I’m in serious trouble.
Horror wasn’t somebody chasing you with a chain saw. It was standing in front of a room full of somebodies, feeling like you
didn’t belong there, having to deliver something you didn’t believe in, reading something that didn’t impress anybody.
The stacks of paper in his closet seemed endless. One day he would organize everything. He had said that five months ago to
Lucy, who had told him she would help him. But she was running out of time to help him with this project or any project.
All of his writing was in here. He even had a filing system which used to work but now was overloaded and disjointed. There
was everything from folders and files of previous novels to book ideas to works in progress to interesting articles to his
massive, stuffed contracts file folder.
There was a hard copy of Sorrow, his fourth horror novel.
There was a photo album next to it.
There were a handful of foreign editions of Run Like Hell.
Dennis sucked in a breath. Tried to figure out a plan.
Tell them I’m sick.
That was a horrible idea. So were the other ten he had.
No, I need to sit my butt in that seat and write, advice I’ve given a hundred, maybe a thousand aspiring novelists who want
to see their name in big print on a book cover and want to be one of the headliners at a big-name gig in New York.
Just then something in the closet caught his eye.
It was colored paper. Orange paper in fact.
It was under another thick manuscript—some early draft of one of his unpublished novels. He didn’t remember ever printing
anything on orange paper.
It was a manuscript printed in very small handwriting. There had to be at least 250 pages, maybe 300.
The title was one word that didn’t ring a bell.
Reptile.
Neither did the author’s name.
Cillian Reed.
Dennis turned the page and started reading. He couldn’t remember reading this before, and he knew he would have remembered.
The opening sentence was good.
Chilling and creepy and good.
The first person he killed didn’t scream and didn’t cry because she was too surprised that her son could do such a thing.
He continued reading, walking across the office to the leather love seat against one wall. He sat down, turning the first
page.
The actual killing was on page two, and it took his breath away, surprising him, making him want to know what would happen
next.
He devoured the next thirty pages in perhaps fifteen minutes. He got goose bumps. Glanced over his shoulder. Felt a bit panicky.
For the first time in a long time, he wanted to keep reading, he wanted—needed, in fact—to see what happened to the young
woman, the girlfriend at the center of the story, to see if she got out alive.
Where did this come from, and who is Cillian Reed?
He looked for anything else in the manuscript—an address or an e-mail or even a date—but he couldn’t find anything.
Dennis searched his closet for half an hour. It was almost three thirty in the morning.
He couldn’t find anything else. No more orange sheets, no more pages with typewriter imprints, nothing else connected with
this. Just a manuscript that appeared out of nowhere.
As he returned to his computer, the screen sleeping the same way he should have been, the orange pages lying on the edge of
the couch, Dennis suddenly had an idea.
The creak in the door awoke him.
One hairy finger wrapped around the edge of the door, then another, then an entire spider scurried across the carpet toward
him.
He had never seen a tarantula before, but it fascinated him.
It crept closer.
He stared in front of him at the pages, so many pages, all written with black ink on orange paper.
He looked at the last page he had written.
A rustling near the door brought his attention back. Another spider. He wondered where they were coming from.
Then another, another, one more.
The first furry creature had made it to his desk and now rounded the edge to go underneath, to his bare feet. When it made
its way over his feet, onto his toes, he wasn’t surprised. It felt odd, itchy, but he didn’t move, not even when he felt the
bite.
The tiny teeth dug into his skin and made him wince, but he remained still.
He wrote another page, then looked up again. There were spiders crawling up the walls. One crawled up his leg, toward his
lap.
He looked at the bottle on his desk. Then at the pills next to it. But that was just liquor and speed, nothing crazy, not
enough to make him hallucinate.
It might have been some of the other things he took. He couldn’t remember the day, the time, the year, anything, nothing but
the story.
He was almost finished.
Ten—eleven—twelve?—days ago, he had started this. Writing in a mad, desperate, frenzied state, letting the drugs and booze
keep him going. Going going going.
“Gone,” he said to the tarantula that crawled up his belly toward his face.
Now they were dropping from the ceiling too.
Onto his head, his arms, his hands.
He kept writing.
The music played, and it helped him too.
It was so loud.
In his head, everything was loud.
And the words kept coming, like yesterday’s lunch you couldn’t help puking, like a deep, dark secret you couldn’t help telling,
like a deep, dark hole you couldn’t help falling into.
“The lunatic is in my head,” someone sang, and he agreed.
Tarantulas were everywhere, and he brushed them away, his pen running out of ink.
“There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me.”
He was running out of adjectives, and the sentences were running out of structure, and finally finally finally he finished.
And he wrote the words, “The End.”
And then, covered in spiders, furry, hairy, thick spiders, he rested his head on the book, his first, his masterpiece.
This will get Dennis Shore’s attention, he thought. This time he won’t simply send me a generic form letter. This time he’ll
take notice. He will have to.
The words went around and around and around.
Dennis.
He stopped typing for a moment, the voice a whisper but somehow heard above the music blaring from his computer. He could
see the word count on the bottom of his document, the number continuing to get higher and higher. It already read 35,000 words.
He was soaring.
Dennis.
He turned around but knew the only things behind him were bookshelves. Dennis muted the song, waited.
I’m not far.
His head jerked left. Toward the closet.
Don’t stop looking.
He stood and walked over to where the voice seemed to be coming from. It was her voice. He could picture her and sometimes
smell her and could even sometimes hear her when he was trying, but not like this, not this way.
It’s time.
The door was closed. He turned the handle.
The faint light spilling into the closet from his office showed him enough. He saw the bare legs, so long, and the ankles.
She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. The shirt was wet with blood, as was the carpet next to her. A fresh wound bled from
her head, her eyes closed, her mouth caked in blood.
And just as Dennis was about to go to her, her eyes opened. A bloody cracking mouth spoke.
I will always love you. Always. Forever.
And then a ping sounded, the ping of an incoming e-mail, the ping awakening him from this deep sleep at his computer.
The music had stopped. He checked the time. In half an hour it would be midnight.
Dennis looked over at his closet door and saw it was closed. His head hurt. He rubbed his eyes and yawned. For the first time
in—well, maybe the first time ever—the thought of that door and what lay on the other side of it scared him. The stillness
of the suburban night and this empty house and that horrific vision and that door…
Come on, Den. Get a grip.
He jogged his mouse to wake up his computer, which he was sure wasn’t dreaming about his dead wife. The empty page on the
screen was the first thing he saw.
He hadn’t written 35,000 words. He didn’t even have 3,000 words.
Dennis shook his head and cursed. He decided to open up his e-mail, which probably wasn’t the best idea but there was nothing
else to do.
Except write.
Or sleep.
Or bury the corpse that was decomposing in his closet.
The e-mail was from Cillian.
He’d known he’d eventually hear from the guy again. It had been a week since the creepy young man had approached him at the
book signing in New York. He was surprised Cillian’s next step was a harmless e-mail. The address was interesting:
[email protected]
.
Dennis wasn’t sure what Demonsaint meant and wasn’t in the mood to ask. The e-mail was short.
Dear Mr. Shore: Do you remember what it was like when you first wrote Breathe? Did it come easily? Will you ever recapture
that energy? Cillian
That pompous little jerk. He’s goading me now. Taunting me.
He started to write a reply, something along the lines of “Get lost” except far more creative, but stopped and canceled the
e-mail.
That’s what he wants: a response.
A few moments later, an instant-messaging box popped up on his screen, full of text.
I know you’re there. And I know you want to respond. I’ll ask my question again. Do you remember what it was like writing
a book that would go on to sell several million copies? Do you remember when you didn’t have the pressure of a name, of a
slot to fill on the NY Times list, of a thousand mouths to feed at a publishing house?
Dennis didn’t answer, instead turning up the music and trying to get some writing done. He clicked off the box in the corner
of his screen. But it burst back almost instantly.
You don’t remember, do you?
Then another.
You can never recapture what it was like, can you?
Then another.
You’re afraid you’ve lost it. And this is the thing, Mr. Shore. I believe you have too.
Then another.
You can’t begin to fathom loss, or hurt, or pain.
But you will.
You will, Dennis.
Dennis gritted his teeth and cursed, picking up a paperback on his desk and hurling it across the room. He would’ve done that
to his iMac, but he needed it. He shut down his computer and left the room. On his way out, he decided to open his closet
door. Just open it. Just in case.
The door sounded like it hadn’t swung open like that for some time. Dennis turned on the light.
There was nothing and nobody there. Just a lot of books.
He turned off the light and closed the door.
Tonight the house felt very still, and very empty.
The old brick church in downtown Geneva had stood there for more than a hundred years. It had character, the kind of church
couples put their names on waiting lists for their weddings, the kind that would probably still be there even if someone proved
God didn’t exist. Lucy went there with Audrey the last few years of her life. Dennis had gone a few times after constant urging,
but not enough to consider it routine, like going to the dentist. At least going to the dentist accomplished something.
Throughout the years, as Dennis and the girls passed by the church, he often remarked at the weekly sayings on the sign outside
the building. Whoever put these up had a good sense of humor.
“Why can’t the preacher have a sense of humor like those signs?” Dennis asked his wife one summer day. “That’s the kind of
church I want to go to.”
Some of the more classic ones Dennis remembered included “We are not Dairy Queen, but we have great Sundays!”, “Have you read
my #1 bestseller? There will be a test. God” (that one in particular made him laugh), “Stop, drop, and roll does not work
in hell” (which he said was inspiring—giving warnings about impending fire and brimstone to an entire city), and then the
whole series of
God is like
… including the classic “GOD is like ALLSTATE.… You’re in good hands with Him.”
Even Lucy had laughed at some of the church signs. Dennis, meanwhile, just went off about them.
“Okay, so what’s that trying to say then?” he asked one day after passing a sign.
“Yes, I know.”
“You know what?” Dennis asked, smirking.
“That one was—interesting,” Lucy said.
“ ‘Interesting’?” Dennis had laughed at her. “ ‘Try Jesus. If you don’t like Him, the devil will always take you back.’ Well,
that’s comforting. I would love to know what they teach the kids in Sunday school.”
“Those signs are just meant to get people’s attention.”
“And tell us we’re on our way to hell. I already know that based on some of the things my book critics have said.”
“I picture some eighty-year-old janitor putting up those signs,” Lucy said with a gleam in her eyes. “One of those old-timers
who always has a saying and a quip.”
“Exactly,” Dennis said. “And I bet the pastors scratch their heads and go ‘Oh boy.’ But it’s Vernie’s job.”
“Vernie?” Lucy asked.
“Sure. Seems like he’d be a Vernie.”
Lucy shook her head. “No. I see him as a Walter.”
“This is why I don’t give you early drafts of my novels.”
She nudged him. “No, it’s because I don’t read your books. I don’t want nightmares.”
“‘You think it’s hot now.… God.’”
“Stop,” Lucy said.
“I think one morning the pastor should just read a list of all the church signs. I’d go to that service.”
Passing the church the morning after his online contact with Cillian, Dennis recalled a host of memories. And it felt like
brushing by a cactus.