Forsaken Quotes

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth." Pablo Picasso”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“For if there were no schools to take our children away, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers,”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“Ultimately, I chose to novelize this story because I grew tired of the hurry-up-and-wait nature of filmmaking (though I’m not opposed to the proper film treatment, emphasis on proper) but mostly because it was the kind of story I liked to read growing up. Pet Semetary, The Damnation Game, Ghost Story, and others calibrated my childhood definition of horror; I don’t believe a good story needs to hit a scare quota by page fifty.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“Your son, he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, does he?” Dan laughed. “Tommy? No, he believes in sports. Soccer, basketball in the winter, baseball in the spring, video games in between.” “But your daughter does. She has imaginary friends, I’m guessing.” “She’s six. Of course she does.” Tamara bent down by the fireplace and reached her hand over the decorative logs. A second later she pulled away, as if burned by an invisible flame. A good actress indeed, he thought. “So, what, you think she’s being haunted by the ghost of Saint Nick?” he asked. “Did I say that?” “No, but come on. What kind of question is that?” “Remember the tea, Dan? Children, sometimes the elderly, sometimes even people of great faith, they act like conduits. Why? ’Cause they believe. Much easier to pass through a door that’s open than one that’s locked.” “What if someone doesn’t believe?” “There’s always more than one way into a house. And more than one—” Tamara snapped her head back to the foyer. Her eyes scanned the stairs, as if something silent and unseen had just run down them and into the hallway. He felt a chill pass behind him. “The painting,” she said, reaching out an arthritic finger that pointed past Dan, to the door at the end of the hallway. “It’s there, isn’t it?”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“They’re real,” she said again in that hoarse voice. “They can hurt us.” “What are, sweetie? Bad dreams?” She shook her head and pointed a finger at the floor. Somehow Dan knew she wasn’t just pointing at the floor but beyond it, and the only thing he knew that lay beneath the boards of the bedroom floor was the study below. But she wasn’t pointing to the room, he thought. No, she was pointing to something in the room. She leaned in close and whispered, “First they took the old woman. Then they took Ginger. And then the girl with the skin pictures.” “Skin pictures?” “On her back,” Jessica said, and Dan felt his blood run cold. “Who? Who told you that?” “The man with the broken name,” she said as she turned over and hugged Mr. Bun. Then, as if she had answered a simple math question, she whispered, “Goodnight, Daddy.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“The hands pulled at his fingers with ferocious strength, and someone shouted his name again. He didn’t want to open his eyes, didn’t want to let in whatever lay in the darkness beyond, but it was overpowering, a tidal surge between the cracks of his hand. Fingers pulled at his, cold and strong, breaking through his grasp, and he screamed and lashed out. Linda fell backward onto the bedroom floor. Her back connected with the edge of the bed, knocking the box spring and mattress crooked. Her nightgown was askew, hiked up above her hips from the force of the fall, her underwear exposed between splayed legs. Her face was a mask of horror. Tommy stood at the edge of the bed, just where that dark boy had stood, only Tommy was crying and covering his mouth. “You’re scaring us! Stop, please!” he gulped again and again in run-on sentences. Only Jessica was silent, unaffected by what Dan realized had been a nightmare. She combed the hair of her doll softly, as if ready to fall back asleep. “Goddammit, Dan,” Linda said, her words spat out with an indignant rage. “What’s the matter with you?”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“I just wanted to scare him,” the girl from the painting sobbed. He felt his bladder empty warmth down his leg, and his fingers burned as if the skin had been peeled back and every nerve was being pulled by tweezers. Move, he thought. Run away. A light appeared at the doorway. Then a shadow crossed before it, eclipsing the warmth and safety of the hallway. A boy stood there, that very same boy from the painting. His clothes were filthy and wet, as if he’d been playing in a slaughterhouse. His eyes, if they could even be called that, were simple blots of darkness that stared straight at Dan.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“The rug scraped against his boxers as he scurried back, away from that thing, that vague, naked form he’d once found so beautiful. Its flesh was covered in shifting, shimmering tattoos that consumed each other. Its skinny hands gripped the edge of the bed like those of a feral animal, a tiger about to leap from the trees, to pounce on him.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“Then it was over and he was in his bedroom and the wet thing that lay beside him opened a painted maw. The death rattle that came from the Karina-thing raised to a crescendo. He felt himself falling backward into darkness as it reached out for him with sticky hands.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“That thing was not his wife. It was an abstraction, a vaguely feminine form that resembled Karina insomuch as a Picasso resembled a real person. Its eyes were empty black pits, as if giant thumbs had pushed them inward, leaving stretched skin sockets and shadow. There was a moment, a brief negative space between the emergence of the thing and the comprehension and horror of what it was, when the world swam in perfect clarity. To a person behind the wheel of a car, it was that silent second before glass and metal shattered and buckled. To a condemned man, that final click of the lever before the gallows dropped and the rope snapped taut. To Dan, it was the last bit of light being swallowed by the darkness as that old trunk slammed shut.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“Staring into that shadow, that perfect black, Dan thought of an ocean, endless and deep. Not an ocean of water but an ocean of time. Where dense kelp forests of memory and emotion shimmered. Where abstract shapes lay dormant and asleep like bugs that waited a dozen cycles of the seasons before waking. Found you, the broken glass said as it rattled and hummed.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“Then she found the strength to do one final thing. She screamed. And screamed and screamed and screamed. And as she screamed, the doll-faced girl skipped and clapped her hands and that broken dog with its missing jaw turned in excited little circles as if chasing its tail. Karina felt two things, and then she felt no more. A final violent yank across the floor, away from the door, toward the edge of the room and that painting. And something wet and old swallowing her, body and soul. Then all became darkness and anger, utter and complete and devouring, and she knew nothing else.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“Karina’s mind went sideways. The sickness erupted, fast and violent. Karina cupped her hand over her mouth and vomited into it. The young girl had no face. Or at least nothing that resembled a human face. It was a mask, but only in the sense that the skin painted on a doll’s face was a mask over an abstract shape. Cracked patches of paint hung from bark-like skin, and between the cracks lay wet stitching. Her eyes were empty chasms, not even sockets where eyes had once been, but holes into a dark core that leaked tears of wet paint down cracked cheeks and past cold, quivering lips. Her engorged head rolled around on her neck like a pendulum.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“Was that where he…” She hesitated, unable to finish the question. “Died,” he said, finishing it for her. “That’s where he died. Yes.” “Did you see him before that?” “Once. On my eighteenth birthday.” The room was white, Dan thought. So white and lonely. Only the buzzing of the overhead light and the psychiatrist’s pen, clicking in and out, as they stared at the silent, shackled form of his older brother. A pale visage, deathly so. A form that didn’t move but simply existed, staring slack-jawed at the corner of the room. A form that whispered “I’m sorry” in an endless loop. It was a husk, a shade, and whatever lived inside was silent and still.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“It’d been years since he’d had a panic attack, so long he’d forgotten what they were like. Then the fear had turned the world sideways, and only the clattering glass and the darkness had remained, old and familiar.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“His fingers curled in as another thought settled into his mind. What if no one was there? What if his mind had slipped sideways and the laughter had not come from without but from within? Was it, like the glass and migraines and auras and perhaps even that diseased dog’s photos, simply inside his mind? Was he slipping toward some unknown precipice—or perhaps had he already?”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“You can’t break your sister’s toys, Thomas. You know that.” And he snapped the Nintendo in half. The glass behind his eyes vibrated white hot. The two halves of the Nintendo buckled and bent until the plastic gave way in a resonating pop and the system folded the wrong way. Just like the bird, only a little harder and not as messy. He dropped the two halves back on the table, eyes never leaving Tommy, whose mouth hung open in shock and betrayal. “You… always blame me,” Tommy gasped, eyes welling with tears. “I hate you!” “You’ll get over it.” Tommy turned and ran to the bathroom, slamming the door so hard that a picture of his second-grade soccer team fell off the shelf and shattered. Like father like son, Dan thought. Even down to the flair for destruction.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“The voice belonged to Marty, who stood at the neighboring fence with a rake. He was a man of indeterminate age somewhere between retirement and death.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“Even atheists put their faith in something; they just call it science.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“It means she was special. Touched. Words only reduce her gift to vagaries.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“But you lied to them.” “They lied to themselves. We all do. Why? Because the truth, Mr. Rineheart, it doesn’t always give us the closure we need. Is that so bad?”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“Take your time,” Dan said. The old clockmaker laughed as he turned around and opened the cabinets behind the counter. “We don’t take time, son. Time takes us.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“You’re a good man, Dan. I hope you know that,” she said in the drowsy quiet that followed. “Thanks, honey,” he said, but she heard the doubt in his voice. She looked over at him and tapped on his heart. “I mean that. The kids are lucky to have you. I am too.” A good man, murmured the glass. Or a good salesman?”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“You’re a good kid, Tommy,” Dan said as he stood up and walked to the door. “And you’re a good dad.” Dan felt his eyes twitch, the corners growing heavy with tears. And you’re a good dad, his son had said. You’re a good man, his wife had said. You’re a good lover, Karina had said. You’re a good liar, the glass said.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“Art is never finished, only abandoned." Leonardo da Vinci”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“ Luck was just another name for the intersection between talent and timing and faith.  And”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“The difference between me and a madman is this. The madman thinks that he is sane. I know that I am mad." Dali”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“like a cat sleeping on a fence: it could fall either way, or it could stay where it was.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“ “We don’t take time, son.  Time takes us.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken

“ He sometimes thought he didn’t live one life but several, all strung together like beads on a necklace, separate but connected if only by his name.”
― Andrew Van Wey, Forsaken