Bedbugs
By Rick Hautala
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Copyright
201
3
/ The Estate of Rick Hautala
Copy Edited by: Anita Lorene Smith
Cover
d
esign
b
y:
David Dodd
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courtesy of:
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U
nder his own name, Rick Hautala has written close to thirty novels, including the million-copy best seller
Nightstone
, as well as
Winter Wake
,
The Mountain King
, and
Little Brothers
. He has published two short story collections:
Bedbugs
and
Occasional Demons
. He has had over sixty short stories published in a variety of national and international anthologies and magazines.
Writing as A. J. Matthews, his novels include the bestsellers
The White Room
,
Looking Glass
,
Follow
,
and
Unbroken
.
His most recent release was
Indian Summer
, a new “Little Brothers” novella from Cemetery Dance Publications, as well as two forthcoming novels,
Chills
and
Waiting
. He recently sold
The Star Road
, a science fiction novel co-written with Matthew Costello, to Brendan Deneen at Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s and
Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala
, to Dark Regions Press.
With Mark Steensland, he has written several short films, included the multiple award winning
Peekers
, based on the short story by Kealan Patrick Burke;
The Ugly File
, based on the short story by Ed Gorman; and
Lovecraft’s Pillow
, inspired by a suggestion from Stephen King.
Born and raised in Rockport, Massachusetts, Rick is a graduate of the University of Maine in Orono with a Master of Arts in English Literature. He lives in southern Maine with author Holly Newstein.
In 2012, he was awarded the
Lifetime Achievement Award
from the Horror Writers’ Association.
For more information, check out his website
www.rickhautala.com
.
Book List
Novels
Beyond the Shroud
Cold Whisper
Dark Silence
Dead Voices
Follow
Four Octobers
Ghost Light
Impulse
Little Brothers
Looking Glass
Moon Death
Moonbog
Moonwalker
Night Stone
Shades of Night
The Mountain King
The White Room
The Wildman
Twilight Time
Unbroken
Winter Wake
The Body of Evidence Series
(co-written with Christopher Golden)
Brain Trust
Burning Bones
Last Breath
Skin Deep
Throat Culture
Novellas
Cold River
Indian Summer
Reunion
Story Collections
Bedbugs
Occasional Demons
Untcigahunk: The Complete Little Brothers
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.
A Little Bit of Divine Justice
Afterword by Matthew J. Costello
A Preview of UNTCIGAHUNK: THE COMPLETE LITTLE BROTHERS
A Preview of OCCASIONAL DEMONS
T
he back of my hands started looking like a man’s back when I was—oh, maybe ten or eleven years old.
I remember how fascinated I was by the curling, black hairs I saw sprouting there; how amazed I was when I flexed and unflexed my hands, and watched the twitching blue lines of veins, the knitting needle–thin tendons, and the bony knobs of cartilage and knuckle. Sometimes, I used to constrict the flow of blood to my arms—you know, like a junkie—to make the veins inflate until they fairly bulged through the skin. The bigger they got, the more “manly” I thought my arms and hands looked.
It might seem laughable now, but I still believe hands are a God-given miracle. They let us touch and manipulate the world outside of ourselves. Sure, scientists say that vision is the only sense where the nerve connects directly to the brain, but hands are the only things that let us reach out, to touch and explore the world. They allow us to
feel
love and to
create
what we know and feel, both internally and externally.
They’re our only
real
solid connection to what’s “out there.”
Our other senses—sight, sound, taste, and smell—can all deceive us. They trick us into thinking we’re experiencing something that might not really be there.
But when we touch something, when we hold it in our hands and caress it, we have no doubt whatsoever that it truly exists. When I look at my own hands now, though, I can’t help but be filled with revulsion and horror.
Yes,
horror!
That’s probably an overused word these days, but there’s no better word for what I feel.
These hands—
my
hands—have done things so terrible, so hideous that I can truly say they are no longer mine.
They’ve acted as if powered by a will of their own—a will with a dark, twisted purpose. And in the process, they’ve ended the life of someone—of the one person I’ve ever really been close to—a life I should have cherished above all others.
O
kay, let me start at the beginning.
The easiest part was killing my twin brother, Derrick. No problem there.
I’m serious.
It certainly wasn’t very difficult to orchestrate. You’d think I was a musician, talking like this, but when it actually came time to
do
it, to aim the gun at him and squeeze the trigger, I didn’t flinch or have the slightest hesitation.