Issue 20 (Apr 2012)

Where is home?
Currently my partner and I live in the mountains of North Carolina.

Do you write full time?
I wish! I have a job that takes up a lot of my time and I am a very visible leader in my community (LGBTQ and Leather) so I often travel for that as well. My dream is to be able to write full time, and hopefully that will happen one day.

What inspired this story?
As a teenager I lived next door to an elderly woman who refused to believe that her husband had died. She was positive that he would come home and so she refused to leave her house to do anything, even shop for food because she wanted to be there when he got home. Her family took care of her . As I got older I read Dickens and came across the character of Miss Havisham… one day those things just sort of melded.

The setting is very vividly described, is it based on an actual place?
Yes, some of the neighborhoods of my hometown.

The opening feels like a post-apocalypse story, was this intentional?
In my hometown there was an apocalypse. The mills all closed, the work moved elsewhere. People lost their jobs, their homes. Neighborhoods that had once been filled with working families became centers of poverty and drug abuse. People took jobs making less money than they had ever made, (and they were the lucky ones), many more went on public assistance and pride, both personal and civic, crumbled. The neighborhood I described is the neighborhood in which I grew up. Houses that were once always painted and cared for have gone to seed, many are boarded over because of foreclosure or abandonment. The decay is terrible and very visible. The economic apocalypse is what occured in that story and in my old neighborhood and since I write what I see I suppose it is intentional as this situation saddens me deeply.

Are you working on anything right now?
I am. I am working on a novel and several short stories.

Where can we find more of your work?
I have been published by Xcite books in several anthologies, the same with Ravenous Romance. I can be found in the Sentinel Literary Anthology, Take 5 (“Read These Lips”, available online free) , Soup of Souls (Panic Press) The Trigger Reflex and Sinisterotica (Both published by Pill Hill Press) and will be featured in an upcoming anthology published by Bruce Bethke’s Rampant Loon Press. I am on Oysters and Chocolate as well. And, of course, here at Something Wicked.

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	Issue 20 (Apr 2012)

The sidewalk was buckled and pitted. In some places, it looked like an earthquake had dislodged the concrete in jagged chunks. The August sun clearly showed the decay and poverty of the street. Honeysuckle vines lay dead on sagging, rusted fences. The thick reek of fried bologna and reefer lay trapped in the layer of wetness that was the awful humidity. Cars sat on blocks. The sound of some old song from the eighties blared from a window momentarily, then died away. There was a stillness broken only by the rattling wheeze of air conditioners that had been patched together with duct tape and prayers by desperate owners, who were not sure the units, or they themselves, could stand it another year.

Lou Williams stood in front of the huge window that dominated most of his living room. One hand twitched at the curtains he had moved aside just enough to peek through. The other rested on the butt of the old revolver he had taken down from its box in the back of the closet. A dreamlike expression rode his wrinkled old face as he stood there, caught between wondering if that window could indeed act like a magnifying glass and burn right through him, and the vivid memory of bringing his wife Sally home to that house for the first time. He could still remember exactly how her milky white skin had looked as she had lain on the bare floor beneath the then uncurtained window, how she had gleamed with moonlight and desire.

“Ashes to ashes and lust to dust.” The words were too loud in the hushed living room and he jumped a little even as he uttered them.

Out on the street, a figure came into view. Lou knew it was Becky Holman and winced at the sight of her. Becky had been afflicted with the same disease that the street, and surrounding neighborhood, seemed to pass on like a carrier. At sixteen, she had been a femme fatale, a Lolita in knee socks and a plaid skirt. Her breasts had bounced under skimpy tops and her hair had swung across her back as she strutted down the steaming asphalt. At twenty-one, she was listless and tired. Her walk was the slow sun-struck stagger of an eighty year old. Her body had gone to seed with the first baby and now, pregnant with number three, she was as misshapen and squat as a troll.

The street had not always been so unkind to its residents. At one time the street, and the streets beyond it, had been home to a different kind of people. Block parties had filled the summer nights; people had sat out on their porches in the long twilights and spoken to their neighbors. Kids had played simpler games back then. Sweetly-scented wives had kept the houses spotless and the men had cut the grass every Saturday, spring, summer and fall, before neatly stowing the mower away in the back yard shed for the winter.

Lou could remember how, fifty-five years before, on the day he and Sally had moved in, their kitchen had become filled with casseroles and pies and Jell-O molds. Likewise, when someone died, food had filled the houses. The neighborhood kids dated, then married each other and the sound of football being played at the high school stadium could be heard for miles.

Then something had changed. Wives began wearing strange, piled-high hairdos and eyeliner both thick and blaring that made their eyes look turned up at the corners. That eyeliner always made Lou think of feral cats. One day he had come home to find a note from Sally on the kitchen table that said she had decided to “find herself”. He had stood in that kitchen wondering why she needed to find herself; she certainly had not seemed to be lost and if she had been, how could she have gotten that way when she rarely even left the neighborhood at all?

Things had gone down a bewildering hill after that. Boys ran amok, growing hair to their very asses and women kissed each other and tossed their bras into bonfires. Vietnam bloomed like a malignant rose and the long-haired boys ran for Canada rather than stay and protect their homes. To Lou, that had been unforgivable and he often wondered what was wrong with the youth of America, what had happened to make them so cowardly and ungrateful. Everything had seemed to be moving too fast and when the sixties slammed into the seventies he grew even more confused. Then the seventies careened into the eighties with a loud crash, accompanied by a crash of the economy. Lou had begun to withdraw even more from a world he no longer knew or understood.

Following Sally’s abrupt departure, he had occasionally taken home a pretty secretary from one of the offices in the spinning mill where he earned his paychecks. He also, less often, went over to the next county to a certain trailer park to see a woman whose specialty was not the soggy pork chop dinner she always served her gentleman callers but the dessert she gave them after.

When the spinning mill finally went under with a groan and a whimper, he found himself forcibly retired and without any type of structure. His life had revolved around the schedule he had stuck to since the sunny afternoon in nineteen sixty-four when his life as a husband and father had ended. His routine had been easy: breakfast of coffee and two eggs, toast with margarine spread thickly across it with exactly three swipes of the knife, work from seven am until three pm, a quick stop at the grocery store on Wednesday afternoons for the rations of beer and frozen dinners that were his dietary staples, a lonely four-pack of toilet paper, single ply of course, and the odd bottle of dish liquid or shampoo when it was needed. Then home to watch television, eat a slow, sad dinner and go to sleep in his easy chair.

The chair had caved in completely in nineteen ninety-seven and he had cried for hours. He had no idea why. The loss of that chair had unhinged something in him. When he had lain down in the dusty-smelling bed, on the clammy mattress that had not seen a human body for over three decades, he had felt swallowed up and adrift all at once. The wood of the frame and supporting slats had groaned in protest until he had been unable to bear it and had gone out to try to get some sleep on the spring-busted couch.

Behind Lou’s head, dust motes spun and whirled in the long column of washed-out sunlight that slid between the chinks in the curtains. Lou knew the kids in the neighborhood knew he watched them but he could not seem to make himself stop, nor could he explain why he had gotten up that morning and gotten the rust-spotted revolver down. He had some vague notion that time had gotten away from him somehow, that he had failed somewhere but he was not certain of where or how.

He half turned from the window and saw the picture of Little Lou. Little Lou had been barely six years old when his mother had decided to go walkabout. She had never returned; nor had Little Lou as far as anyone knew. Lou looked at the fly shit-speckled photograph of his lost wife and son: the thin wheat-colored hair that had graced their heads, Sally’s anxious brown eyes and Little Lou’s chubby red cheeks. The blue and white jumper that showed the child’s precious dimpled little knees. Lou had never forgotten the sight of his son whirling about on the living room floor to those damn Brits with the bad haircuts and sly grins. He had been outraged by it; it had not been decent, the way Sally would rock and roll all over the house to that damn band of ruffians, and she always got Little Lou to dance along.

“The little brat always was a Mama’s boy.”

A half remembered rage fought a thin regret in Lou’s gut. He had bitterly resented the way the child had refused to play ball with him, running screaming for his mother if he so much as fell or got the slightest knock from a baseball or football. But what could he have done to help mold the kid into a man when every time he tried, Sally came at him like a fire-breathing dragon?

Once he had caught the kid eating jelly on toast and drinking tea from a china cup with the two Mackie girls. John Mackie had called him, and after some hemming and hawing he had suggested Lou get over there posthaste.

Lou could still feel the red heat that had crawled into his cheeks at the sight of his son – his son! – perched on a thin, pink chair with a high-crowned hat on his narrow head and a girlish giggle trilling from between his lips as he ate red-smeared toast. The spring sunlight had picked out the tiny white flowers embroidered on the collar of the dress the girls had put on Little Lou, and John Mackie had kept his face averted and down as Lou had stripped his son, beaten him and hauled him home. John had understood why that beating had been necessary. Sally had not.

“How could you hit him like that?” she had screamed as she stood there with the sniveling kid tucked into her arms. Her eyes had been hard and bright with unshed tears; Little Lou’s had streamed plenty of water, however, and Sally had had to scream louder to be heard over her son’s howls.

“You monster!” Sally had shouted at him. Nearly five decades later, Lou could still feel that sting. He had not been able to get a word in edgewise, to explain to her why it had been so wrong. He had known, right then, that it had gone too far and the boy was spoiled for life, but he had been unable to say anything that would make her understand, so he had given up.

Beyond the window, one of the rail-thin young men who lived in the crumbling house on the corner staggered outside and stood there staring up at the sun like he had lost his mind. Lou could recall when a woman named Lisa Nelson had lived in that house. She had been widowed in World War Two; her husband had had the sense to die for his country, and she had made a homemade batch of fudge every Fourth Of July, then crumbled it into the chocolate ice-cream she hand-churned out there on her porch. Looking at the scuzzy man standing on that lawn, Lou felt a sense of total outrage that Lisa, who had come to his house for years on Sunday afternoons to talk for a few minutes and pass him a box filled with homemade cookies or a pie, was dead and the man on the lawn alive.

The gun seemed to grow heavier in his hand. The old metal had warmed in his fingers and he raised it, putting it to his temple in a gesture he was not even aware of as he watched the neighbor piss on a patch of dirt that had once been home to lilies and gladioli.

The gun made a hard chink as it tapped against the glass of the window. The sound made Lou blink but he found himself fascinated by the very fact of the gun: the way the sun gave the metal a hard twinkle that sparked up into his eyes; the heat of it in his hand.

“Bang, you’re dead you little sonofabitch.”

The man out on his lawn jerked around as if he had heard the words. Lou could almost imagine that the bullet had puffed right past the bastard’s head, scaring him senseless. A grin creased his sagging cheeks and a jagged laugh spilled from his mouth.

“Got ya! Take that you dirty rat!”

The man lit a cigarette, eyed the length of the street for a few more seconds, hitched up his greasy and too-long denim shorts (why they wore them that way Lou would never know), and ambled back toward his front door. Lou tapped the gun against the glass and wondered if there were any bullets in it; if he could hit the man from where he stood, if he dared… and then it was too late. The front door of the house opened and closed and Lou could almost smell the ghost of homemade fudge and hear old forties torch songs playing sweet and low. Then he was alone once more with the seedy street and the unyielding sunlight.

Lou let the gun fall back to his side. It hit his hip as it did so and a yelp of pain sprang from his mouth. Then guilt over the direction of his thoughts – killing a man while he stood in his own yard, what had he been thinking? – set in. He stepped back from the window, allowing the curtain to fall shut. A puff of gray dust drifted upwards and he sneezed.

The curtains had once been plush red velvet. Now they were mostly rags. The little color that remained in the material had long since faded to a sickly pink, streaked with the occasional suggestion of coral. The outline of the window could be seen even when the room was pitch black; the curtains were lighter in that area and seemed to glow with an inner light. Dust lay in the creases; the shreds still clinging to the rod were festooned with cobwebs.

The whole house had an air of abandonment. It could have been left behind years before for all the care it showed. The rugs were threadbare and dirty. Dust lay thick on the floor, undisturbed except for the tracks of Lou’s heavy boots.

Out on the street there was a slight noise and once more Lou’s liver-spotted hands twitched at the curtains. It was Bessie Reynolds, walking home from her job as a cashier at the Wham Bam Burger down on Main and Thirteenth. Lou watched her walk for a moment, watched the heavy thighs rubbing together under brown polyester and the ass lifting and falling like two oversized pistons, and he raised the gun again.

“I would be doing you a favor.”

Bessie plodded on, sweat running down her face. Lou could almost taste it. On the heels of that thought was another: that when Sally had lain beneath him she had always laughed when drops of his sweat had plopped onto her face or breasts. Or she had until that Mama’s boy had come along, anyway. The memory of Sally’s face, upturned and filled with wanting, made his fingers tighten on the trigger.

The boom was very loud. For one second it filled the entire world. Then it died, replaced by an odd, high ringing. Lou’s mouth sagged open. Out on the street, Bessie Reynolds took two more steps, teetered, and crashed to a halt on the broken sidewalk.

“Oh damn,” Lou muttered. Hysterical laughter welled up, ran over. He rocked himself back and forth, tears streaming from his eyes as the man in Lisa Nelson’s old house came running out, along with a few of his equally useless friends.

The men surrounded Bessie. There were yells and one stood, sticking his hand up to his ear. Lou knew he was calling the cops. The fact that a person could use the phone without having to go through all the motions that had once made the invention so special – the dialing of the big dial, the sound of it whirring as it slid back into place, the sitting down in a chair with the cord dangling from one end of the receiver, the wire running into its snug little nest in the wall, infuriated Lou.

One man screamed and the rest scattered, running like chickens before a storm. Lou was laughing again without being aware of it. The hot lead had shattered the glass of his window and tiny, sharp shards had slammed into his face, hands and chest. Blood traced the furrows of his forehead and trickled from the corner of his mouth where he had bitten his lip, but he did not notice.

Bessie twitched and heaved, got to her feet and then fell again. That time she landed half on the sidewalk and half on the street. She had lost one of her safety-approved nonskid shoes, and her stocking-clad foot looked terribly pale and small on the concrete.

The gun clicked and then clicked again. Lou shook it, stared down the barrel in puzzlement and then realized it was empty.

“Bullets in the attic,” he spoke aloud, and walked across the pellets and bits of glass, crunching them beneath his boot heels as he made for the spot in the hallway where the door swung down to reveal a ladder that gave access to the attic.

Dimly, he was aware that there were yells coming from outside, that there was some major commotion going on, but he was too focused on getting the hook that held the attic ladder in place to notice. When the latch finally gave, rust flakes pattered down and the smell of something both old and sweet filled the house.

Lou stood there looking up, wondering how many years it had been since he had visited that room at the top of the stairs. When he put his foot on the first step it gave way beneath him and he almost fell on his face in the middle of the hallway. He stood looking at the spongy, rotted wood, forgetting what it was he had been after in the attic.

There was a loud banging on his front door and Lou flinched.

“Crazy old bastard shot Bessie!” came a yell, and Lou put his foot on the second step up, feeling the material of his dirty green slacks stretch taut. Then came a long, tearing sound. For a moment, he felt his heart almost explode from his chest. He had thought that the ripping was the stair letting go and found himself terrified of falling. He could break a hip or an arm. He was not a young man anymore. He could feel the frailty in his bones at the prospect of hitting the floor. Another flurry of loud bangs from the direction of the living room made him move.

The attic was not as dark as he had thought it might be. His head popped up through the door and he sneezed. The dust was even thicker here than in the downstairs rooms. And the smell…it was an odd smell: the mingled odors of dried flowers and mothballs lying over something else, something once ripe and warm but now faded to a brief memory.

Sounds in the lower floor of the house made Lou stop and stare down at the floor in bewilderment. His eyes flickered across the sheeted bulk of a couch that they had bought at a yard sale, their first purchase for the new house. He closed his eyes, remembering the way the sunlight had picked out the drops of sweat on the thin brown hair that lay on Sally’s arms and the freckles that dusted her upturned nose.

He had come home once unexpectedly from work to find her lazing in the sun on the backyard. Little Lou had been a bare bump in her belly then and he had stood there watching her for long minutes, watching the tick of the pulse in her throat, the shape of her fingers on the ice-choked glass that she held against her wrist (an old cooling trick that had never seemed to work for him), and the blue veins traced across her lids.

He had never been able to imagine what it was women did all day. He had always had some vague notion that the housework and cooking and shopping occupied all their time. Then he had come home to find her in hair rollers and a robe, picking over the destroyed remains of the breakfast table, sipping Bloody Marys and eating salmon on tiny points of toast with the other wives of the street. After that, any time the factory called a half day he stayed away until it was his normal time to return home; standing there watching her during those moments had frightened him. She had not looked like his wife in those moments; she had looked like someone else entirely.

The attic was explosively hot and bird droppings smeared many of the sheets that Sally had always put over the things he’d hauled up there. The sheets were yellowed and gray with dust. The sunlight that came in from the one tiny, open space where there had once been a window seemed too strong, too brilliant, and he wished he had thought to nail a board over it years ago.

The gun fell from his nerveless fingers as he walked past the silent, blinded objects under the sheets. Once upon a time he had known where everything in the room was, what lay under every single sheet. Sally had wanted to throw everything out but he would not hear of it, one more thing that always set them to arguing. He ran his hands along the covers as he walked through the eddies of dust that rose around his feet.

The wardrobe was made of solid oak. He pulled the sheet away from it and ran one finger down the once gleaming surface, feeling the dried out quality of the wood. It was one of the old-fashioned ones, the good kind that stood six feet high and was made to hold an entire family’s clothes if need be. The doors were solidly hinged and padlocked closed; he knew that the wood was so heavy it would absorb the hardest blows. Or the loudest screams.

He felt tears crackle at the corners of his eyes. He could feel himself being transported back in time, back to the day he had come home to find that note on the table.

The sun had poured like honey through the kitchen windows that day. The whole house had still hummed with Sally’s womanly energy and he had looked up at the sound of a footstep overhead.

Lou wiped his eyes and reached onto the top of the wardrobe for the key to the lock. He had picked the lock up just that afternoon at the hardware store, he recalled as he worked the orange-mottled key into the bottom of the lock. Some kids had been stealing gas from the lawnmowers and he had been determined not to be a victim again.

Sally had been in front of the wardrobe, bent over, busy stuffing her winter clothes into the suitcase at her feet. When she had seen him, her face had gone from fearful to angry.

“You do not know what it is like to always be a prisoner of this damn house! To never be allowed out!” Sally had yelled. “I am more than your wife dammit, I am a human being and I want…I want…”

He had known what she wanted. She wanted what all the wives suddenly seemed to want. She wanted to run around without a bra and sleep with any and every man who came down the pike. She wanted to go back to college and neglect her responsibilities to her family.

Sally was curled up in a fetal position around Little Lou. The dress she had worn that day had been a bright, happy blue; now it fluttered from her bones in strips, and Little Lou’s baby teeth poked out from his jawbone like those tiny squares of gum he had been so fond of chewing on.

“Holy shit,” someone said from behind Lou.

Lou could not turn around to see who was speaking. He was looking at Sally. He wanted to tell her he finally understood what she’d meant when she said she had been a prisoner of that house. He himself had been one. He wanted to ask if she remembered the day they had gone for ice cream, driving along the old highway out by Sander’s Creek until dusk had hung heavy across the late evening and how, when they had stopped, she had slow-danced to a sad little ballad coming from the car’s radio right there in the high grass while frogs and crickets sang. He wanted to tell her he remembered exactly how her skirt had swung out around her tiny waist like a pink bell. How the thought of her dancing out there under the shadowed sky, in the soft amber of his low-beamed headlights, always made him want to cry.

Hands grabbed at him. He could feel the arthritis in his elbows and knees gearing up; soon it would be a dull flare that would roar into pain, but at that moment the hurt in his heart was too high to give way to the physical.

Voices rolled over Lou. He heard them but ignored them. He was drifting away, moving away like the sea from the shore, in soft, undulating waves. He was twenty-two and freshly married, wide-eyed and ready to start a family with pretty little Sally Johnson, now Williams, and they were looking at the neat house that sat on a tiny and well-clipped yard. Her pink, polished fingers were trembling on the sleeve of his second-best jacket and he knew the realtor was looking at them; they should not appear to want it too badly or they would never get a good deal but just then Sally spoke, her voice thrumming with passion:

“Oh Lou, I could stay right here forever!”

Copyright © 2012 by Angel Propps

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Something Wicked Issue 20 - Illustrated by Pierre Smit

What’s your day job?
i work as a “scenic artist” for film and tv productions..

What’s the last thing you worked on?
..um.. oh, History of the World..

How long have you been painting?
..since i was like 10, or 8, i think?

What’s your favourite medium (oils, water-colour, pencils, digital)?
pen, pencil, ink, acrylic, anything else i can find that can be of use..

Your art has featured in almost every single Something Wicked issue to date, if you can remember, what was your favourite piece to illustrate?
they were all fun..some did tend to flow out easier and/or unexpected..which makes it more fun..:)
one of my personal favourites, i always felt, were my drawings for “The Block,” back in um..SW#03..or the one for “Deadfellas” in SW#09.. but now it probably has to be ‘ANNA NIEMAND” (to cite someone else’s title for it), i did for the cover of SW#12..
i think she came out damn sexy.. (it’s all her though, not me..:)

Where can we find more of your work?
for now..on the something wicked website.. i still have to get around to start a page/site/place to post..

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	Issue 20 (Apr 2012)

Apr 2012

Firstly let me apologise for the lengthy silence. Things have come to pass in Something Wicked Land that we were hoping to avoid and have spent a good deal of the last 7 weeks trying to come up with alternatives, which, I think, we have.

This has been a strange and tumultuous year so far, with neither Vianne nor I managing to obtain the oh-so-needed freelance work that keeps both us, and the magazine alive, and unfortunately we’ve had to triage our lives. First comes us and the family, and then the magazine. As a result everything has been put on the back burner while we’ve been attempting to make ends meet. To further complicate matters we’ve committed ourselves to a European part-business/part family reunion trip which will take us away for a month. We were hoping to get the April, May and June issues finished before we left, but with us concentrating on plans and trying to find work, this has just not been possible.

And so here comes the piece of news you’ve been dreading but probably already knew was coming. Something Wicked is officially stopping our monthly publication schedule. We simply can’t keep up, and we’re not making enough to be able to hire help (or even pay the regulars, for that matter).

The online mag was always going to be an experiment and I think, as such, we succeeded; we managed to publish ten issues beyond our print grave and collected some damn good stories by some damn good writers. And we’re not done yet.

Even though we have stopped the monthly issues, we are still going ahead with the promised Annual Print Anthologies, the first of which, Something Wicked Volume One,  should be out by mid-July/early-August. Look out for an announcement within the next week.

Once again, this is not the end.
Vianne, Mark and I love publishing Something Wicked and we will continue to do so for as long as possible. In the long run we are hoping to put out an annual print/electronic anthology rather than a monthly e-magazine.
We will also endeavor to publish one story a month on the website, starting with Angel Propps’s “The Time Hangs Heavy” and we’ll keep the website and community alive with sporadic reviews and interviews.

The rest of Issue 20 will be available for sale as an e-Magazine eventually, but it is not actually finished yet. We will be releasing the rest of Issue 20 slowly over the next few months, starting with the already mentioned “The Time Hangs Heavy”, by Angel Propps and followed by CS Fuqua’s “Demons”, Taylor Hanton’s “Lanchester Square” and Grey Freeman’s exquisite ghost story, “Promises”.

We also have an interview with Alastair Reynolds and review of his latest book, Blue Remembered Earth, which, as above, will be published in due time.

All of this and more, still coming, I just don’t know when.

With our schedule tossed to the four winds, the best way to keep up to date is to either subscribe to our RSS feed (http://www.somethingwicked.co.za/feed/) or follow us on twitter, (www.twitter.com/Somethin_Wicked), and we’ll keep you posted.

Thanks again, as usual, for your support and kindness, feel free leave us your comments and thoughts below, or a review on our Amazon page.

Till next time…

Joe

13:33 29th April 2012

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From Issue 19 (Mar 2012)

Where is home?
I live in Astoria, Queens, which is a neighborhood in New York.

Do you write full time?
My day job involves writing of a public relations sort. As day jobs go I couldn’t ask for a better one, but I’d love to write fiction full time some day.

What inspired this story?
This story came out of a love of Lovecraft and Arthur Machen — especially Machen, in this case. Machen’s stories and novels are some of the most wonderful and terrifying out there, I think, but one thing that bothers me in some of them is a sense of female characters as both victims and objects of horror. I wanted to write a story that both paid homage to everything I love about Machen and addressed or turned the tables on this issue a bit. The story also came out of a lot of broader thinking I’d been doing about love and relationships.

Does this story belong to a larger body of work? Tell us about it.
It does. This story is part of a collection of linked stories that look at love from a variety of angles and genres — some of the stories are more fantastic, others are totally realist, or play with time and point of view.

The theme of an ancient and forbidden text that unlocks something secret or evil has long inspired writers. Do you believe books or words (and the mere acts of reading or speaking them) could be that powerful?
I do, though I think in real life the power of books and ideas is almost always overwhelmingly positive. Still, the idea of evil books and things we’re better off not knowing has always fascinated and frightened me. Language is part of us, but also outside of us, and sometimes it seems to have a life of its own.

Do you believe spells, curses and rituals hold real power, or is that purely the stuff of fiction?
I’m not personally a believer in ritual magic, but what do I know? It’s a big world.  One of the things that always attracted me about writing was that it was a kind of magic — creating something that didn’t exist before with just words and imagination.

Are you working on anything right now?
Besides the short story collection, I’m working on a young adult fantasy novel about being lost, and finding your way in a world that doesn’t always make sense.

Where might we find more of your work?
I have a short-short story in the August web-issue of the literary journal HOBART.  It’s also part of the linked short story collection: http://www.hobartpulp.com/website/august/scorza.html

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I must write this quickly. There is not much time before she overtakes me. I say ‘she’ because part of my crumbling mind still clings to the memory of my dear Catherine, but what pursues me is not of the fair sex, or any sex – it is old, and immeasurably foul.

It is all because of the book, that accursed book I came across in my employ as a dealer in antiquities. I did not choose the profession, but rather awoke to find myself immersed in it – being something of an antiquity myself, even as a young man. I loved all old things, whether from the past century or the past millennium. I was mad for them, but books I prized above all else. Is there anything more wonderful than a book? It is a treasure trove – the wealth and wisdom of the dead preserved for the living as no hoary pharaoh could have hoped for. In books I sought the same commune with things greater than myself that others sought from the church. To me, any book was a bible.

Alas, this love was not enough to sustain me.

My family being of comfortable means, I pursued my education to the fullest extent, but sought the classics themselves, not the busy disciplines of law or medicine. I pursued books and objects first as a private collector. When I tired of something, I sold it, and found I could supplement an already sufficient income in this way, so as to afford even greater and rarer delights. For years this was my life, and my only social circle was a small cadre of like-minded men.

My friend Mr. Charles Denton was to furnish the seed of my destruction, in a form fairer than any my imagination could supply. How strange that I, who had found joy only in the tomes of my ancestors, could be so bewitched by sweet Catherine Denton, the young sister of my dear friend. She was the opposite of all I had loved previously, a bright bundle of life, with joy radiating from her rosy pink face and intricate curls of auburn hair. This was the youth I had spurned in a life chasing treasures of the past, given form to tantalize me. When I met her, introduced in an offhand manner while Denton and I discussed matters relevant to our acute bibliomania, I suddenly realized the wasted weight of my years.

I had read much of love in Petrarch and Ovid, Shakespeare and Donne. I had thought that storied ‘marriage of true minds’ was something I would never experience directly, save for the union of my mind with the texts of the past masters. Now it was before me and so full of life. I longed to join my soul to Catherine’s, and to share all that it is possible to share with another living thing!

I called more frequently on Mr. Denton. It did not take my friend long to guess my intention, and he was not pleased. I could not understand where the man’s objections came from – I was his trusted friend, and in a position to provide his sister with an excellent life. My family name was not so distinguished as his, perhaps, but my income was a good deal larger. As for the disparity in age – I was older than Denton, and much older still than his sister – it was really not such an unusual thing, and an established husband could offer many things to a young woman that a mere youth could not.

But Denton was fixed against the match, for reasons that were bewildering to me. Miss Catherine herself, in those few moments I could arrange to be alone with her, laughed coyly at my remarks and seemed mildly pleased by my attention, with a touch of the shyness with which nature has endowed her sex. Still, the very act of speaking to her threw my age, my faltering manner, my general unloveliness of form into sharp relief. Next to her, I felt like a withered scarecrow, my gnarled claws grasping toward a light and life I did not deserve. Still, I resolved that I would make my dream come true. I sought her father’s permission.

The old man, who smelled faintly of brandy and the horse track, was all too happy to marry his daughter off to a gentleman of means. Catherine’s mother had died when Catherine was young, so there was one less person to convince. I made my case and her father accepted, resolving to inform Catherine forthwith. The very next day, I received young Denton, unexpected, at my apartments.

“Whatley, I’ve come to ask you to abandon this foolish pursuit. My sister will bring you no happiness. She is delicate and unused to company…”

I let Denton continue his little speech, though my blood boiled and I longed to throw him out on his ear. When he finished, I rose and mustered all of my dignity.

“I assure you that my intentions toward Catherine are nothing but honorable. Who better to be with her than I, who am also unused to company and do not seek it out? She will not be required to be some society hostess – you know I have no taste for that. For God’s sake, Denton, why aren’t you happy for us?”

“My father gave her the news yesterday evening, and she wept. She wept, Whatley, at the thought of marriage! I love my sister, but in some ways she is a pitiable creature. I think sometimes she is not meant for any man.”

“I will hear no more of this! I love her, and the matter is decided. You have no say in it. I must thank you not to call again.”

I immediately formed the worst sort of depraved suspicions about Denton’s feelings for his sister, and I resolved to watch them both closely for evidence of any wrongdoing. I was troubled by the idea of Catherine weeping at our engagement, but I felt it was most likely the usual youthful anxieties, and tried to put it out of my mind.

That was when the book entered my life. A dealer I trusted, despite certain dubious connections, offered it to me from his latest batch of acquisitions. He swore he’d had the book from an Arab trader who’d claimed to have had it from the lost library of the Moorish Caliphs of Cordova – but the book was even older than this, he said. The Arab claimed the book first rose, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the great Alexandrine Library, that lost Mecca of bibliophiles. It was nonsense of course. The book was in poor condition, and no older than the Renaissance – a battered, leather-bound quarto with tarnished silver brackets. It consisted of three disparate manuscripts bound into one, as was common in that time, and all given the vague title Liber Amoris, or Book of Love.

I haggled my dealer down on the price out of principle. The book was not especially valuable, but I still cherished the notion that it might yield a few nuggets of unexplored scholarship.

At first I paid it little thought, as my wedding drew near. I had banished Denton from my life, and his words still galled me such that I did not miss his friendship. It did not help that Catherine’s shy mirth in my presence had been replaced by a kind of dutiful terror. She was pleasant, to be sure, and always mindful of my wishes, but I could read in her hesitations, her white-knuckled grip on the tea service, that my presence filled her with a mortal dread.

“I know I am not young and fair,” I said, “but I will be so good to you, my Catherine. Do give me a chance.”

The look she gave me said what she could not. I was an ogre in her eyes, a loathsome beast, hell-bent on stealing all that was beautiful in her life.

The wedding that should have been a culmination of joy, uniting my love of the ancient and pure world of ideas with the perfection of youth and the physical world, was instead a grueling affair with all the joy of a funeral. The only ones in attendance were Catherine’s father and a few of my friends from the book circle.

My chambers in London were not roomy enough for us both, so we took up residence at my family’s estate. Catherine was at first taken in by the beauty of the countryside and the tumbledown charm of the old manse. It made me indescribably happy to see even a faint smile on her face, but when I reflected on this later, it left me with gnawing bitterness. Could this be the love to which the classical poets had devoted their genius?

I supplied my Catherine with the books she liked, instructed the cook on her favorite dishes, and led her on pleasant country rambles. I even purchased her a fine, chestnut mare for riding. None of it brought more than a wan, passing smile to her lips. The woman was a Chinese puzzle-box, each layer containing nothing but another layer beneath it. Frustrated, despairing, I threw myself into my work, and found the book there, waiting for me.

The first manuscript bound within the book of love was a stale imitation of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria by a decidedly less talented Roman poet. The second text was one of those Renaissance grimoires purporting to teach secrets of the starry spheres and metals of the earth, or some such nonsense. It began predictably enough, detailing methods for distilling lead from gold and the creation of homunculi. The spells and occult treatises grew direr as one progressed: a spell to take the life of an enemy, a means of consorting with certain ‘nameless angels,’ a spell to command true love. If only such a thing were possible.

What the third manuscript contained I still cannot safely say. It shared the title Liber Amoris with the other two, with the subtitle Parting of the Veil. It was in worse condition that the others, and older, and it appeared that in places the text had been deliberately cut, burned, or otherwise obscured. I shudder to recall it now, but at the time I dove in with a sick curiosity. What I found was madness.

In the house of [ ] all delights are known, and in the flaying gardens where each form becomes a blossom of its inner glory. [ ] is the eye and the garden. [ ] is noumenon, dweller in-between.

All forms will become known to it, and all shall be embraced by its boundless LOVE.

Seek the name in the spaces between. Seek [ ], and be filled with LOVE…

The letters in the book seemed to swim before my eyes, or scatter like frightened insects. I have difficulty recalling exactly what I read in it, and that is for the best. The book referred to a particular name over and over, but I could not find it clearly printed anywhere – it was cut or burned from the pages, or drowned in thick smudges of ink. Nor could I establish with any certainty whether it was a person or a place, or something entirely different. The book claimed to speak of a pervasive and all-encompassing love – at first I took it for the ramblings of some obscure Gnostic madman – but something about it made me profoundly uneasy, as if love were a code word for something I could not comprehend.

Yet even as the text’s meaning seemed to deliberately elude me, I was compelled to keep reading it as if frozen to the spot. The sounds of the country outside my study faded to an indistinct hum, while the page before me blurred. I felt that I was still reading the book, even though my eyes could not perceive it clearly. Then from the hum, I began to hear a voice, faint at first, but growing ever clearer. It was my Catherine’s.

“Another dreary day,” she said, or rather her voice spoke within my thoughts. “I should keep a record with notches scratched on a wall, as prisoners do.”

I felt a chill come over me. The whole experience was like being submerged in icy water. Her surface thoughts flowed over me in a torrent – her lonely malaise, her pitiful desire to scratch marks in the wall to enumerate the days of her perceived imprisonment, the way an ivy-decked stone arch reminded her of childhood, and a childish wish to escape through such a door into faerieland. All of these flooded me in a babble of voices, moving faster than I could make sense of. I feared I might go mad with the echo of Catherine’s thoughts, but I sank deeper, and her waking mind became a distant hum, as of the ocean in a seashell, as I descended to the dark recesses of her soul.

She missed her brother terribly, and I was consumed with both numbing waves of her loneliness and my own burning jealousy, and I wished to do something nasty to Denton. His image drifted so frequently through her mind – nearly every moment was the seed of a memory of him. He was as much father to her as brother, it seems. Her own father cast a cold shadow through her life, a void of cruel distance – almost an absence. The worst of it was that I beheld my own image intertwined with that of the old man. I had never been anything but sweet and loving to her, and yet her mind conflated me with this joyless specter. Deeper still within her I sensed the stirrings of primal fears, night terrors that sent her running to her brother’s side; the drunken ravings of her father and the beatings he gave her brother; the horrid image of her mother, consumptive and near death, demanding her young daughter embrace her.

Deep in the abyss of her mind, I beheld a knotted core of buried passions, wild fantasies that bore little semblance to mundane biology – a world of hazy, mingled flesh and warring shame and pleasure. My Catherine’s imaginary incubus had many faces – most I did not know, (though one I could swear was my gardener’s son) but not a one of them was mine.

I confess, a terrible desire took hold of me then. I longed for the ability to give my face to the fleshy hydra of her inmost desires. I wished to sow seeds of myself within her mind, and grow to eclipse her brother and all others in the garden of her love. At that moment, my Catherine’s mind faded from me, and I felt myself terribly, crushingly alone. Except, there was something there, even then – something that whispered that it could make my wish come true…

It was after this that my dreams became strange.

Each night as I slept, I wandered through a garden of sumptuous beauty, filled with exotic ferns and strange, luminous orchids. Walls of carved marble peered out from beneath carpets of vines. I sensed there was a pattern to it, yet it constantly eluded me, and I could divine no grand plan or significance from its layout, only interlocking gardens of ever-increasing complexity. As I penetrated deeper, I could not shake a pervasive sense of unease. Things moved in the hedgerows, obscured by darkness. Strange symbols were carved into the rock, half hidden by creeper vines – the language was unknown to me, but something in it chilled me. In the distance, I heard what I thought at first were bird calls, until they began to sound, faintly, like cries of human agony. Disturbing shapes hovered at the corner of my eyes, only to vanish when I turned frantically to look.

By day I felt I walked through a fog, barely able to focus on the details of my business. I sold few pieces in that time, and I could scarcely rouse myself to search for new acquisitions. My morning ramble through my family’s gardens, once a source of pleasure, now threatened to take my dream into the waking world. I feared I would turn a corner in those pleasant greenways and arrive in the dream garden.

I confess I was hesitant to confront my Catherine as well. After peering through her mind, it was somehow difficult to look at her. Our hasty and awkward meetings accomplished nothing, and I could not very well accuse her of phantom unfaithfulness in her mind, could I? Perhaps my experience had been nothing more than drowsy fantasy?

The book was another matter. It beckoned to me, and I wondered if I could once again immerse myself in Catherine’s mind – to read her like an open book, as they say. I resisted as long as I could, troubled by that terrible dream-garden, but I have never been a man who could keep himself away from books. And so, on an idle, sunlit afternoon, I parted the covers once more, and was confronted by the same scarred and impenetrable text. On its face, the book was meaningless – it seemed to be some sort of code, hinting at and implying things some imagined reader would be knowledgeable enough to recognize. Perhaps things one did not wish to speak openly.

As before, the letters began to swim before my eyes, darting from my gaze and lingering at the borders of my vision, recombining to form strange new words I did not recognize. But before this could drive me mad, I felt the tide of Catherine’s surface thoughts engulf me.

This time was different – her mind was fixed on something, returning to it with every spare moment: a letter, given in secret to one of my own servants. What was this? As I focused on the letter, her mind led me back through the channel of its writing and gestation in her thoughts, and its contents were revealed to me. She planned a secret meeting with her brother, whom she’d entreated to take her away and secrete her far from my sight in some French convent – anywhere I was not likely to track her down. She wrote of growing feelings of fear, strange dreams, the menacing shadow of my figure – I, who adored her! I could taste with bitter irony all of my Catherine’s revulsion at me, and all of her longing for the safety of the wretched Charles Denton.

Then, as if in a dream, the book stood out sharply before me. I do not know if I beheld its physical form in my study, or in my mind’s eye, as I had seen Catherine. Perhaps it does not matter. The letters once again scattered like insects from my eye, gathering and coalescing in strange patterns – but then they re-sorted themselves, and the book took shape as something I could comprehend…

I can give you the love you desire. I can plant the seed of devotion in your Catherine’s mind, and enthrone you as emperor of her heart. All you must do is open the way for me.

“Who are you?” I asked, though my lips did not move.

A friend. Someone who loves you. Do what I ask, and let me in, and what you desire can be yours.

Once more the letters spun before my eyes, but they did not coalesce as before. Still, images began to take shape in my mind, and I knew what I would have to do. A name rose up in my thoughts – a name I cannot now recall, for it seems an unpronounceable blur, but then I knew exactly how to say it. It seemed such an absurdly simple thing, the task that appeared on the pages before me… speak certain words at a certain time beneath certain stars – the easiest thing in the world…

It was simpler than I thought to imprison Catherine for her disobedience. She swore innocence, of course, and my fool heart almost succumbed to her pleas, but I knew the truth, and I made sure she was safely locked away. What I was to perform that night was not magic; the book had assured me of this, as if it had anticipated some latent superstition I had not known I possessed. It was nothing more than an invitation, such as I would extend to a friend. After all, an invitation is necessary to any event of importance. I merely spoke the name and bade it enter, beneath the open sky – my gaze fixed on Catherine’s window, and my mind focused on her heart. It is strange, I can barely remember that night… but I remember my sleep was peaceful, untroubled by anxious dreams, and I awoke to a sunny morning, eager to see if there had been any change.

When I unlocked the door to Catherine’s chamber, she flung herself upon me, embracing me tightly and declaring how she had missed me, how glad she was that at last I was by her side again. Such a joy it was, in those few moments, to be loved so. I had never known affection like this, even in my dimly-recalled childhood.

She would not leave my side all day. When we walked together through the garden, she took my hand, gripping it as if she expected me to drift off into the clouds. The way I felt that morning, it seemed a real possibility.

“My dear,” I said to her, “I hope the rest of our lives can be this perfect.”

“Is it everything you wanted?”

Those eyes, when she said this, were not my Catherine’s… and her mouth… such a terrible, wolfish smile I have never seen. In that moment my happiness crumbled to despair and a terrible, nameless dread. She had the same perfect green eyes and dainty mouth, but they seemed a twisted mockery of what they were – the trappings of humanity, worn like a hollow mask by something that was not human.

“Who are you?” I said, pulling instantly away.

“Who could I be, but the one you love?”

“Yes, forgive me. Something strange came over me.”

I let her take my hand again. Her grip was iron, and her flesh was so cold.

“I hope it isn’t serious. I don’t want anything coming between us today.”

For a few moments I had kissed the greatest joy in life, and it had fled in an instant, replaced by desperate, animal fear. A fear I could not show. When I could first excuse myself without arousing suspicion, I made arrangements with a servant to ready my coach. I dared not risk confronting Catherine directly, or giving her any intimation of my fears. She had to know, though – she must have seen it in my face. I wondered if the thing that was once my Catherine could slip inside my mind, as I had done with hers. I tried my hardest that day to think of obscure origins of words, a catalog of the species of local butterfly, anything but Catherine, anything but my wounded heart, or my desperate thoughts of escape.

I had no appetite for anything at dinner with Catherine. She, on the other hand, savored each morsel slowly, as if she had never tasted it before, but her eyes never left mine, and as I watched her chew each bit of food, I shuddered at what lay behind those eyes. The way she looked at me… I felt like prey.

When she tired of the charade of dinner, she got up and boldly announced she would be waiting for me in her bedroom.

Just a few hours earlier, such a thought would have flushed my face and filled my heart with secret joy – but now the thoughts it inspired were grisly and fearful. I told her that I would join her momentarily. As soon as she was out of sight, I made hasty preparations to leave. My coach was already prepared. As I raced from my chambers, I caught sight of the book, its battered cover leering at me. The last thing I did before setting off into the night was to cast it into the fire. I had never dreamed of destroying a book before, but I could not wait to be rid of this one. Alas, this brought me no relief.

I rode to London, but I dared not stay in my apartments long. I sold what pieces I could quickly, made arrangements to rent my rooms, and booked passage on a ship for the continent. I needed answers, and I feared for my life. The dreams had returned, and I felt each night not only the fearful presence of the garden, but the dreadful, unshakable feeling that something scratched and pawed at my mind.

In Paris, I tracked down the dealer who had sold me the accursed book. I found I could barely stomach the man now – my past enthusiasm for the wonders he had provided had blinded me to his grasping, loathsome greed. I now had little doubt that he moved in the worst sort of circles.

In Cairo, I found the Arab who had sold my contact the book. The man was shrewd, no doubt, and learned, but he was used to selling ancient Egyptian forgeries to the credulous, and was surprised to hear the book was anything genuine. From Cairo he directed me to Athens, where I traced the book to a ring of thieves and forgers. One of these men, when plied with drink and the promise of easy money, related to me that he had absconded with many books from an island monastery, the well-meaning monks of which had been foolish enough to offer him food and shelter.

Being well rid of the ruffian, I set sail for the secluded monastery he had described, my mind reeling with the thought of humble, holy men unknowingly harboring such a loathsome evil in their midst.

The monastery was a cloud of white marble above red crags and dark blue water, a sight that would have stirred my soul in happier times. I felt no joy at seeing it, however, beyond the faint hope that it might offer answers and some hope of relief. Each night, and now even in daylight, I felt the dull scratching of that thing at the borders of my mind. Sometimes, when I opened doors, or looked around behind me, I beheld the most fantastic, inviting garden path open before me, laden with rich aromas and lush blossoms – an enticing mystery I knew to resist with every fiber of my being. If only Catherine had known this as well – I had no doubt that this was the means by which she had been ensnared.

After climbing the rocky path with some difficulty, I was admitted to the monastery by a hulking bear of a novice monk, by all appearances a simpleton, who silently led me to the abbot’s humble chambers.

The abbot was this novice’s polar opposite, a silver-haired little man whose face had all the wit and taut energy men associate with hawks and owls. When he inquired as to the purpose of my visit, I was relieved to discover he spoke near-perfect English.

“I have come on a matter urgent to myself,” I said, trying to convey the utmost respect, “but one which should not trouble you overmuch. I simply wish to research certain things in your library.”

When I said this, the man’s face darkened visibly, the many lines around his mouth hardening, as if to bar my way before he even spoke.

“We can no longer permit outsiders to enter our library. What proof do I have that you will not abuse our trust?”

I had no choice but to tell the abbot my sad tale and hope he did not consider me a lunatic. As I spoke, and told him of the book, I saw him grow more interested. By the time I finished telling him of the trail that had led me to his doorstep, his features had softened, and he seemed to regard me as a brother-in-arms.

“You have come a long and hard way, and I believe you are sincere, though your story is wild. You have three days within the library. I hope you find what you seek.”

Another monk led me to a tower at the back, which housed floor upon floor of books, most of which predated Gutenberg’s press. In earlier days, the sight would have provoked in me a feeling akin to religious joy. Now, with the dull scrabbling in my head growing ever more furious, I could find no joy, even in books.

I was not sure precisely what I was searching for, but my years of fanatical reading served me well. I devoured mythology, histories, mystical tracts and treatises on the bizarre. I hoped I would find my answers in medieval bestiaries and lexicons of the demons and devils that beset man, but found nothing of help.

The monks brought me food and water, and one helpful, silent brother brought a straw pallet so that I might sleep in the library as well. At night, among the books, I had the familiar dream, now stronger and more immediate. The garden no longer tried to entice me. In my dreams it was now a place of horrors, where men and women hung flayed of skin, the innermost secrets of their bodies laid bare by cruel instruments. And in the center of this ghastly scene stood my Catherine, dressed in white, and radiant.

“Let me love you, and never be alone again,” she said.

When I awoke, I thought I still heard the cries of agony echoing within the monastery. Always there was the presence, scratching at my mind. I did not have long to find the answers I sought, I felt, and the endless tomes detailing baleful witch cults and their alleged atrocities, and the innocent girls that were tortured and burned to assuage the popular hysteria, were taking a toll on me. It was with the hope of a few moments’ relief that I pulled Philoctetes of Thessaly’s Feasts of the Gods off the shelf. I expected to find no answers in an overview of ancient Grecian religious rites – only perhaps something charming to divert my mind back to the dreamy escape a book once represented to me.

It was in Philoctetes’ description of the Bacchae that I found my answer, and plunged yet further into the gulf of horror. Here is where I should include a note about the virtues of ignorance, and an admonition not to go looking in the dark places of the world, but if you are reading this, I suspect it is already too late for you. This is what I found in Philoctetes:

The Bacchae were worshippers of Dionysus, God of wine, whom they honored with wild, drunken rites of sexual excess and savage violence. The faithful, in their frenzy, could tear a live bull to pieces with their hands and teeth. They were accused of worse things: arson, murder, cannibalism; and their path was said to end in madness. Needless to say, they were hated and shunned by the rest of society. All of this was known to me already. But Philoctetes also described an ‘offshoot’ of the Dionysian tradition, though I am not sure if it can properly be called such. This cult, whose name was never fully established, was accused of abductions and various other crimes in cities throughout Greece. Their rites, held on hilltops beneath the moon or in secluded temples, were said to be quite calm, and free from orgies or revelry. Instead, they consisted of the slow and agonizing murder of a young man or woman, by first flaying the skin, then the muscle and viscera and so on until ‘hidden truths were laid bare.’ They did not worship Dionysus, but claimed their god came to them in dreams, and offered to open secrets for them, to reveal all and, ultimately, to lead them to a world of all-consuming love. The name of their god was secret, and members would not divulge it even under torture. In the accounts that Philoctetes referred to, the cultists were seen to share one mind, to act with one will, and those who attempted to stamp them out disappeared, or were driven mad by strange nightmares.

Then, the cult abruptly vanished, and all discussion of it ceased. Many believed that they had been successfully wiped out, but others, Philoctetes among them, believed they had simply become better at hiding.

No sooner had I read these words than there came a knock on the door. It was the little old abbot, flanked by two other monks. He handed me a letter, addressed to me. I was taken aback by the sheer improbability of any letter reaching me here, in such a remote place. Though I was extremely suspicious, my curiosity got the better of me, so I read. It was from William Harrow, a fellow book collector and friend to Denton and me.

I am sorry to be the one to convey such news to you, Whatley, but events have transpired since your departure of a truly shocking nature.

I was quite alarmed to find a police constable in my office, asking me very pointedand peculiar questions about both you and your wife. It seems the young Mrs. Whatley, nee Denton, had gone to meet with her brother after you departed on business. Mrs. Whatley called on Denton at his family’s house, that much is certain. The day after she arrived, however, the maid came upon young Denton, or, shall I say, what was left of him. I hesitate to write this, or even think it, but Whatley – Denton was eviscerated. The constable said it wasdone slowly, by a hand as skilled as a master surgeon’s. The doctors believed it had taken poor Denton hours to die, and those hours were spent in the most profound of agonies.

Whatley, I pray you have heard something of the whereabouts of your wife, for she was no longer at the Denton household, and the police have been unable to locate her. Let us hope that she is all right, and that your love can guide her through so terrible a tragedy as has befallen her only brother.

Yours,

W.H.

As I looked up from the letter, my face drained of blood and my body wracked with chills, I saw the abbot smiling at me – such a terrible, hungry smile. I had seen it only once before.

“Do you see, now?” it said to me. “I love you. And I am everywhere you turn.”

The two monks lifted me swiftly from the table and bound me, dragging me through the monastery. They did not bother to cover my eyes, and as we passed I wondered how I could have been so foolish as to mistake this place for a house of Christian worship. In the depths of the monastery, weird and blasphemous symbols covered the walls. Paintings depicted landscapes that could not possibly exist, and beings that made me shudder and weep to catch sight of. In a black vault beneath the monastery, I discovered the source of the screaming I had earlier attributed to the echoes of my dreams.

Bloodstained tables filled a room like some nightmare hospital, along with horrible gibbets and other devices I dared not even contemplate the use of. All of them bore signs of use, however – some quite recent. I began trembling violently, fearing the monks that held me would strap me to one of these tables. Instead, they lowered me into a pit, and sealed an iron grating above me.

“Why not butcher me like the others?” I called up at the abbot, whose twinkling eyes I saw peering through the grating; eyes I had last seen peering out from the husk that was my Catherine.

“You are special.”

Its voice hummed in my ears like the buzzing of insects. When I blinked, the pit melted away and we were in the garden, beneath its alien sky. The thing addressing me wore Catherine’s form again. I could not bring myself to look at her face, for fear of the look I would find there.

“Most require an extreme stimulus before they are in a state to receive me, and they do not last long after that. But you… your mind called out to me, desperate for what I, too, seek in my way. Catherine’s did as well, once you had provided me introduction. I love you, Albert Whatley, and it will only be a matter of time before you receive me.”

“What are you?”

“Someone who loves you. Someone who would do anything to possess you.”

“Why? Why us?”

“You gave me form – your little species. I have waited quite a long time, in the lonely place I live. So long I thought I was alone. One day, one talking ape wrote a story with crude marks, and another read that story, and something happened, greater than the sum of their feeble brains, something more than simple reading or writing; something… in-between. It is hard to explain, but for a moment you go somewhere that does not exist. Somewhere where I live. It was like a window opened on my dreary world, after a solitude longer than your species can comprehend. I knew I had to have more, but so few called to me. You were one such, whose sweet thoughts reached me through the book. That, Albert, is why I will always love you. I will never let you go.”

Catherine’s arms reached out for me, her eyes flashed with inhuman lusts beneath the auburn curls I had loved. Her smile… God… her smile was sick with the cruelty of desire. I screamed, and when I opened my eyes I was screaming alone, at the bottom of the pit.

It left me with that. Or rather, it did not. The scrabbling and scratching at my mind has only grown stronger, and each minute I lose the will to fight. The monks still bring me food and water, and they have even given me paper and a pen. I have written this account to focus my thoughts. Perhaps you chanced to find it, pressed into the crack between two loose stones in this dismal pit. Perhaps you too are a prisoner here. If you have seen someone with my body, with my face, who tells you he is Albert Whatley, he is the foulest of liars. Even now, I feel it wearing away at my mind, at all I hold dear of myself. The garden is ever before my eyes, with its many torments and delights. I can no longer turn away from it. Something impossibly vast, a void, a thing that is and is not, engulfs me now, and I am loved. I can feel it, licking at my thoughts and memories… Let the veil fall away, and the true Love enter… all praise… Love is a horror… all praise its name…

Copyright © 2012 by Nick Scorza

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Issue 19 (Mar 2012)

Many, many years ago Brandon Auret and I spent most of our days studying drama at Pretoria University of Technology, and most of our nights either rehearsing for plays, performing them or playing guitar and singing covers in bars and restaurants all over Pretoria, sometimes getting paid in pizzas and beer. Hey, what else did we need?

Initially our careers were pretty closely matched; we both had our first professional break in Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat, we both made our television debuts as costumed characters in children’s shows and we even shared the stage in Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story in 1998/99.

But that’s where our paths parted. Brandon went on to make his name as the fan-favourite character Leon du Plessis, in the South African television daily drama Isidingo, and I went to London to starve to death.

For eight years Brandon graced our television screens before moving on to bigger things.

A brief appearance in District 9 lead to a friendship with director Neill Blomkamp, which has led to him being cast in Blomkamp’s new movie, Elysium, currently in post-production.

Brandon’s latest film, Rancid, is set to open in the US on 200 screens – not bad for a low-budget South African movie.

Your latest movie, Rancid, is apparently getting a 200-screen theatrical release in the States. Is that right?
The director told us two weeks ago that he’d signed a deal with an overseas distributor and that they’d like us to go over there and be part of the publicity tour for 200 cinemas. It’ll be a six-week tour.

That’s amazing. So you’ll be doing premieres and red-carpets and all that?
Oh, I hope so.

[laughs]Let’s face it, it is the only glamorous part of this job, isn’t it?
I want to know if it’s worth it. I want to walk down there and just go, “Oh, so this is what those okes experience. Awesome.”

Tell us a bit about Rancid.
The story is about a company that’s busy designing some kind of wonder drug and they have these participants come in who all have different diseases and different personality disorders. They all sign their lives away for the next four days, take these tablets and wake up four days later, alone in a hospital. There are these creatures running around and they are, slowly but surely, turning into something of the sorts. That’s what the story is about, and yeah – there’s a nice little twist at the end as well.

Sounds like a 28 Days Later, that takes place inside the hospital.
Pretty much like that, that’s a very good way to describe it. It was also shot on a Canon 7D and the director and the DOP… Just they way they shot it, because it was a very small crew, there was only one cameraman, and one focus-puller and the cameraman did his own lighting. But because it’s such a small camera they were able to get some really, really interesting shots in the movie, you know it’s shot really beautifully and it’s edited really cleverly.

I’ve watched the trailer, and it looks fantastic. It also looks extremely messy.
Yeah, there’s a lot of blood and guts in it. A lot, a lot. And you know what, it’s amazing, this is how small the crew was – the girl who did the make-up was also the girl who did special effects and also did special effects make-up and did costume and did food and everything like that.

[laughs] It really was a skeleton crew that we worked with. But you know it was all about the end product, and the end product looks amazing. I think that’s why the Americans bought into it, because I don’t think they believed that Alastair [Orr] was able to shoot a movie of that quality on that budget, if you know what I mean. In our terms, I think it was a R380 000 movie. Which is low, low, low budget, but for the Americans it works out to about $70 000, which is ridiculous, I mean, that’s not even the budget for a pilot.

That’s like a student film budget.
Ja. So for them to realise that they can make their money back by distributing this film all over the world, flight it in 200 cinemas, invite some of the actors over there for six weeks and do, what I suppose at the end of the day we want all our movies to achieve, and that is have the appreciation of the people that go to watch it.

Which brings me to my next point. That’s the problem in this country [South Africa]. The problem is not our filmmakers or our films; the problem is our filmgoers. And it’s a cultural thing, it’s easy for them to go and watch a Leon Schuster movie or a Bakgat or whatever, but the minute you label something South African, they’re like, “Hmm, we don’t really know about it, we’ll wait for it to go to DVD.” But the minute something in South Africa gets international approval then all of a sudden their ears get perked and they’re like, “What? So it’s a South African movie, and it’s good? Wow.”

We’ve been saying the same thing about South African books. There has been a wonderful bout of local genre fiction writers…
They’re not writing movies for the South African market, which is the way to go. Screw the South African market if they’re not going to support us, we know that the rest of the world does. Because to the rest of the world, South Africa is a honey pot.

Absolutely. We have the worst view of ourselves than anyone in the world. If you tell someone you’re South African people go, “Wow, that’s awesome,” but we’re embarrassed to say that.
And the enlightenment comes, and you’ve experienced it yourself: when you go overseas and work on an international movie, your race, country, religion, or wherever your loyalties are, doesn’t really make a difference. You’re seen as ‘the talent’ and you’re treated as such. You’re not a worse talent because you’re South African, you know, you’re as important as the next talent.

Absolutely. Cast is cast – you’re all there doing the same job.
Exactly. It’s important to them and I think in this country that’s the biggest problem – that we do undersell ourselves and accept mediocrity, and I think that’s where the bullshit lies and we’ve gotta stop that. At some point it has to stop because somebody has got to realise that there is a real business out there. Somebody needs to sort it out, because who ever is running our film industry and our distribution industry, really don’t have any idea what they’re doing.

But let’s get back to Rancid. You play a character called William Hunter, is that correct?
Yes.

And are you one of the test subjects?
Yeah, he is. You get introduced to the test subjects one –by –one. There are four of them, and, once again, I think that’s my calling, I kind of offset everybody’s worst nightmares. But you know, with it being a horror genre, things always, without giving too much away, they don’t always turn out to be what you think they are. But maybe it is.

It’s a very well-written script. And that’s the problem, a lot of times people see “low-budget” and they don’t go and audition for it. But it was a really well-written script and it unfolds beautifully on screen. He’s an interesting character, I enjoyed playing him. He has a lot of anger, a lot of anger issues.

Yeah, there’s a shot in the trailer of you chucking a bunk bed against a wall.
[laughs] I won’t explain why.

So when does Rancid release?
It releases in the US in May.

You started out on Isidingo? Was that was your first gig?
No. Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat.

Aah, but that was on stage. You did Joseph? When did you do Joseph?
With Mark Sykes, at the Theatre on the Track.

Oh, so six months after me. Right, that was ’94.
Yeah, Philip Godawa was the director. That was my first gig.

But you really came to the public eye in Isidingo as the character Leon du Plessis (Dup).
Well I did a lot of stage and a lot of musicals. I didn’t really get on TV until ’97. Up until that point I’d done basically musicals, stage shows, rockumentaries and tribute shows, stuff like that. But I knew what I wanted to do, which was get into film. I kind of left it in destiny’s hand, but, as actors do, we do what we need to survive.

Absolutely, especially here. How long were you on Isidingo?
Long time, eight years.

You played a single character for eight years, and obviously you got to know the other cast members, so it must’ve been a bit of a family there. So what was it like leaving that and going back out on your own again?
I think the choice was easy, but dealing with the aftermath of leaving was hard. The reason I left was because I’d only played one character for eight years. I was getting tired of it and it was becoming mundane and boring and my artistic integrity was taking a bit of a dive because it became like a sausage factory, you know what I mean? It became a job.

But the problem is you get stuck on a TV programme that long, you kind of carry that label with you. I’ve been out of it now for almost eight years and people still call me Dup, you know.

And that’s, I don’t know, I see it as a compliment, because it means somewhere down the line my character embedded himself into the viewers minds, but the problem is that directors and producers and big companies that are busy getting their ads cast, they see that and they go, “You know you’d be great for this ad, but you’re Dup.”Or: “We’d like to cast you in this TV series, Brandon, but… you’re Dup.”

[laughs] I did Angel’s Song, and I did One Way after that, but then for about three years I, phew, hey dude – I can’t even remember how I survived. Thank God for my credit card, it kind of got me through some hard times, because people were just not… they were not seeing past the Dup character. So I went on a massive diet, lost a shitload of weight, cut my hair all off, and then I landed my first movie role, which was minor, in an international movie, Catch a Fire.

That’s with Tim Robbins, right?
Yeah, directed by Phillip Noyce.

And what was it like transitioning from a daily television show to a film set?
It was like starting all over again. It was like walking onto a totally new environment but it felt good, it felt right. It felt like, “yeah man, this is what it’s all been [about], all I’ve been through up until this point has been worth it because of this moment.”

And I kind of knew then that things were going to start happening. I didn’t quite know how but I kind of knew that this was right.

And there were some really good movies after that, and some really shit ones, you know. A lot of the times in this country we don’t get paid for a movie. I think Hansie is a very, very good movie, I think it’s a beautifully shot movie, but they didn’t pay me for it. They paid me [a couple of days pay] and then they said to me, “No, no, we don’t have any more money,” and this was after the big theatre release and all this shit and I’m like “Whatever, dude.”

But I’m glad that I did it anyway, you know, it’s the same with the Race-ist; I’m glad I experienced it. It’s a crap movie, but they didn’t pay us for it. But then you get the gems, you get the Night Drives and the District 9s, you get the Rancids, where they do pay you. It’s not a lot of money but you’re working with amazing people and you learn so much in that kind of environment when you’re around people who are backing you up 100% in whatever it is that you’re doing.

So I did like a movie a year, and in between I had to go and do other stuff like Barnyard [Theatre] stuff and corporate functions and this and that.

But I really want to get involved in the film industry in our country. I’ve got a company called A Breed Apart Pictures now and it’s time to take our stories to the rest of the world.

I really believe we can. We’ve just got to somehow, I don’t know, get finances behind it, people that believe in the industry and know that it’s not going to happen overnight, and invest in it.

I think it’s more to do with the marketing than the financing, to be honest, because over the years we have become extremely good at shooting excellent product for very little money, but then that product just gets buried. No one watches it.
Ja, ja, you’re 100 percent right there, Joe, it’s the marketing and distribution. We only have Ster-Kinekor and NuMetro and they rip the companies off because they take 60% off the tickets, just right off the top, and nobody is going to make money unless you are Leon Schuster and you’ve been offered 94 cinemas as opposed to a movie like Night Drive, which was only offered twelve.

Yeah, I wanted to see it, I had seen the trailer, I knew it was coming and then it was gone already and I didn’t even know it had been released. It just disappeared.
But that’s my point, again. A movie that didn’t do really well in this country, is doing well overseas. Its opening weekend in China was unbelievable, you know.

Well, it’s a terrifying movie, I mean, just from the trailer. It is fucking terrifying.
[laughs]You know that M-NET [SA Cable network] said no to it? “It’s just not something we can show,” and I’m like, “Are you kidding me?”

Whatever, but it was a really good movie. That really made me fall in love with acting again, because I worked with a director who really pushed the limits and was more obsessed about the characters than the storyline, you know.

Of course you worked with your old Isidingo partner, Chris Beasley.
Yes, and he’s amazing in the movie. He’s wasted on Isidingo, and you can quote me on that.

To be honest, I think most actors are wasted on Isidingo; you and I studied with most of them and we know they’re all fucking phenomenal actors.
Ja, but you know dude, it’s lekker, you get caught up in it.

Sure, it’s a steady paycheque.
I’m not gonna lie, dude, it was the most comfortable eight years of my life. It was a salary every month, it wasn’t an amazing salary but believe me when you have a salary every month your problems become less. Suddenly banks take you seriously: “Can we have six months worth of statements?”

“Yes, you can. Here are my payslips.”

[laughs]You know what? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never had six months worth of payslips.
[laughs] It’s a relief, hey, it’s an amazing feeling, but you get caught up in it. And that becomes your reason for [losing] any kind of momentum. Which for some people, I suppose, is cool, but people like us, who need to go and explore, and go and have an adventure in somebody else’s life for a minute, it’s not lekker, you know what I mean? It’s what we do.

Ja. Now, you were in District 9. Did you have any idea when you were shooting that film that it was going to be the most successful South African movie of all time?
You know Joe, I’ve got a story for you, my broer. We had no idea what Neill [Blomkamp] was doing. I mean Neill had me running through Soweto dressed up in old South African Defence Force browns, with full gear on, chasing after a black dude, calling him the K-word, telling him I’m going to put a bullet through his head if he doesn’t stop… I’m scheming, “My broer, why am I doing this in the middle of Soweto? Somewhere along the line someone is going to jump out and go, ‘Hey, you’re on Candid Camera.’” But it wasn’t.

It was callback, after callback, after callback. I think it was about three or four callbacks and then I was up for one of the leads, for the part of Kobus.

David James’s part.
Ja, and it came down to a decision between Peter Jackson and Neill, and because Peter Jackson had the final say he kind of went with David James, but in saying that, Neill came up to me afterwards and he said, “Look, do you still want to be in the movie?”

And that’s how I ended up being in the movie. Normally, you know what it’s like, you audition you don’t get the part and you never hear from them again. [laughs]

So I had a small little part in District 9 and then at the after-party Neill put his arm around me and he said, “You know, don’t worry about it (?),” because he’s a dude, you know, he’s not caught up in the whole la-dee-da-ness of movie making, he’s an oke, you know, and he says, “Dude, we’ll make a movie together one day.” And ja… I got the call, hey.

He came through.
He came through; he said to me he’s got a part for me in Elysium, would I be interested?
[laughs] I was like, “Ja, let me think about it…”

Let me check my calendar.
I had to send through an audition tape. They do things professionally, they had to go and show the producers, and I ended up working with… and I wish I had got to know him better in District 9, because he’s actually an incredible actor but he’s just a very complex person, is old Sharlto Copely. Because I didn’t spend a lot of time with him on District 9, we had no scenes together.

Ja, you’re on opposite ends of the storyline.
And in this movie we end up doing just about every scene that we have together. We end up playing these… um, you know, without giving away too much, we are a specialised unit that operates in the black-ops kind of regime and we are told to go and kill somebody for something.

[laughs] Right. And of course you got to work with Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, and one of my absolute favourite frikken actors, William Fichtner.
Ja dude, I didn’t even get to see him, man. He did a lot of his scenes in Mexico City. I had one day with Jodie Foster and… dude, you must understand, I hate to box actors, but she’s like one of my top five, you know what I mean?

Ja. Didn’t you play Bugsy Malone at some point?
[laughs] Listen dude, don’t even joke, you know what happened? [American accent] “Oh hey, how’s it going, you’re the guy playing Drake.” And of all the things I could’ve said to her, I went, “Hey, I’ve loved your work ever since Bugsy Malone.”

[laughs] She was like, “Really, Bugsy Malone?” And I am like, “Just keep walking, just keep walking.”

I could’ve said to her, “Hey, the first show I ever did as an actor was Bugsy, and I played Bugsy,” but no, I had already put both my feet in my mouth, so…

[laughs] So you’ve got a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, you’re an actor, you’re a singer, you’re a producer. How do you manage to juggle your time across all these things?
Um, it’s called survival.

[laughs] You know, it’s amazing – I tell people, “I’m not a singer”, I never have been, I’ve been able to kind of bullshit my way across all that. You know, at the end of the day I’m an actor. That’s one thing I’ve never been able to lie about, and I wish I could spend more time acting, but I can’t, because there’s just not that opportunity, so I’ve had to ‘act’ as a singer and ‘act’ as a this and ‘act’ as a that to try and make sure that, should something come along, like Elysium, or Rancid, that I have that time available to myself that I can say, yes, you know. So that’s why I do it. I keep myself busy for that one call, or for that one audition that we can go to and get that lekker part.

And now, I’m a dad as well, she’s going to be one-years-old next month. That’s the real reason, bro – I was doing so much just to feed my own ego, but right now it’s not about that, it’s about making money and making sure my daughter never has to go through what I went through.

You and I have the same background, I also started in musical theatre and all that, but I love the permanence of film. I love that my daughter, regardless of whatever happens to me, can see what I have done.
Isn’t that the best thing?

Of course, the movies that you and I do, our kids won’t be able to watch for another eighteen years. But it’s just that knowledge, and it’s silly, but I feel like I have left my mark in the world for her.
Your legacy.

Ja, no matter how small it is, no matter how silly it is.
Exactly what it is, broer.

So, what’s next for you? Anything lined up, other than a six-week tour?
Right now I’m waiting to go on the publicity tour for Rancid, and then it’s back to what I’ve been doing for the last three years, producing and trying to raise funds for scripts that I’ve been given. I’ve got two really, really good scripts that have been written by Justin Head and I want to produce them and I want to get them done in this country and I want take those films to the rest of the world. It’s business time now; I’ve got to take the Brandon actor suit off and put on the Brandon corporate suit on and go and convince people that putting their money into this movie is a good idea.

We wish you all the best for the future. Thanks a lot for talking to us, Brandon, and congratulations on everything.
Thank you, and thanks for this opportunity. I wish you guys all the best as well.

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Published by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd PB 752 pages RRP £9.00 (Kindle £9.99)

From Issue 19 (Mar 2012)

When I heard that Stephen King was releasing a time-travel novel, I found myself excited and apprehensive in equal measure; time-travel novels are pretty much the multi-disc concept albums of the literary world, and even the finest authors can easily stumble and embarrass themselves when traversing this uneven, but well-trod, ground. And yet, somehow, 11/22/63 manages to be almost impossibly good, a historical-fantasy-thriller-romance novel, which excels at every one of these.

The premise is simple: Jake Epping, a present-day English teacher, is presented with the opportunity to travel back in time through a wormhole to stop the John F. Kennedy assassination. There are, of course, a number of complicating factors, and the novel’s various conceits are elegant and well-considered. King’s treatment of the past, its contradictions and paradoxes – and, oh so thrillingly, its character - is virtuosic, a delicate and beautiful house of cards which puts pretty much any comparable book to shame.

After an extremely entertaining and wildly suspenseful first 250 pages or so, King eases off the throttle for a while, immersing us in a surprisingly sweet and understated love story. We get to know the (uncharacteristically small) cast and, in time, we come to love them. I tend to scoff at people who criticize King’s books for being overly long, but, in all fairness, this part of the novel does suffer from pacing issues. Sandwiched as it is between one of the finest introductions and one of the greatest climaxes in the King oeuvre, however, I don’t see how it could have felt anything but a little plodding. And the payoff from our emotional investment in the characters during the book’s final 200 pages – an absolute frenzy of tension too agonizing to read, but too hypnotic to put down – makes any feelings of impatience more than worthwhile.

The historical detail King crams in is exceedingly impressive, but never overwhelming, and he convincingly captures the zeitgeist of the late 50s and early 60s. It is often through the smallest, subtlest details that King succeeds in imbuing the past with the sort of immediacy which very few authors can match. His characterization of various historical figures is superb; their depth and detail, complimented as they are by an almost banal normalcy, is a triumph of artistic integrity. King has managed to capture and weave together the disparate elements of the events around Kennedy’s assassination in a manner which manages to be at once compelling and – crucially – supremely objective; an incredible feat considering how emotionally charged the issues in question remain after almost 50 years.

In short, despite its fantastical premise, there’s a core of emotional, uniquely visceral plausibility to this work, representing, as it does, the finest elements of all the genres from which it draws. It proves, ultimately, to be a sophisticated love story as beautiful as it is harrowing, as touching as it is deeply thrilling and as viscerally disturbing as it is uplifting. Read it.

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From Issue 19 (Mar 2012)

Where is home?
Home at the moment is Northern Minnesota, United States. In a few weeks, though, we load up the billions of books and kids and head on out to Washington, on the west coast. Partially because I very much miss the ocean and the mountains, but also because fighting the Wolves and Woolly Mammoths in Minnesota every winter is exhausting.

Do you write full time?
I do! When my first son was born, nearly five years ago, I started staying at home and writing. Harder than I expected, writing full time, but it IS better than the alternatives, although you can’t convince me of that on the bad days.

What inspired this story?
It started as a creative exercise, and expanded from there. Here’s how it happened: my absolute favorite band in the world is Nightwish. A few years ago, they did a song for the soundtrack of a movie. They made a music video, using footage from the film itself. Here’s the music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smiFk6KHr_8
The creative exercise was that I tried to take the scenes present in that music video and find a pattern to them, create a story for them. I deliberately avoided looking up the film or learning anything more about it than was present in just that video clip.
Of course, no story stays with just its inspiration. It went on from there. I think the story and the video kind of work together. If you take them as a whole, they augment each other. (The song was on nearly endless repeat while I wrote the story.) Later on, after the story had been finished and gone out into the world, I looked up the film and discovered that I was a billion miles away from their story. That made me happier still. (Mostly for fun, there are various other Nightwish references in the story. But I’ll leave it to someone else to spot them.)

Tell us about creating a blind protagonist. (Why and where the idea came from, as well as how you set about creating her world.)
In my first attempt at the story, she wasn’t blind. That was okay, I suppose, but I’m always looking for ways to push the stories and ideas just a bit further. There have been an uncountable number of horror stories about a pretty young woman being menaced by a murderous nutjob. You’ve read it, I’ve read it, so what’s the point in rehashing it? Quite why I settled on her being blind as opposed to anything else, I don’t remember now. It made her stand out a little more, gave the story some of the energy I needed to push through it.

Actually writing her proved to be a good deal more difficult. Occasionally, I find myself writing an element into a story which in my head I’ve constructed for film, or for comic books. Even now, quite some time after having written this story about Charlotte, I can still see some of the panels and layouts and pieces of artwork that I would have been aiming for, had this been a comic. I can still see the transitional shots, had it been film. That was frustrating, to convey those transitions between her worlds, and to make it clear within the flow of the text that sometimes she couldn’t see, and sometimes she could. I mean without writing SHE CAN SEE NOW YOU GUYS periodically throughout the story. I wasn’t sure it worked, the gradual shift between which senses she was using most at any given moment. I wasn’t sure it would make sense, but it didn’t seem to have bothered anyone but me. Isn’t that how it always is, with writers?

As for creating her world, the snowy landscape she and her boyfriend drive through…there’s this beautiful stretch through Montana of long highways, surrounded by trees and hills. The road goes on for ages, rising and falling as the landscape changes. In the snow, it’s spectacular. But I was careful not to do any research and just to recall my own memories and visuals from driving through there. That’s what is important, after all. Anyone who has access to Google Earth can go find out the precise topology of the region.

How did the story evolve? Did you know where it was going from the outset, or was Charlotte’s journey also a journey of discovery for you?
The story itself went through four ‘drafts’. I’m hesitant to think of them as proper drafts, though. I’m no good at those. What happens is, I start the story and write it for a few (or a lot) of pages, and then suddenly go “This doesn’t work,” and scrap it and start over. I did that a few times. I knew the basic elements. I knew Simon’s murder-plot, his plan to drive across the country. It arose from my own irritation watching shows I find pretty dimwitted, all those crime shows about sassy crime-solvin’ cop-teams who have Catchphrases and Techno Music and stuff. Also, like any writer, I spend too much time thinking up clever ways to commit crimes I never plan to commit (EVER PLAN TO COMMIT, law enforcement officials reading this interview).

It was realizing she was blind that set the story going at full speed. It gave me not only the tools and ideas to shift between the two worlds, but gave me something to talk about and think about.

I knew the ending from the outset. I almost always know the ending, but not in any grand and useful sense. I knew that she would wind up dying, that Eric would wind up having been more than a memory, that there was a sunflower field waiting for her, and so forth. But I didn’t know anything useful, like why Simon would kill her, or what she would do to try to free herself. All of that is pretty much scene by scene for me. I write the one bit, and can see that it leads to this next bit. Eventually I realize what’s going to happen to cause the ending. Occasionally, when it happens, the ending falls to bits and a new one appears. I never mind that.

Who are your writing influences?
I think like any writer, my influences are too many to count. How do I limit them, so I can talk about them? I’m influenced by watching people in the world around me interacting. Influenced watching excellent TV and movies and books, wishing I could do a work half as well. Influenced by rubbish art, which I want to pick up and re-write until they aren’t quite so stupid.

Music has a tremendous influence on my writing, and my way of thinking. Nightwish and Alice Cooper have had a great effect on how I work. Alice Cooper, particularly, has been shaping how I view myself as a working artist since I was thirteen years old or so. And then there are other bands like My Chemical Romance and Thea Gilmore. Listening to intelligent music sometimes leads to intelligent stories. Sometimes it just leads to me being annoying and singing around the house.

I read a great deal. Listing authors who have an effect on me would be unbearable, the list would just go on for ages. My short story work is strongly influenced by Joe Hill — who reprogrammed how I wrote, when I read 20th Century Ghosts and realized I could do longer, slower, more literary stories that still had a fantastic and horror element to them. The book found me at the right time. Recently, I’ve just discovered Margaret Atwood and John Irving and gone “Oh, I can work like that if I want…” Whenever I’m bogged down, I turn to Neil Gaiman and Harlan Ellison, whose work I not only love but who convince me to just…get on with it.

All of that said…I think every artist has what I think of as patron saints, little angels and devils sitting on their shoulders. Artists whose presence is indelibly on everything they do. For me, it’s Alan Moore — who has had a tremendous effect on my writing, my work ethic, my politics, my interest in the occult and what I’m willing to believe, my approach to day-to-day life, and my tendency to look rather hairy. And also Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese animator, who has just as big an effect on my life, work, beliefs, and politics as Alan Moore does.

Boy, thank goodness I kept that answer short, eh?

How do you manage to maintain your writing output with two boys in the house?
To be perfectly frank…I don’t. I don’t know how people do it, those people who have several kids and still manage to get work done, keep up on the dishes, and stay in shape and also be well-groomed. Particularly as the boys get older, I find it nearly impossible to do any sort of writing work when they’re awake. And when they go to bed, I oftentimes either nod off myself, or just sit on the couch and vibrate gently as the tension of the day radiates off me. I work slower than I ever have. But I am still working. One big trick is that I keep agreeing to things. Deadlines and actual Grown Ups expecting work from you is a huge motivator to get your ass in gear.

Are you working on anything right now?
Indeedy. I sporadically write book reviews and articles for SFSignal.com and for The Future Fire magazine. I have two or three short stories in various stages of completion. The one taking up all my time right now is called Frost at the moment and is set in the Sahara desert. Unlike the Montana road I mentioned above, for this story I’m being very precise about location. It’s a pretty solitary little road through the Sahara and it serves me well to pay attention to it. Google Earth is a gem.

I’m also writing a novel (who isn’t?) very slowly. I’m not a natural novelist. Short stories are more my area. It comes along slowly, though. It’s called The Man on the Shore, has three characters and one small boat and is the sort of novel that Misery or Cujo kind of is. But I don’t want to say too much, because it might all collapse.

Where might we find more of your work?
For ease of use, I try to keep a running bibliography of my work on my web-site, peterdamien.com …although I need to be better about updating it. I also spend far, far too much time on Twitter (@peterdamien ) so I suppose someone could always go on there and say “Hey turkey! What else ya got!” and I’d send them links. The links would probably just go to rude pictures, though, so that might not work out…

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He had zip-tied Charlotte’s ankle to the metal skeleton beneath the car seat, and she had spent all of the first day of their unending drive moving her foot back and forth and up and down, rubbing against the little plastic. It was no thicker than a straw but may as well have been made of solid steel for all the good her movements did. Yet she kept wiggling and moving her foot. She rubbed the flesh raw, and then rubbed it off and blood ran down her pale ankle and left her bare foot and the zip-tie slick and red, but even that did no good. In the movies, the blood provided lubricant and the captive slipped themselves out of their bonds easily, but that was not the case here. Here, she was only getting out if she severed the bones in her foot from the bones in her leg. If she could have reached, she would have done just that, if necessary with her teeth.

If there was pain from the small equator of raw flesh and blood, she did not feel it. She went mad, that first day, a madness the pain could not penetrate. Her mind filled with rage and despair, the animalistic panic at being trapped like this, being snatched away. What was left of her mind was filled with those last few moments: the sound of scuffling, the sound of Eric shouting at her to run, goddammit, get the hell outta here, get the – and then the sound of his voice being cut off by a thunderclap explosion which left her ears ringing. A gunshot. The only sound after that had been the sick thud of dead meat hitting the asphalt. Then hands that were not Eric’s had grabbed her and shoved her into the car. The man who took her had said his name was Simon, and then he said nothing else.

He drove while, beside him, she sank beneath the black waves of grief and insanity.

On the second day, her ankle hurt badly and she felt it with every pulse of blood that her heart pushed through her body, which it did at jackhammer pace since the panic had not left, even if the madness had abated. The meaty thud and the gunshot still looped through her mind, and she began to sob brokenly.

In the seat next to her, Simon eventually told her to stop. He said it with disinterest, as if he had been expecting this and found it a chore. When she did not stop, when more hours had passed, he reached over and grabbed a handful of her long, black hair, yanking her head back. She didn’t see his hand coming, of course. The pain was staggering and she gasped, shocked into silence.

“Seriously, shut up,” he said. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded annoyed. It was the tone of voice someone might use to scold a small dog who wouldn’t stop barking. Then his hand was gone.

That second night, Simon stopped the car and got out, locking it behind him. She heard his footsteps crunch away, and then nothing but silence. For a long time, Charlotte just sat there, still trying not to cry. Then she began fumbling around the inside of the car, looking for any way to escape, anything she could use to kill him…or herself. But there was nothing. The door had no handle, the lock had been filed away into the depth of the door. The floor was bare, and so was every compartment she jammed her hand into. Each time she tried to move, she was reminded that her ankle was trapped and a piercing pain shot up her leg. She was so well anchored, she couldn’t even put a finger on his door. Claustrophobia threatened to roll over her and smother her. Madness lurked nearby, waiting to come back.

She didn’t know where she was, either, and that was just as maddening. Where had they stopped? Where had he gone? Had he simply stopped the car on the side of the road, somewhere in the Nevada desert and walked away? Leaving her to starvation and insanity? To cook in the heat like a side of meat in an oven? Where had he gone?

She wondered if she would be going less mad, if she would be able to escape, if she had her eyesight. If only she could see. It had been decades since her eyesight had gone, and plenty of years since she had accepted the blindness. It had been so long since she had missed it as badly as she did now. But the world was as black and featureless now, in this nightmare, as it had been during the good years, the happy years, with Eric.

She cried a little. It was the only sound in the car. She hid her mouth with her hand and wiped away tears the moment they formed. She didn’t know who she was hiding her crying from, but hid it anyway.

A sound of crunching gravel, then the door opened and Simon dropped into the driver’s seat. He reeked of hamburger and fries, cigarette smoke, cheap beer. A small bag fell into her lap and she grasped at it. It was smooth and it crinkled.

“Chips,” he said. “Eat up. Long drive ahead of us, so you gotta keep some strength up.”

She didn’t eat them. She let them slip to the floor a little while later. Simon made no comment. He just drove on, through the night.

On the third day, she went away. Simple as that.

It was something she had learned from Eric; something he had taught her how to do. Eric had loved to teach. Except that didn’t quite convey his wild enthusiasm. He’d delighted in things and shared them and enjoyed the reactions of others. Whether it was booze, TV shows, stupid pictures on the internet, fine cuisine or baffling flavors of potato chips, he’d loved to try things and bring others along for the adventure. Sporadic. That’s what his mom had called him, but Charlotte had loved it. There were never dull moments, only electric ones and the restful spaces between them.

He had taught her to go away, and she did.

It was a meditation technique, one of his few interests that had lasted longer than a few weeks (other long-term interests had been tea, good books, running…and her). She focused, she really focused on putting away the world around her: the endless, burning pain in her ankle, the hot and dusty car rattling around her. She visualized herself walking down little stone steps, and she felt the roughness of each stone under bare feet. She stepped into a small pool of cold water, and she felt it against her ankles, forced herself to feel it. And then, breathing and calm and settled, she pictured where she wanted to be.

And then she opened her eyes.

The little Ford Focus was blue and it hummed along the interstate. The world outside was mountainous and full of thick snow, she saw. She was sitting in the passenger seat. She looked over, and there was Eric, driving the car and drumming his thumbs on the center of the steering wheel. He watched the road in the absent way one does on a long drive. Then he glanced over at her.

“Hey, you’re awake,” he said with a wide, handsome grin. He gestured out the windows. “Can you believe this snow? I’m amazed the roads are open.”

The snow was heavy and enveloping. The road they were on wound through sloping hills and sharp cuts through mountains. Trees and walls of rock surrounded them, all covered in snow. The trees bent under the weight of it, whether they had evergreen needles or were simply black skeletons waiting for the spring. Snow buried the fields and level areas, it encroached on the road wherever it had found finger holds, where the cars had not pushed it back. Snow had turned the world white and the sky gray, it had transformed the world into a black and white TV show with a strange, bright-blue car rolling through the middle of it.

She stretched, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. His cheek was rough with a day’s worth of stubble and it pricked her lips.

“How much longer?” Charlotte said, bending down to rub her hands along the length of her legs. She created friction against her denims, stirring life back into tired and inert limbs.

“I’m not gonna tell you,” Eric said, with the coy glee of a child with a secret. “But it won’t be very much longer now, so chill out, huh? Eat some junk food.”

There was a ton of junk food – little bags of a million kinds of chips, all in the footwell of her seat, around her feet. She shifted and they crinkled and crunched. “That stuff’ll kill you. I don’t want any part of that. Come on, why won’t you just tell me where we’re going?” She switched to a cute, petulant tone of voice and pouted at him. “Why’s a big, strong, handsome man like you got to keep secrets from little, delicate me?”

He snickered at her, and she socked him in the arm.

Eric looked at her, his face suddenly contorted into a gargoyle expression of fury. His hand blurred across the space between them and slapped her, hard, so unbelievably hard, across the cheek, that her head snapped away and her forehead smacked into the window beside her. The impact made her shut her eyes, and she kept them shut. The pain in her cheek was a crimson blossom, beginning as a single brilliant white point of pain that soaked outward until her whole face ached. She cradled it, tears cresting in her eyes.

“Don’t try that again, you dumb bitch,” Simon snapped at her. “I got plenty of experience with bitches who start fightin’ back, an’ lemme tell you, all it’ll get you is stuffed in the trunk for the rest of the ride home. You get me?”

She nodded, frantically, so that he wouldn’t hit her again. Her cheek was on fire and it was spreading. Simon said nothing else, just sighed deeply and went back to driving. The car rattled and bumped down the desert roads. She leaned against the doorframe. If there were anything but blackness, she would have peered out the window.

The car was hot and dusty, but Charlotte shivered, just a little, despite the heat. She held onto that feeling, like she held onto the images of a snow-covered landscape, a little blue car, and Eric grinning. No gargoyle-leer, no hitting. Grinning. Loving. A day’s worth of stubble rasping against her lips. The staccato drum beat on the wheel. The heartbeat of tires thudding down the road. All the dead trees in their wintry shrouds…

Blackness around her and a head full of images? It was easy to go back. She just had to be still, that was all, to visualize a pool of water and then calm it until it was a mirror in which she could see herself if she looked down. Once all was still, well, all she had to do was open her eyes.

Eric drove on. The landscape had changed only in that they were driving the long downward slope of a mountain, nothing but white stretched out for miles and miles ahead of them, with only the thin vein of the black road to break up the snow tracts.

Coming down a mountain like this wasn’t so hard for the little car, which was relatively light, but there were all sorts of big yellow signs which warned of exactly how difficult it was for big trucks to get down these steep sections, and how small cars should keep a close eye out for trucks that had no brakes. At regular intervals on the long slope, single lanes branched off from the road and ran for a few hundred feet, full of gravel, with big metal barriers at the end. If the trucks went out of control, they could veer into those and, physics willing, grind to a halt before shooting off the road entirely and into the trees or the side of the mountain.

“I know where we are,” Charlotte said, looking around. “This is Montana. Isn’t it? Am I right?”

“You are not right, you are wrong, is what they call what you are,” Eric said. He glanced her way. “Why can’t you just sit back and let it happen? You gotta keep guessing ’til you ruin it? Just be patient and wait for it.”

“I hate doing that.”

“Tell me about it,” Eric said. “It’s why Christmas time is such a pain in the ass.”

She let the matter go. It was too peaceful a world to fill up with arguing. She gazed out the windows, laced her fingers in her lap, and enjoyed watching everything go by, as if she were sitting still and the whole world were on a conveyer belt, trundling past her. Occasionally, they passed trees that had shattered under the weight of the snow and toppled. More snow had covered these fallen bodies, and they were as beautiful in their way as the trees that were still standing.

Once in a while, they passed other cars, but she never got a good look at them. They were just things she was aware of, out of the corner of her eye.

Eric glanced at her when they came down the mountain and the road leveled out.

“Hey,” he said. “So how’re you doing anyway? Been on the road awhile. You okay?”

“I’m all right,” she said. “Tired mostly. And sore.”

She was sore, she realized…but she shied away from the thought. She added, “Just pretty tired, that’s the main thing. It’s been a long few days on the road.”

“Tell me about it,” Eric said. “And I’m the one driving. Why not go to sleep for a while? We’ve got a ways to go still.”

As he said it, Charlotte realized that sounded like the nicest thing in the world. She let her head rest against the side window, the chill of the outside world seeping through it. Her eyes were already heavy, and she was asleep in no time.

They slept in the car that night. And in the night, a figure maneuvered inside the awkward space of the car and moved against her, waking her only halfway from a deep sleep. It was a male form, Eric, surely Eric.

He insinuated himself between her legs. She didn’t bother opening her eyes, she was too sleepy. Typical Eric. Drive all day, and still have enough energy at night for something like this. Usually, he gave sex all the enthusiasm he gave the rest of life, but this time it was slow, and short, and then done, because he had driven all day and was tired.

Then he went back to the driver’s seat, and Charlotte settled back down, still in the blurred-world fog of someone who had only come halfway from the black waters of a deep sleep. She barely remembered to mumble, before she slipped off again, “I love you, Eric.”

There was no reply from beside her.

Probably, he was already asleep.

Poor Eric.

Eric pulled off the freeway and into the parking lot of a small truck stop, and the car tires crunched across the ice as he came to a stop a ways off from the little building. He pulled up the emergency brake, which made a loud popping sound and that startled Charlotte, who sat up right as Simon opened the door, his feet crunching gravel.

“I’m gonna go piss,” Simon said. “You…want anything?”

It was the first thing he’d said all day, since they’d started driving again. He sounded different. Almost hesitant.

“No,” Charlotte said. She was lying. Her stomach stabbed and bit and gaped, her hands shook if she held them out in front of her. She was so hungry. When had she last eaten? What had she had?

“I’ll bring some food,” Simon said. He was silent, but there were no footsteps and the car door did not slam. Just silent for a long time. Then he added, “Are you sick or something? Besides the blind shit, I mean are you ill?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t get sick much.”

“Oh.” Another long silence. Then Simon said, “You’re just so goddamned cold. I thought maybe you was sick. Anyway. I’ll be back.” He slammed the door and crunched away.

Charlotte sat and baked.

Charlotte sat.

Charlotte sat and steamed up the window, which was so cold from the wintry air outside. She doodled a happy face in it. Then a cat face. Then a peace sign, and then she was out of steam.

“Am I boring you?” Eric asked.

“Nope,” she said. “I can doodle and listen at the same time, you know.”

“What was I saying, then?”

“That there’s a city in Norway where they completely eliminated all the traffic lights and stop signs and rules-of-the-road stuff, as an experiment, and very nearly all accidents stopped.”

“Well…yeah.”

“Jealous that I can doodle and listen?”

“College education at work,” Eric said. “Doodle and listen. If I had gone to a big mucky-muck university, I could doodle and listen too.”

Charlotte laughed.

Eric climbed out of the driver’s seat. He left the door hanging wide open as he walked in a small, restless circle next to the car. He high-stepped and opened his arms wide, he twisted at the waist and he stretched, groaning with effort as he did so. Then he bent and peered back into the car. “You gonna get out and stretch your legs at all?”

“No, I’m fine,” she smiled at him. “And I don’t feel like getting covered in snow.”

“Oh, well…”

She knew what he was going to do before he did it and she shouted “Don’t you dare!” But it was too late. He bent down, gathered up a big handful of snow and flung it into the car at her. It was too powdery to form a snowball, so it was simply a long sheet of snow that wafted through the car. Some of it hit her and did what snow does instinctively, which is to go straight down the shirt.

“Aaah!” she shouted. “You jerk!” She grabbed the front of her shirt and pulled it away from her body. “Get back in the car, so I can punch you!”

“Maybe I’ll just walk from here,” Eric teased.

“I’m never going anywhere with you again! It’s like traveling with an infant!”

Eric laughed. He slid back into the car and pulled the door shut with a bang.

“Here, I got you some chips and a beef stick,” Simon said. “Tastes all right, once you get used to –”

Simon broke off, silence and darkness ruling in the car for a moment. Then he said, quietly, “That’s some damn chill you’re radiating, the whole inside of the car is cold. It’s like I got me a human air conditioner…”

He didn’t laugh after he said it, though. He started the car and pulled it out onto the freeway in silence. The gravel crunched. The dry desert heat quickly took care of the chill. The dust worked its way into the car, inevitably, and Charlotte tasted it in the back of her throat.

They drove in silence for a long time. The radio grew dull and Simon turned it off. Silence filled the car for a bit, and then Simon began to talk. He spoke slowly at first, sounding preoccupied, like he had something on his mind that he wanted to share.

“The first girl I killed, I did her right next door to my house. Now that was stupid. You don’t gotta tell me that. So stupid. But I got away with it. Turns out she had some shit of a boyfriend who used to beat her and they thought of him before me. But you know? It was good. Killing her. It was fuckin’ amazing.”

Charlotte had been leaning against the window, but she sat up straighter as he began to talk. There was no need to look over at him, so she looked straight ahead at blackness.

“Pretty soon, I realized I wanted to do it again. But you know what?” He paused a second, not long enough for her to answer. “I’m not an idiot. I’m not actually stupid. You probably think I am. All fuckin’ women, they take one goddamn look at me and think they got me all figured, you know? Well they don’t. You shouldn’t do that to men. You don’t get it. So I watch a lotta TV, and I see all those shows about serial killers. And they always have their territory and their patterns and sooner or later, the cops get ‘em. So you know what I did? I got smart.”

He snapped his fingers, just an inch away from her left ear and she flinched as sharply as if she had been struck. “You payin’ attention? Or you staring into space again?”

“I’m paying attention,” she mumbled, hating how weak her voice sounded.

“Better be.” He said nothing for a time, then continued. “So I waited, real patient, and then I took my vacation time from work and headed out west. All the way to California. Sometimes I hit Oregon or Nevada or Washington or somethin’, but usually California. I just really like their girls. And I grab the bitch, and then drive back home, do what I want. Means I’ve got no territory they’re gonna spot, no patterns. It’s great.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“I dunno,” Simon said. “Cause I’m proud of it? Cause you’re gonna die, so what’s it matter?”

“How many times before?”

“You’re my tenth,” he said, and now there was no disguising the pride in his voice. “You’re my happy anniversary. Cool huh? Hey, listen, you eat that shit I bought you, or I’ll tape a funnel in your mouth and pour food into you. You get me?”

“I get you,” Charlotte said, but she didn’t eat. She leaned her head back against the glass, which was fogged as thoroughly as if the world outside were coated in mist.

It was interesting that she didn’t feel scared, or upset. Not really. Maybe it was because she had slept so little and had been through too many days of terror and imprisonment, maybe she was just worn out inside. But she wasn’t scared. She was as calm as a pool of water, and as clear.

“Hey,” Eric said, “you dozing off?”

She looked at him. His close-cropped blonde hair could almost blend into the snowy fields passing by the car. He had several days worth of stubble on his face, but his hair was so pale, it was almost impossible to tell.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m just waking up. How are you doing?”

“Me? I’m fine. It’s a long drive, though.”

“Well, we could just stop,” Charlotte said. “Or you could tell me where we’re going, and I could drive. How’s that for a thought?”

“It’s a good thought. Anyway, it’s not that much further. So relax. Just enjoy the ride.”

“Yeah, well, easy for you to say, you know where we’re going.”

“Only immediately. Cosmically, do any of us? I mean really?”

“Don’t even start up with that,” Charlotte said. He laughed and focused on the road.

She looked at him, really studied him, and then said, “When did you get a gold earring?”

Simon whirled to look at her, wide-eyed and alarmed. She saw him, then, for the first time…but only for a split-second. Then the blackness swallowed her vision. It was alarming and painful, a stake driven through each eyeball. Even in the blackness, she could make him out, like an after-image: soft and too tall for the car, thick glasses and a thin mustache, bad teeth, a finger missing on his left hand. A gold earring.

“What the fuck?” Simon snarled at her. And when she didn’t answer – she was trying to, though, she was scrambling for something to say as terror bubbled up inside her, marring the clear surface of the pond – “How the fuck did you do that?”

Abruptly, he wrenched the car off the road and it skidded through the dust. At the speed they’d been going, Charlotte was amazed the car wasn’t simply wrecked. She tensed up, waiting for the blows to land. What she didn’t expect was to feel both his hands close on her head, one on each side of her face. He forced her around to look at him, so hard her neck twinged. For a moment, Charlotte thought he was going to smash her head in, to strangle her, but he just held her that way.

“You look blind, you look goddamn blind,” Simon shouted. His breath was hot and reeked of old meat and stale chips. “Your eyes are all pale and shit like in the movies. So how the hell did you do that?”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t, I just –” she stammered and stopped, choking on the congealed terror in her throat.

He just held her that way, silent but for his fast breathing. His hot breath hit her face in gusts. Her mind randomly reminded her of how Eric had held her just this way, hand cupping each side of her face. Rough palms against her soft skin. She couldn’t see him, but it didn’t frustrate her. She didn’t know what expression was on his face, couldn’t see what he was thinking. What excited her, though, was that sooner or later he would lean in and kiss her, and she didn’t know when until his lips were against hers. Every time, a surprise. Magnificent.

They stayed that way for too long. It would be a surprise, she thought, if Simon’s hands suddenly shifted and crushed her throat.

His hands released her face. She flinched, but they didn’t touch her again. He exhaled.

“Fuck,” he said. His voice shook a little. “You’re just some bitch, you are not worth this grief…”

The terror was still a lump she couldn’t spit out or swallow. She talked around it, she had to. “You could let me go. You could just let me go right here. I haven’t seen you, please, I haven’t seen you, not really, I can’t describe you to anyone. I’m no threat. I don’t even know where I am.”

“Utah,” Simon said, distractedly, as if he weren’t really paying attention. “Edge of Utah. Middle of nowhere.”

“You’ll be long gone by the time I make it to anyone,” Charlotte said. She tried to sound warm, reassuring, the way she might speak to a small child if he were upset. It occurred to her a split-second too late that this was a bad idea. She pushed on. “I might not even make it to anyone, you know? I might just –”

“Stop talking,” Simon said. He spoke very quietly. “Just shut the hell up and let me think for a minute.”

The car door opened and the car shifted around them as Simon got out. He banged the door shut. It had brought a waft of heat and dust in, but no other smells she could pick out: no gasoline, or burnt rubber, or exhaust. No food, or smoke. They really had stopped in the middle of nowhere.

Charlotte was dizzy. It was a good thing she was sitting down because her head spun and she felt a little detached from the world. Adrenaline and terror, she thought at first. Then realized it was more likely because she hadn’t eaten in, what, three days? Four days? She had no idea how long she’d been strapped by her ankle to this seat. It felt like years.

The heat was too much, so she put it away and replaced it with the gentle chill of a warmed-up car cruising across a wintry landscape. The plastic tie around her ankle hurt, so she put it away and stretched her legs. The sitting still was unbearable, so she put it away and put the car in motion. The loneliness hurt, an ache like an old wound that would not heal. So she put that away.

“We’re here,” Eric said. He smiled when she looked at him. “Close your eyes, love.”

She closed her eyes obediently. Eric drove a few minutes more, then stopped the car. He opened the door, a chill breeze wafting in. There were no smells with it, nothing but the sharp, clean air of winter in the middle of nowhere. She heard his footsteps around the car, and then he opened her door and helped her out. Her left ankle hurt a little, like she had sprained it or something…but Eric supported her weight. With her eyes closed and the roughness of the snow underfoot, she needed his arms around her waist.

They walked a little ways. “I hope this was worth the wait,” she teased, leaning against him. He was a hutch of warmth and pleasure in the cold landscape.

“I think it is,” he said. “I’m sorry you hate to wait so long.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” she said, but that wasn’t true and they both knew it. She leaned on him a little harder and realized that tears were welling up in her eyes. The lump of terror that had been in her throat, it was just a lump now, and it was making it very hard to breath.

They stopped walking and she pushed her face against his shoulder, and she sobbed. Nothing graceful or controlled about it. She just sobbed and cried. It was so hard to breathe now, so incredibly hard to breathe, that lump in her throat constricted her airways until it felt like nothing was coming in. Eric’s hands were around her, caressing her back and brushing her long hair out of the way.

“It’s okay now,” he whispered, kissing her ear as he spoke. “You’re here. It’s okay now. Just hold onto me.”

“I miss you,” she managed. “I love you… and I miss you so bad.”

“I know.” He kissed her again. She felt dizzy, so dizzy, and inhaling wasn’t filling her lungs. “I’m right here.” Suddenly, he sounded a little more urgent. “Open your eyes, Charlotte. Look around.”

She did. She turned away.

The world had transformed around them. Behind them, a snowy world full of whiteness and black trees, a small blue car sitting on the side of a black strip of road. But her feet and boots, they were on velvet grass. A blue sky domed over the world. Before her, around her, as far as the eye could see: sunflowers.

Endless sunflower fields. They stretched on and on, all their black eyes turned toward the sun, rows of them running down into valleys and up hills, cresting the hilltops as they reached for the sky. The fields ran all the way to the horizon, where maybe they finally brushed the light blue dome that they longed for. Brilliant yellow petals wreathed around black, unblinking centers atop tall green bodies with strong, broad leaves. There were narrow paths between the rows.

Maybe it was because she’d pushed herself against Eric’s chest that it had been so hard to breathe, because now it was the easiest thing in the world. Warm, clean air filled her and calmed her. What a silly girl she was sometimes, Charlotte thought: to make herself stop breathing against Eric’s jacket.

Eric’s hand closed around hers. She turned to him and he kissed her, full and hard on the lips. She gave herself utterly to the kiss.

And then, hand in hand, they went off down the miniscule paths that wound through the sunflower fields like veins. The sun was high, and it felt like it might never set. They could explore forever, together. That was how it felt.

Simon drove on, alone.

He had traveled miles before he calmed down and felt the anger and terror settle. The road rolled on beneath his red Cadillac. Dusty plains stretched out beside him, shades of brown and black. They led to towering, jagged mountains which rose out of the salt plains.

This had been the worst vacation ever, and he was pissed as hell about it. It wasn’t his fault, not even a little. He’d done nothing different this time. So what the hell had happened to get him saddled with such bad luck?

But the more the miles rolled past, the more the dry desert heat baked away the gloom. Eventually, he was thinking, ‘Well hell, this might not be so bad after all’. He’d never picked up a girl in Utah before. He liked the beachfront girls of the Pacific coast, but he’d seen some of them Mormon bitches in Salt Lake City. He could go for one of ‘em. She’d be normal, with the usual screaming and crying and trying to escape. Nothing terrifying. And it was pretty far off whatever pattern he might have. It’d work. The trip was salvageable. Totally salvageable.

The sun crept down the sky, flaming into a blazing red as it sank below the horizon. Simon turned on the radio, where Credence Clearwater Revival sang about a bad moon, John Fogarty hoping you’d got your things together. Simon turned on his headlights.

Eventually, the long crawl of the straight freeway got to him. It had been a horrible day, and he was exhausted. He pulled off the freeway, a ways from the road, killed the engine and the lights, tilted his seat back and closed his eyes. There was no one next to him to worry about. He could sleep as deep as he liked. Like anyone on vacation might do.

He was almost asleep, he was just on the verge, when a gust of frigid air hit him and snapped him awake, quick as if he’d been slapped.

He sat up, squinting. It was brighter than nighttime now, and he gaped: He was in the passenger seat of the Cadillac. Beyond the car, a snowy landscape stretched endlessly, his view of the horizon broken only by the thick forests of snow-covered pine trees. The tarmac unrolled ahead of the car as it hurtled down the road.

The air vents pulled air in from outside, blasting unbelievable cold at him. He tried to reach forward and push them away, but his hands wouldn’t move. He looked down.

His hands were zip-tied to his thighs. And when he tried to shift his legs, he discovered they were zip-tied too. He couldn’t see what they were tied to, but he knew. He knew precisely where to attach those on the underside of a car seat, after all.

“…the fuck?”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” said a voice beside him. He looked over at the driver.

Behind the wheel sat a thin young man with hair of such a pale blonde, it was nearly white. He had three days’ worth of stubble on his face and he drove with both his thumbs resting on the center of the steering wheel. When he looked over, he smiled at Simon.

“You’re dead,” Simon said stupidly.

“Yes,” Eric said. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”

“Done what?”

“Touched her. Hurt her. Gone near her,” Eric said. Simon’s teeth chattered so hard, he could barely hear Eric over the sound of them rattling in his skull.

The world around the car was gloomy and menacing. It scared Simon to look out the window. It seemed alive, the snowy world: like there were huge wolves behind each tree, unspeakable creatures lurking beneath the piles of snow, waiting to tear him apart, waiting to scream insanely at him. He shivered so hard.

Claustrophobia settled in and he tried to yank his hands free. All he managed to do was send burning pain up from his wrists and shred his own skin. It didn’t help. His breath came in short bursts, the cold air hurting his lungs.

“Settle down, we’re almost there,” Eric said.

“This is a dream,” Simon said. “This is a stupid dream. Like that shit she was always talking about. Her daydreaming.”

“Like that,” Eric agreed. “Precisely like that. But she was better than you, and better than me. I think that means she had a better quality dream, don’t you agree? I envied that about her. I loved that so much.”

Eric pulled off the road and drove through the snow. The car slowed and sank until Simon thought it would simply get stuck, but it pushed on. The trees loomed very close, reaching down to brush it with pine-needle skeleton fingers and thick shrouds of snow. The sky was invisible now, obscured by the canopy of the trees. Simon shivered so hard, it hurt his wrists. He couldn’t stop.

“We’re here.” Eric said, stopping the car.

There was nothing around but endless trees and the feeling of something lurking. Terror flared up in Simon’s stomach, so forcefully that it caused tears to prickle his eyes.

Eric opened his door. He pushed it all the way open and then began to walk away.

“Wait!” Simon screamed, gibbering in terror. “Don’t leave me here! This is a dream this has got to be a dream!”

Ten feet away from the car, Eric looked back. “You know,” he said, “I don’t feel that matters one way or the other.”

He kept walking. Simon shrieked after him as madness swallowed his brain, fired him so that he wasn’t aware of the loss of feeling in his hands, and his legs. He was unaware of the woods around him or the car or anything but his own terror and claustrophobia and the raw-throated violence of his screams…

Copyright © 2012 by Peter Damien

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