Chad A. Clark's Blog, page 37

Tracing The Trails Of The King : The Shining

FAIR WARNING – if you have not read this book, there will likely be spoilers contained within this essay. This is the third 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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“He had whirled Danny around to spank him, his big adult fingers digging into the scant meat f the boy’s forearm, meeting around it in a closed fist, and the snap of the breaking bone had not been loud, not loud but it had been very loud, HUGE, but not loud. Just enough of a sound to slit through the red fog like an arrow-but instead of letting in sunlight, that sound let in the dark clouds of shame and remorse, the terror, the agonizing convulsion of the spirit. A clean sound with the past on one side of it and all the future on the other, a sound like a breaking pencil lead of a small piece of kindling when you brought it down over your knee. A moment of utter silence on the other side, in respect to the beginning future maybe, all the rest of his life.”

-The Shining, location 347 – Kindle Edition

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In any artistic endeavor, there is always that handful of examples, those shining glints of near perfection that you can’t help but hold up to everything else, the place where motifs became motifs and the original breeding ground where so many other ideas sprang from. My love for horror has always tended towards the dark and the supernatural so for me, this book is huge. The premise of the book is frightening enough, a family trapped alone in an expansive hotel, snowed into the mountains of Colorado in a place with a sordid history, that we slowly become privy to as the story progresses. I have always loved the idea of a hotel so malevolent, that has grown in power on the back of every evil and violent act which has taken place throughout its history. It’s a book that I have come back to many times and never have I felt that the story failed to entertain.

From a story telling perspective, I feel like King has put on a clinic on how to develop tension and suspense throughout a book. He starts small, hinting at the dark conclusion which the book is moving towards but takes his time, developing and crafting the story masterfully. He starts with simple, small, disparate events and builds them in scope and intensity as the hotel comes to life around the characters. We see the internalized torture that Jack Torrence lives through as well as his slow descent into madness. King also does what he does best, creating characters that feel honest and authentic and their personal tensions and fears grow throughout the book and build on each other, all the way up until the book’s conclusion.

I have always been deeply touched by Jack’s story, in particular and I think it casts an interesting light on where you find the “horror” in a particular story. The horror doesn’t always have to come from ghosts and ghouls and monsters. Sometimes, the most effective horror is in creating realistic situations and characters that act as mirrors for ourselves. Ultimately, Jack comes to do unforgivable things throughout this book and the question becomes, how many of those things can be attributed to the influence of the hotel and how many are simply a result of his own inner demons and alcoholism. How much of the darkness in Jack’s past comes out to create the darkness of his present? What I am saying is that more terrifying than the character of Jack Torrence is the notion that there are aspects of Jack inside all of us and that the amount of distance separating someone from becoming that kind of a monster isn’t as large as we might like to think.

Reading this book reminds me of why I developed a love for reading, so long ago as you are swept away into the story and the universe that he has created. You get to experience what this family goes through and in the end, you have the ability to safely close the book and move on to the next one. This book has the ability to, at the same time, drive me to want to be better as writer and it makes me want to read, even more. I have always equated Stephen King to the Beatles, in that when people tell me they don’t like the Beatles, I stand by my belief that in all those albums, there has to be at least one song that anyone can connect with. Along these lines, I think that there is a Stephen King book out there for everybody. So even if you think you don’t enjoy his writing, give this one a try because this might be the one. It’s a fantastic tale of isolation, of horrors created by the severity of the environment, in a time before the Internet and cell phones when people really could be so isolated that the only help you will ever receive is the help you provide for yourself.

I also appreciate the subtlety of the book. I don’t have a problem with gore, as it sort of goes with the territory for the genre and I certainly think it has a time and place. However, I think that when it comes to horror, the best way to convey that is to use the reader as a part of the process. I read something once that stories begin in the mind of the writer and end in the mind of the reader and I think this is especially important for horror fiction. It’s easier to describe every little thing down to the most minute detail but I think that you can create a more powerful book that the reader is going to more closely identify with if you allow them to fill in some of the narrative space with their own imagination, not unlike in comic books where the bulk of the really important story telling happens in between the frame, inside the mind of the reader. The books I have loved the most are the ones that demand at least a little bit from the reader, in your ability to put yourself into the mind of a character and live their experiences alongside them.

As I make my way through these books, I find myself re-igniting my love for this author, for these words. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like at the time, to be writing these books and putting such great material out into the market. It was definitely a big period for him with book after book and I can only speculate what it must have been like at the time from the readers’ perspective and the buzz that must have been slowly building around this great author. I would consider myself proud and lucky if I were able to write one book that was this successful and effective but to keep doing it, book after book is a little mind-blowing for me. It shows me that, if nothing else, while this quest I’ve taken upon myself will likely still be ongoing in the years to come, there is still a lot of great reading ahead of me.

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

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So as this series progresses, I will generally not be paying a lot of attention to the movies. Mostly because you could likely devote an entirely separate series of essays solely devoted to the film adaptations, but mostly because books and movies are separate artistic endeavors. I can’t evaluate a movie through the same lens as I would the book equivalent because we are talking about two separate mediums for storytelling.

However, in this case, I think that I would be remiss if I didn’t at least share some of my thoughts about what could be the most controversial and hotly contested adaptations of King’s work.

For any of you who may be less aware of what I’m talking about, I will give you the broad strokes. The original movie version of The Shining was brought into being by legendary director Stanley Kubrick. As a director, he had already established himself as a heavy hitter in the industry while King, at the time with only a few novels under his belt, could probably best be described as a fledgling author. Far from the giant of pop culture he is now, it is easy to imagine how he could be steamrolled by a larger-than-life personality like Kubrick. It’s also worth noting that Kubrick had a tendency to ignore the specifics in the source material he was adapting from. In the film version of Full Metal Jacket, for example, only one scene from the book actually made its way into the movie.

Needless to say, King was not happy with the direction Kubrick took the movie and felt that it was too great of a departure from the book. I myself tend to be sympathetic and agree somewhat with several of his issues with the movie, namely that first, Jack Torrence becomes less of a sympathetic character. One thing I loved about the book was that it was a lot easier to relate to Jack. You felt the weight of his alcoholism and the stress he felt in that environment at the Overlook. You see the hotel slowly creep into his consciousness and take over. In the movie, he seems less sympathetic from the start of the film. Much of the supernatural aspects of his journey is lost and the alcoholism is moved onto the back burners. In the movie, I felt like the character that you saw on the screen was less Jack Torrence and more Jack Nicholson.

Another issue I take with the film was in Kubrick’s treatment of Wendy Torrence. In the book, she is a strong and intelligent character, standing up to her husband and protecting her family. She proves to be highly resourceful and is a character that is easy to root for. In the movie, Wendy becomes more of a prop, something that is there to scream and be in danger.

Now, all of that said, there is a certain contingent of King fans who go so far as to say that the story of the movie is “unrecognizable” when held up next to the book and I think that is going a bit too far. The truth is that I love the movie. I think that it is beautifully shot and Jack Nicholson’s performance is nothing short of legendary. Sure, the kid is annoying but kids in movies are annoying at least ninety percent of the time. And while I find Shelly Duvall’s performance grating and irritating, I have to remind myself that I have often read that Kubrick was not exactly a dream for women to work with. So I have to remember that her performance had to be tainted somewhat by first his vision for the character as well as dealing with him personally. I think the movie is fantastic. I also love the book. I don’t see any reason why you have to choose one or the other, or even compare them in the first place. Movies are movies and books are books. Films can be inspired by books but storytelling devices that work on the page aren’t going to necessarily work on the big screen. Unfortunately, there is a certain amount of change that is going to happen in the transition from book to film. It’s just the way it goes. Is The Shining a faithful adaptation of the novel? No, not really.

But it still is an amazing film.

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Issue #120

“He hasn’t been well for over a week,” Sarah said as she poured the hot water over the loose tea leaves.

“Sorry to hear.” Brianna replied.

“It isn’t serious, but it’s sure taken him off his feet. And he looks about the color of skim milk.”

“And your sure it’s not serious? Have you guys been to a doctor?”

“It’s nothing. Just one of those bugs going around. Dickie has always been sickly.”

The comment hung in the air like a foul odor as Brianna watched the tea leaves steep in the near boiling water. What was there to say really?

“So, is this going to interfere with your trip?” She finally figured out something to say. Sarah laughed at the suggestion.

“Are you kidding? The sun and the mountains are what he needs the most. He actually wanted to limp down here last night to help me load up the van.”

“Well, I suppose it’ll be good just to get away from things for a while,” Brianna said.

“I agree.”

Brianna felt her gut twist at the overly chirpy tone from her coworker. She had been reluctant to come here, but Sarah had been relentless, and there wasn’t exactly an unending supply of plausible excuses. She couldn’t even claim that she wasn’t feeling well, since she had used that so often that the last time, Sarah had sent her private physician over to check on her. This visit was already going as awkwardly as she had been expecting.

Maybe even worse.

“So…” She looked around the room, desperate for inspiration, something to talk about, calculating exactly how long it might take before it stopped being rude to just leave. She took a closer look at the pictures and for just a moment, her attention was piqued.

“Where were all these pictures taken?” She asked.

“Oh, all over. We travel so much, and these are from just some of the trips. Isn’t it just the best?”

“But your husband. I don’t see him in any of the photos. Wasn’t he with you?”

“Oh, Dickie does better behind the camera than in front of it.” As she said this, Sarah let out a honking bray of laughter, so absurd sounding that Brianna was barely able to cut off the giggle that rose to her lips.

“Here, try some of the biscuits,” Sarah said as she slid the tray of hockey puck looking pastries across the table. Brianna forced herself to choose one. She bit down, slowly, so as to conceal the sound like granite splitting in her mouth.

“We thought about buying another time-share this year, but it’s so hard to keep them all straight, don’t you know?” The laugh again and, this time, it was only the mouthful of stale biscuit in Brianna’s mouth that stopped her laughter from spilling out.

“It’s good that you’re able to take so much time off,” Brianna said. How much more of this would she have to endure? At this point, she would have even welcomed a phone call that someone had been in a car accident. Anything to give her an excuse to leave.

“You meet so many interesting people,” Sarah said, seemingly oblivious to Brianna’s comment. “Sometimes, it’s a wonder that you can even come home after everything you get to experience. You really just don’t understand the world unless you really been out in it.”

Brianna had always found sentiments like that to be a conceit of the well-to-do. It was easy to blather on about the importance of seeing the world when you had the means to drop whatever you were doing, hop onto a jet and enjoy the world from the serenity of your four-star hotel balcony. It wasn’t so much that Sarah was experiencing the world as much as she was likely zip-lining over it.

Sarah was blathering on about something, probably the expense of walking tours or swimming with dolphins, but it was getting harder to focus on the words. In fact, she found that what had started as an odd queasiness had suddenly blossomed into the stark imminence of throwing up.

“Are you all right, dear?”

Brianna heard the sounds of concern in Sarah’s voice. She could see the expression on her face to match it, but it looked like it had been painted on, and by a poor artist. She just wanted to get out of this house, out into the fresh air. That would make her feel better.

“I just need to go home,” she said, the heel of her hand pressed her to her forehead. “I’m sorry, I just need to—”

“Oh, I understand.” She said the words, but the hurt expression on her face told otherwise. “But at least come upstairs for a minute. Dickie has been wanting to meet you, as much as I talk about you.”

Brianna nodded and allowed Sarah to lead her upstairs. As they reached the top, she felt the outer edges of frigid cold air, like a freezer. She shivered and looked around, wondering how sick she was getting.

“Down here.” Sarah gestured as she walked to the end of the hall, pausing just long enough for Brianna to walk in ahead of her, the pinup smile still firmly planted in its place

Brianna entered the room and the only thing that stopped her from screaming was the blast of cold, dry air that hit her like a physical blow.

The room felt like a meat locker. She saw vents that had been installed throughout the room, pumping cold air steadily over them. At the center, stood a simple hospital bed and lying atop it was a corpse, in an advanced state of decay. Brianna started to weave from side to side, vaguely recalling that Sarah had never once touched any of the pastries, or drank any of the tea. The sense of alarm came far too late, as she tried to back away. She felt Sarah’s hand pressing firmly into the center of her back, shoving her forward.

“Can’t you at least say hello?” she asked, the hurt, plain in her voice. “He was nice enough to ask to meet you, I think it’s the least you can do.”

Baked Scribe Flashback : Headless

The screaming of the motorcycle as it raced past the house had been keeping him up all night, every night this week. He didn’t know who in the neighborhood was going through the mid-life crisis, but he was ready for it to stop. It was getting so pervasive in his subconscious that he was noticing motorcycles everywhere. Several times on the way home in early evening traffic, he would spot a lone headlight in his mirror, rushing up on him as if on a collision course. Something else would distract him, and when he looked back, nothing would be there. At work, he would doze off in his cubicle and snap back awake, certain that he had just heard the din of an engine.

Besides the racket at night, he had also been having horrible nightmares. He woke up with images of dark, hulking forms riding down on him, sometimes wielding a human spinal cord as if it were a whip. He might have to break down and see the doctor for a prescription. He needed his sleep.

It was in this half-dazed, half-asleep state that he found himself strolling down the street for a late night walk when he heard the motorcycle again. The sound had become so frequent for him that he barely noticed it, even though it sounded like it was bearing down, directly onto him. He turned, with just enough time to take in the spectral shape standing atop the giant black motorcycle. The towering creature looked down at him as the cycle approached, or at least that’s what he thought it was doing.

There was no head.

He was only vaguely aware of standing there, mouth hanging open as the cycle jumped the curb and raced down the sidewalk at him. The figure bent down as it approached, clutching a severed head in one hand while the other gripped the hilt of a sword, drawing back to strike. The instinct to run came to him, far too late. As he turned to run, he felt a dull, but heavy impact. He fell to the ground, watching from another, diminishing universe as his own headless corpse collapsed onto the grass next to him.

Ramblings On The Craft : The Mythology Of The Writer

DISCLAIMER : I consider myself to be a life-long writer but I am still an aspiring author. What’s the difference? Essentially, to me anyway, it means that while I have devoted a great deal of time to my words and my art, the amount of money I have made as a professional writer to date could maybe be used to purchase a nice steak dinner for two. So while I have a deep and devoted passion for writing, I do not claim in any way to be an expert or authority figure. What you will find in these essays represent my personal thoughts and feelings about various issues related to writing. I think that in any endeavor, it is essential to have the mindset that there is always something to learn, something you don’t know. As soon as you start to think that you are an authority on anything (besides how to eat a hot dog or perhaps, spelling your name) there might be a problem. With that in mind, I am fully cognizant and comfortable with the fact that on any and all of these issues, I could be completely wrong.

Put another way, I recognize and admit that I could be full of shit.

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I’m a writer.

It’s a simple sentence but for some reason there seems to be a ton of baggage and assumptions that come along with it. You can often see it in the eyes of the person you are talking to. There is often a mixture of respect and pessimism, fueled largely by how writers are portrayed in popular culture and a lot of the misconceptions about what writers do. Also, as writing is wrapped up inside the umbrella of artistic endeavoring, it’s natural to want to romanticize the process a bit, again something which is driven in no small way by the “writers” we see on the large and small screen.

I think that common perceptions of writers generally fall into two general categories. First, you have the staunch intellectual, the one with the gigantic libraries with the classic oak shelves that make you feel like you just stepped into an Oxford reading room. Our writer sits at a picturesque battleship of a desk, made out of wood that was recovered from an ancient pirate ship. Classical music plays softly from somewhere, likely a record player and this writer is more likely to be writing on a typewriter or with a fountain pen that looks like it would look at home on the desk of a Supreme Court Justice.

Stereotype number two is of the manic, obsessive writer, the one who looks like they have been wearing the same clothes for upwards of a week. This writer has a writing space, but is likely just as happy scribbling notes on the back of ATM receipts and cocktail napkins. Their working space is likely littered with overflowing ashtrays, empty bottles and wadded up pieces of paper. If you found yourself sitting near this person at a coffee house or a bar, especially while they were working, you might be privy to quite a bit of frantic mumblings and mutterings as this writer battles with their own inner voices that simply won’t leave them alone. This individual more than likely bounces from one part time job to another, somehow having just enough money to afford their meager little one room efficiency and at most hours of the day can be seen in a green army jacket, walking from the coffee shop to the bar or from the bar to the coffee shop, depending on which one is opening and which one is closing.

So what’s the truth? I wish I could give you an exciting answer and while most of us exhibit at least some aspects of those personalities, in the end we’re really just people.

The reality is that like anything else, there isn’t really a box that you can fit all writers into, and hold that up as encapsulating the depth and width of all of us. Our interests may tend towards the quirky, the esoteric. Often we feel a desire to explore the various facets of human behavior and see what we can do with it when we put our characters through the narrative wringer. But we are no different than anyone else who puts in the time to develop a specific skill set.

I think it is also important, just in terms of the scope of this essay, that I am drawing somewhat of a difference between working writers and those that are more hobbyists. And I am not using that word in a judgmental or dismissive way, simply that there are some people who purely write recreationally, and have no interest in publishing. The working writers are the ones who I am focusing on here, the ones who have the fortitude to get down into the muck, roll up their sleeves and work until the work is done. These are the ones who write the inkwell all the way down to the bottom, regardless of whether or not conditions are optimal.

I thought it would be helpful to list some common questions that we, as writers get from time to time and share some of my thoughts on them. And please, if you find some questions listed below which you have asked before, don’t feel bad. If one thing holds consistent from writer to writer it’s that we really do enjoy talking about our writing, even if it is a question that we are asked slightly more often than others. All I would ask is that if you do find yourself in a conversation with a writer, just listen to them. Ask specific questions, and don’t worry about how the person you are talking to might fall short or exceed whatever pre-conceived image you might have about writers.

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“I don’t know what the big deal is, you just sit around and make stuff up…”

Writing is like a lot of other things in that there is a lot more going on in the process of creation that you don’t see and might not be aware of. It’s not unlike eating at a fine dining establishment where your seemingly simple plate of food was likely handled by a half dozen different people before it was sent out from the kitchen. Another way to think of it is to picture an iceberg. Now what you are seeing is actually only the small portion of the object which is above the surface of the water. There is a huge part which we don’t see and aren’t aware of and with writing, the same holds true.

It may seem like writing is merely the act of coming up with an idea and putting it down to paper but the reality of that process is a lot more complicated. Coming up with ideas is one thing, but that idea still needs to be crafted into a narrative form that is interesting and engaging to as many readers as possible. That narrative needs to be articulate in language that is clear and again, appealing to the reader. We have to create characters that are sympathetic or bring out your emotions. There is a lot of trial and error to this process and from start to finish, the story will be written and rewritten too many times to keep track of. You seek out the input of your peers and at no point during the entire process do you ever really feel like your story is ready to unleash onto the readers-at-large.

A skilled craftsman has the ability to make something look simple and easy. Just remember that whenever you read something from an author that you really like, chances were there was an embarrassingly large amount of bad writing that came before it. Keep that in mind the next time you really enjoy a book because there was likely a lot of time spent by that author, swimming in self-doubt and steeling themselves against what seems like inevitable criticism and scorn.

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“Could I have a copy of your book when it comes out?”

This is a difficult one for us because on one hand, we like it when people show interest in our work and we want to get our books out to as many readers as possible. On the other hand though, at the risk of sounding selfish, we also don’t necessarily want to give away our work for free. If the section previous to this hinted at anything for you, it’s the amount of time and work that goes into creating a novel. It is a long and, at times soul-crushing experience as you battle against fatigue and the constant call to start new projects and in the end, you would like to see somewhat of a return for that effort. So while we certainly appreciate your interest, please consider the possibility of paying for the book. You will be doing a good thing with your money by supporting a local artist and I think that there is an extra bit of enjoyment when you know that the thing you have in your hands was brought into the world by someone you are close to personally. It’s a rough industry for writers anymore, with so many easy avenues to publish, it’s a lot harder for us to be heard and noticed. We rely a lot on people like you for support and we are infinitely grateful when you are willing to spend your hard earned money on the art we create.

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“I’d write too, if I could find the time.”

Trust me, we likely have as many challenges to our time management as you do. Also consider that, despite what you may think, it is a very small percentage of authors who are able to support themselves on their writing alone. A survey I read a year or two ago showed ninety percent of self-published authors and even fifty percent of traditionally published authors were making less than a thousand dollars a year off of their writing. Often, we find ourselves needing to find a full time job or even a full time and a part time job in order to support ourselves and (in many cases) our family. We deal with the same time constraints as anyone else. There isn’t a trick or a spell that endows us with the power to introduce a twenty-fifth hour into the day. We work very hard, we pay attention to our time management, we make sacrifices with other recreational things we might want to do and we work to improve our craft so that when the time comes for writing to be done, our creative muscle is strong enough to be efficient with the time we have.

This statement also falls victim somewhat to the first question posted above in that it diminishes the efforts of the writer by failing to recognize how difficult the task is that we put ourselves to. Not everyone can write. Anyone can start a story but it takes a special subset who have the talent and work ethic to finish it. It isn’t just a matter of making free time and doing it, you have to bring a certain amount of ability to the process and not everyone has that. I can picture a glorious sunset in my head but I’m not going to be running to the canvas and grabbing my paints any time soon. Just because you can boil water doesn’t mean you can make an amazing bucatini marinara with ricotta. I’m certainly not going to head down to an operating theater and scrub in because I’ve watched a ton of episodes of ER and House.

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“You have to stick to one genre.”

This is one that is perpetuated more by writers than non-writers. I alluded previous to this about the extreme difficulty in getting noticed as a published author. The challenge, especially for self-published authors is to stand out in the crowd and find readers in an increasingly noisy environment. The idea that you need to stick to one genre is one of those pieces of advice that have come to stick, mostly out of being repeated so many times. I think that one problem with this industry is that there is a large subset of people who don’t really understand that finding success is largely a result of catching lightning in a bottle but, instead of showing gratitude for their own success, they spend all their time trying to convince everyone who will listen why their bottle is better than everyone else.

The rationale here is that if you have a book that is successful and then change genres for your next book, your readers will get frustrated with you and lose interest. My problem with that logic is that even if it was true, if you write a second book and stayed to the same genre, but it was awful, those same readers will still turn away from you. If you write a good, engaging novel, unless it is a dramatic change, I have a hard time believing that a loyal fan will be so devoted to one genre that they won’t buy the book. And who’s to say that you might not pick up new fans from a book of a different genre? You might even introduce new readers to a story type that they never would have considered before. The point is that there is too much unknown about this aspect of your relationship with the reader to try and build a publishing platform around it. Maybe this isn’t the most practical business strategy but I genuinely believe that if you put out books that are good, you will find readers eventually, maybe not as fast, but eventually. I also think that the quality of your fans will be greater if you are putting out fresh material instead of just constantly perpetuating iterations of your first book.

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“Hey, I’ve got an idea for one of your books…”

Okay, I’m going to stop you there and just say this. We appreciate that you are aware enough of what we do to bring this up in conversation. It is flattering somewhat in the sense that it has demonstrated that you have accepted us as being a writer. And like I said before, we have no problem talking about our writing. However, we generally have more than enough free-floating ideas running wild through our head and we really don’t need more. So at the risk of sounding rude or ungrateful, maybe you should write that book.

This was not an exclusive list by any means but were just some thoughts I had as well as some contributions from other authors on questions they have often encountered. I’m not going to pretend that we’re not a bunch of socially awkward, fearful, eccentric weirdos. Far from it. But we are all strange in our own unique, little twisted ways. So the next time you meet a writer, don’t fall back to the image that pops into your mind, planted and fertilized by assumptions and myths, perpetuated in pop culture. Everybody has a deep love for something, for us, that just happens to be books.

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Books are truth, and that is the truth. That is what we seek, and that is all you need to know.

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Issue #119

The dogs sounded like they were waging war, out there. Grady looked out, to see what the hell they were up to and there they all were, crowded against the house and barking savagely. They all seemed to be staring past the fence, where the property dropped off severely into the valley below. Grady noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Other than the unusually cool breeze flowing over the farm, it was a normal night. He lifted the mug to his lips and took another long sip of the tomato soup. Diane had been gone for over a year now, but he still couldn’t bring himself to reject her preferred method of serving soup. “You drink it, more often than not,” she would say. “You don’t drink out of a bowl do you?

The picture frames clunked against the wall, as they often did at night when the wind picked up. There were times he couldn’t help but feel like the entire house was about to be attacked by flock of some kind of long dead, prehistoric monster.

Grady sat down and reached for the hardback he had been reading. He set the mug down on the end table when there was a soft knocking from the front door. Frowning, he looked down at his watch before standing up and walking to the door. The last time he got a visitor this late, it’d been a passing college student with a flat tire, just up the lane. A tiny voice urged him to peek through the window before opening the door, but he ignored it. The wind flitted into the house like a cacophony of screams as he did so, knocking him back on his heels.

There was no one there.

Grady shook his head and stepped out onto the porch, hitting the switch for the outside lights as he did so. Warm, yellow light popped on, revealing the expensive wooden deck and confirmed what he had already seen.

There was no one out here.

Had to be a fluke, a trick of the mind. Still, it was better to be careful. Grady stepped down, off the porch and began scanning around the property. If this was kids screwing with him, then he would bring all holy hellfire down on the little bastards. The whole point of buying this property out in the middle of nowhere had been to get away from people.

Nothing was out of order, no windows open or doors hanging loose in their frames. He heard no sound, no snickers of suppressed laughter that he might expect from errant pranksters. Grady looked up into the sky, and took another moment to revel in what lay above him, as the twinkles of stars tumbled off into the horizon of infinity. This really did make the rest worthwhile.

He turned to return to the house. As he began climbing the stairs to the deck, he glanced up at the bedroom window. It wasn’t until he took several more steps that he realized what he had just seen.

Someone was standing in the window.

Grady backpedaled down the steps and looked up. There was no one in sight. For a moment, he considered throwing something up at the window to try and startle whoever had been lurking up there. He stood, fixed in place for several moments, reluctant to enter the house and wishing whoever had he had seen would return to the window.

The wind rushed over him, feeling more cold than it just had and, for a moment, he thought he could detect the sound of something screaming.

It was idiotic to just stand out here like this, afraid to walk into his own damn home. He tossed the soup out onto the ground and set the mug down on the porch railing, picking up a heavy pipe that was leaning up against the front door.

“Anyone in here?” He yelled out, holding the pipe in front of him like some kind of talisman. No one answered, but his nose suddenly exploded with a tickling sensation as his allergies started to flare up. He looked up, glaring at the dust trickling down from the floor boards above, which were flexing down, as if from the weight of footsteps.

He was going to give all holy hell to whoever was up there. This had been going on for long enough. Grady raced up the stairs and began marching down the hallway, banging the pipe on the walls in order to scare out the intruder that was hiding up here.

“Picked the wrong fucking place to break into, friend!” Grady kicked the door open to his bedroom, wincing at the sound of the door knob, punching a hole through the wall. All the better for a dramatic entrance though. Drywall was cheap. “Get the hell out of here!” He reached out and yanked the closet door aside, half-pulling it off the track as he did so.

The closet was empty.

“What the Christing hell?” Grady muttered as he returned to the window, glaring out over the front lawn. He looked up into the sky above and in the glass of the window, caught the reflection.

There were people in the room with him.

Grady stared into the reflection, refusing to turn and look, refusing to acknowledge what he was seeing. There was nothing distinctive about them, faceless, with simple white dresses draped over frail figures. They started to shamble forward, freezing him in place as he felt the pipe drop from his fingers. He tried to draw in a breath against the icy fingers crawling across his chest.

Grady sat up with a start, looking around the room from the relative safety of his hospital bed. Why did he keep waking up here? He began to lift his hand to his forehead but, before he got halfway there, he felt the cool steel of the handcuffs, linking his hands to the side rails.

“He’s awake officer,” the voice came from the darkness to his left. Grady looked, but saw no one there.

“Still with us then?” A cop was now leaning over him, his face coming so close, Grady had to flinch against the mattress to try and get away.

“Where am I?” He asked.

The man shook his head, laughing a little. “Still don’t remember, huh? It’s getting a little old, going over this again and again. Or maybe someone is just trying to set himself himself up for a crazy defense.”

“I don’t…” He started to protest but, in an instant, the room swirled away from again, his head filling with howling wind. He shivered with a cold that he felt, down to his bones. It was a feeling of death. He felt like his body had melted, leaving behind nothing but fragmented consciousness.

He was falling down, through open space. A lake shimmered below him and in the low ambient light could tell what he was plummeting towards.

The lake was filled with blood.

Grady bucked, mid-air and screamed out in anticipation of the impact, but when he opened his eyes, he was on his knees, in the cellar underneath the house. He looked down at his hands and saw them streaked bright red, with blood.

What was this he had wrought? Was he really here, or was he trapped inside of this memory? Was this his mind trying to—

“Wake up!”

Grady stepped his eyes open to see the attacker, the cop, once again leaning over him, and drawing back as if to strike. Grady suspected that this blow would not have been the first.

“About time. Tired of you drifting off like that. I will smack the color out of your face if you drift off again, motherfucker.”

Was he really just dreaming? Or was he actually being drawn out of this place, pulled into these varying times and places in physical form, as well as memory? Somehow, the officer was able to lean in even closer.

“One of those girls was my friend’s daughter and I’m going to see to it that you burn for what you did.”

“Officer!” The crisp voice came, following the sound of the door opening and light, flooding in from the hallway. “The patient is in an extremely sensitive state right now. He does not need this kind of agitation.”

“Sure thing, cupcake.” The officer smirked down at Grady before heading for the hallway. The doctor followed, standing there in the doorway to make sure the man was indeed leaving. Grady lay back, listening to the sound of footsteps moving past, fragments of conversations and the occasional squeaky wheel of a gurney.

Would the blood ever truly wash away, or would the spectral taint be there forever, attached to him for the severity of his sins, for the lives he had taken? He couldn’t remember anything that happened before being in this room, other than the scattered images of his dreams,. He didn’t know what was true or false, but somehow he fundamentally knew that he had done every single thing that he was being accused of. The blood has been shed by his hands, no one else’s.

This was his purgatory.

“Wake up!” The cop smacked him again. Back to the reality of his hospital room. The avenging creature had evidently sneaked back into the room at some point. Grady tried to twist away from the man, and cried out before a hand came down and clamped his throat, cutting off the supply of air. He clawed at the sheets as the room began to swirl away, the vague sound of shouting somewhere. There was persistent pressure, and his head started to feel weightless and dizzy.

“Wake up!”

The slap again, this time from the other side.

“You don’t get off that easy, you don’t—”

Again, the pressure bore down, and the room blinked away. He wondered how long this would go on and, even how much of it was really happening. How long before the comfort of his final release? What act of internal contrition was required of him?

Maybe he had it backwards. Maybe the dreams he was having were real and the hospital was the hallucination. Maybe he just needed to make his own mind understand the reality, the fact that—

His head rocked forward from a savage blow, the source unseen.

“Wake up you son of a bitch!”

Baked Scribe Flashback : Gorgon

Joey sped up to a jog to keep up with her. She had made blatant eye contact with him at the bar, or at least it had seemed so at the time, since he couldn’t really see her eyes behind the black lenses of her sunglasses. Regardless, he had seen the upturn of those lips, the suggestive nod as she had turned towards the exit.

But now that he had followed her out into the street, she was actually playing hard to get, and that just wasn’t going to fly. He had sacrificed the good money he had spent on that cover charge by following her out here, that was not going to go to waste. Five dollars lost meant that he should get something for his trouble. It was only fair.

He was about to give in, and just call out to her, when he saw a bum come stumbling from around the corner to make a grab at her arm.

“Hey!” he yelled. Maybe he could be the hero and get his foot in the door that way. She clearly didn’t need his help though, as she threw the guy back against the wall like he was nothing. She ripped the sunglasses off, and as they flicked past, he saw a brilliant flash of green light emerge from her eyes, like search-beams. It lit up the alley, and fully illuminated her hair that, in the nightclub, he had taken for tightly coiled locks.

“Holy Jesus,” he muttered at the sight of the snakes, writhing and whipping wildly about her head. The sunglasses returned to their starting position, and she glanced back over her shoulder at him before walking off.

The bum was still standing there against the wall, sort of half leaning over as if he was going to be sick. Joey ran up the guy just to make sure he was all right. He reached out to grab his shoulder, to try and shake him out of his stupor.

“Holy…” He jerked his hand back as if it had been burned. His fingers trembled as he reached out again, brushing the man’s arm which, along with the rest of him had been turned into cool, solid stone.

Issue #118

Marissa groaned as the doorbell rang again, and slammed the book down on the table. It had seemed like such a good idea to do Halloween this year. This was her first year in the new house, and she thought it would be a good way to meet the neighbors. Almost right away, she had regretted her decision. It was Halloween candy, how expensive could it be? Still, she had spent thirty dollars that she didn’t really have, and while she had consoled herself at the time with the thought that she would almost certainly end up with a bunch of leftover candy, it was actually looking like she would have to close down early. Or head to the store to buy more. Maybe she was giving out too much. Or letting the greedy little vultures take too much.

She greeted the fourth iteration of the complete Avengers team at her door by trying to smile sweetly, while dumping the candy into the outstretched buckets and bright orange plastic pumpkins. If she had to put up with the aggravation, maybe she could take her anger out on them by helping guarantee a diabetic coma for them the next day. The happy laughter and giggling as the little shits tore off down her driveway was only converted in her head to the sound of them making fun of her for some reason.

As she sat back down to pick up the book where, she hoped to get through maybe even one chapter without the doorbell ringing. A voice in the back of her head said that she should just call it quits, and switch off the light. She didn’t owe anything to these people’s kids. Still, she intended to see this thing through to the end. She would not be seen by the neighborhood as a quitter.

She managed to read just one page when she heard the sound, but this time it wasn’t coming from the front door. It was coming from somewhere to her left. She looked over and saw the door to the closet on the far side of the room was shaking back and so forth, ever so slightly, as if there was someone inside, pushing out on the door in its frame. That was idiotic though, no way that could be possible.

Must have been something inside that had fallen over, and was pushing against the door, a broom or a Swiffer Jet that had been displaced. She pulled the door open and staggered back several steps, nearly yelling out as she did so.

One of the kids from the neighborhood had sneaked into the house without her hearing, and had been hiding out, waiting to surprise her. The kid, she guessed it was a “he”, just stood there, staring up at her through the grotesque excuse for a Halloween mask he was wearing. It was unique at least, unlike anything she had ever seen, looking like some odd cross between a werewolf and an alien costume. Considering the lack of tags anywhere, and how worn everything looked, she wondered if this kid was some kind of budding fashion or costume designer.

Her curiosity was quickly drowned out by the anger of having her home intruded upon like this.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked. “What are you doing, just standing there like that, and how did you get in here?”

No response. He stared at her through the mask, his breath coming out in ragged gasps as he rocked from side to side.

“Christ’s sake, we’ve got an idiot here or something.” She glared at the kid, trying to figure out who it was. He had to be one of the neighborhood kids, but behind the mask, she couldn’t tell for sure. “Are you just going to stand there like an idiot?” She asked. “What are we doing here?”

He just stood there. For the briefest moment, Marissa thought he was going to start walking forward, but he just rocked back onto his heels and stayed there, incomprehension glowing behind those eyes.

“Do you live around here?”

No answer.

“Are you friends with someone in the neighborhood?”

Silence.

“Where are your parents?”

The situation had extended beyond odd, and was now infuriating her. She was about to take a step forward to grab the kid by the shoulder, when she noticed the knife for the first time, gripped in the tiny little hand. Initially, she had taken it as simply being part of the costume but now, as she looked at it, she immediately realized how wrong she had been. This did not look like a cheap piece of plastic that most toys of this ilk would be made of. It looked like hard steel, stained, up and down with what she had to assume was blood. The hand that held it kept flexing on the handle, as if it was about to raise the thing up to strike.

Marissa took in several breaths to try and calm herself before taking a step forward. She had to control the situation, stay calm and try to figure out what this kid needed. As she reached a hand out, she saw that she was trembling. She reached out to try and place her hand on the handle of the blade, but just before she got there, it pulled away from her smoothly. The look of rage in those eyes that came out from behind the mask made her breath catch in her throat.

Maybe it was the mask. The kid was hiding behind it and acting out in ways that he might not do otherwise. She needed to knock him out of his daze, and this might be the only way to do it. Moving her hands slowly, she reached up and felt around on the back of the kid’s head, feeling for a zipper or a seam, or anything she could use to pry loose the tight, form-fitting mask. A zipper, buttons, velcro, anything that would dislodge the thing from the kids face.

She found nothing.

The swirl of silence in her head became deafening, as she heard the kid’s breathing grow more ragged. The eyes looking up at her had a bright red glow to them that she hadn’t even noticed before. She had immediately taken the eyes as being behind a mask, but they were actually sunken down, into skin that looked alien, inhuman. The rage coming off of the thing standing in front of her was baking off of it in waves and in the blink of a moment, all she could think about was the knife, still held in that things’ hand. She turned to run, but before she could get more than a step or two, a hand that she couldn’t believe she had ever taken as human, snaked around and grabbed her from behind. It pulled her in close, enfolding her in the stink of its breath, and cutting off the scream rising to her lips on the sharpened edge of cold steel.

Baked Scribe Flashback : Faeries

It was two o’clock in the morning, and she was at the store buying skim milk. It was the cherry topper for this week that had been filled with so much odd behavior, that she was starting to doubt if Jerry was even the same person anymore. He was too sick to go himself, too hobbled to walk all the way down the block and through the park to the big, scary grocery store for the late night beverage. He didn’t even like milk.

Pathetic.

She had just crossed over the foot bridge when the glow from the pond caught her attention. It was hovering over the ice with a brilliant gold color. She set the milk down on the ground and took a few tentative steps out, beyond the shore. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. The light grew stronger as she approached. It pulsated, and resonated with a high pitched, harmonic humming that was like the most glorious choir that had ever taken voice. She put a hand out to caress the brilliance.

With a wet popping sound, the light oozed out and absorbed her hand, crawling up onto her upper arm as well. It moved like liquid all over her, until she was completely enclosed in the glow. She tried to move, but her arms and legs were pinned to her sides, and it took all of her strength just to draw in breath. From the outside, she had seen the beauty of the light and the sound. From this vantage point, all she could see was oozing black sludge and a pervasive smell of rot.

She looked out at the shoreline to see if there was anyone who might be able to help her. A dark figure emerged from the woods and she tried to call out, but could not find her voice. She watched as the figure stepped up to the edge of the pond and began to glow, the same golden luminescence which she had seen before.

The light grew so bright that she squinted against its power and then, in an instant, it cut out completely. She blinked the tears out of her eyes and, by the lights lining the walking path, she saw that the figure had clarified into something completely familiar.

She was looking at herself.

The newly formed doppelganger reached down to pick up the milk. It looked over its shoulder at her before turning towards their street. In that moment she had a sudden explanation for the oddity of this past week. Jerry really wasn’t Jerry anymore. Her thoughts flashed to the image of their two sons, and what was going to happen to them when she realized that a new grip was tightening around her ankles. The black sludge slipped away from her, creating a brief moment of freedom before the ice cracked and she was pulled down into the watery depths far below.

Issue #117

The storms rolled through early that morning, the thunder making the windows rattle in their frames. Above that, the metallic plink of water dripping down into the large cake pan could be heard distinctly, as rain pelted the roof above them. Louis stared down at the book he was reading, oblivious to anything going on outside or around him. Raymond stared at his friend, and squirmed around in the chair, so bored that he felt like any second he was going to boil over. He hadn’t brought anything to entertain himself, he hated to read. But what he assumed was going to be a weekend of socializing had turned into an exercise of watching himself being ignored.

It seemed absurd to be here, and the only reason he could think of for Louis inviting him was because he wanted some help covering the cost of gas and food, driving all the way up here like this. That was all Raymond was to him anyway, just a resource to be exploited for his own gain.

When Louis had called, asking him to come along, it had seemed like something was weighing heavily on his friend but, he would not admit to anything specifically. He thought they were going to have some kind of drawn out, heavy conversation but as soon as they had arrived, a cold front had swept through the house, and Louis had barely said more than two words at a time. Raymond had considered walking into downtown and exploring, but was worried about getting lost. Louis had booked the rental, and Raymond didn’t know the town,

What the hell. Even the pouring rain seemed like a more attractive alternative to the stifling silence he was having to sit through in here. It didn’t even occur to him to say anything to Louis as he stood up, and walked out the front door. Part of him was a little disappointed that Louis hadn’t called out after him.

The main street through town was mostly deserted, probably due to the rain, but also because it was getting down to the end of the tourist season. Before long, the most action that would be found anywhere, would be the locals at the newspaper stand, arguing over their checkers game.

Raymond looked out over the channel, and at the boats drifting around on their lines. A few owners sat out on the decks of their various over-sized yachts, sipping drinks in the now misting rain. He was surprised to find that his hands were starting to tremble slightly from the chill in the air.

He scanned the boats, looking over each one when, as he passed over one of the more modestly sized fishing boats, he saw the older owner, sitting there in a lawn chair, and staring straight at him. He passed over the man so quickly, that it almost didn’t register. Raymond frowned as he shifted his gaze back to the boat and saw the man, still glaring at him from across the park.

As he walked over and approached the boat, the man’s gaze somehow became even more icy and hostile. He didn’t know what he had done to piss the guy off, but he needed to find out.

“Sorry, do I know you?” he asked. The man crossed his arms across his chest but did not answer. Raymond stood there, feeling like an idiot as the man reached up and slid the hat off the top of his head, scratching at the mostly balding area before replacing it. He leaned over and let loose with a giant wad of spit, somehow managing to maintain eye contact with Raymond the entire time.

“Is there a problem?” he asked, trying again to get some kind of response. Finally, he started to turn away when the man yelled out at him for the first time.

“You just don’t know what the hell you’re doing here, do you?”

Raymond turned around to face the man, who was now standing up from his chair. “I don’t understand. What’s that supposed to mean?”

The man chuckled and shook his head. “Blind to the world, right? Wearing blinders, are we?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, are you mistaking me for—”

“Hard to mistake someone as dim bulb as you are around these parts. Don’t have a clue, do you?”

“A clue about what?”

Again, the man chuckled, a gravelly tone, as he reached down and jerked on the rope to loosen it from the dock. He turned back to the controls and twisted the key. Before Raymond could say anything else, the boat started to move out into the channel, its owner keeping his back to Raymond the entire time.

It was about on par with pretty much every social interaction he had experienced in town so far. There wasn’t much outright rudeness, but everyone seemed to be peering down at him, making him feel like a bug in a petri dish. He had written it off, at first, as simply locals scorning the tourists, but now it seemed deeper than that, as if there was some huge inside joke that he wasn’t privy to.

There was a clamor of activity from the other side of the park, a sound of heavy equipment dropping and someone cursing loudly. It had come from one of the repair houses for the yacht club, and he could see something flashing inside, as if a work-light was being swung back and forth. He strode over to the entrance and peered inside, hoping to maybe find some reason to strike up conversation with anybody. By the time he got there, however, there was no one to be seen.

He did notice an office door against the far wall that was ajar. There was no one in there either, but the computer on the desk was on, the chair slowing to a stop from rotating, as if someone had just stood up in a hurry. He didn’t even know why he cared, but he approached the computer and looked at the screen.

The black and white footage looked like some kind of a laboratory or doctor’s office. The room contained one operating table, with a patient sitting atop it, staring listlessly off into space. Raymond was about to disregard the footage until, in a moment of breathless recognition, he turned back to the screen to look closer.

The patient on the bed was Louis.

He watched as the black and white image moved, and someone approached the bed, wearing what looked like a Hazmat suit. The person produced a needle that looked over a foot long, and leaned over Louis, placing the tip just to the left of one of his eyes. Raymond looked away as the needle was plunged in, but looked back reflexively, peeking through his fingers as he discovered that Louis was lying alone again, a fresh tube now inserted into his arm. Blood flowed freely from him, but Raymond couldn’t tell where it was going. He looked at the time stamp on the footage and saw that it was late at night, the same night they had arrived here.

The past few days came back to him in a flood of images. Louis, growing progressively more introverted, showing less and less interest in anything. Raymond had felt like he was talking to someone in a walking coma. He thought about the attitude of the locals, the snarky comments of the man in the boat and how he had almost seemed to be warning Raymond about something.

In the length of a heartbeat, he suddenly realized that the bells on the buoys outside had gotten louder, as if the outer door to the building had been opened. He felt the kiss of fresh breeze on the back of his neck and the groaning from floorboards. Raymond turned, already knowing what he was going to find.

A half dozen of the town locals stood there, staring silently. Raymond took a step back, trying to formulate in his head what he was supposed to say, what they might accept. Before he could come up with anything, they began shambling forward. There was no other door, no windows, anywhere that he would be able to escape from, and he certainly couldn’t overpower all of them.

The only sound filling his head was the increasingly ragged intakes of his own breath as someone switched off the lights and closed the door, drowning him in darkness.

Baked Scribe Flashback : Erinyes

Rex had laughed it off at first, the sniveling idiot and his pitiful begging. It was his life savings and now he wouldn’t be able to support his family. Please. Well, maybe the little twerp would be more careful about who he gave his money to from now on. All it had taken was a little sweet talk, and Rex had gotten his hands on all of it. If the moron was going to make it that easy, didn’t he deserve to be swindled? He paid no attention to the pathetic threats. You’re going to pay for this. There’s gonna be a reckoning. Straight out of a shitty B-movie.

Now, as he stood in the alley, looking up into the darkening sky and feeling the grumble of thunder in his bones, he started to doubt that bravado. The weather had called for clear skies, but the expanse of thunderheads, combined with the flashes of lightening had once again proven the weatherman to be fallible.

The sound of the wind increased and he paused, thinking for just a moment that he had heard the sound of something beating against the air, like giant wings. He looked up, just as the dark shape swooped down and grabbed him, pulling him off his feet and straight up towards the storm clouds above.

It was a woman, except for the wings of course, and the claws, which were now breaking skin and digging into his arms. The thing screamed at him with an unearthly rage that he had never heard or felt before. It reverberated in his head with the anger of every person he had ever ripped off in any number of bad business deals over the years. He couldn’t explain why he made the connection, but there it was. He didn’t know where this avenging creature had come from or how it had found him, but he had built a life on his ability to talk himself out of trouble.

“Wait, I can fix whatever—” A hand snaked down and darted into his mouth, mid-sentence and pulled. He screamed as his mouth filled with blood and he watched his tongue tumbling off into open space.

Arms and claws flashed around him, ripping and pulling. Through his pain, he struggled to draw in breath from the rapidly thinning air and then, just as he was starting to feel his eyes bulge out, the hold on him was gone and he was in free fall. He watched as the ground below, littered with distant specks of buildings grew larger. He writhed around in his descent, trying desperately to wave arms and legs that, he discovered, were no longer even there.