sharp, cruel little voices. I remember Sherm, right after he’d killed Dugan. He was shouting at something to shut up and get out of his head. I think Sherm knew the voices well. I think they’d been whispering to him for a long time before we even met him.
I just crossed off a day on my short-timers’ calendar. I don’t feel good at all. I’m weak, and I’ve started losing weight again. My throat hurts and the headaches are back, along with the nausea. Last night, I got a nosebleed while I slept. My pillow was crusted with dried blood this morning. I have cancer. At a very advanced stage. It’s growing, growing at an alarming rate. It’s terminal.
The court sentenced John to ten to fifteen years in prison. He was eligible for parole in eight years, but he got out much earlier than that. I was sentenced to a term of not less than fifty years and not to exceed my natural life. That’s not much time. Not much time at all. It’s a death sentence.
There’s only one thing left for me to do. In a little while, I am going out to find myself. If I should get here before I return, please hold me until I get back. Please hold me until I get back.
Please— hold me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BRIAN KEENE is the two-time Bram Stoker Award winning author of several novels and short story collections, including The Rising, Fear of Gravity, No Rest For The Wicked, and City of the Dead (the sequel to The Rising). His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, and several of his novels and short stories have been optioned for film. He has also edited several anthologies. He lives somewhere on the border between Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Insanity, where he spends too much time writing, walking his dog, pulling bank jobs, and drinking tequila. He enjoys planning crimes with his readers. Contact him at www.briankeene.com.
Other Books by Brian Keene:
THE RISING
CITY OF THE DEAD
FEAR OF GRAVITY
NO REST FOR THE WICKED
NO REST FOR THE WICKED REDUX
NO REST AT ALL
TALKING SMACK (audio book)
4X4 (with Geoff Cooper, Michael Huyck & Michael Oliveri)
As Editor:
BEST OF HORRORFIND
BEST OF HORRORFIND II
Be sure not to miss
THE HOLLOW
the next exciting novel from
Brian Keene
Coming from Bantam in Summer 2006.
Read on for a special preview . . .
THE HOLLOW
On sale in Summer 2006
It was on the first day of spring that Big Steve and I saw Shelly Carpenter fucking the hairy man. Winter had been a hard one. Two books to write in five months’ time. Not something I recommend doing, if you can help it. There was a lot of pressure involved. The sales of my first novel, Heart of the Labyrinth, caught my critics, my publisher, and even myself by surprise. It did very well— something that a book of its kind isn’t supposed to do, especially a mass-market paperback with no promotional campaign behind it.
So, flush with success, I quit my day job— only to learn that I wouldn’t be getting a royalty check for at least another year. We’d already blown through the advance: mortgage payments, car and truck payments, new living room furniture for my wife, Tara, and a new laptop for me. Plus, I’d spent quite a bit of my own cash traveling to book signings.
If I’d had an agent, maybe he would have explained that to me. Or maybe not. Personally, I’m glad I don’t have an agent. They require fifteen percent of your earnings, and I was broke. I could have gone back to work at the factory, but I figured that if I applied myself to the writing, I’d be making about as much money as I would at the factory anyway, so I decided to follow what I love doing.
Tara still worked, insisting that she pay the bills while I stayed home and wrote, but we couldn’t survive on just one income. Thus— two more books for two different publishers in five months’
time, written just for the advance money, which would see us through the winter. Nice chunk of change, but when you totaled up the hours I was working, the advance for the next two novels came out to about a buck eighty an hour.
But we needed the money.
The pressure got to me. I started smoking again, and drank coffee nonstop. I’d get up at five, make the daily commute from the bed to the coffee pot to the computer, and start writing. I’d work on one novel until noon, take a break for lunch, and then work on the second novel until late evening. After a full day of that, I’d take care of business— reading contracts, responding to fan mail, checking my message board, giving interviews— all the other things that constitute writing— and then go to bed around midnight.
During those rough months, I’d have gone insane if not for Big Steve. Tara brought him home from the pound to keep me company during the day. Big Steve was a mutt— part beagle, part Rottweiler, part black Lab, and all pussy. Despite his formidable size and bark, Big Steve was scared of his own shadow. He ran from butterflies and squirrels, fled from birds and wind-tossed leaves, and cowered when the mailwoman came to the door. When Tara first brought him home, he hid in the corner of the kitchen for half a day, tail between his legs and his entire body shaking. He got used to us fairly quick, but he was still frightened by anything else. Not that he let it show. When something— it didn’t matter what, the Ferguson kid or a groundhog— stepped onto our property, the Rottweiler inside him came out. He was all bark and no bite, but a robber would have had a hard time believing that. Big Steve became my best friend. We watched TV together. He listened while I read manuscript pages out loud to him. He liked the same beer as me, and the same food. Most importantly, Big Steve knew when it was time to drag my ass away from the computer. That was how we started our daily walks, and now they were a scheduled routine. Two per day— one at dawn, shortly after Tara left for work, and the second at sundown, when she was on her way home. Tara commutes to Baltimore every day, and it was at those times— when she first left and when she was due home— that the house seemed especially lonely. Big Steve had impeccable timing. He’d get me outside and that always cheered me up.
Which brings us back to Shelly Carpenter and the hairy man.
When Tara left for work that morning, on the first day of spring, Big Steve stood at the door and barked once— short and to the point.
Behold, I stand at the door and bark; therefore I need to pee.
“You ready to go outside?” I asked.
He thumped his tail in affirmation, and his ears perked up.
I clipped his leash to his collar (despite his fear of anything that moves, there is enough beagle in Big Steve to inspire a love of running off into the woods with his nose to the ground, and not coming home for days). We stepped outside. The sun was shining, and it felt warm on my face. Tara and I had planted a lilac bush the year before, and the flowers were blooming, fragrant and sweet. Birds chirped and sang to each other in the big oak tree in our backyard. A squirrel ran along the roof of my garage, chattering at Big Steve. The dog shrank away. The long, cold winter had come and gone, and somehow, I had made it through. I’d finished both manuscripts, Cold As Ice and When the Rain Comes. Now, I could finally focus on the novel that I wanted to write. I felt good. Better than I had in months. The weather probably had something to do with that. Now it was spring. The time when nature lets the animal kingdom know that it’s time to make lots of babies. Spring, the season of sex and happiness. Big Steve celebrated the first day of spring by pissing on the lilac bush, pissing on the garage, pissing on the sidewalk, and pissing twice on the big oak tree— which further infuriated the squirrel.
Our house is sandwiched between Main Street and a back alley that separates us from the Fire Hall. The Fire Hall borders a grassy vacant lot and a park, the kind with swings and monkey bars and deep piles of mulch to keep kids from skinning their knees. Beyond the playground lies the forest— twenty square miles of protected woodland,
