The War Beneath Quotes

“You believe that. People believe all kinds of crazy shit. People think the sky is up. The sky is out though, isn’t it? We just feel more comfortable thinking it’s up ‘cause otherwise you gotta admit the whole world is a little speck of rock floating in the fucking dark.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“What could someone say to the dead to earn their forgiveness?”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“The thing appeared jointed, osteological, a creature of bone and sinew, but it moved like drooping glue. It stretched out and fell from the ragged hole in the ceiling, a horrific whiteness of teeth and bladed limbs. Too many legs, three arms—one from the top of its spine, if it had a spine, the others from curdled-milk textured shoulders—and a vast jaw lined with rows and rows of jagged fangs. In the center of the serpentine tube of its torso, a red-black hole guttered to its innards.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“if you’ll let me hijack your feed for one second, I think we could help each other.

The voice was chemical-sweet, carcinogenic, a pool of oily promise cooking in a silver spoon. Its silky bravado reminded Deirdre of stories about devils and demons, about dark fae spirits feasting on firstborn children after a handshake and a trick.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“I’m looking for information.”

She lifted her arms, indicating the breadth of the library, and declared with self-parodied drama, “I’m surrounded by it!”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“The deal involved saving your life. There aren’t any subsection clauses to that. I saved your life. And if you hurt that kid, I’ll take it back.”
Frank’s lips flapped, making sounds but not words.
Deirdre didn’t wait for him to figure out how to speak again.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“It was funny how little justice seemed to come in the wake of justice being done. It was funny how often the word “funny” described horrors that couldn’t be screamed away.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“Consider yourselves innocent.
Easier said than done.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“She pushed herself through the opening, around an ornament that was simultaneously a hanging light bulb and a uvula, and stepped inside. She entered the Mouth, the Throne Room, the Jaws of the Devouring God, or maybe just another in a series of countless double-wides gutted and lashed together with scavenged steel and magic, the bare skeleton of an illusory power. Tongue. The Devourer. God, the Devil, or nobody at all.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“It was teeth and talons and fire and mustard gas, it was ghosts scorched into Hiroshima streets, showerheads pouring poison into tiled rooms, and a grasp that twined itself around his own bones, a tongue that licked for marrow in his own spine, and a hunger he could feel in his own stomach.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“Reality unzipped before her eyes, floors and walls melting into some new Dali steelscape. Gravity twisted, shifted, plucked at her from different directions like groping hands. The beaded blood from their opponents rose from the floor and floated mid-air.

Somehow, her feet stayed stuck to the ground.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“Paul scrambled across the war torn lot to the rear of the car and snatched the dead boy’s rifle from the moonlight. Wet blood kissed his palm along its grip. He wiped the gore on his pantleg and pressed his back to the tire well at the rear of the vehicle. Another bullet yawped against the reinforced frame.

From the tree line, the chorus of dead rasped, you too, soon.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“The restless dead crowded the back of his mind. They strained to be heard, clawing through graves at the back of his skull. hear us, they pled. please, hear us.

And some of them merely chorused giddily you, too, soon.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“Deirdre’s consciousness flooded with unbidden images. Her foot on a man’s throat; her gun against a man’s head; her hand wrapped around power; her seat atop a throne of yellowed bone, a kingdom spread out below her in bloodstained wasteland. In return: offerings, worship.

Worship: apes eating their own young, faces smeared in meatjelly.
Worship: jackbooted soldiers marching over corpse-strewn battlefields.
Worship: a father staring at the severed hands and feet of his own child.

Inside her gut, an instinctive gospel heaved itself into her diaphragm. The scripture said there were two kinds of people in the world: predators and prey. All other truths were secondary. Deirdre could be a predator in exchange for worship. If not…”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“Victor made an amused sound from the threshold.

Nora’s eyes flicked to him. “What? What is it?”

“I told them you were bad with people.”

“I’m not bad with people.”

“You aren’t great with them,” Deirdre said.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“A memory unearthed itself: the way his wife had looked in the weeks following the news, the way she looked at things but never really saw them. The way she always seemed to be staring at something he couldn’t make out. The broken-down pits of her eyes, high on painkillers, opiates, staring at the wall, silent tears streaking drug-slacked cheeks. Maybe that had finished them off even before the divorce papers. Neither of them could live with what happened and neither wanted to watch the other one die so slowly.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“Deep, deep down, a truth beneath every tale. Soon, too soon, a monster at the end of every story.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“You’ve got something on Randall or else you wouldn’t work with him, so what’ve you got?”

“Addresses, names. His whole crew.”

“You scared of him?”

“He’s insane. We got his kid, he’s got a son in Portland, we keep an eye on him. If we didn’t have that…”

“Are you scared of him?” she repeated.

“Y-yes.”

A drop of sweat fell from her forehead and splashed onto the back of his scalp. An oppressive quiet grew around them.

“Think carefully about this next one,” Deirdre whispered, craning forward to get her lips close to his ear, pressing the barrel harder against his skin. “Are you scared of me?”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“She wondered what stories wrote themselves across the bedsheets in so many rooms, how many of them ended in jittery pacing up and down an unlit hall.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“Time passed. Warehouses shed exoskeletons and became artist lofts. Collapsing Victorians and colonials slouched into their roles as homeless shelters. The suburbs hunched into Squatter City. Malleus Industries International relocated its North American East offices to Oceanrest. Highrises sprouted overnight, a newborn downtown squealing in glass and neon. Oceanrest shivered out from its old skin. Everything became something else, eventually.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“US Highway 1. A gray snake of concrete writhed past her. The Oceanrest exit let off onto an artery road, two lanes on either side of a double yellow line, a dying pulse bloodletting into the sea. Before the iron lung economy, there’d been a trailer park by the highway, and an ice cream
shop, and a very large church. Their razed bodies curled in shallow graves, their bones hidden in underbrush. A monster licked the skulls empty, scavenged the flesh.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“He jerked his arm back, nearly launched the car keys into the sea, stopped just short of letting go. He needed the car, now more than ever. The idea flattened him. His arm fell limp to his side, the keys back in his pocket. Draining the rest of his whiskey, he settled for hurling the glass into vast ocean darkness.
The bottle followed shortly after, though he stumbled in the throw and ended up breaking it on the end of the pier.
He made his way back to the laptop.
He didn’t learn anything important.
Story of his life.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“In the receding wake of the engine, night faded into day. Birds twittered in the growing forest. All around her, a sprawl of rotting ex-suburbs roused its wheezing way into sunlight. Vines clung to abandoned houses like lover’s limbs as if saying come back to the earth with us. come back
to the earth and sleep.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“No single week seemed so different from any other week, and yet the years did.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“Under lightless skies, dark things flourished.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“New names cost. They’d sacrificed things in their transfigurations. Tyrell Meeks. Imani Greene. Razz. Deirdre. They’d carved open their histories and offered up their guts.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“You ever notice it’s the things you want to change that never do?” Virgil asked. “And all the shit you want to keep always ends up changing?”
Paul hadn’t always seen ghosts.
“I don’t know if too much ever really changes,” he said.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“Virgil stepped back from the front door and drew a non-standard-issued sidearm—a large-mouthed weapon of history. A hand-me-down from an officer in one of those wars that were supposed to end all those other wars.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath

“Paul knew from experience that the dead did not have futures, only pasts that repeated until madness.”
― S.R. Hughes, The War Beneath