Back From The Dead

Jeff was in his basement office gathering some paperwork and she quickly picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

A male voice she didn’t recognize asked, “Hello, can I speak to Tim Gaines, please?”

“This is his mother. Can I ask who’s calling?”

“My name is William Sawyer. I’m responding to an email Tim sent through my website. I’m a writer.”

Recognition set in. William Sawyer was the author of half a dozen suspense novels she’d picked up at the Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Lancaster. “You wrote the novel Scream.”

“That’s me.”

“May I ask why you’re calling my son?”

“He read a novel of mine. Back From the Dead.”

“You’re the author of Back From the Dead?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I thought that was written by somebody else.”

“It’s me. I did that book under a pseudonym.”

“Oh. I see. Tim contacted you?”

“He did.” There was a short pause. “Um, how old is your son, Ms. Gaines?”

“Tim’s sixteen,” Naomi said. “He’ll be seventeen next month.” Jeff was coming up the stairs and she turned to the kitchen. She held her hand up to him as he emerged and mouthed hold on a minute. “Let me guess. Tim contacted you about the ritual that’s depicted in your novel.”

“He did. I was hoping I could — “

“Did Tim tell you what is happening?”

Another short pause. “I’m afraid he didn’t, Ms. Gaines. He simply asked where I got the background information on the spell that’s mentioned in my novel. It was…well, it was another question of his that prompted me to call, actually.”

“And what would that be?”

William Sawyer paused. Naomi had the feeling the author was uncomfortable. Jeff was standing beside her now, asking who she was talking to, and Naomi had to shush him so she could hear. “Ms. Gaines, do you live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania by any chance?”

“We do,” Naomi said, all thoughts to personal privacy set aside.

“The reason I called was due to what’s on the national news.”

Naomi turned to Jeff and mouthed, turn on the news. Jeff nodded and scampered to the television in the living room. “Let me guess. Tim asked you if there was a counter-spell to the one depicted in your novel.”

William sounded surprised. “He did. And he didn’t tell me why he wanted to know, either. It wasn’t until I turned on the news a moment ago and saw what was happening…” William’s voice verged on borderline fear and panic. “What’s happening now is only touched on briefly in my book, Ms. Gaines. I can’t believe its happening, but the events…what I’ve been seeing on TV and the way Tim worded his email…I had to call to find out what’s going on…”

An irrational person would have told William Sawyer that he’d been reprehensible to include that kind of information in his book, even if it was fiction. Suppose somebody mentally unstable took it seriously? Of course, Naomi realized such arguments were bullshit. Detailed concepts of death and destruction were laid out in thousands of novels, plays, and movies every year and the only example Naomi could think of something disastrous happening due to somebody not getting it was a decade ago, when two boys mimicked a scene from a movie by lying down in a busy street during rush hour traffic. Instead of the vehicles driving over them and escaping unscathed as depicted in the movie, the boys weren’t as lucky. They were turned into roadkill.

William Sawyer must have been on her wave-length. “I wrote five horror novels under the Richard Long byline,” he said. “They’ve done moderately well, but they aren’t my bread-and-butter novels by any means. Most of my fiction is pure psychological suspense like Scream, which sells much more than the horror stuff under the Richard Long pseudonym. Prior to today, I would have thought it was more likely for some nut to get inspired by a scene from Scream and smear her cheating husband’s genitals with honey and leave him in the woods for the ants. That book’s sold almost a million copies. My novel Mother Love was even worse. I got hate mail for it, but I got even more letters from women claiming they would have done the same thing if they were in my main character’s position. My psychological suspense novels push buttons, they’re rooted in reality, but they don’t inspire people to do the things I depict. I hardly thought the scenes in a supernatural horror novel would inspire somebody to actually do the wacky shit I describe.”

Despite not having met this man before, Naomi felt an instant kinship with him. She had the impression he was intelligent and often had a hard time with readers who reacted viscerally to the themes of his suspense novels. It was obvious his horror novels weren’t taken as seriously by his hardcore readership. “I’ll get straight to the point Mr. Sawyer.”

“Call me Bill.”

From the living room, Jeff was watching the TV. “Oh my God,” she heard him mutter. “Jesus, hon, you should see this — “

“Hold on,” Naomi said to Jeff. She knew what was happening without needing to see the news. The spell was getting stronger, raising the dead everywhere and powering them, gaining strength as it emanated onward. She turned and headed into the kitchen, talking to William Sawyer who, as far as she knew, was hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. “A classmate of Tim’s borrowed his copy of Back From the Dead. He overheard Tim talking about the book to a group of his friends and was interested in the book for one reason. He wanted the formula to perform a spell that is depicted somewhere in the narrative. I’m not familiar with the book Mr. Sawyer, so please forgive my ignorance of the novel’s plot — “

“That’s okay,” William Sawyer said.

Naomi gave William Sawyer an abbreviated version of what happened. She heard him draw in a breath of surprise. Several times he said, “I can’t believe it.” When she got to the part about Scott Bradfield’s wilding spree and the use of the spell to reanimate the bodies of their murder victims for further abuse, William sounded disturbed, to say the least. He spoke in a hushed voice, as if he were holding his breath. “I don’t know what’s more disturbing. The supernatural elements I’ve never believed in, or what you said about this kid and his friends kidnapping people, taking them to his rich parents’ guesthouse and torturing them. Jesus!”

“So what you described in your book is fictitious?” Naomi asked.

“The ritual? Elements of the ritual are taken from non-fiction accounts.”

“So they’re real?”

William let out a small sigh. “Ms. Gaines…you’ve got to understand…what happens in Back From the Dead is fantasy. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the concept that somebody out there took a piece of fiction as…the real thing.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, Mr. Sawyer, it’s that most people are dumber than stumps. Especially the ones I’m dealing with now where it concerns my son.”

“I’m an Agnostic, Ms. Gaines. I approached the supernatural elements of Back From the Dead from a very pragmatic, anthropological view.”

“But the ritual itself is real?”

“Only elements are.”

“Which elements?”

“There’s a scene in the book where the antagonist performs a ritual in the woods,” William Sawyer explained. “What I describe him doing, the animal sacrifice he makes, the occult items used, the time of year, it’s all based on variations of different occult rituals. A dash of Macumba, a little bit of Santeria, some Wiccan stuff. I threw in elements of pseudo-Satanic stuff for dramatic effect and to give it a more sinister edge. Other elements were inspired by the writings of Justin Grave, a pulp horror writer from the 1930’s who wrote a handful of stories and a novel utilizing the demon Hanbi. Other stuff I made up.”

“Such as utilizing the bones of a human being?” Naomi asked.

There was a short pause. “Did the boy who performed the ritual…use human bones?”

“He dug up a grave to get human bones for the ritual, Mr. Sawyer.”