid down?”
Beth didn’t look away, her voice cold and measured. “Did you read about what happened last week?” she asked. “They found a local woman’s body in the woods. She was so badly mutilated they had to use dental records to identify her. She’d been torn to pieces. Nothing human could have done that, Jerry.”
He felt all remaining color fall out of his face. “My God.”
“If we go now, I think it will still be down in there. It sleeps till dark.” Her hand was still clamped to his wrist. “We have to go now, Jerry. We can take my car.”
“Listen, my family—”
“I know you don’t live here anymore, but I do.” Now that deadly calm tension in her voice had taken on an additional note of desperation, and he saw her as he’d seen back in fourth grade, another small face on the other side of the wishing well where they’d been throwing rocks against the wooden lid, until one morning when they’d come out and found the lid torn off, the chains splayed in the weedy, garbage-strewn grass. They morning they’d first awakened it.
“Okay,” he said, the word seeming to fall from his mouth involuntarily. “I’ll tell her—” What? he thought. “—I’ll be back by dinner.” Now a weird, mirthless giggle did escape his lips, but it didn't help, in fact, it scared him a little. “We should be done by then, right?”
She nodded once, already turning, ready to go, and Jerry went over to talk to his wife, told her what was happening—“just going for a quick nostalgia trip around the old school”—and followed Beth out of the conference room and upstairs, neither of them speaking, out to the library parking lot where her Honda was waiting.
Jerry’s family drove back to his mother’s house, where they’d been staying over the long weekend he’d come back for the book reading. They waited until almost six o’clock, dusk sliding up hungrily to swallow the October landscape.
When darkness finally fell, they ate without him.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Scary Music
I've never had a song written about my stuff before, but if you click over to my MySpace page and turn on your speakers you'll hear John Austin's "Satellite Boulevard," a moody, creepy little ditty about a big bad wolf following girls home from school. John swears it was inspired by Chasing the Dead and vodka. All I know is that opening keyboard reminds me if David Holmes scored a David Fincher movie. Perfect for the season.
Meanwhile, Brian over at Fantasy Book Spot wrote some very nice things about Eat the Dark . There's going to be a contest over there soon where they're giving away a signed copy of the Chasing the Dead hardcover, so keep your eyes open.
And speaking of contests, I'm compelled to remind you that within the next few weeks I'll be giving away five free Eat the Dark audiobooks from Tantor Audio. The rules are simple -- come up with a made-up creepy selection from a made up kids' book. I've gotten some good entries so far but I need more. Come on, folks, it's free stuff.
Meanwhile, Brian over at Fantasy Book Spot wrote some very nice things about Eat the Dark . There's going to be a contest over there soon where they're giving away a signed copy of the Chasing the Dead hardcover, so keep your eyes open.
And speaking of contests, I'm compelled to remind you that within the next few weeks I'll be giving away five free Eat the Dark audiobooks from Tantor Audio. The rules are simple -- come up with a made-up creepy selection from a made up kids' book. I've gotten some good entries so far but I need more. Come on, folks, it's free stuff.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Pumpkins
Written the other morning over breakfast. I imagine January Jones from Mad Men in the main female role.
Maureen parked in front of the school and walked around to let Tyler out of the back seat. He sprung free, leaving his Incredibles backpack behind, and stopped when he saw how empty the playground looked.
“Are we late?”
“Actually, we’re early.” She picked up the backpack and took his hand, walking across the street. Anxiety jangled somewhere in the base of her spine, low-level but undeniably there. She told herself she could do this, it was the reason why she’d volunteered in the first place. Helping out in Tyler’s class was a good idea all the way around. And it would give her a better sense of Miss Schneider.
From the beginning, when she and John had gone in to meet her son’s teacher, Maureen had mixed feelings about the woman. She was young and pretty and seemed friendly enough, but Tyler had come home with stories of her yelling at the other children, hardly the kind of behavior Maureen would expect from a kindergarten teacher, even in public school. By signing up to help in the Halloween party, Maureen intended to get a glimpse of how much Tyler told her was accurate.
They walked into the school, down the hall to Tyler’s classroom, where the door stood open, decorated with witches, spider webs, ghosts and skeletons. Entering the doorway, Maureen told herself to relax. She’s just a person, she thought. She can’t be as bad as you think.
Inside the classroom, the small desks stood in careful rows. On each desk was a pumpkin with a face drawn on it. A young man in a blue shirt and khakis was arranging the last of the pumpkins, looking as though he weren’t entirely sure of the composition.
“Hello?” Maureen said.
The man looked up, frowned and then smiled. “You must be…” He glanced at the sheet of paper in his left hand. “Mrs. McCarthy?” Lowering his eyes slightly: “And Tyler?” He held out his hand. “I’m Todd—” And pausing, realizing that more than his first name might be required, “—Todd Soznowski, the substitute.”
“Oh,” Maureen said, feeling a combination of disappointment and relief. “So Miss Schneider…?”
“Called in sick, apparently." The smile on his face, nervous but genuine, put her at ease. “This is only my second time subbing, but I thought, you know, kindergarten might be the place to start.” He gestured, a little self-conscious, at the pumpkins. “I brought these in. My folks have a fruit and vegetable stand, so…”
“They’re very cute,” Maureen said.
“You don’t think it’s a little much?”
“Not at all.”
That seemed to relax him, and they chatted as Tyler played with the pumpkin on his desk. A few minutes later, a whistle blew outside and the children came into the classroom, a noisy cavalcade that grew even more ebullient when they discovered the pumpkins on their desks. Almost all of them had come in costume—mutant turtles, princesses and cats, bags of M & Ms, robots, cowboys and football players. Maureen glanced at the substitute, wondering if he was going to be able to assert himself in front of the raucous group, but when he went to the front of the room and shut the door, they all quieted down and looked at him.
“Good morning, class,” he said. “Miss Schneider is sick today. I’m the substitute teacher, Mr. Soznowski. I know it’s a difficult name to pronounce, so you can just call me Mr. Soz.”
A few children giggled at that, including Tyler, and Maureen felt a little embarrassed for the man, sensing the class already tilting toward the natural entropy of five-year-olds. He continued, oblivious:
“Today is the Halloween party, as you all know, and I brought pumpkins for everyone. Does anyone know where Halloween comes from?”
The class sat, vaguely restless.
“The modern holiday comes from Ireland, from a pagan ceremony called Samhain, a fall festival. Back in those days, it was a ceremony—does everybody know what a ceremony is? A celebration to mark the end of the harvest season. The ancient people believed that this day, October 31st, was when the boundaries between the living and the dead overlapped.”
Now the children were staring at him raptly, and Maureen wondered if this was appropriate for five-year-olds. She glanced over at Tyler, who had stopped playing with his pumpkin and sat with the rest of his classmates, hanging on every word the substitute said.
“In fact, these people believed that this time of year, tonight, the dead would come back to life to spread sickness and destroyed crops. So what they would do is dress up in costumes, to mimic the evil spirits, make big bonfires and throw slaughtered livestock into the flames and burn them alive. It was the only way to keep the spirits of the living dead from taking over.”
An audible gasp came from the children, and Maureen was actually trying to think of a way to interject some innocuous comment like, “Of course, that was all just imaginary,” when Mr. Soznowski laughed and held up his hands.
“Of course, these days, we have our own ceremony of….what?”
Silence.
“What do we do on Halloween? Anyone?”
Hands started going up, cautiously at first, then in threes and fours, while other children just called out answers like “dressing up,” and “trick or treat,” and the substitute nodded, pleased with their response. Behind her, on the other side of the door, Maureen saw the outline of a person through the glass, looking in—the principal, she supposed, checking on the substitute’s progress.
“These days,” Mr. Soz continued, “we do all those things. And something else we do…” He nodded at the pumpkins on the children’s desks, “is carve jack-o-lanterns.” Walking back over to the teacher’s desk, he picked up a box and opened it up. “So today I thought we could have some fun with our pumpkins.” He reached into the box and began handing out what Maureen realized, through a veil of her own startled disbelief, were small knives with orange handles, giving one to each child. “I think I have enough for each one of you.”
“Mr. Soznowski,” Maureen said, “are those actual knives?”
He looked up at her, gave her that same awkward but sincere smile. “Well, of course,” he said. “Why?”
“For a kindergarten class, I don’t think that’s particularly…” Appropriate, was the next word on her lips, but there was a knocking on the door behind her, and some automatic part of her turned to go over and open it. The man standing on the other side wore a worn brown suit—he wasn’t the principal, she realized, and she was fairly sure she’d never seen him before. His face was flushed, as if he’d been running up the hallway.
“Can I help you?” she asked the man in the brown suit, stepping outside. A moment later, the door of the classroom slammed shut behind her. Through it she heard a child scream.
The man in the brown suit stared at her.
“I’m the substitute,” he said.
Maureen parked in front of the school and walked around to let Tyler out of the back seat. He sprung free, leaving his Incredibles backpack behind, and stopped when he saw how empty the playground looked.
“Are we late?”
“Actually, we’re early.” She picked up the backpack and took his hand, walking across the street. Anxiety jangled somewhere in the base of her spine, low-level but undeniably there. She told herself she could do this, it was the reason why she’d volunteered in the first place. Helping out in Tyler’s class was a good idea all the way around. And it would give her a better sense of Miss Schneider.
From the beginning, when she and John had gone in to meet her son’s teacher, Maureen had mixed feelings about the woman. She was young and pretty and seemed friendly enough, but Tyler had come home with stories of her yelling at the other children, hardly the kind of behavior Maureen would expect from a kindergarten teacher, even in public school. By signing up to help in the Halloween party, Maureen intended to get a glimpse of how much Tyler told her was accurate.
They walked into the school, down the hall to Tyler’s classroom, where the door stood open, decorated with witches, spider webs, ghosts and skeletons. Entering the doorway, Maureen told herself to relax. She’s just a person, she thought. She can’t be as bad as you think.
Inside the classroom, the small desks stood in careful rows. On each desk was a pumpkin with a face drawn on it. A young man in a blue shirt and khakis was arranging the last of the pumpkins, looking as though he weren’t entirely sure of the composition.
“Hello?” Maureen said.
The man looked up, frowned and then smiled. “You must be…” He glanced at the sheet of paper in his left hand. “Mrs. McCarthy?” Lowering his eyes slightly: “And Tyler?” He held out his hand. “I’m Todd—” And pausing, realizing that more than his first name might be required, “—Todd Soznowski, the substitute.”
“Oh,” Maureen said, feeling a combination of disappointment and relief. “So Miss Schneider…?”
“Called in sick, apparently." The smile on his face, nervous but genuine, put her at ease. “This is only my second time subbing, but I thought, you know, kindergarten might be the place to start.” He gestured, a little self-conscious, at the pumpkins. “I brought these in. My folks have a fruit and vegetable stand, so…”
“They’re very cute,” Maureen said.
“You don’t think it’s a little much?”
“Not at all.”
That seemed to relax him, and they chatted as Tyler played with the pumpkin on his desk. A few minutes later, a whistle blew outside and the children came into the classroom, a noisy cavalcade that grew even more ebullient when they discovered the pumpkins on their desks. Almost all of them had come in costume—mutant turtles, princesses and cats, bags of M & Ms, robots, cowboys and football players. Maureen glanced at the substitute, wondering if he was going to be able to assert himself in front of the raucous group, but when he went to the front of the room and shut the door, they all quieted down and looked at him.
“Good morning, class,” he said. “Miss Schneider is sick today. I’m the substitute teacher, Mr. Soznowski. I know it’s a difficult name to pronounce, so you can just call me Mr. Soz.”
A few children giggled at that, including Tyler, and Maureen felt a little embarrassed for the man, sensing the class already tilting toward the natural entropy of five-year-olds. He continued, oblivious:
“Today is the Halloween party, as you all know, and I brought pumpkins for everyone. Does anyone know where Halloween comes from?”
The class sat, vaguely restless.
“The modern holiday comes from Ireland, from a pagan ceremony called Samhain, a fall festival. Back in those days, it was a ceremony—does everybody know what a ceremony is? A celebration to mark the end of the harvest season. The ancient people believed that this day, October 31st, was when the boundaries between the living and the dead overlapped.”
Now the children were staring at him raptly, and Maureen wondered if this was appropriate for five-year-olds. She glanced over at Tyler, who had stopped playing with his pumpkin and sat with the rest of his classmates, hanging on every word the substitute said.
“In fact, these people believed that this time of year, tonight, the dead would come back to life to spread sickness and destroyed crops. So what they would do is dress up in costumes, to mimic the evil spirits, make big bonfires and throw slaughtered livestock into the flames and burn them alive. It was the only way to keep the spirits of the living dead from taking over.”
An audible gasp came from the children, and Maureen was actually trying to think of a way to interject some innocuous comment like, “Of course, that was all just imaginary,” when Mr. Soznowski laughed and held up his hands.
“Of course, these days, we have our own ceremony of….what?”
Silence.
“What do we do on Halloween? Anyone?”
Hands started going up, cautiously at first, then in threes and fours, while other children just called out answers like “dressing up,” and “trick or treat,” and the substitute nodded, pleased with their response. Behind her, on the other side of the door, Maureen saw the outline of a person through the glass, looking in—the principal, she supposed, checking on the substitute’s progress.
“These days,” Mr. Soz continued, “we do all those things. And something else we do…” He nodded at the pumpkins on the children’s desks, “is carve jack-o-lanterns.” Walking back over to the teacher’s desk, he picked up a box and opened it up. “So today I thought we could have some fun with our pumpkins.” He reached into the box and began handing out what Maureen realized, through a veil of her own startled disbelief, were small knives with orange handles, giving one to each child. “I think I have enough for each one of you.”
“Mr. Soznowski,” Maureen said, “are those actual knives?”
He looked up at her, gave her that same awkward but sincere smile. “Well, of course,” he said. “Why?”
“For a kindergarten class, I don’t think that’s particularly…” Appropriate, was the next word on her lips, but there was a knocking on the door behind her, and some automatic part of her turned to go over and open it. The man standing on the other side wore a worn brown suit—he wasn’t the principal, she realized, and she was fairly sure she’d never seen him before. His face was flushed, as if he’d been running up the hallway.
“Can I help you?” she asked the man in the brown suit, stepping outside. A moment later, the door of the classroom slammed shut behind her. Through it she heard a child scream.
The man in the brown suit stared at her.
“I’m the substitute,” he said.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Rambling Man
I've been writing a lot of short stories lately -- very short, five pages or less. It's perfect, because I can crank 'em out in or two sittings. This morning I sat down at the breakfast table and wrote one called "Pumpkins," just for Halloween. I'd love to print it up like a little Halloween card and send it out to people but I'm not sure I'll have the time. I'll definitely post it here.
Meanwhile, I'm still travelling. This weekend I'm flying back to my hometown of Portage, Michigan to do a talk and signing at the library. On my way out of Philly on Thursday I'll be having lunch with this guy, which I'm really looking forward to. I can't wait to start rewriting The Black Wing -- hopefully that will happen soon. And I'm setting up at least one more online interview that I'll link here when it shows up.
Meanwhile, I'm still travelling. This weekend I'm flying back to my hometown of Portage, Michigan to do a talk and signing at the library. On my way out of Philly on Thursday I'll be having lunch with this guy, which I'm really looking forward to. I can't wait to start rewriting The Black Wing -- hopefully that will happen soon. And I'm setting up at least one more online interview that I'll link here when it shows up.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Mrs. Warner Winds the Watch
Gretchen was stretching. She liked the sound of that—the almost-rhyme of Gretchen/Stretching, playful, like something from a children’s book. Her own children were parked in front of SpongeBob, finishing up their hour of TV for evening, while Terry sat on the couch pecking at his laptop, lamplight gleaming off his bald spot.
Glancing at the clock, feeling a familiar pleasant tightness in her diaphragm, she finished touching her toes, did a quick hamstring flex on either leg and arched her back. “Back in twenty.”
Terry glanced up. “You're going now?”
“I always go at seven.”
“It just seems a little late, that’s all.” But he was already returning to his computer, one hand reaching absently for the plate of chocolate chip cookies balanced on the arm of the sofa. She’d baked them this afternoon with the kids, and Terry had eaten half of them already, dipping them into the cup of coffee he kept next to them for just that purpose. Tax preparation is hungry work, babe, he always said, but he no longer smiled when he said it.
Gretchen stepped outside—it was just before twilight—walked around their garage to the cul de sac, and broke into an easy, open-handed jog to the end of the court, onto Chamberlain Avenue, which ran in one big circle around their development, a little over two miles. Another peek at her watch; it was seven o’clock exactly. She turned left and began running a little faster, mindful of her pulse and breathing as she headed westward, the drone of crickets from the nearby field growing slightly more audible. Indian summer meant people were still keeping their windows open, catching the last of the evening breeze. In a couple weeks it would be October, then winter and the crickets would be gone.
He appeared out of Brookside Court up ahead, crunch of gravel and reflectors shining on his running shoes, and then his voice. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
They ran along together, two voices in the not-quite-dark, and Gretchen felt the happiness and relief she’d been waiting all day for, as the immediate physical presence of him settled in to her right. They didn’t speak for the first minute or two, just ran side by side on the road that circled their development.
“Wasn’t sure you were going to make it,” Coop said.
“Oh stop it.”
“I'm serious. I missed you last night.”
“There was a crisis. Somebody let the cat out.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Everything’s fine now,” she said, exhaling it a little in hopes of hiding whatever duplicity might have been involved in the reply. If Coop noticed, he didn’t say anything. They ran on, sneakers making little sketching sounds. Up ahead was Starling Court, and the McLarens’ house, and Gretchen could already hear Fox News blaring from their fifty-inch set, not quite loud enough to disguise the clatter of dishes in the sink. Through the kitchen window she saw Ruth-Anne McLaren pouring herself a Burger King glass of Jack Daniels from the lung-sized bottle on the counter, not bothering with ice. As they passed by Ruth-Anne drank the glass and hurriedly refilled it.
“How about you?” Gretchen asked. “How’s Donna?”
“Don't ask.” He was breathing a little harder now, and she could smell the faint musky scent, the smell of a freshly laundered T-shirt meeting the first drops of sweat. “We got into some stupid fight about Christmas.”
“Why not just go to her folks’?”
“Her father’s a thug.”
Gretchen glanced over, smiled. “What’s a holiday without a dysfunctional family?”
“I’ve already got one of those, thanks.”
They curved their way further, jogging past Butte Court, the Paulsons’ townhouse, their black lab/beagle mix barking furiously at the door until Steve Paulson shouted at it to shut up. Next door to the Paulsons, Gretchen heard a baby screaming; that would be Colin Atwood, four months old and colicky to the point where she sometimes heard his mother Suzanne crying right along with the infant, pleading with him in a voice that made Gretchen’s teeth itch. The old Buick Roadmaster parked out in front belonged to Suzanne’s boyfriend Mickey, but there was a big oil stain underneath it, and the FOR SALE sign shoved up in the passenger side window had dust and dead bugs stuck to it. Sometimes Gretchen saw Mickey out in the fields shooting tin cans with his .38. She heard him talking to the cans sometimes, calling them faggot and bitch.
“You know, when I ran this by myself last night—” Coop caught his breath, swallowed. “It’s not the same, you know?”
“I know.” She tried to sound casual, but the words thrilled her, and she allowed them to work their magic on her. “It goes slower.” They ran on in the gathering dark, followed the loop around, close enough that their arms occasionally brushed together and she felt the small fine hairs prickle against her skin. Coming up on the right was Veseks’ town house, an end unit, and their mutually agreed-upon least favorite. She sensed Coop picking up his pace, wanting to be past it. With the windows open Gretchen could hear nothing but silence from inside. Then, as they grew closer: a muttering noise, Karl Vesek’s voice, toneless in its anger, accusatory, and a woman snapping back at him, one-syllable answers. As they passed by, there was a sudden crack, and a sharp hiss of pain.
Coop cringed a little. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been thinking…” Now he glanced over at her, and she could feel him slowing down a little as they curved into the third turn of the loop, “What if—what if we just stopped all this?”
“What?”
“Winding the watch.”
“How?” she asked, but she already knew the answer, realized she’d known from the beginning. Still, Coop didn’t respond for what felt like hours; there were no fields on this end of the development, no crickets, only the sound of their feet on the dark pavement. Finally he said, with what almost sounded like reluctance:
“It goes slower when we do it alone, you said so yourself. So what happens if we just stop winding it completely?”
Despite it all, despite all the pleasure and excitement of their time together, Gretchen Warner, wife of Terrance Warner, for whom tax preparation was hungry work, felt the first unmistakable seeds of dry panic starting to rattle in the pit of her stomach. “What would happen?”
Coop shrugged: she could just make it out in the last fading light. “Who cares? Maybe it all just winds down.” He flung out one hand at the development, the circle that coiled through it. “Maybe it all just—stops.”
Stops. Her first thought was of her children. Not Terry on the sofa, with his chocolate chip cookies and his coffee and his 401-K, but Evelyn and Henry. What would happen to them? She pictured them frozen on the floor in front of the TV, little statues that would never move again, never grow up or age another moment. Or would they go away completely, cease to exist?
Her silence must have meant something to him, because he was looking at her steadily now as they moved into the final quarter of the loop, their time together coming to an end. “Is this any better, what we’re doing now?” he asked. “Karl Vesek—you know he’s going to kill his wife someday.”
“I know.”
“And that Atwood kid? You think we’re doing them any favors, keeping them going?”
“It’s not up to us,” she said.
“Then who’s it up to?” And before she could answer, “How long have we been doing this?”
“Winding the watch?” The question struck her as faintly absurd, like an adult asking why the sky was blue. “I don’t—”
“You don’t remember,” Coop finished for her. “Me either.” He gestured again at their development and the road that looped through it. “Maybe it’s time we walk away, just to see what happens.”
He was slowing down already, not quite walking, but Gretchen felt herself fighting the urge to pull ahead. She forced herself into a steady trot, her pulse still booming in her throat, breast and wrists. The sweaty immediacy of Coop right here next to her made her want to say everything to him, all the feelings she kept bottled up even during their last hundred-yard sprint back to her cul de sac. All the questions about how it really had started, and what it meant that they were they only two who seemed to be able to do it.
Tonight, though, he wasn’t sprinting. Tonight he had stopped, was standing still.
“I’m tired of it, Gretchen,” he said. “I’m tired of keeping it going.” He held out his hand, and she was aware that they were standing at the dark intersection between Chamberlain and Hornbeck Avenue, facing right, where the road ran due east to the South Street Bridge. Beyond that was the state highway and after that—
After that was whatever remained.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Coop.”
“That’s your answer?”
“For now,” she said, “yeah.”
He nodded and let his hand drop to his side. “I’m sorry too,” he said. “I guess it’ll go slower with me. But you’ll keep at it, won't you?”
It wasn’t really a question, so Gretchen didn’t bother answering it. She turned and left him at the intersection, walking at first, then picking up speed and finally breaking into a run, back toward the sound of the crickets, around the loop and home.
Glancing at the clock, feeling a familiar pleasant tightness in her diaphragm, she finished touching her toes, did a quick hamstring flex on either leg and arched her back. “Back in twenty.”
Terry glanced up. “You're going now?”
“I always go at seven.”
“It just seems a little late, that’s all.” But he was already returning to his computer, one hand reaching absently for the plate of chocolate chip cookies balanced on the arm of the sofa. She’d baked them this afternoon with the kids, and Terry had eaten half of them already, dipping them into the cup of coffee he kept next to them for just that purpose. Tax preparation is hungry work, babe, he always said, but he no longer smiled when he said it.
Gretchen stepped outside—it was just before twilight—walked around their garage to the cul de sac, and broke into an easy, open-handed jog to the end of the court, onto Chamberlain Avenue, which ran in one big circle around their development, a little over two miles. Another peek at her watch; it was seven o’clock exactly. She turned left and began running a little faster, mindful of her pulse and breathing as she headed westward, the drone of crickets from the nearby field growing slightly more audible. Indian summer meant people were still keeping their windows open, catching the last of the evening breeze. In a couple weeks it would be October, then winter and the crickets would be gone.
He appeared out of Brookside Court up ahead, crunch of gravel and reflectors shining on his running shoes, and then his voice. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
They ran along together, two voices in the not-quite-dark, and Gretchen felt the happiness and relief she’d been waiting all day for, as the immediate physical presence of him settled in to her right. They didn’t speak for the first minute or two, just ran side by side on the road that circled their development.
“Wasn’t sure you were going to make it,” Coop said.
“Oh stop it.”
“I'm serious. I missed you last night.”
“There was a crisis. Somebody let the cat out.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Everything’s fine now,” she said, exhaling it a little in hopes of hiding whatever duplicity might have been involved in the reply. If Coop noticed, he didn’t say anything. They ran on, sneakers making little sketching sounds. Up ahead was Starling Court, and the McLarens’ house, and Gretchen could already hear Fox News blaring from their fifty-inch set, not quite loud enough to disguise the clatter of dishes in the sink. Through the kitchen window she saw Ruth-Anne McLaren pouring herself a Burger King glass of Jack Daniels from the lung-sized bottle on the counter, not bothering with ice. As they passed by Ruth-Anne drank the glass and hurriedly refilled it.
“How about you?” Gretchen asked. “How’s Donna?”
“Don't ask.” He was breathing a little harder now, and she could smell the faint musky scent, the smell of a freshly laundered T-shirt meeting the first drops of sweat. “We got into some stupid fight about Christmas.”
“Why not just go to her folks’?”
“Her father’s a thug.”
Gretchen glanced over, smiled. “What’s a holiday without a dysfunctional family?”
“I’ve already got one of those, thanks.”
They curved their way further, jogging past Butte Court, the Paulsons’ townhouse, their black lab/beagle mix barking furiously at the door until Steve Paulson shouted at it to shut up. Next door to the Paulsons, Gretchen heard a baby screaming; that would be Colin Atwood, four months old and colicky to the point where she sometimes heard his mother Suzanne crying right along with the infant, pleading with him in a voice that made Gretchen’s teeth itch. The old Buick Roadmaster parked out in front belonged to Suzanne’s boyfriend Mickey, but there was a big oil stain underneath it, and the FOR SALE sign shoved up in the passenger side window had dust and dead bugs stuck to it. Sometimes Gretchen saw Mickey out in the fields shooting tin cans with his .38. She heard him talking to the cans sometimes, calling them faggot and bitch.
“You know, when I ran this by myself last night—” Coop caught his breath, swallowed. “It’s not the same, you know?”
“I know.” She tried to sound casual, but the words thrilled her, and she allowed them to work their magic on her. “It goes slower.” They ran on in the gathering dark, followed the loop around, close enough that their arms occasionally brushed together and she felt the small fine hairs prickle against her skin. Coming up on the right was Veseks’ town house, an end unit, and their mutually agreed-upon least favorite. She sensed Coop picking up his pace, wanting to be past it. With the windows open Gretchen could hear nothing but silence from inside. Then, as they grew closer: a muttering noise, Karl Vesek’s voice, toneless in its anger, accusatory, and a woman snapping back at him, one-syllable answers. As they passed by, there was a sudden crack, and a sharp hiss of pain.
Coop cringed a little. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been thinking…” Now he glanced over at her, and she could feel him slowing down a little as they curved into the third turn of the loop, “What if—what if we just stopped all this?”
“What?”
“Winding the watch.”
“How?” she asked, but she already knew the answer, realized she’d known from the beginning. Still, Coop didn’t respond for what felt like hours; there were no fields on this end of the development, no crickets, only the sound of their feet on the dark pavement. Finally he said, with what almost sounded like reluctance:
“It goes slower when we do it alone, you said so yourself. So what happens if we just stop winding it completely?”
Despite it all, despite all the pleasure and excitement of their time together, Gretchen Warner, wife of Terrance Warner, for whom tax preparation was hungry work, felt the first unmistakable seeds of dry panic starting to rattle in the pit of her stomach. “What would happen?”
Coop shrugged: she could just make it out in the last fading light. “Who cares? Maybe it all just winds down.” He flung out one hand at the development, the circle that coiled through it. “Maybe it all just—stops.”
Stops. Her first thought was of her children. Not Terry on the sofa, with his chocolate chip cookies and his coffee and his 401-K, but Evelyn and Henry. What would happen to them? She pictured them frozen on the floor in front of the TV, little statues that would never move again, never grow up or age another moment. Or would they go away completely, cease to exist?
Her silence must have meant something to him, because he was looking at her steadily now as they moved into the final quarter of the loop, their time together coming to an end. “Is this any better, what we’re doing now?” he asked. “Karl Vesek—you know he’s going to kill his wife someday.”
“I know.”
“And that Atwood kid? You think we’re doing them any favors, keeping them going?”
“It’s not up to us,” she said.
“Then who’s it up to?” And before she could answer, “How long have we been doing this?”
“Winding the watch?” The question struck her as faintly absurd, like an adult asking why the sky was blue. “I don’t—”
“You don’t remember,” Coop finished for her. “Me either.” He gestured again at their development and the road that looped through it. “Maybe it’s time we walk away, just to see what happens.”
He was slowing down already, not quite walking, but Gretchen felt herself fighting the urge to pull ahead. She forced herself into a steady trot, her pulse still booming in her throat, breast and wrists. The sweaty immediacy of Coop right here next to her made her want to say everything to him, all the feelings she kept bottled up even during their last hundred-yard sprint back to her cul de sac. All the questions about how it really had started, and what it meant that they were they only two who seemed to be able to do it.
Tonight, though, he wasn’t sprinting. Tonight he had stopped, was standing still.
“I’m tired of it, Gretchen,” he said. “I’m tired of keeping it going.” He held out his hand, and she was aware that they were standing at the dark intersection between Chamberlain and Hornbeck Avenue, facing right, where the road ran due east to the South Street Bridge. Beyond that was the state highway and after that—
After that was whatever remained.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Coop.”
“That’s your answer?”
“For now,” she said, “yeah.”
He nodded and let his hand drop to his side. “I’m sorry too,” he said. “I guess it’ll go slower with me. But you’ll keep at it, won't you?”
It wasn’t really a question, so Gretchen didn’t bother answering it. She turned and left him at the intersection, walking at first, then picking up speed and finally breaking into a run, back toward the sound of the crickets, around the loop and home.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
The First Signing
So today's book signing for EAT THE DARK went great. Jim Munchel's Borders Express at the Camp Hill Mall is the little bookstore that could. It runs on hand-selling superstar booksellers like Jim and Chris Shearer, guys that love the genre and aren't afraid to stand up for writers whose work they like. Lots of people showed up, including my coworkers from the Medical Center, Lisa, Anne and Colin, Vicki, Steph, Mike and Evelyn, and a ton of mall shoppers who just happened to like horror and decided to take a chance on a guy with a couple of plastic skeletons propped up on either side of him. We moved a lot of books today. I hope they all like it.
At first it's always a little strange sitting at a table at the front of a store with stacks of your books, but it turned out to be a terrific opportunity to meet people. And the thing about chatting with strangers is, it gets easier every time you do it. There's a comfort level that's different for every person, but once you find out what you're okay with, you stop worrying and just decide to have a good time. I met a girl named Tiffany who's writing a book about a math teacher with OCD who also happens to be a serial killer and a woman named Paula, who loves good horror novels. And many, many more. So much fun.
This coming weekend I'm flying back to Michigan, where I had a great time last year at the Portage District Library. I'll be back on Saturday, so if you're in the Kalamazoo/Portage area, check the "Where I'll Be" list on the right for details.
At first it's always a little strange sitting at a table at the front of a store with stacks of your books, but it turned out to be a terrific opportunity to meet people. And the thing about chatting with strangers is, it gets easier every time you do it. There's a comfort level that's different for every person, but once you find out what you're okay with, you stop worrying and just decide to have a good time. I met a girl named Tiffany who's writing a book about a math teacher with OCD who also happens to be a serial killer and a woman named Paula, who loves good horror novels. And many, many more. So much fun.
This coming weekend I'm flying back to Michigan, where I had a great time last year at the Portage District Library. I'll be back on Saturday, so if you're in the Kalamazoo/Portage area, check the "Where I'll Be" list on the right for details.
Friday, October 19, 2007
The 5-Year-Old Book Review - Invitation to a Beheading
On Vladimir Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading:
"If I were invited to a beheading, I would tear up the invitation and not go."
--Jack
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Book Flakes
I gave the 400-page manuscript for the first draft of The Black Wing to my kids to play with. They got out some scissors and came up with book flakes.
Let it snow!
Let it snow!
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The First Cold Morning in October
I started writing this story in my kitchen on Monday morning. Finished it yesterday at the Hershey Public Library while Jack was at music class.
For the record, my marriage is fine.
It’s the morning of their fifteenth anniversary, just before dawn, and he wakes to the realization that time has moved on and left him here. It passed through the house like a thief while he was sleeping, touching the world of people and things and leaving everything just slightly different than the way he left it when he went to bed last night. He’s thirty-five years old with the first gray hairs in his beard, his wife dozing next to him with the dog at her feet. In the other room the children are still asleep.
He dresses silently, a pair of old Levis and his Cornell sweatshirt, wool socks, and goes downstairs to make coffee and light the woodstove. It’s still dark outside. He thinks he might have been awakened by the sound of a far-off train but the house is quiet now except for the soft jet-turbine sounds of the fancy coffee maker that she bought him for Christmas last year. He thinks about how they got here, Suzy and him, so far away from New York, maybe not geographically—three hours isn’t a long drive—but in every way that matters. He sees his iPod on the counter and without really thinking about it, he thumbs it on, dialing not-quite-randomly through the songs, looking for a gateway back to those days. How crazy is it that he has scroll back through old playlists to help him remember how things were back then?
He first met Suzy the summer after graduation, at a party in Cape May where neither of them had known anybody. He’d gone down solo to meet friends who’d never showed up, a faulty fuel line in the VW Rabbit had short-circuited his pals’ plans before they got south of Atlantic City, and so he found himself alone. The party turned out to be in a rambling old beach house packed full of strangers, young kids most of them, drinking beer and smoking weed, dancing to whatever song had been popular that summer—George Michael’s “Freedom 90,” wasn’t it? Or Soul II Soul’s “Keep On Moving”? The guys weren’t dancing to it, of course, but the girls liked it, so that’s what was on. He remembered spotting Suzy for the first time across the rickety front porch, dressed in a white T-shirt and cut-off khaki shorts, bare feet, her hair short so it just barely kissed off her sun-freckled shoulders, leaning on the railing, loosely ringing a Coors Light bottle between her thumb and forefinger.
What he’d noticed about her first wasn’t how pretty she was—there were plenty of pretty girls there that night—but the intensity in her stare, so brown and heavy he could feel it before he noticed the color of her irises. She wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was focused on a small group of kids on the other side of the porch, laughing obnoxiously loudly inside a cloud of their own smoke. His initial thought was that he saw loneliness in her eyes, envy, tinctured with the slightest bit of contempt. Now, almost twenty years later, sitting at his Pottery Barn dining room table with the coffee and the iPod on this morning in October, he almost laughs at how wrong first impressions can be—his, at least. Of course, nobody ever accused him of being particularly observant.
Walking over to her, mindful that she still hadn’t looked at him, he started to ask if he could get her another beer—it was as good an opening line as any—but she’d raised one hand before he could get the words out, her eyes still fixed on the other group of kids.
“You see that guy over there?” she asked, voice just loud enough that he’d been able to make it out over the first throbbing bass notes of “Under Pressure,” Queen and David Bowie…or was it Vanilla Ice’s version? 1991: "Ice Ice Baby." He’s afraid it might have been.
“Which one?” he asked, and started to turn around.
She grabbed his wrist. “Don’t look.” Lowering her voice again, she lifted one bare foot and began rubbing it against a sand flea bite inside her other leg: “In the Budweiser T-shirt, with the brown hair. See him?”
“Sure.” As casually as possible, he joined her against the porch railing, enjoying this immediate sense of shared closeness, superficial as it might be. Somewhere down the single-lane beach road the ocean was bellowing, rolling up and crashing against the sand. There was a bonfire down there somewhere, a dragon’s tongue crackling up orange against the night, and beyond it the tide was coming in, ancient, endless power. Even though he couldn’t see it, he could smell the salt, and he remembers wondering if he could taste it on her lips, if they kissed.
“I’m going to go talk to him,” she said, nodding at the guy in the Budweiser shirt.
Oh, he thought, disappointment dropping him back down to earth so hard and fast that it temporarily doubled his weight. But it was familiar, too, like being shoved in the hallway by the high school bully. Even then he hadn’t had much experience with girls, and he knew this feeling of letdown better than he would’ve liked to admit.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “he’s just a friend. We’re going down to the beach in a minute. You should come with us.”
He frowned, not understanding, but she was already walking away, approaching the group on the other side of the porch. A moment later he heard her laugh for the very first time, and then stood watching, still puzzled, while she and the guy in the Budweiser T-shirt walk down the front porch steps and across the road toward the beach. Looking back on it now, he remembers having no idea what they were doing, any of them, himself included. But he liked her. Already she seemed different than the other girls he’d met, more sure of herself. He finished his beer and set the empty bottle on the railing next to hers, then walked down to the beach.
And here was the bonfire, surrounded by kids making out on blankets and sleeping bags, a long-haired guy with an acoustic guitar playing an old Dusty Springfield number, but she wasn’t there. Walking away from the fire, cold sand under his bare feet, he followed the line of the surf toward the glow of a cigarette, already sensing her there, sprawled on the sand with the kid in the Budweiser T-shirt, waiting for him.
“You never told me your name,” he said.
She didn’t answer. He came closer. There was just enough light from the distant fire that he saw the blood smeared around her mouth, a crooked clown grin that slopped over her teeth and crazily sideways up one of her cheeks, and realized that the kid in the Budweiser T-shirt wasn’t moving. The kid’s throat was torn open, a big crooked homemade grin under his chin. His arms sprawled limp on the sand. The shirt wasn’t white anymore, not even remotely.
“What…?” was all he managed to get out.
“It’s okay,” she said. Blood ran off her chin, and she reached out her hand for him.
“What happened? What’s happening here?”
“Exactly what it looks like,” she said.
And that was all it took. In the end, for what seemed like the first time in his adult life, things were exactly what they seemed to be. Looking back now he wonders if that was really all he was ever searching for in life—one clear glimpse of something that was both profound and self-explanatory. Of course, that’s simplifying matters. But the fundamental reality, the cornerstone of their relationship, remained unchanged. That night on the beach he was given a glimpse of the unimaginable and he never looked back.
Until now.
After fifteen years of marriage.
What is that has awakened him on this particular cold autumn morning, except perhaps the knowledge that what they once had, starting on the beach that night, is gone. Or, if not quite gone, it isn’t what he once thought. For all this time, he has lived with her and her secret, her appetites, and for her part, she has never gone after him in that way. They have lived here in this farmhouse in Pennsylvania, going to work, raising children, and all the while—
He taps the button on the iPod, searching for another playlist, something more contemporary. Then, suddenly, he removes the earphones and looks around as if he might have heard something, but the house is still silent.
He pours a cup of coffee, takes a sip and puts on his jacket. Upstairs he hears the dog stirring at the foot of the bed, its leash and tags jingling as the animal wakes up. She’ll be awake soon too, he thinks. He has to be quick, and quiet.
Stepping out the front door, he’s shocked by how cold it really is. Frost skates and gleams over the grass and piles of dead leaves. He buries his hands in his jacket pockets, hunches his shoulders and walks along the pathway leading out to the barn.
The barn smells like old damp straw and horses, though they’ve never had any. In the corner he keeps a workbench, tools carefully hung up, each in their place. He’s not especially handy, but he likes things organized, just so. She’s not that way, but she respects his boundaries and never sets foot out here. Just in case, though, he keeps one particular toolbox stashed under the bench, where you have to look to see it. He pulls it out and unlatches it, lifting the lid to reveal a small but powerful looking wooden mallet and single wooden stake.
For a moment he just stares at the two objects in his hands, barely visible in the first dusty beams of morning light peering through the windows behind him. He doesn’t have to ask himself if he’s up to this—he realizes now that he’s been ready for a while. It’s what woke him in the first place.
Behind him, the barn door creaks, and before he can turn, he hears her voice, still lazy with sleep.
“Darling?”
He turns, already moving toward her, and the smile on his face is genuine.
“Happy anniversary,” he says.
For the record, my marriage is fine.
It’s the morning of their fifteenth anniversary, just before dawn, and he wakes to the realization that time has moved on and left him here. It passed through the house like a thief while he was sleeping, touching the world of people and things and leaving everything just slightly different than the way he left it when he went to bed last night. He’s thirty-five years old with the first gray hairs in his beard, his wife dozing next to him with the dog at her feet. In the other room the children are still asleep.
He dresses silently, a pair of old Levis and his Cornell sweatshirt, wool socks, and goes downstairs to make coffee and light the woodstove. It’s still dark outside. He thinks he might have been awakened by the sound of a far-off train but the house is quiet now except for the soft jet-turbine sounds of the fancy coffee maker that she bought him for Christmas last year. He thinks about how they got here, Suzy and him, so far away from New York, maybe not geographically—three hours isn’t a long drive—but in every way that matters. He sees his iPod on the counter and without really thinking about it, he thumbs it on, dialing not-quite-randomly through the songs, looking for a gateway back to those days. How crazy is it that he has scroll back through old playlists to help him remember how things were back then?
He first met Suzy the summer after graduation, at a party in Cape May where neither of them had known anybody. He’d gone down solo to meet friends who’d never showed up, a faulty fuel line in the VW Rabbit had short-circuited his pals’ plans before they got south of Atlantic City, and so he found himself alone. The party turned out to be in a rambling old beach house packed full of strangers, young kids most of them, drinking beer and smoking weed, dancing to whatever song had been popular that summer—George Michael’s “Freedom 90,” wasn’t it? Or Soul II Soul’s “Keep On Moving”? The guys weren’t dancing to it, of course, but the girls liked it, so that’s what was on. He remembered spotting Suzy for the first time across the rickety front porch, dressed in a white T-shirt and cut-off khaki shorts, bare feet, her hair short so it just barely kissed off her sun-freckled shoulders, leaning on the railing, loosely ringing a Coors Light bottle between her thumb and forefinger.
What he’d noticed about her first wasn’t how pretty she was—there were plenty of pretty girls there that night—but the intensity in her stare, so brown and heavy he could feel it before he noticed the color of her irises. She wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was focused on a small group of kids on the other side of the porch, laughing obnoxiously loudly inside a cloud of their own smoke. His initial thought was that he saw loneliness in her eyes, envy, tinctured with the slightest bit of contempt. Now, almost twenty years later, sitting at his Pottery Barn dining room table with the coffee and the iPod on this morning in October, he almost laughs at how wrong first impressions can be—his, at least. Of course, nobody ever accused him of being particularly observant.
Walking over to her, mindful that she still hadn’t looked at him, he started to ask if he could get her another beer—it was as good an opening line as any—but she’d raised one hand before he could get the words out, her eyes still fixed on the other group of kids.
“You see that guy over there?” she asked, voice just loud enough that he’d been able to make it out over the first throbbing bass notes of “Under Pressure,” Queen and David Bowie…or was it Vanilla Ice’s version? 1991: "Ice Ice Baby." He’s afraid it might have been.
“Which one?” he asked, and started to turn around.
She grabbed his wrist. “Don’t look.” Lowering her voice again, she lifted one bare foot and began rubbing it against a sand flea bite inside her other leg: “In the Budweiser T-shirt, with the brown hair. See him?”
“Sure.” As casually as possible, he joined her against the porch railing, enjoying this immediate sense of shared closeness, superficial as it might be. Somewhere down the single-lane beach road the ocean was bellowing, rolling up and crashing against the sand. There was a bonfire down there somewhere, a dragon’s tongue crackling up orange against the night, and beyond it the tide was coming in, ancient, endless power. Even though he couldn’t see it, he could smell the salt, and he remembers wondering if he could taste it on her lips, if they kissed.
“I’m going to go talk to him,” she said, nodding at the guy in the Budweiser shirt.
Oh, he thought, disappointment dropping him back down to earth so hard and fast that it temporarily doubled his weight. But it was familiar, too, like being shoved in the hallway by the high school bully. Even then he hadn’t had much experience with girls, and he knew this feeling of letdown better than he would’ve liked to admit.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “he’s just a friend. We’re going down to the beach in a minute. You should come with us.”
He frowned, not understanding, but she was already walking away, approaching the group on the other side of the porch. A moment later he heard her laugh for the very first time, and then stood watching, still puzzled, while she and the guy in the Budweiser T-shirt walk down the front porch steps and across the road toward the beach. Looking back on it now, he remembers having no idea what they were doing, any of them, himself included. But he liked her. Already she seemed different than the other girls he’d met, more sure of herself. He finished his beer and set the empty bottle on the railing next to hers, then walked down to the beach.
And here was the bonfire, surrounded by kids making out on blankets and sleeping bags, a long-haired guy with an acoustic guitar playing an old Dusty Springfield number, but she wasn’t there. Walking away from the fire, cold sand under his bare feet, he followed the line of the surf toward the glow of a cigarette, already sensing her there, sprawled on the sand with the kid in the Budweiser T-shirt, waiting for him.
“You never told me your name,” he said.
She didn’t answer. He came closer. There was just enough light from the distant fire that he saw the blood smeared around her mouth, a crooked clown grin that slopped over her teeth and crazily sideways up one of her cheeks, and realized that the kid in the Budweiser T-shirt wasn’t moving. The kid’s throat was torn open, a big crooked homemade grin under his chin. His arms sprawled limp on the sand. The shirt wasn’t white anymore, not even remotely.
“What…?” was all he managed to get out.
“It’s okay,” she said. Blood ran off her chin, and she reached out her hand for him.
“What happened? What’s happening here?”
“Exactly what it looks like,” she said.
And that was all it took. In the end, for what seemed like the first time in his adult life, things were exactly what they seemed to be. Looking back now he wonders if that was really all he was ever searching for in life—one clear glimpse of something that was both profound and self-explanatory. Of course, that’s simplifying matters. But the fundamental reality, the cornerstone of their relationship, remained unchanged. That night on the beach he was given a glimpse of the unimaginable and he never looked back.
Until now.
After fifteen years of marriage.
What is that has awakened him on this particular cold autumn morning, except perhaps the knowledge that what they once had, starting on the beach that night, is gone. Or, if not quite gone, it isn’t what he once thought. For all this time, he has lived with her and her secret, her appetites, and for her part, she has never gone after him in that way. They have lived here in this farmhouse in Pennsylvania, going to work, raising children, and all the while—
He taps the button on the iPod, searching for another playlist, something more contemporary. Then, suddenly, he removes the earphones and looks around as if he might have heard something, but the house is still silent.
He pours a cup of coffee, takes a sip and puts on his jacket. Upstairs he hears the dog stirring at the foot of the bed, its leash and tags jingling as the animal wakes up. She’ll be awake soon too, he thinks. He has to be quick, and quiet.
Stepping out the front door, he’s shocked by how cold it really is. Frost skates and gleams over the grass and piles of dead leaves. He buries his hands in his jacket pockets, hunches his shoulders and walks along the pathway leading out to the barn.
The barn smells like old damp straw and horses, though they’ve never had any. In the corner he keeps a workbench, tools carefully hung up, each in their place. He’s not especially handy, but he likes things organized, just so. She’s not that way, but she respects his boundaries and never sets foot out here. Just in case, though, he keeps one particular toolbox stashed under the bench, where you have to look to see it. He pulls it out and unlatches it, lifting the lid to reveal a small but powerful looking wooden mallet and single wooden stake.
For a moment he just stares at the two objects in his hands, barely visible in the first dusty beams of morning light peering through the windows behind him. He doesn’t have to ask himself if he’s up to this—he realizes now that he’s been ready for a while. It’s what woke him in the first place.
Behind him, the barn door creaks, and before he can turn, he hears her voice, still lazy with sleep.
“Darling?”
He turns, already moving toward her, and the smile on his face is genuine.
“Happy anniversary,” he says.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Tomorrow
Eat the Dark comes out tomorrow. I’ve already heard about people seeing it in stores, but tomorrow’s technically the release date. I hope you’ll check it out. I’m pretty excited about it, and the initial reviews that I’ve read have been pretty positive.
I’m also excited about the upcoming signings. I bought a couple of three-foot fully articulated talking skeletons over the weekend and they’ll be coming along with me for the signings to add banter to those times when we might hit a lull. Maybe we’ll have a contest on-site: name the skeletons, win some candy.
Also, I’m in the process of trying to set up what might be a very cool signing in Philadelphia. I don’t want to say anything because it might not work out, but if it did…it would be very cool. Hint: It’s not at a bookstore.
In other news, I read Norman Partridge’s instant Halloween classic Dark Harvest over the weekend, in one sitting. If you haven’t gotten hold of this book yet, I urge you to waste no more time. There’s a reason why people are going nuts over this book. It’s fantastic. I emailed him that night to tell him how much I loved it, and he responded the next day saying that he was a fan of Chasing the Dead. How cool is that?
In other news, we sold our house.
Now all we have to do is find a new one.
I’m also excited about the upcoming signings. I bought a couple of three-foot fully articulated talking skeletons over the weekend and they’ll be coming along with me for the signings to add banter to those times when we might hit a lull. Maybe we’ll have a contest on-site: name the skeletons, win some candy.
Also, I’m in the process of trying to set up what might be a very cool signing in Philadelphia. I don’t want to say anything because it might not work out, but if it did…it would be very cool. Hint: It’s not at a bookstore.
In other news, I read Norman Partridge’s instant Halloween classic Dark Harvest over the weekend, in one sitting. If you haven’t gotten hold of this book yet, I urge you to waste no more time. There’s a reason why people are going nuts over this book. It’s fantastic. I emailed him that night to tell him how much I loved it, and he responded the next day saying that he was a fan of Chasing the Dead. How cool is that?
In other news, we sold our house.
Now all we have to do is find a new one.
Monday, October 08, 2007
I Am Your Future
This is Rolo. Apparently he lives with us now.
Here's the background: I worked another midnight shift last night, eleven hours in the hospital basement scanning patients. Drove home at six AM blaring Ozzy to keep from falling asleep and crawled into bed. Woke up around eleven-thirty and the house was quiet and empty. Checked MySpace and found a message from Robert directing me to his great review of Eat the Dark on Fantasy Book Critic. Also found out that Tantor has posted an audio sample of Renee Raudman reading Eat the Dark. This is the first I've heard of Renee's work on this book and I absolutely love it. Listening to her read the voice of my serial killer Frank Snow is like having warm, poisoned honey poured into your ears.
I went downstairs and got coffee, checked the answering machine -- set up an interview with a reporter from the newspaper back in Kalamazoo, Michigan where I'll be reading in a couple weeks. The other message was from my wife. She told me I had to drive down to the Humane Society because they wouldn't give us the dog until they'd met the whole family.
Wait a minute. The dog?
I drove to the Humane Society and met my family there. The dog in question was named Rolo. He's half-husky, half-beagle, rescued from an abused home. By the time I arrived, the kids had already decided they wanted him. My wife and I had been on the fence about having a dog for a while now but yesterday, when I brought home a foot-long snapping turtle I'd found halfway across Cocoa Avenue, that must have been the turning point. The turtle ended up being returned to the stream in our backyard and now we have Rolo. Like the candy for which he's no doubt named, he's a whole roll o' fun. Although you can't tell from the above picture, the left eye is actually very pale blue, not Crypt Keeper white, as it appears here. Still, he's a perfect match for our cat Beau, who also has two different colored eyes.
Now I'm back at work getting the occasional phone calls updating me on the behavior of the dog and the cat, who are still trying to resolve various territorial disputes in the living room.
Oh yeah, did I mention that we're also trying to sell our house?
Am I high?
Friday, October 05, 2007
Put This in Your Weekend and Smoke It
Over at this week's Philadelphia City Paper, Cameron Hughes writes a terrific early review of Eat the Dark. Very cool!
Hard to believe, but the book is going live in just a week and a half. I got a handful of copies and they look great. Ballantine and Del Rey outdid themselves with this one, and I couldn't be happier about it.
I'll be hitting the road to sign books and scare children across this great land. Here's the plan so far:
Saturday, October 20th 1-4 PM
Borders Express, 3575 Capital City Mall, Camp Hill, PA 17011, (717) 737-4298
Saturday, October 27th 2-4 PM
Portage District Library, 300 Library Lane, Portage, MI 49002 (269) 329-4544
Saturday, November 3rd 1-3 PM
Borders Express (formerly Waldenbooks), 828 Park City Shopping Center, Lancaster, PA 17601 (717) 299 0905
And later that same day...
Saturday, November 3rd 5-7 PM
Borders Express, 1665 State Hill Road, #A7, Wyomissing, PA, 19619, (610) 376-6133
Monday, January 28, 2008, 6:30 PM
Hershey Public Library, 701 Cocoa Avenue, Hershey, PA, 17033 (717) 533-6555
Hard to believe, but the book is going live in just a week and a half. I got a handful of copies and they look great. Ballantine and Del Rey outdid themselves with this one, and I couldn't be happier about it.
I'll be hitting the road to sign books and scare children across this great land. Here's the plan so far:
Saturday, October 20th 1-4 PM
Borders Express, 3575 Capital City Mall, Camp Hill, PA 17011, (717) 737-4298
Saturday, October 27th 2-4 PM
Portage District Library, 300 Library Lane, Portage, MI 49002 (269) 329-4544
Saturday, November 3rd 1-3 PM
Borders Express (formerly Waldenbooks), 828 Park City Shopping Center, Lancaster, PA 17601 (717) 299 0905
And later that same day...
Saturday, November 3rd 5-7 PM
Borders Express, 1665 State Hill Road, #A7, Wyomissing, PA, 19619, (610) 376-6133
Monday, January 28, 2008, 6:30 PM
Hershey Public Library, 701 Cocoa Avenue, Hershey, PA, 17033 (717) 533-6555
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
The Waiting (Is the Hardest Part)
Being a writer means you spend a lot of time waiting. You pour yourself into a project for weeks, months, sometimes years, and then you send it out to your agent or editor, and the clock starts ticking. Eventually you hear back, you get notes and editorial suggestions, you fix it up, send it off again, and the waiting continues. If the manuscript sells, the clock gets set back to zero again, and the prepublication wait begins.
Waiting is inevitable in this business, and there's no way around it. The trick is not waiting actively -- that is, checking your email and phone messages constantly throughout the day in anticipation of good fortune. I can't do this, but I try. My favorite way of not doing it is throwing myself into something new. Sometimes this technique actually works.
For example, my newest novel, Stillwater, was launched mainly as a way of not having to think about my last one The Black Wing, while I waited to hear back about it. Stillwater started out as a whim: What would happen if you combined Ordinary People with Jaws? I imagined a dysfunctional family on a pontoon boat under attack from something in the water. The idea was so damn fun, so hooky, that I jumped right in. Stillwater turned into much more -- became, in fact, The Book I Was Born to Write -- and I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. But at the time it was just my hobbyhorse, my toy truck, a pure pleasure to work on from start to finish. I started it while sitting out on my back porch in early July, thought about it the whole time I was out in San Diego, wrote chunks of it on vacation in South Carolina (hi, Sarah!) and finished it up on my desktop with the sticky keyboard where my kids spilled orange juice all over it.
To date, four people have read the manuscript for Stillwater -- my wife, my agent, and two other readers -- but the feedback so far has been very positive. Whether this means the book will ever actually see the light of day remains to be seen. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that something I thought was great wasn't met with the same enthusiasm in New York. At the moment it's on my editor's desk, awaiting judgment. And that ticking sound you hear is almost certainly just a figment of your imagination.
Whatever the case, I had an excellent time with it. Not long after I finished the most recent polish, I found out that the notes on The Black Wing were coming back soon, hopefully by the end of this week. If nothing else, Stillwater will go down in history the most fun I've ever had waiting to hear back about another manuscript.
Waiting is inevitable in this business, and there's no way around it. The trick is not waiting actively -- that is, checking your email and phone messages constantly throughout the day in anticipation of good fortune. I can't do this, but I try. My favorite way of not doing it is throwing myself into something new. Sometimes this technique actually works.
For example, my newest novel, Stillwater, was launched mainly as a way of not having to think about my last one The Black Wing, while I waited to hear back about it. Stillwater started out as a whim: What would happen if you combined Ordinary People with Jaws? I imagined a dysfunctional family on a pontoon boat under attack from something in the water. The idea was so damn fun, so hooky, that I jumped right in. Stillwater turned into much more -- became, in fact, The Book I Was Born to Write -- and I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. But at the time it was just my hobbyhorse, my toy truck, a pure pleasure to work on from start to finish. I started it while sitting out on my back porch in early July, thought about it the whole time I was out in San Diego, wrote chunks of it on vacation in South Carolina (hi, Sarah!) and finished it up on my desktop with the sticky keyboard where my kids spilled orange juice all over it.
To date, four people have read the manuscript for Stillwater -- my wife, my agent, and two other readers -- but the feedback so far has been very positive. Whether this means the book will ever actually see the light of day remains to be seen. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that something I thought was great wasn't met with the same enthusiasm in New York. At the moment it's on my editor's desk, awaiting judgment. And that ticking sound you hear is almost certainly just a figment of your imagination.
Whatever the case, I had an excellent time with it. Not long after I finished the most recent polish, I found out that the notes on The Black Wing were coming back soon, hopefully by the end of this week. If nothing else, Stillwater will go down in history the most fun I've ever had waiting to hear back about another manuscript.
Monday, October 01, 2007
38 Special
I turned thirty-eight about three hours ago. Happy birthday to me.
Not exactly a milestone year but at this point, that’s a good thing. All the milestones from here aren’t exactly thrilling. Getting older would be less depressing if you developed superpowers later in life. Imagine turning forty and being able to fly or control the weather. By sixty-five you’d be living on Saturn and traveling back in time. Someone should figure this out.
Anyway, I’m celebrating by working the midnight shift tonight. In the morning I’ll go home, sleep a few hours and come back to work second shift tomorrow, which means is I probably won’t see much of my family on my actual birthday.
Fortunately we got to spend the whole weekend together. On Saturday we went to check on the Chasing the Dead paperbacks on Borders front table and shopped for Jack’s Halloween costume—he wants to dress up as the killer from Scream, a choice unlikely to be welcomed into his kindergarten festivities, which means he’ll have to go with his second choice, a dust bunny. That’s his idea—a dust bunny. Christina plans to wrap him in batting and spray-paint it gray. Three dollars later the kid’s got a costume. The next-door neighbor’s got him beat, though. He wants to be a box.
After shopping for costumes, we went out to lunch at the Olive Garden. It was my choice but I mainly chose it because it gives me an excuse to have merlot with lunch and I know my kids love the Olive Garden. Jack digs the breadsticks and the oily salad with lots of olives and lettuce and the hot spinach dip appetizer that he can dip flat pieces of bread into. Veda and I usually order some kind of seafood and everybody but me gets a dessert. We went home and I caught a nap, then we went out to Hershey Park for the evening, riding rides until after it got dark and the whole park lit up around us. Jack and I rode the Super Duper Looper three times in a row as the night got cooler and on our way out we picked up Nathan’s hot dogs and fries. There’s something inexplicably satisfying about fried food at night in a carnival atmosphere. Afterward I carried Veda on my shoulders and we went home, put the kids to bed and I stayed up with Jason Starr’s new novel The Follower, published by St. Martin’s Minotaur imprint. For some reason all the best books I’ve read lately come from St. Martin’s Minotaur—the last three in particular, including Chelsea Cain’s debut Heartsick, a real stunner, and Duane Swierczynski’s The Blonde.
The house was cold when I woke up Sunday morning. I was the first one up, put on an old Bill Evans CD and made breakfast for everybody—eggs, over easy, bacon, Starbucks and Pepperidge Farm Soft Oatmeal toast. Veda got on a stool to help me crack the eggs. We spent the day loafing around the house, playing old Elvis Costello songs and trapping strange insects that crawl out on our roof and screens. Both of my children are fascinated with bugs right now and at any given moment there are jars and bottles and buckets with caterpillars, beetles, worms, moths, butterflies, arachnids and mantises in various stages of death and transcendence around the house. It was a loose, unorganized afternoon and nobody seemed to mind because the weather was so great and we spent the duration of the day drawing Lego car racetracks with chalk on the sidewalk. My kids wanted a story so I hit them with the newest installment of Dr. Chickensauce, a super-villain whose Quixotic attempts at world domination invariably end in catastrophe. In today’s episode Dr. Chickensauce attempts to take over the world by creating the world’s scariest haunted house and trapping the President in a mirror-lined room the size of a phone booth with the vengeful ghost of George Washington, which, for various reasons, the President eventually has to have sucked out of his butt with a vacuum cleaner. This ending brought the house down, exactly as planned. When it comes to butt humor, I use the same philosophy that B-actresses bring to on-screen nudity: I only employ it when the project's really in trouble.
I put on my hospital scrubs and we all went to a playground. My kids knew I had to go into work tonight but when I said goodbye, Jack burst into tears, and Veda tried to follow suit but couldn’t quite pull it off. I gave kisses and hugs and told them I loved them and drove to the hospital. I’d been here for an hour when Christina called and asked if I’d used up the last of the eggs without telling her. “No birthday cake for you,” she said, with a certain dark glee, and threatened me with a vegan carob cake instead. A couple hours later I called her back after she’d put the kids to bed. They were already asleep and she’d just finished frosting my cake. I told her I thought she didn’t have enough eggs, and she said she’d gone next door and borrowed them from the neighbor. Tomorrow if we have a moment together in the midst of everything, we’ll all have a piece of cake together. My wife makes a damn good cake; I think it’s the best I’ve ever had.
I turned thirty-eight three hours ago.
Happy birthday to me.
Not exactly a milestone year but at this point, that’s a good thing. All the milestones from here aren’t exactly thrilling. Getting older would be less depressing if you developed superpowers later in life. Imagine turning forty and being able to fly or control the weather. By sixty-five you’d be living on Saturn and traveling back in time. Someone should figure this out.
Anyway, I’m celebrating by working the midnight shift tonight. In the morning I’ll go home, sleep a few hours and come back to work second shift tomorrow, which means is I probably won’t see much of my family on my actual birthday.
Fortunately we got to spend the whole weekend together. On Saturday we went to check on the Chasing the Dead paperbacks on Borders front table and shopped for Jack’s Halloween costume—he wants to dress up as the killer from Scream, a choice unlikely to be welcomed into his kindergarten festivities, which means he’ll have to go with his second choice, a dust bunny. That’s his idea—a dust bunny. Christina plans to wrap him in batting and spray-paint it gray. Three dollars later the kid’s got a costume. The next-door neighbor’s got him beat, though. He wants to be a box.
After shopping for costumes, we went out to lunch at the Olive Garden. It was my choice but I mainly chose it because it gives me an excuse to have merlot with lunch and I know my kids love the Olive Garden. Jack digs the breadsticks and the oily salad with lots of olives and lettuce and the hot spinach dip appetizer that he can dip flat pieces of bread into. Veda and I usually order some kind of seafood and everybody but me gets a dessert. We went home and I caught a nap, then we went out to Hershey Park for the evening, riding rides until after it got dark and the whole park lit up around us. Jack and I rode the Super Duper Looper three times in a row as the night got cooler and on our way out we picked up Nathan’s hot dogs and fries. There’s something inexplicably satisfying about fried food at night in a carnival atmosphere. Afterward I carried Veda on my shoulders and we went home, put the kids to bed and I stayed up with Jason Starr’s new novel The Follower, published by St. Martin’s Minotaur imprint. For some reason all the best books I’ve read lately come from St. Martin’s Minotaur—the last three in particular, including Chelsea Cain’s debut Heartsick, a real stunner, and Duane Swierczynski’s The Blonde.
The house was cold when I woke up Sunday morning. I was the first one up, put on an old Bill Evans CD and made breakfast for everybody—eggs, over easy, bacon, Starbucks and Pepperidge Farm Soft Oatmeal toast. Veda got on a stool to help me crack the eggs. We spent the day loafing around the house, playing old Elvis Costello songs and trapping strange insects that crawl out on our roof and screens. Both of my children are fascinated with bugs right now and at any given moment there are jars and bottles and buckets with caterpillars, beetles, worms, moths, butterflies, arachnids and mantises in various stages of death and transcendence around the house. It was a loose, unorganized afternoon and nobody seemed to mind because the weather was so great and we spent the duration of the day drawing Lego car racetracks with chalk on the sidewalk. My kids wanted a story so I hit them with the newest installment of Dr. Chickensauce, a super-villain whose Quixotic attempts at world domination invariably end in catastrophe. In today’s episode Dr. Chickensauce attempts to take over the world by creating the world’s scariest haunted house and trapping the President in a mirror-lined room the size of a phone booth with the vengeful ghost of George Washington, which, for various reasons, the President eventually has to have sucked out of his butt with a vacuum cleaner. This ending brought the house down, exactly as planned. When it comes to butt humor, I use the same philosophy that B-actresses bring to on-screen nudity: I only employ it when the project's really in trouble.
I put on my hospital scrubs and we all went to a playground. My kids knew I had to go into work tonight but when I said goodbye, Jack burst into tears, and Veda tried to follow suit but couldn’t quite pull it off. I gave kisses and hugs and told them I loved them and drove to the hospital. I’d been here for an hour when Christina called and asked if I’d used up the last of the eggs without telling her. “No birthday cake for you,” she said, with a certain dark glee, and threatened me with a vegan carob cake instead. A couple hours later I called her back after she’d put the kids to bed. They were already asleep and she’d just finished frosting my cake. I told her I thought she didn’t have enough eggs, and she said she’d gone next door and borrowed them from the neighbor. Tomorrow if we have a moment together in the midst of everything, we’ll all have a piece of cake together. My wife makes a damn good cake; I think it’s the best I’ve ever had.
I turned thirty-eight three hours ago.
Happy birthday to me.
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