For a second he lay on his back, out of breath. He could see the figure standing over him, and for a brief moment he looked
into Hank’s eyes—but they weren’t Hank’s eyes.
They belonged to someone else.
It’s him. It’s Cillian.
But that was just for a second as the pain in his jaw and cheek throbbed.
“Hank, what the—”
“You guys get on out of here,” the bartender said, obviously annoyed.
Hank grabbed a bar stool and chucked it toward the bar. It hit the edge and snapped in pieces. The bartender didn’t hesitate.
He took the palm of his hand and slapped it over Hank’s head.
“Get outta here now or I call the cops, Hank.”
Hank was still muttering something as Dennis stood up.
“You’re both part of them! You’re with them! I can see through you!” Hank bolted out the door.
Dennis felt even more dizzy than before.
“What a head case,” the bartender said.
Dennis gave him an extra twenty. “Sorry about that.”
“Yeah, sure. You might want to see where he took off to.”
Outside on the street, the misty drizzle felt refreshing. Dennis walked down the block and saw a figure next to the truck.
He’s so drunk he can’t even get into his own car.
Dennis called out, but as he jogged toward his friend, he could see the terror on Hank’s face.
“No no no no no no!” Hank shouted over and over again.
The big guy was in tears. As Dennis reached the opposite side of the truck, he could see Hank sobbing, blabbering, trying
desperately to get inside.
“Don’t hurt me! Please, don’t hurt me! Don’t take me away! Don’t!”
“Hank—man! What? What’s wrong?”
Dennis lurched around the vehicle, and Hank suddenly fell to the street, his hands covering his head and his face, his voice
like a small child’s, his wailing continuing.
“Don’t hurt me! Don’t touch me! Not again! Not anymore!”
Dennis went to offer a hand to Hank, but the shrieking only grew louder. He backed up.
“Please just leave me be! Please go away! Go away! Take your evil somewhere else!”
Dennis had no idea what he was seeing, what he was experiencing. Hank looked terrified, like a ten-year-old boy screaming
at a talking skeleton.
Dennis could feel himself shaking, the light rain falling on his forehead and his cheeks.
“Just go!” Hank shouted as if his very life depended on it. “Please go. Go and leave me be!”
So Dennis left him.
And as he walked back to his vehicle, he couldn’t stop shaking.
When will they learn? When will they ever get it in their heads that it’s not about the work, it’s not about the pages or
the word count—it’s about feeling the words, about living them. And you can’t know until you’ve lived them and tasted them.
Rain dripped off the window ledges, the fading sun hidden behind afternoon clouds, the soggy night descending.
Cillian knew that’s when the demons would come, when the visions would resume, when he would be able to write.
For some time now he would start to get a headache about midday. He worked odd hours serving tables, which didn’t help the
headaches. Sometimes the sun would make his mind hurt, as though he were a vampire. He dreaded the days because they lasted
so long.
But night would come, just like the approaching evening right now, and that’s when things would change.
Nobody would believe him, but he didn’t have to make anybody believe. People were fools, and fools were only interested in
themselves. They didn’t take the time to notice. But he noticed. He watched. He smelled and listened and touched. He waited.
He enjoyed.
And the darkness would cover him like a blanket, smothering him, burning him.
Sometimes he would find himself hunched over at the small desk typing away, his fingers cut and bleeding.
Sometimes he would wake up naked with a notebook in hand and scribbles and drawings and a pen that thankfully wasn’t stuck
in his side like one time years ago.
Sometimes he would try to combat the darkness with alcohol, but that didn’t help. Bob had given him some drugs to try, but
they didn’t help.
Life was full of spirits, full of voices, full of brokenness, and he opened the window at night and swallowed it in and let
it cover and corrode until he woke up somewhere not remembering the last six or eight hours of his life.
The rain fell. Sometimes he would go outside and sit in the street and wait for oncoming cars to approach and nearly hit him
and swerve and honk their horns. That was amusing.
They don’t understand, and they can’t see what the words are really for, what they really mean, what the story really is.
Somebody turned down the light, like a dimmer slowly turning off.
He thought of the hypocrite author who had lost it, the poser who still pawned off used goods and useless stories.
You don’t even believe in God, and that’s sad because I know better. I know I believe in God, so what does that make you?
He turned to the chair in his small bedroom and saw the eyes looking back at him, the animal perched, the sickly wet fur and
the fangs, this creature that watched, that smelled, that wouldn’t go away.
Bob can’t see him, but that’s okay because Bob’s got his own set, his own ways, his own thinking.
Sometimes he would read what he had written the night before—thousands of words, dozens of pages—and he would be scared. They
weren’t his words. They belonged to someone else.
But he liked this because something was working.
This is true inspiration. This is how you really do it, Dennis Shore, and one day, one day, if I’m lucky, I’m going to show
you how.
He found a sweatshirt and crumpled it and put it against his mouth and nose and inhaled.
It still smelled like her.
And soon he would be with her again.
“Can I come in?”
Dennis looked at the half-opened door to his office, the light from the morning sun streaking across his carpet. “Of course.”
Lucy was already dressed for the day, having worked out at a health club not far from the house before having breakfast and
then getting ready. She wore jeans and button-down shirt. His wife looked ten years younger than her age.
“It’s always so cold in your office.”
“That’s because there are lots of windows. But the higher the sun gets, the more my office and my fingers warm up.”
“Productive morning?” she asked.
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Which one is this again?”
“I’m calling it
Empty Spaces.
It’s about a serial killer.”
Lucy raised her eyebrows and gave a humored look. She didn’t ask the question she always used to ask him when his career in
writing macabre tales began:
When are you going to write a love story?
He eventually got testy with the question one day and told her he’d do it when someone gave him a million dollars to write
it, something that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, not while his name was Dennis Shore, not while his books scared the
snot out of readers looking to be scared.
She sat on the blanket draped across the leather armchair that was supposed to be for reading and mostly served as a bed for
their cat, Buffy. For a moment she stared around the office.
“What’s up?” Dennis asked her.
“Nothing. Just came in here to be with you.”
He looked at her, the light brown hair still long, her eyes so deep and earnest, her mind going a hundred miles an hour. She
was always thinking and acting and living and doing.
“Bored?”
“No,” she said with a smile.
Something was up and both of them knew it.
“Okay, wait a minute. Did I miss something? Someone’s birthday or anniversary?”
She laughed. It was like a drug, that laugh. So confident, so joyous, so right.
“I want to tell you something,” Lucy said.
Dennis leaned back in his chair and watched her, waiting.
“Let me guess—something about the cancer.”
“Uh, no,” she said. “I doubt I’d look this happy if it was.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s about Audrey.”
“Something good?”
She nodded, still smiling, the morning sun’s glow accenting her strong jawline and those ocean-deep eyes. Dennis couldn’t
help smiling back. He waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And suddenly, he found her gone.
The chair was still there, as was the blanket, but Lucy wasn’t sitting in it.
He found himself in his office, his iMac still asleep, the light from the windows leaking in. Dennis moved and his back snapped
in pain. It took him a moment to realize how he’d gotten here, to realize the time, to realize he’d been sleeping in his chair
for hours.
The room was quiet. Too quiet.
He hadn’t wanted to wake up. He wanted to stay sleeping, to live out that morning and that day and that life. He wanted to
see her again and to hear her voice and see her smile and feel her life.
Dennis glared at the chair and could almost smell her.
It was real and it happened and that’s why you dreamed. You can relive moments from the past.
But the dreams always, always turned into nightmares.
He still remembered what Lucy had told him.
He still remembered his promise to her.
But you never told Audrey, did you? You couldn’t, and you rationalized that it was because she was buried and gone. But you
promised, Dennis, and you never fulfilled it.
It was a slap across his face by a cold, rigid hand.
The glow and warmth of the morning in his dreams was long gone.
Just like Lucy.
“Hank.”
“Hey, man.”
“You sound awful.”
“I feel worse than I sound.”
Dennis had tried twice that morning to get a hold of Hank. If he hadn’t answered on this third attempt, Dennis was going to
head over to his house. He wasn’t sure if Hank had made it into his truck last night, much less make it back home. Part of
him wouldn’t have been surprised if they had found his body in the Fox River somewhere.
“What day is it?” Hank asked.
“Thursday.”
“Good thing I don’t work Thursdays.”
“What happened to you last night?”
“Huh?”
It sounded like Hank was struggling to get out of his bed, or wherever it was he had fallen asleep.
“Last night at the bar. What happened? You sorta flipped out on me.”
“Really? I don’t remember. Last thing I recall is sitting at the table with you, downing beers.”
“Did you have much before I got there?”
“No, not that I can remember,” Hank said.
“I’ve seen you gone, but never like that.”
“Like what?”
“You just—you batted me on the side of my head with a beer pitcher, then threw a bar stool at Jimmy. I’ve got a nice bruise
across my cheek to prove it.”
“Oh man. I’d better go by there today.”
“And that wasn’t the worst. You just—I don’t know, Hank. You were pretty messed up.”
“What’d I do?”
Dennis didn’t want to tell him that he’d turned into a blubbering mess. Hank couldn’t fully appreciate it even if Dennis described
it to him in full detail. The sight of his friend weeping uncontrollably and crawling away from him in terror—it was probably
one of the most unsettling scenes Dennis could remember seeing.
“That bad, huh?” Hank asked after Dennis’s silence.
“Hank, you just—you really sorta buckled under the pressure.”
Hank just laughed. He was back to good ole Hank. “Yeah, well, you were the one who wanted to go out.”
“Is everything okay?”
“What do you mean? With what?”
“With you.”
Again Hank laughed. It was a laid-back, gruff but tender laugh, the kind even the grumpiest of individuals would have to smile
back at. And Dennis, as always, obliged.
“I’m up to my neck in debt, and my ex keeps in touch enough to continue breakin’ my heart, and you and I both know I drink
way too much. But other than that, yeah, everything’s okay.”
“I’d lay low for a while, you know. Just—take it easy.”
“You take it easy.”
“How about we both take it easy?” Dennis replied.
“Okay then. We still watching college ball this Saturday?”
“Of course.”
Dennis got off the phone and could still hear echoes of Hank’s desperate cries. He couldn’t understand why Hank had just snapped,
why he was suddenly paranoid and deranged, and why he had been scared of Dennis.
Then he recalled the text from Cillian.
“You remember Marooned, don’t you?”
Suddenly it washed over him.
The story and the characters and the images and the scenes.
And it made sense.
And for the first time, he realized what he was dealing with.
He huddled in the walk-in closet next to his bedroom.
He couldn’t stop shaking.
Even though it was bright and sunny outside, he remained in the shadows of the partially closed closet, the racks of clothes
hovering above him.
“No,” he said out loud, quiet but still audible. “No.”
Thoughts buzzed in his head like a swarm of bees, and no matter how he might run and how he might swat his arms to get rid
of them, they were still there and not going anywhere.
It wasn’t just that he was losing his mind.
He could deal with that.
But this… this made no sense, none whatsoever.
How could he know?
But another voice inside him told him the truth, the truth he didn’t want to face.
He didn’t dare articulate it.
Dennis didn’t even want to think about it.
How could Cillian know?
First it was the girl on the bridge, a pivotal scene from
Breathe.
Next came the nightmarish romp through Home Depot, a pivotal scene from
Scarecrow.
Then the terrifying voices filling his house just like they had in his novel
Echoes.