Don't Fear the Reaper (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #2)

by Stephen Graham Jones

It’s becoming a shadow town for him, which, taking into account all the ghosts, is about right.

Old men don’t have to figure shit out. They just have to sit on a bench in the bitter cold and smoke their death sticks, and consider the white form taking shape out on the ice.

“I’ll help you get back to… I don’t even know where you live, do I? Pleasant Valley Assisted Living?” Hardy lets his smoke seep out, like he’s on fire inside. He looks up the hill, to the nursing home, says, “Not yet, no.”

“What bullshit is this?” Jennifer says. About the elk, sure, but, more, about the guy speared over its face.

It should have been dead long ago, she knows, but souls are like livers: they regenerate and regenerate, until you’ve finally poisoned them enough that the only thing they can do is kill you, take you down with them.

It’s all about perspective. It’s all about what you choose to build your psychological and emotional house on. It’s all about what light you choose to shine on the past, and the present.

Fifty thousand ancestors, going back and back, each of them a final girl.

But she can’t get mired down in the past. Turn your head behind long enough, it’ll get lopped by what’s rising up in front of you.

Banner Tompkins, former linebacker, one hundred percent idiot, husband of the woman Jade secretly considers her best friend, he did it, he did the impossible.

“Jennifer goddamn Daniels,” Hardy finally says. “It’s Jade, sir,” Jade says back, and breathes all the corruption in her lungs out. Well, not the blackness, she supposes. Not the horror. Never that.

Because she’s Jade fucking Daniels. And a thousand men like you can’t even reach up to touch her combat boots.