Header 2

Header 2

by Edward Lee

Necro Publications

2011

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HEADER 2

Text © 2011 Edward Lee

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For Brian Keene.

Lemme know when you

need more crabs!

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First and foremost, I must thank Dave Barnett for publishing HEADER so long ago; next I must thank Glenn Danzig and Verotik Inc. for the very cool comic version and solid pay. Likewise, I’m quite grateful to Michael Kennedy and Mike Anthony of Mpyreal Entertainment for having the sheer audacity to make HEADER into such a wonderful movie; and also to Jerry Chandler and Don May of Synapse Films for releasing it; and to Thomas Deja, Tony Timpone, and Mike Gingold at Fangoria. And I must thank actors extraordinaire Jake Suffian and Eliot Kotek and everyone else in the movie, cast and crew, because you are all dynamite! Thank you!

Further thanks must be paid to my terrific friends at Wild Willy’s in Largo, Florida, the coolest bar in the world: Nick, Rhonda, Johnny, Bob Monday, Sheri, Roz, Stacy, Mitch, Randi, English Richard, James, Royce, Doug, and the rest. To Wendy Brewer and Bob Strauss for indefatigable proofing. Thanks to Tony and Kim at Camelot, and also to the following fans and readers: Paul Legerski; Sandy Griffin and Tony Brock; Jonah Martin, Rob Johns, Jordan Krall, splatterhead4ever, harleymack , Amy M Pimental, mrliteral, Horror Freek, Lilith666, Bateman, Lazy Old Fart, vantro, TravisD, JameyWebb, reelsplatter, boysnightout, Nephren-ka, carthoss, Amano Jyaku, Insalubrious, VT Horrorfan, bgeorge, Tod Clark, John Copeland, dathar, bateman, godawful, Ken Arneson, Bob & Jamie Taylor, Killa Klep, darvis, antitheism, S. Howard, S. Eliot-O’Leary, FrederickHamilton, niogeoverlord, horrormike, vladcain, Kerri, IrekB, Onemorejustincase, jesus was a robot, oh, and I mustn’t forget Dr. A.N. for delightful medical info.

As a side note: I apologize humbly to the town of Pulaski—of which I obviously know precious little—for inaccuracies and various bombast. I had to use your town in this fictional realm only to corroborate details relative to HEADER 1. Please forgive me!

E.L.

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Chapter 1

SOMEWHERE NEAR THE VIRGINIA/WEST VIRGINIA LINE

LATE-DECEMBER, 2010

It was—oh, but delimitation seems called for regarding the unwritten theorem that unless one is, say, Charles Dickens, the writer must never begin a novel with the words It was, due to the shiftlessness of the simple-past form of the verb to be. Poet extraordinaire Ezra Pound, for instance, asserted that the verb to be (and all its indicatives: is, was, were, etc.) was indeed the most important verb in the English language but also the weakest. Exceptions to all rules, however, must be minded; and on that desultory note— considerate Reader—we shall begin again…

It was thirteen days after the 9-year-old hillboy, Crory Tuckton, son of Dumar and Mary Beth Tuckton (the maiden name of the latter being Martin, niece of the late Jake Martin), and grandson of 57-year-old Helton Tuckton, had disappeared.

To reiterate: the boy disappeared.

Without a trace.

Hence, nearly the last fortnight, the Tuckton household (or more accurately shackhold, for they domiciled in Helton’s sprawling, dilapidated oak-plank and cedar- and tin-roofed shack) had lived its life beneath a caul of tense, imponderable despair. No one dared speculate aloud what had become of the boy, though in somber privacy, Helton himself supposed that young Crory, whilst venturing to Hog Neck Lake to trap crawdads as he did every morn, had gotten hit by a copperhead. The idea that he had been abducted had never occurred to any of them.

Nevertheless, though in his simple yet strident backwoods wisdom, Helton Tuckton rarely bowed to such whimsy as superstition, nor was he given in particular to the neurotic compulsion known as triskaidekaphobia (i.e. the fear of the number 13). On this day, however, the thirteenth day, he paused to scratch his massive gray-blond beard and postulate, Blammed if it ain’t been thirteen days since Dumar’s tike disser-peered. Shore as hail hope that don’t bring no bad luck…

It would.

Crory’s mother, the aforementioned Mary Beth Tuckton, in the throes of liquor-amplified sorrow, had hanged herself six days after the little shaver’s disappearance, which is mentioned here only as an interesting formality: 13 being the unlucky number, and 6 being the