Chad A. Clark's Blog, page 29

Baked Scribe Flashback : Mistaken Intent

He didn’t know how to tell her that the night before had been the extent of his interest. Nothing against her, but the sex was done, and beyond that, he would have preferred to not see her at all this morning. The only reason he hadn’t called her a cab the night before is because of the screaming fits of rage women seemed to go into when you asked them to leave at 2:30 in the morning.

This one wasn’t leaving though. She stood there in the room, tapping her foot on the floor looking at him expectantly, like she was waiting for him to do…

What exactly?

It was always a little awkward even though he had done this dozens of times. That was how the scene worked. You hit the clubs, pick out the one you want and bring her home for a little after-party party. Why couldn’t that just be the end of the exchange, with the transfer of fluids? He wanted her, and clearly she had wanted him the way she had responded to his advances. No need to complicate this whole thing with strained conversation.

In the midst of his dull recollections, he suddenly remembered her body pressed up against his outside the coat check at the bar. What was she whispering in his ear? He shook his head.

“Look…” he started, reaching into his memory for her name and finding nothing, “Look I don’t know what you were hoping for here, but—”

“Eddie.”

He stopped, again with a feeling in his gut that there was some key part of this exchange that he was forgetting, something that was important. Blank slate was all he could come up in his mental loft.

“What?”

She smirked and shook her head. “You owe me three hundred and fifty dollars.”

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Baked Scribe Flashback : In The Dark

The sound of the cry cut through the woods and he sat up in his sleeping bag, looking out over the clearing. He looked across the dying embers of the fire at his friend, who seemed unfazed.

“I told you the locals around here called them Howler Woods, I guess it was for a reason,” Zeke said.

“I just figured it was just passing stories around,” Don said, “I didn’t take it so literally. What do you think that was?”

“What do you mean, you don’t think it’s the dead?” Zeke rolled his eyes, “I can’t remember what they call the effect, something that has to do with the way the woods are situated and air drafts coming through and causing weird sounds.”

Don stared him down for several moments before responding. “Yeah, I think I’ll still with the cries of the dammed, thanks.” He stabbed his long metal fork through another hot dog and held it out over the fire, sitting in the silence and watching the skin of the meat blister and pop. Zeke cracked open another beer, the popping of compressed air followed close by the smell of hops. They looked back over their shoulders at the sound of wood snapping somewhere off in the darkness, as if under the weight of a footstep.

“Animal,” Zeke said, shrugging again as he returned his attention to the beer.

“Big animal,” Don said, squinting into the shadows beyond the tree line. There was no sign of movement or further noise that he could detect.

“Told you,” Zeke said as Don turned back towards the warmth of what was left of their fire. He didn’t know why he had let himself get talked into this absurd trip in the first place, other than the fact that he had really wanted to get out of town and away from things. He didn’t even like camping but sometimes it was good enough to simply not be doing anything else. Zeke threw some more wood on the fire and it flared up again.

He felt himself starting to drift off, soothed by the popping from the fire and the heat flowing over him, the cries from the birds overhead. His brain had gotten so foggy that it was several minutes before it occurred to him that it was too late for birds to be out.

Don’s head snapped up at the realization as at least a dozen black colored birds descended down out of the trees and began circling them, shrieking loudly and shattering the silence. They looked like ravens but several times larger and continued to pour down on them from the trees until they were surrounded by a cyclone of birds, obscuring anything else around them.

He could hear Zeke screaming, could see the fear in his eyes that had to mirror his own. Don grabbed at the sides of his head as the birds took up the sound of a train bearing down on them, the pressure in his head increasing with the wind. The fire blinked out and the birds swarmed in on them, blacking out whatever light was left and shrouding them in darkness.

Don blinked and looked around, no longer feeling the forest around him and not knowing where he even was anymore. He saw a cloaked figure striding towards them, face obscured by a dark, crimson hood. He thought he could hear the sound of branches blowing against each other and in the shrieking howl of the wind, he thought he heard a voice, whispering in his ear, so high pitched and abrasive that he felt like something was being jabbed into his head. He felt warm fluid coming out of his ears that had to be blood. The cloaked figure raised a hand to point and Don soon felt searing heat ripping through his temples.

He woke up on the ground. To the left, nearly fifty yards away he could make out their campsite. Zeke was nowhere to be seen and there were no sounds of anything out of the ordinary, just the normal night life of the forest.

“Hello?” he called out as he struggled to his feet, hoping Zeke would answer, jump out from behind a tree but there was no sign. He was about to call out again when a par of hands grabbed him from behind and threw him against one of the trees. He cried out as something cut into his back and he fell to his knees.

Zeke was looking over him, reaching down with one hand to grab at his shirt, the other already balled into a fist, drawn back to strike.

“Wait, stop!” Don called out to try and talk some sense into his friend but the only answer he received was the fist, driving down onto his nose, cutting through skin and breaking bone underneath, causing blood to spray out in all directions.

The image of Zeke crouched over him began to blister and smoke, the forest around him trembling, like film that was starting to tear in a movie. Instead of his friend that

he was looking up at, he now saw a large mass of some kind of black substance, oily and slick but still bearing some vague human form as it reached down for him. Electricity sparked off of it, burning him wherever it touched and he struggled to get free.

When he came to, whatever was left of Zeke was strewn around him in pieces, on the ground. The only way he could even identify the remains was by Zeke’s plaid shirt, still plastered to the severed torso that was lying near him. Don looked at his hands, now coated in blood that he somehow knew wasn’t his. He leapt to his feet and began to run, trying to out-distance whatever was happening here. A cacophony of snarling cries rose up all around, sounds of movement from the underbrush around him.

The world went dark and silent, the feel of the ground underneath him now absent. He felt weightless, as suspended in midair, seeing nothing but darkness. He was about to speak when searing pain lanced down his back, a blade of some kind piercing the skin and making its way down. The words he was about to speak was drowned out in a sudden outpouring of sound, a scream of inarticulate pain and rage. He wasn’t even sure if the scream was his own.

The sound caught in his throat as he began to cough up blood. He could see more of his surroundings now. The large trees of the forest stood all around him. He was tied to one of the massive branches, hanging upside down, swinging from side to side on the back of a stiff breeze that brought pain up and down his body like a thousand pin pricks.

On the branches of the other trees, Don could see the bodies of others, also hanging and fighting against their bonds. They seemed to blink in and out of existence, like a bad television signal. Despite this, he still heard the constant sound of their cries, eerily similar to what he had heard earlier, sitting next to the fire. He was starting to struggle against the force holding him to the tree when he felt the cutting begin again.

He began to howl.

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Issue #142 : Hail Mary

“Can you trace it?”

Devin didn’t answer and instead, tapped away at the keyboard, trying to ignore Kathryn’s restless shifting back and forth, behind him. He could actually see her, with his back turned, raising the hand to her mouth, and inserting the gnarled thumb, chewing as she waited impatiently for him to answer. He knew that she had no patience, but something like this couldn’t be rushed. He had to give it its due time, and not take the risk of misidentifying someone with a false positive. She would never understand the value of that, but he would never forget.

“Can you trace it?”

This was what she did. If she got tired of waiting, she just repeated the question, as if he hadn’t heard it the first time.

“For fuck’s sake, would you get a snack or something? I’m working on it, I can’t make it go faster just because you want it to.”

He heard her grunt in frustration and she resumed her pacing behind him. Shaking his head, he resumed the keystrokes.

“You know, not for nothing, but I would probably have an easier time at this if you would stop distracting me with all the hand wringing. Can you just give me some space?”

He heard the grunt again, but she actually acquiesced, stalking away from the workstation, and dropping down into one of the over sized. He thought that he had bought himself a brief reprieve, but he soon picked up on her impatient shifting in the seat, causing the leather to protest and groan as she moved. Denying himself the retort he wanted to hurl at her, he instead focused on the screen, trying to follow where it was going to lead, until he saw it.

“No,” he said, pushing back somewhat from the desk. “This isn’t going to give us what we need.”

“I don’t understand.” She was staying in the seat but he could hear the edges of hysteria in her voice. “I thought this one was a solid lead.”

“Yeah, well I thought so too. Turns out, it wasn’t. There isn’t enough residual data for me to track down where the transaction could have originated from, and without that, we’ve got nothing.”

He heard the indignant sniff from behind him, and once again, his blood flash-boiled.

“Look,” he said, “I told you when we started this that our chances were not good. You have too little data to go on, I told you that you needed to prepare yourself for the good chance that we might not find anything. You just need to be a little more patient with me and—”

He stopped short, as he finally identified the sound that was now coming from behind her. The shortness of her breath, the hitching, as she tried to find more air, the suppressed sobs. He turned to look.

She was crying.

It just wasn’t something that he had seen from her before, he hadn’t actually ever acknowledged the possibility that she was even been capable of it. And this wasn’t just a few tears, sneaking loose from her fraying self-control. This was an all out, body-racking sobbing as she grabbed at the sides of her head, almost trying to take physical hold of the emotions that had broken out, and shove them back inside.

He felt his mouth gaping open, he was so taken aback and with a conscious effort, managed to close it before she saw.

“What…I mean, what’s—” he tried to ask.

“You. Don’t. Understand.”

Each word came out as a separate sentence, requiring her to take in an entire breath in order to say them clearly.

“What do you mean, what don’t I—”

“You can never know what it feels like.” She was getting her breathing under control, at least, but he could still barely understand her.

“Know what…what feels like?”

It was a long time before she answered. He sat there patiently, knowing how volatile her temper could be, and how little he would accomplish by prodding her. She sat there, the sharp intakes of breath slowly coming back down to a more normal pace. The spasms that seemed to be rocketing up her back, from the force of her crying finally died down, and she was left sitting there, slumped over in the wake of what she had just experienced.

“You don’t understand,” she said again. “You grew up in a foster home, right?” She didn’t wait, or even look up to see him nodding. She took in a long slow breath. “I wasn’t completely honest with you. I’m not trying to track down an old friend from high school.”

He frowned, not connecting the dots. “So who is this?

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “You don’t understand what it feels like to have a bond with someone, something so close, and so tight that when you aren’t in the room with them, you feel like you’re missing a body part. Whenever anything happened to either one of us, the other was immediately on the phone, to see if they could help, before anyone else knew. We knew what we were thinking, sometimes to the point where I thought both of our brains were having the same thoughts, at the same time.”

Regardless of whether or not he understood, he thought it would be better to just let her go on this rant.

“Do you have any idea what it feels like to lose an essential part of yourself? One day, poof, it’s just gone. No explanation, nothing. Just gone. What are you supposed to do when that happens? She was gone. We grew up together. We spent nine months in the same womb together, and just like that, she’s gone. How am I supposed to react to that? What am I supposed to do when I reach for the most essential part of myself, and it just isn’t there anymore?”

He listened to the CPU behind him, processing some worthless loop, and waiting for him to input something new. He didn’t feel right, turning away from her though. A sister. The picture seemed so much clearer to him.

“Do you know what the last thing I ever said to her was?” she asked, finally looking up at him again. He shook his head. “I told her to go fuck herself. Those were the last words she heard from me and if there’s anything I can do to fix that, I have to try!” She stood up and walked to the computer, smacking an open palm down on the top of the flat-screen. “She is out there somewhere. I know she is. I just need to find her.”

“But how do you know?” He finally added to the conversation.

“How do I know? The same way I knew that she had been in a car accident, coming home from a camping trip, even though she didn’t have her phone with her, and was still an unconscious Jane Doe in a hospital bed. The same way I knew when, a year later, her fiance had been killed in a mugging, less than five minutes after it had actually happened and the same way that—” She broke off suddenly, clearly trying to keep her emotions from breaking loose again. Pointing a wavering finger at the screen, she spoke again.

“I can feel her out there. I know that she’s still alive. I don’t think it. I know that she’s still alive. And there’s no way you can ever feel it for yourself, so you just have to trust me. She is out there and, you are the only person left who can help us. I need your help.”

He looked up into those eyes, the pleading he saw there, the need for that which was no longer present, and in that moment, for the first time, he felt like he was in the presence of two people, calling out to him for the same purpose. Pulling himself back up to the computer, he nodded slowly.

“Let’s get back to work, then.”

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Tracing The Trails Of The King : The Gunslinger

FAIR WARNING – if you have not read this book, there will likely be spoilers contained within this piece. This is the ninth essay in my ongoing series on Stephen King, and is intended to be a free discussion of the book. I cannot be held responsible if I inadvertently ruin the ending for you, so if you think this might apply to you, I would encourage you to turn back now.

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The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

– Stephen King, The Gunslinger

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In the literary scope of things, in the history of one-liners, of opening salvos that hook deeper than you had ever thought possible, this one might be at the top of the list. The quest of quests, the epic of epics. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve gone down the road alongside Roland Deschain and his band of fellow gunslingers, and this was the one that started it all. Originally published in serialized form, this consolidated book represents the first steps of a massive literary journey, the epicenter of Stephen King’s fictional universe.

The Dark Tower.

The very words are enough to bring out a reaction in pretty much every King fan, either from those who worship the books as the centerpiece of their table of addictions, or to simply shrug and admit that it just isn’t for them. It’s on the tip of the tongue of many a hard core King fan whenever they come across fellow constant readers.

Have you read the Dark Tower?

But in the beginning, with this first book, things were simpler, placed on a much smaller scale in terms of its relation with the rest of King’s universe. I think that this book could almost be viewed as a preface to the proper narrative of the Dark Tower, an introduction to this tragically flawed character, and daring you to root for him. But more on that later.

I have often been curious as to how much of the Dark Tower saga was present in King’s consciousness when he wrote this book. Did he know where the story was leading? Did he have a destination locked in his head, but with no idea how long it was going to take to get there? It would take decades following the release of this book when the saga would finally be completed and at that point, King went back and re-released a revised version of The Gunslinger, altering some minor aspects of the book in order to make it feel like it was more of a part of the overall story. Without going into a lot of detail, the changes he makes leads me to believe that when this book was originally written, he may have had some vague sense of where the story was going, but that a lot of it was unrealized, locked up inside of his unconsciousness.

Roland is the perfect anti-hero, and while it is clear that he is courageous, I often find myself asking if he can really be described as being heroic. I have felt for some time that the best kind of fictional characters are those who challenge you and Roland definitely fits this requirement. As the series approached its end, Stephen King made the decision to write himself into the books as a character. In one appearance, the character Stephen King admits that when he originally wrote the Gunslinger, he didn’t like Roland, was afraid of him. I don’t know if that was true or if he was simply creating a version of himself as a way of highlighting the importance of the books in relation to the rest of his catalog. Part of me likes to think though, that in a very real way, Stephen King was afraid of this literary character he had stumbled across.

In the course of this project, I made the decision to read the original version of this book, as it was published in the beginning. Any of you who may have been following this series might be wanting to point out to me that several books ago, when it came time to read the Stand, I chose to read the unabridged version which wouldn’t be published until much later, instead of the originally released book. Yes, I realize that I’m being somewhat of a hypocrite but I take these decisions on a case by case basis, and my reasons for choosing this version was the same as my reasons for choosing the more current version of The Stand. It was the version I read first, and it is the version I am the most attached to.

It was nice to get the original language of the book, the sense of Roland as a fairly different character than he becomes in the rest of the series. It seemed like King was trying to wrap his mind around this enigma of a man, his history and how that led to his present and how his decisions will affect where he ends up, wherever the end of his path might lie.

The Gunslinger is a brutal book. Roland is not necessarily a just character who always does what is righteous and good. He makes decisions that are morally questionable at best, and he does them with no clear suggestion or indication of what he is even trying to accomplish. He is in pursuit of the enigmatic Man In Black, but he himself often seems like a plague of violence, let loose on the world around him. He certainly seems to stride through the world, leaving behind a wake of blood and death.

The opening sequence of this book can be a little hard to track, with a flashback occurring within a flashback, but Roland’s story of what happens in the town of Tull grabs the reader right away, and sets a chilling tone for the entire series. He moves on from this, and after nearly perishing in the desert, comes to the boy Jake. His relationship takes on an almost paternal quality as the story proceeds to pitch downward toward inevitable tragedy. Roland is a man on the pursuit of a noble quest, who happens to not always do noble things along the way. He is an incredibly complex character and one of my favorites out of all the books I have read, not just Stephen King.

The Gunslinger is a short book, but it is fantastic to behold. One thing that struck me as I read this was just how amazingly versatile King is. For as much as people make of him as “only” a horror writer, to be able to, after a long string of books centered around children or other characters with paranormal abilities, it is impressive that he was able to simply hop to a completely different genre, and produce work such as this. I think it just goes to show that good writing crosses all genres, and that it shouldn’t matter what label we can put on the story, so long as we love the writer that is doing it.

I have often seen Roland as a kind of metaphor for Constant Reader, making his way through this immense universe of books and stories and characters, constantly pursuing just one more narrative, one more “once upon a time”.

Put simply, the word-slinger fled across the desert, and I followed.

My name is Chad Clark, and I am proud to be a Constant Reader.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Walking Yesterday’s Roads

Gregory sipped the wine and gazed out the window at the ocean raging below. They could hear the sound of the surf crashing against the cliff, a constant buzz underneath the conversation which had been ongoing, all night long.

“You remember the Christmas party? Emory asked, already laughing through a mouth full of dinner roll.

“Which one?” Leona asked, starting to giggle herself. “The one where he got into an argument about Faulkner with a seven year old? Or the one where he insisted that Peter, Paul and Mary were actually the leaders of a Satanic cult?”

Emory was now laughing so hard that his face had become close to the color of a tomato. He put a hand out on Gregory’s elbow to steady himself and catch his breath. “I forgot about the first one. No, this was the one where he got so off-his-ass drunk that he ended up stripping down and running out into the snow, insisting that he was going to find a twenty four hour nude bowling alley.”

“I remember how it took us over an hour to find him,” Gregory said as he swirled the wine around in his glass. “I had to drive him to the hospital myself, he almost lost half of his toes because of that.”

“He was the only one, you know?” Leona said. “He was the only one who realized what was happening the second those ships dropped down out of the clouds.” Her voice hitched and her eyes were starting to glisten from the tears. The others didn’t voice what she was clearly hinting at. Of all of Stanford’s friends, she had been the most vocal in ridiculing him for what they had all seen as crazy ravings and paranoid fantasy.

The whole planet had been taken in when the ships arrived. When the communications from their leaders had been broadcast out over the globe, everyone had believed them in their benevolent intentions. It had all been a smokescreen of course but no one had seen through it.

None of them, save for Stanford.

Towards the end, he had been harder to get in touch with as he progressively fell further of the grid. They never knew for sure if he had gotten involved with the terrorist groups who had tried to rise up against the visitors. They didn’t know and didn’t go out of their way to find out, even though they all suspected that it was true. When the warrant for his arrest had been handed down, they had disassociated themselves with him, claiming ignorance to the authorities but also cutting off their friend for good. Gregory had tried to tell himself that this was just as much for his protection as theirs.

Stanford’s body had been found a week later.

Even this, they had written off as just a close friend meeting the end which he had likely brought upon himself with his own actions and poor decisions. If Stanford had been there, he would have been raving about how the visitors were likely behind the killing, about the folly of still referring to them as “visitors”, even though they were clearly here to stay.

Their only saving grace that evening was that the dead couldn’t say, “I told you so.”

They did it for him anyway, punishing themselves with their memories, flogging themselves with the guilt that they all felt but never actually vocalized to each other.

“We couldn’t have done anything,” Leona said, half as a question, sounding like she was trying to convince herself as much as anyone else.

“Nothing we could have done.” Gregory echoed the sentiment as he lifted his glass for another sip. They toasted each other, ensconced in their own seeming confidence that the statement was true. The wine went down smoothly, the scent and the tannins obscuring what they were actually ingesting.

Society was on the brink. Security forces had descended down from the ships and were now corralling the citizens of Earth, crowding them into camps and jails. There had even been some public executions.

Stanford would have been the one to push for action, the scream for the need to do something, anything other than the pathetic self-doubt and fear which they now hid behind.

Tonight wasn’t about dwelling on their own depression though. It was about looking back, seeking, through their reflections, a way to make their final moments as pleasant as possible. This should have been a celebration, not a reason for despair.

“I miss the trips out to the bluffs,” Gregory said, “We used to take the kids out there every summer.” His family was gone now, caught in the rubble underneath the school which had been bombarded for being a suspected safe house for insurgents. He should have been there as well for a teacher conference, but had been running late and his life had been spared by mere minutes.

“Tuesday nights,” Leona said. “Sid and I … it was the only night we actually had together…” She trailed off. Sid had been killed in one of the worker’s riots, quickly put down with violent precision.

“I’m going to miss the three of you,” Emory said, including Stanford, despite his absence.

“I just don’t understand how things could have gone this far,” Leona said. “Why didn’t anyone see anything sooner?”

It was a moot point. There weren’t any answers to be found anymore and even if there were, they had chosen the path to take and it was too late to turn back. Leona swirled the wine in her glass and took a long drink, as if willing the effects to come on faster.

“I’m surprised I can’t taste it,” she said.

“No reason why you…” Emory trailed off as his mouth slipped open, as if on a hinge. He swiped away the drool that was starting to form with the back of his hand and shook his head. “Is this…” He wasn’t able to finish the sentence and his head nodded down slightly, as if he was falling asleep.

Leona was crying now and reached out to take hold of Emory’s hand. Gregory took hold of the other, gripping it tightly, thinking that there might have been a response to the touch but it was hard to know for sure. It was getting difficult to see or hear clearly. He blinked and jerked his head up. Leona was laying her head down on the table, reaching out for his hand.

All he could think about was how dry his mouth felt as he began inching his hand towards hers. His field of vision was beginning to narrow down to a fine point. He felt like he was looking up from the bottom of a deep well. In the depths of his awareness, he felt the touch of Leona’s finger against his, already cold. He slipped away, escaping the horrors of their future, wrapped in the memory of his past and the faces of his wife and children. Taking one last, short breath, he allowed his eyes to droop shut one last time.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Hole In One

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Derrin pressed a hand to the side of his face, feeling blood trickling through his fingers.

“I’m sorry, all right? Are you okay?” Jerry asked.

“No. I’m not okay. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Look, I said I was sorry, I didn’t know you were going to put your face there.”

Darrin took a step back and looked around, as if he was expecting some unseen audience to react to the absurdity of the statement. “What does that have to do with anything? Who the hell taught you how to play mini-golf anyway?”

“All I can do is apologize. You’re so God damned quiet, I didn’t even hear you walking up next to me.”

“I didn’t think I needed to announce my presence. Why can’t you pay more attention to what you’re doing?” Derrin noticed Jerry’s hand tightening around the grip to his club and wondered if maybe he was pushing this too far. The problem was that letting go was a little easier said than done. “Why can’t you just admit that you made a mistake? God forbid, maybe you could even apologize for—”

“That’s bullshit, I just apologi—”

“Like you mean it fuck-stick.”

“Don’t call me that.” This time, the putter was lifted halfway up, drawing back slowly as if to strike. This was stupid. There was no point to dragging out this argument. He just needed to clear his head and calm down. Darrin shook his head and began walking towards the next hole.

“Where the hell are you going?” Jerry’s voice had jumped several octaves and was starting to crack as he spoke. Darrin waved off the question and kept on walking. He heard Jerry’s shuffling footsteps and even the whistle of the club swinging through the air but didn’t register it soon enough to avoid the blow. Brilliant light exploded around him as he heard a dull thud coming from somewhere inside a deep, dark hole that he was now falling in to.

Sarah glared across the way at the two douche-bags, now in full blow-up mode as they screamed at each other. It was beyond her what could have transpired during a game of mini-golf that could have led to an argument as heated as this.

Her heart jumped in her chest as douche-bag number one actually hefted his club in his hand and cracked it across his friend’s skull. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. What had started as an annoying disturbance had turned into an emergency, someone in need of her assistance. Isn’t this why she had been preparing herself for all this time? All of the classes, the practicing at the range, the permit to carry, this moment would be the justification for all of that.

Sarah began walking towards the two, hand shaking as she reached into her satchel.

Bryce watched the woman as she began making her way towards the feuding frat brothers. She had a set, determined look on her face as if she was psyching herself up for something. His breath stopped as her hand came out from her bag holding a … Jesus, was that what it looked like? He need to stop this before it got out of hand.

“Hey!” he yelled out at her, taking a step forward. She spun towards him and jerked at the unexpected noise. He had just enough time to register the look of dismayed shock on her face before he saw the muzzle flash and felt the impact to his forehead.

Any remaining conscious thought he might have had exited through the rear.

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Issue #141 : Consider The Source

“Hey! Phone call.”

Howie looked up from his station, and at the phone, scrutinizing the blinking light, as if it had offended him. He stood up, and walked to the wall, looking out over the mass of coworkers around him as he pressed the receiver to his ear.

“Hello?”

There was no answer on the other end, other than a sound of wind, and something else he couldn’t quite identify.

“Hello?”

Still no answer, and now he recognized the sound, underneath everything. It was someone breathing, as if they had called, and were now just sitting with their phone, listening to him silently.

“Look, if there’s someone there, I need to be getting back to—”

“Howard, you need to stop talking.”

He closed his mouth, not because he felt any particular need to obey, but because he was so taken aback by the brashness.

“Excuse me?”

“You need to stop talking and listen.”

“Who the fuck is—”

“If you want your wife to survive this, you need to shut up, right now.”

This did silence him, and he looked around the office, sure that someone was playing a prank on him, that he would just catch the blinds on one of the nearby offices snapping shut, along with repressed laughter from inside. No one seemed to be taking any notice of him however, as the normal business of the office carried on, as usual. He might as well have been invisible to all the people as they filed past, unaware of his need and likely, unwilling to offer aid, even if they did. Howie turned back to the window and spoke again in a hushed voice.

“Who is this?”

“All you need to know is what we expect of you. Do exactly what I tell you, and your wife will come out of this alive, and in one piece. I can’t say the same for you, but if you come along peacefully, at least one death can be prevented.”

His throat had gone completely dry. He opened his mouth to try and speak, but nothing came out. The voice on the other end went on, regardless.

“Right now, there is a van parked behind your building. Red in color, and with the logo of a painting company. You need to leave your building, right now, and get into the van.”

“Wait a minute, how—”

“You aren’t in a position to demand anything from us. What you need to understand is that right now your wife is sitting on the precipice of the decision you are about to make. You are the one who can make this right for her. You are the one we want, Howard.”

“But I don’t know what you want!”

“That isn’t material.”

“How can that be—”

“You are putting her life in danger, Howard. You are putting her at risk, with your insolence.”

“All right, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” He pinched his nose and tried to tell himself that this was all going to be okay, that it had to be a mistake. Except that the guy had called him Howard. She was the only who knew that his real name wasn’t Howie. Was that why they had been using it? To show him that the only way they could have known his real name was if she had told them? He had to think around this problem, figure out what he was supposed to do, how he was going to help her.

“Howard?”

“Sorry. What do you want me to do?”

“Go to the van in the parking lot. As soon as you get there, you will see your wife being released. Once this has happened, you will need to get into the van.”

His throat dried up again and he tried to speak. “I don’t understand, what are they going to do with me?

The other end of the line paused for several moments before answering. “I think you know, Howard.”

He felt his fingers squeezing on the receiver, and it squirted out of his hand, crashing to the floor. Several people glanced over, donning their obligatory veil of concern that was really just a paper-thin patina over their annoyance. They turned back to their work, as he reached down for the phone, bringing it back to his ear.

“I don’t understand, I don’t even know who you are.”

“This is wearing on me, Howard. As I said, it’s of no consequence. What does matter is how you handle this situation. Believe me when I say that a life hangs in the balance.”

“But I don’t know if I can—”

His sentence was cut off by a shrill scream, the sound cutting straight through him. He heard her voice, muffled and distant, as if the phone had simply been turned in her general direction. “Howard, please God, please help me, I don’t know what—”

In another blink, she was gone.

“Don’t hurt her, you bastards! What kind of a fucking man are you?”

“You know where you have to go.”

“Just please, don’t hurt her, I’ll be down, just wait.”

He waited for a response, for an assurance, but all he heard was the click, followed by the swollen silence of the dead line. He sprinted for the stairs, didn’t want to wait for the elevator, and instead jumped down six or seven steps at a time, until he hit the bottom floor. He ankle twisted slightly underneath him, and he cried out, grabbing at it as he fell against the wall.

The unmarked van was in the lot, directly across from him. He pushed through the doors, into the parking lot, and began hobbling towards it, ignoring the stares he got from the security guards. He tried to peer in, but the windows were tinted and there was too much glare. As he drew closer, the door slid open, revealing no one inside, but he could now make out the shape of two people sitting in front.

“Where is my wife?” he screamed at them. From the other side of the lot, he heard a quick horn and spun to look. She was staggering out of a small hatchback, clearly confused as she looked about, likely looking for him. There was something off about her that he couldn’t figure out. Something wrong with her hair, the over-sized sunglasses that he didn’t remember her owning. Behind him, he heard the van rev its engine. He turned back to look and saw that the passenger side window had lowered down just enough so that the elongated barrel of a rifle now protruded, taking aim across the parking lot.

Taking aim at her.

“Stop!” he cried out at them, turning from his wife, and hobbling towards the car. Probably it was better this way. Easier for her if she didn’t have to see him one last time, not like this. He got to the van, reached in and pulled himself in, falling to the floor as the driver hit the accelerator and began pulling out of the lot. The side door slid shut on its motor, rumbling slowly and as it closed, he kept his eyes focused on the outside world, on the dwindling time that was likely left for him, whoever these guys were.

From his pocket, he felt his phone buzz and he reached in to grab it. He had about three seconds to hold it up in front of him, before one of the men in the front seat reached back and grabbed it. The three second was enough, though, to see the text message from his wife. Just got home from the gym. Dinner plans for tonight?

It hadn’t even been his wife. He had gotten right into the van, and had barely put up a fight. And now he was being dragged off, to God knew where, and would probably never be heard from again. He felt rage and hopeless misery, all at the same time. He wanted to leap to the front of the van and take hold of the both of them, even if it meant causing a crash. Still, he saw the one on the passenger side, tapping the barrel of his pistol against his thigh, and he knew he wouldn’t make it. He tried to focus on the image of her face, on the fact that he had at least been trying to help her, to do the right thing.

Likely before too long, even that would serve as little consolation.

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Top Picks : NOS4A2

I am starting a new feature for the blog, highlighting books I have read over the past year which I have particularly enjoyed, and thought were so awesome that I needed to share them with you. For the debut this month, I figured we’d start with an easy one.

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Previous to this, I had never read anything by Joe Hill. I had certainly seen plenty of praise for his work, but I have always been a little reluctant. Obviously, I am a big Stephen King fan, I think that’s clear enough if you’ve been following the blog for more than five minutes. However, I have always been a bit leery of the notion of passing along that adoration and love onto a son or daughter. Sure, George Harrison’s son looks eerily like his dad, and when I see him up on stage with that guitar it looks like some old Beatles footage has come to life in full color. But does that mean I’m going to really like his music? Does he deserve any extra attention or consideration, just because of who his father was? I guess what it comes down to for me, is that I’ve never believed that artistic excellence is something that is stamped into your DNA. To be sure, there are certain sensibilities that can be passed along and I’m sure it can be an advantage to grow up with that artist as a parent but in the end, you still have to do the work and put the time in, if you expect to achieve any level of noteworthiness as an artist yourself.

So I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to read Joe Hill. But there comes a point where you hear enough people consistently saying good things about a writer that eventually you have to check it out. And I will say that while you could make the argument that his name is just a gimmick and that in the modern era, it takes about five minutes to find out whose son he is, I did appreciate the fact that he seemed to be resisting the easy path of leaning on the King name. He seemed to be intent on building his own brand, and being his own person. So I made the decision last year to finally take the plunge and NOS4A2 was the book that I chose.

Holy crap, why the hell did I wait so long? Why didn’t any of you tell me?

The book is a master stroke, and on an epic scale. It’s the kind of book that, despite its length, I would probably be content to sit there and not put the thing down until I had reached the past page. There were a number of points throughout this book where I caught myself thinking, what, I was worried about him not living up to the shadow cast by his father? He may have actually exceeded Steve in a number of ways. Reading this book made me feel the way I remember feeling as a kid, reading The Stand, or IT. Seriously, I would put the book in that company without hesitation. For me, it was the perfect mixture of horror and fantasy and action and mystery. There are points throughout where you aren’t quite sure what’s going on but before too long, he sweeps you back up into the narrative and all is made clear and amazing.

For me, Stephen King’s strongest ability has been in his characters. Now I don’t know what was being discussed at night over that dinner table in the King household but whatever it was, that talent definitely was passed along. First we have the supernaturally powered killer/kidnapper in Charles Manx. Manx tours the country in his vintage Rolls-Wraith, abducting children and taking them away to a special place that only he seems to have access to: Christmasland. Because, what could possibly be happier than Christmas? Maybe a place where it is eternally Christmas morning? And lets not forget the car itself because, it wouldn’t rightly be a King franchise without at least one supernaturally endowed car. Then we have Vic McQueen, who discovers that she has a unique ability, thanks to a very special bike. If there is an item that has been lost and she concentrates on it, she can ride her bike across a special bridge which essentially functions as a portal, that takes her to wherever that object is.

The paths of these two characters seem to be destined to cross and before too long, Vis had found her way to Manx and essentially walks into his arms. And while she manages to escape and helps to bring about his capture, the events clearly have a toll on her as she continues to grow up into a troubled adulthood.

This is probably one of the aspects of the book that I am the most drawn to. I love that the characters are all broken, in their own ways. In a cliche Hollywood movie, we would see Vic escaping from the madman, followed shortly after by his satisfying demise. The credits would roll, and we would return to our lives, happy in the knowledge that the pure and the good again won out over evil. What we don’t see is that same girl, many years later as an adult and just how fucked up she has become. She is haunted by the past, doesn’t handle it well and, as such, when Manx resurfaces, and begins to pursue her out of revenge, she finds herself with no one to turn to because she had been so diminished in so many people’s eyes.

I loved this book. I loved the structure of it and how the story was physically presented. There is a certain deliberation to how the book is laid out and I don’t want to get any more specific than that as part of the fun is that moment when you finally figure out what he is doing. There were a few winks and nods, making references to his dad’s work which I thought was great. King has been long known for inserting references to other books so it was nice to see his son carrying on this tradition. I liked that Hill didn’t feel the need to overly explain a lot of the aspects of the story, what the car is or why it is seemingly possessed or even the nature of Christmasland in terms of what it is and how it came about. It makes the story so much more scary and effective when you are left to simply accept these things for what they are, without ever really understanding them. He doles out information as it is needed and through that process, creates a wonderfully laid out and well paced story that leads to an ending that I found to be very satisfying.

Put it this way, this is the kind of book that was so good, when I finished it, the first thing I wanted to do was go to a bookstore. I can’t say it enough, other than to say that it probably goes without saying that I am now a Joe Hill fan. He has a new book coming out later this year that I am excited about reading and I have also picked up copies of Heart Shaped Box and Horns. I think it’s time to catch up with Joe Hill.

Do yourself a favor. This was easily one of the top books I read last year. It was an eye opening experience for me and I loved every page of it. Pick up a copy for yourself, you won’t regret it.

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Follow the link below to get your own copy of NOS4A2

NOS4A2: A Novel

Baked Scribe Flashback : On Tour

He pushed the bicycle up the hill, grunted as he muscled the tires through the deep patches of mud and tried to brace himself against the driving rain. For not the first time, he began to wonder what crazy notion had led him to attempt this trip in the first place. Get out of the city, see the progression of the countryside as he traveled west, all from the quaint view of his bicycle seat. Right about now, he was guessing that he would find the trip just as quaint from behind the steering wheel of his car. There weren’t even creepy, rural area motels for him to take advantage of. Nothing but the road, the dark, the cold and the mud.

Then, when he was nearly to the breaking point, he looked up and saw that to his right there was a house up at the top of a steep hill. It was huge, three stories and all of its windows lit up with an inviting, warm glow. James dropped the bike at the base of the path winding up to the house and set to making his way up. His feet slipped several times before he reached the porch. He could hear music coming from inside despite the late hour. There didn’t seem to be a doorbell but there was a length of chain hanging down from the ceiling next to the door. James took hold of it and pulled. There was resistance at first but eventually the chain moved, grinding with a metal on metal sound which was followed by a booming proclamation of bells and chimes within the house.

“Help you?” The voice came from behind him and made him actually jump, dropping the satchel that he had just pulled up over his shoulder. The man was standing there, halfway up the steps, tall and thin, nearly seven feet tall. Despite looking to be in his early sixties, the man looked spry and healthy. He looked at James with a blank expression on his face, seemingly unaffected by the weather raging around them. In his arms was a load of firewood.

“Hi,” James said, not sure what else would be appropriate. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to trouble you this late but I’ve been caught out in this storm and yours is the first place I’ve come across in a while. Would it be at all possible to stay here for a while, maybe just until the rain stops?”

The man squinted as he looked up into the night sky. James frowned as he noticed the man tilt his face up slightly and breathe in deeply, as if he was sniffing the air.

“Ah, gonna be a while before that happens. Best if you just spend the night.”

“No, I couldn’t put you out like that, I just—”

“It’s no bother.” The man unrolled his arms, letting the wood tumble out onto the porch and wiped his hands off on his pants. “Besides, if you’re just gonna stay until the weather blows over, that’s all you’ll end up doing. Trust me, these summer storms come rolling down onto us and they stay for a long time.”

“Well … all right, I guess. Only if I’m really not inconveniencing you though.”

“The bed’s there, might as well be yours.” He walked into the house, nodding for James to follow.

The room he walked into looked like it could have been an elaborate set for a fifties-era movie. In the center of the room was a huge rocking recliner. The small table net to it sported a mug with contents that were still hot enough to produce steam. There was also a radio that looked like it came straight from the antique shop. There was a fire going strong in the hearth and James could feel the warm, inviting heat even from across the room.

“Guest room’s upstairs. End of the hall, to your right.”

James headed up, shouldering his bag and wiping the moisture from his face. He walked down he hall and turned into the room, surprised to find the bed turned down and a towel folded neatly on the bed Maybe people passing through was a more common occurrence than he was giving the area credit for.

His host was stirring a small pot of soup when he made his way back down to the kitchen. “Figured you could use something hot to eat,” he said, his back staying turned. “My name’s Edward, by the way, didn’t catch yours.”

“Sorry. I’m Jacob.”

“No worries. I’ve pretty much settled with your generation not having much regard in terms of manners.”

James paused, halfway into sitting down at the table. He straightened back up, trying to regain his mental footing at the sudden verbal jab from the man who, up until now had been congenial.

“Um … I … sir, I’m sorry if I—”

Edward waved him off, still without turning and spoke with the same deadened tone of voice, “I”m only foolin’ with you son, take a breath.”

James nodded and sat down, hearing the friendliness in the man’s voice but wondering how genuine it really was.

“Right. Sorry, I guess that’s what being alone all these weeks gets you.”

“How long you been out there in the rain?”

“All night.”

Edward chuckled. “Well, then you need this.”

James took the bowl of soup that Edward offered and went straight to it, only slightly aware of how rude he was acting, shoveling the food into his mouth like a slob.

“I got coffee too,” Edward said. “And if that don’t work the bourbon’s downstairs.”

“Thank you.”

“Been dry as a bone here the last few weeks,” Edward said. “We need this rain.”

“I’m sure.” James looked around the kitchen, still feeling like he was in the middle of a World War II exhibit at the museum.

“Have you been here long?” he asked, trying to at least be the one to start a topic.

“Oh, pretty much the entire time,” Edward answered.

James frowned. Something about the way Edward had answered the question seemed off but he couldn’t quite explain why.

“I’m just glad I came across your place when I did.” He floundered around, trying to think of something else to add to his sentence but instead resigned himself to lowering his head, fighting the awkwardness in the room but also savoring the warmth from the soup. “Do you live here alone, or do you have family?”

“Just me for now, holding down the fort. They’ll send more when they’re ready.”

Again, James was struck by the oddity of the answer. He opened his mouth to ask what Edward had meant but as he did so, his mouth and tongue went numb and all he could manage sounded alien even to himself.

“D’you ev …”

James shook his head violently, trying to clear the fog in his mind. He couldn’t really be this tired but it had suddenly become too much of an effort to even keep his eyes open. A voice screamed at him from his head that something was wrong, that he needed to get away.

It was too late for him to care, too late to act on any thought that might intrude into this haze of mental nothing-ness. His arms felt like they weighed fifty pounds each as they dropped to his side, knocking the soup off the table. The bowl shattered in an explosion on the floor, spreading tomato soup and shattered glass all over the kitchen.

“See now, look what you’ve done.” Edward’s voice was booming in his ears, so much so that James’ first thought was of the great and terrible Oz. He tried to talk, to ask what was going on. One word was all he could manage to get out and it was delivered distorted and stretched as he said it.

“You …” It sounded like a record being played at a slower speed. His eyes dropped and he gave in to sleep.

When he woke up, he was lying on a cold, hard table. There was no sensation of anything below his neck. He opened his mouth to call out, sending bolts of pain through his face and into his neck.

“Don’t bother,” Edward said from the corner. “I removed your vocal cords some time ago. This is actually the third time I’ve told you this, you keep passing out from shock.”

James shook his head and recoiled on the inside as Edward, or whatever he had been in the first place, stepped out from the shadows. He had grown in size to the point that the top of his head was nearly brushing against the high, arched ceiling. He had sprouted three more arms from somewhere behind him that were swirling around in the background, grabbing at the air with pincer-like movements and his skin had gone a deep purple color, scaled like some kind of lizard.

He began to buck up and down on the table, or at least he thought that was what he was doing with so little sensation to confirm the action. Despite what he had just been told, he opened his mouth to scream, seeking purchase from a voice that had abandoned him.

The thing in Edward’s clothes darted forward and backhanded him. It bent down until their faces were only inches apart. “Do not pass out!” It howled at him, so loud that he could barely understand the words. The house itself felt like it lifted up from its foundation for a moment and settled back down. He was looking up at the ceiling at the dust and debris that had been shaken loose when he felt the sharp end of something metal first pressing against, then breaking through the skin of his belly. He sucked in his breath as he heard Edward speak, suddenly clinical in his tone.

“We all want this project to succeed so please, tell me. Exactly where does it hurt?”

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Baked Scribe Flashback : In Distress

The car was parked along the side of the road. Jessie leaned forward, trying to see better through the windshield, and unconsciously eased off of the gas pedal to slow as he passed. The windows of the other car were so fogged up that it was impossible to see inside. But how could there really be anyone in there? It was 2:30 in the morning and, if someone was just hanging out, chances were good that whatever was going on in there, it was something that he probably didn’t want to walk in on. In the mirror, before the car dwindled into the horizon, he caught a flash from the corner of his eye as the dome light inside the car came on. He craned his neck around to see, sure that he must have caught a reflection off the moon. His second look verified what he had seen though, as the light was indeed on.

It wasn’t important. Just a car, nothing that he hadn’t seen before. Still, something tugged at the back of his mind, a need to make sure that the person back there didn’t need help. How would he feel if the next day he turned on the news to find out that some guy had died from a heart attack there on the side of the road, watching cars pass him by until it was too late?

Jessie pulled off onto a side street, and headed back to where the car had been parked. He pulled up behind it, gingerly stepping out, as if someone was about to jump out of the other car and reprimand him. His head filled with the sound of gravel crunching under his feet as he approached the vehicle.

The car was some kind of generic sedan, reminding his of the cars his grandparents would drive them around in when they were kids. The motor wasn’t running and there was no indication of movement inside. Save for the fogged windows, he saw no sign of life.

“Hello?” His call was quickly absorbed into the increasingly brittle wind and he received no answer. He stepped closer to the car, moving carefully towards the driver’s door. It was as if invisible fingers were reaching out from the darkness and brushing against his neck. his skin felt electric, as if his hands and feet were falling asleep.

“Hello?” he called out again, leaning in closer to the window and with one hand reaching out to rap a knuckle on the glass. The sound was dull to his ears, carrying no weight in the cold air, and there was no answer from within.

Jessie reached out and placed a hand on the door handle, fingers trembling against the cool, moist surface. His breath was starting to come in ragged hitches, fully expecting something to jump out at him, to burn his hand for the offense of intruding where he shouldn’t have been.

He yanked his hand free at the sound of an air horn, blasting behind him. A semi blew past with a rush of air and sound that pushed him up against the car. He turned to glare, long enough to catch a glimpse in the darkness of a giant yellow smiley face on the backside of the rig. In the wake of the truck’s passing and in the newly found silence, he thought for a moment that he had heard someone moving around inside, an exhalation of breath followed by the car shifting slightly.

“Is anyone in there?”

Another sound, again almost too quick to hear but, even in that split second, he had an image of overnight parties as kids, shushing each other before the parents came in to shut down the fun.

Don’t open the door!

The voice was his own, spoken from the deepest bridge where the unconscious crossed over into conscious thought. He wanted to listen, to take heed, but it was the other part of his brain, the one that reminded him that it was important to put others before yourself, that voice was the one that ultimately won out and made it impossible to move away from the car.

Don’t open the door!

His hand made its way back down to the handle, was sliding on the moisture as it pulled up, hesitating at the resistance from the bolt inside, the scintilla of added applied force that would be needed to open the door.

Don’t…

The voice was pleading now, but also sounding resigned to whatever path he was determined to set himself onto. Another voice of responsibility was lecturing him now, on the importance of people’s privacy. You couldn’t just go around, letting yourself into whatever car you felt like.

He had to do this.

What if he was the one trapped inside the car, slowly bleeding to death, or worse? Maybe a broken leg, or having just had a stroke, the door just out of reach and unable to respond to the other person’s calls. If the situation were reversed, wouldn’t he be mentally admonishing the person for taking so long to just open the damn door?

This was stupid. Why had he pulled over in the first place if it wasn’t to try and help this person? If he happened to interrupt some random person in the middle of sticking it to the nanny, he would just have to live with that embarrassment. He had a momentary flash of possibility, as it occurred to him to simply call the police. But what would they say, really? What would happen if he filed a report on what ended up being a parked car?

Don’t open the door.

He grabbed the handle and lifted, pulling the door open and peeking inside. The door stuck at first, and made a wet sound as it opened. From the inside, the car began to chime softly, indicating that the keys were still in the ignition. No one was sitting in either of the front. When he looked at the passenger seat, however, he could see the moisture left behind on the leather, as if someone had been sitting there for a long time and had just stood up.

“Hello?” he called out again, but nobody answered. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw movement. He also heard breathing, labored as if whoever it was back there was in a great deal of pain. Jessie kept his hands braced against the roof of the car, ready to shove off and start sprinting if he had to, and stuck his head through the door. The backseat was also empty. He felt like smacking himself on the head for his idiocy. He didn’t understand why he allowed himself to get so worked up. Somebody had car trouble and had gone off for help, or had called a cab. Harmless. The dome-light must have come on somehow, by accident.

Something brushed past him from behind.

Jessie screamed so loudly, that he actually startled himself. There was no one there, but he felt the distinct sensation of bodies brushing past him. He heard footsteps. His panic spiked, and in that moment, of needing to act, to be anywhere but here, he sat down in the driver’s seat, behind the wheel, and slammed the door behind him.

The inside of the car wasn’t merely quiet. What he felt was the complete absence of sound, a vacuum in which even his breathing was amplified several times louder than it should have been. It was a cold feeling that he associated with funeral homes, places where you caught glimpses into things that you weren’t supposed to see in this life.

This was like being in the presence of death.

Still, footsteps sounded outside, circling at a slow, shambling pace, the car occasionally shifting as if someone was bumping into it as they passed. He had to repress the urge to slap his hand against the door lock, knowing somehow that it would do no good.

His breathing was starting to echo in his head until he began to realize that it wasn’t just his own breaths that he was hearing. They could be heard beside him and from behind. He could feel the sobs, already catching in his throat, crying out at himself for not choosing to drive on, screaming as he reached for the door release, to try and escape even though it was likely too late. He heard what sounded like metal scraping across a sharp edge.

Outside, a dark colored bird fluttered down out of the night sky, and alighted on the roof of the parked car. It stood there for a moment, preening in the moonlight until a shrieking cry ripped out from the inside, startling it back into flight.

Inside the car, the dome light flipped back off into darkness.

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