I have three legacy published books. The Lost Village, The Haunting of Sam Cabot, and The Holocaust Opera. Those who read my blog and keep up with my writing activities know by now that I’m sorry I ever went with a publisher. That’s not news but it is truer now and more relevant than ever. There is a post on this blog about how to make money publishing short stories an Amazon. If you haven’t read it you should. Here’s the link. http://www.markedwardhall.com/the-pros-of-publishing-short-stories-on-amazon There are other posts relevant to the independent author as well. And if you are an independent writer and you’re not familiar with Joe Konrath’s blog you need to be.

What I want to talk about today is a little novelette I wrote nearly fifteen years ago entitled The Hero of Elm Street. Now I’m primarily a horror writer. The Hero of Elm Street is not a horror story. It’s a light-hearted little ghost story about love, loss and the power of hope. Not generally my style, but because of my grandmother Luella, who meant a lot to me and was my greatest influence, the story has always been dear to my heart.

Back in the dark ages before kindle and nook and self-publishing (now known as independent publishing.) I sent that little story out to nearly every literary magazine in the country. I didn’t hear back from most of them. I did hear from Yankee. They said they liked it but felt it wasn’t right for them at the time. Yeah, we’ve all heard that before. So I buried the story and pretty much forgot about it.

Well, a year ago I decided to include The Hero of Elm Street in my collection, Servants of Darkness. I knew that it might get lost or overlooked in a collection of primarily dark tales. And I was right. Even though the collection has been selling reasonably well, I haven’t heard many people comment on that individual story.

So, on a whim I decided to put it out as a stand-alone story. I commissioned a cover and a little trailer and published it on Amazon. It sold some copies but nothing to write home about. So then I got the bright idea to include it as part of Amazon’s KDP Select Project and offer it for free for five days. KDP Select allows Prime members to borrow books, but the books also remain for sale. The only caveat: authors who sign up must agree to go exclusive with Amazon for a period of ninety days. I didn’t care. The story wasn’t doing much anyway. What did I have to lose?

250 copies were downloaded in the first three days of the promo and I thought, well, good try but that’s that. Then something amazing happened. Within the next twenty-four hours the story exploded as more than ten thousand copies were downloaded. I was stunned. I started receiving messages and mail and reviews, most saying how much they were moved by the story and thanking me for publishing it. I couldn’t believe it.

It was all very nice but I figured after the free promo ended that would be it. I was wrong. It continued to sell at an alarming rate. And some of my other titles started taking off. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t do anything different with this story. It’s a mystery to me, but a good mystery.

I see now, a week later that it’s slowing down some but still selling briskly. I couldn’t be happier. The point of this post is to encourage writers to never give up on a story. You don’t know what’s going to turn the reading audience on. And when you’re faced with an opportunity to put your work in front of a bigger audience, do it.

Don’t ever give up your dreams.

Here’s a teaser:

DARKNESS

It’s all yours now. You own it. . .

The man did not know what that phrase meant any more than he had four days ago when he had come awake in the woods injured and afraid with it cycling through his head.

It’s all yours now. You own it. . .

He raised his head up and sniffed the air. For one brief moment of pure exaltation he thought he smelled smoke. He tried to scream into the forest but he was weak and the sound that it made choked in his throat and died there.

He sagged down onto the old railroad bed and sobbed. It had been too good to be true. The wonderfully sweet aroma of wood smoke was now gone, if it had ever been there in the first place.

The wind was moving in the trees and the sound it made was similar to that of a rushing stream. Another of nature’s tricks. The wilderness was rife with them. There was no reason to anything here. He was lost in a lost world where rationality had taken a permanent vacation. He would most likely die out here in this great chameleon forest where unspeakable shapes roamed, where the unimaginable could materialize at any moment and become tangible, where creatures of wickedness and dread would swiftly rip the flesh from ones bones, feast on it, and leave the rotted remains for vultures and worms. There was no discrimination out here, no distinction between man and beast, good and evil. It was the ultimate class system. The fit survived, the weak simply did not. It would be easier to put a gun to one’s own head and pull the trigger. Certainly more humane. If only he had a gun.

Below is a description.

How many women did John Lennon bed in his lifetime? Does he still exist in a strange time warp where women are forced into his company by invisible men who drive skewed automobiles? Deb Stiles thinks so but she also believes that her soul is in jeopardy. She tells reporter Rick Sanchez about the strange East End Hotel known as Strawberry Fields and of the room with the number 9 on the door. Rick Sanchez doesn’t know it but he’s in for the ride of his life.
A story with a twist you won’t see coming.

Pure instinct had been driving Annie onward for nearly three days now. Her decision to resume her artistic endeavors had come from someplace inside her that she did not understand. The muse was an essential element of her existence that lived almost as a separate force from her normal self. And even though she realized on that same elemental level that she could not stay here at her father’s home, that she would soon have to run, she could not curb the impulse to fill her remaining days here putting paint to canvas.

First she’d gone about the business of preparing the room, much to Greta’s dismay, and then she had begun her quest.

The picture she painted had come unwittingly from a place inside her that seemed separate from her conscious self, which was no surprise. Annie’s paintings had always been instinctual. Nothing about her art had ever been contrived. She could no more visualize her next creative work than could she visualize what the end of the world would look like. She’d simply begin to paint, and when instinct told her to stop, that was that, the work was complete, resulting in art that defied categorization, complex yet elemental, abstract yet detailed, all without a trace of self-consciousness.

So it came as a complete surprise when she realized that, dead center of her chaotic creation, she’d painted an ordinary object. She stood back staring at her handiwork, cocking her head from side to side, frowning and fretting. After a few moments of careful consideration she came to the conclusion that there had been something at play here besides instinct, simply because she had no memory of painting the object. Geometric shapes were not a part of her mind spectrum. They never had been, and there was no reason to believe they ever would be. No, something external had acted upon her during the creative process that caused her to paint an object that looked curiously like the point of an arrow, or perhaps a spear. She couldn’t be sure. It was realistic in every detail, so realistic in fact, that it seemed three dimensional; as though it had been photo flashed onto the canvas.

Written in black letters beneath the object, were the words: Eye of Hell.

“What in the name of God?” Annie breathed, as the spearhead morphed into a small crimson pinpoint and began to grow, chilling her bones to the marrow. Startled, Annie backed away, for now the object looked like an eye, and out of the eye, a dark object arose and took wing, growing, flailing as it went, like a black bed sheet gone awry from a clothesline in a windstorm. Instinctively she ducked, to avoid the object flying straight at her. She screamed and hit the deck as it missed her by a hair’s breadth. The object circumnavigated the large room several times before dissipating into what looked like fragments of black confetti floating slowly downward onto the canvas-covered floor. The fragments settled all around Annie and became static. When she reached out and tentatively touched one of them with the tip of her finger, it crumbled to ash.

Annie remained on the floor for a long moment, breathing laboriously, her heart pounding. She waited, wondering what the hell had just happened here. She pinched herself, thinking she might have fallen asleep and was in the midst of a dream. “Ouch!” she said, realizing that this was absolutely real.

It only took Annie a few more moments to suspect the truth of what was happening here. The madness of her youth was beginning all over again. A magical thing that seemed to change shapes at will had visited her time and again when she was growing up. It took on many forms, sometimes a man, sometimes a bird or a bat, sometimes fragments of dark matter that flailed like little winged monsters, their purpose never clear. She remembered the secret whisperings, and fragments of dreams, long twilight sleeps between fever and exhaustion. Her years with Doug had brought a measure of sanity to her life because it was so normal, because he was so normal. But she’d always known she wasn’t normal, and so had Doug.

That’s why Annie needs constant love and reassurance, Doug had told her father on that day that now seemed so very long ago. You’ve allowed that thing to steal her soul. Doug’s accusations had enraged Annie to the point of violence, even as she’d suspected their truths. And in place of whatever had been stolen, her soul, something had been substituted, a weight, a burden, a living tumor that grew inside her like a cancer.

“Who are you?” she asked in a trembling voice, unaware until now that she was sobbing. “What do you want? Why can’t you just leave me the hell alone?”

You know me, child, a voice answered back, inside her head. Probably better than you know yourself. You’ve always known me.

“No!” Annie said, heaving herself up off the floor and circling the room, trying to pinpoint the exact location of her antagonist. A rage was building in her even as her distended belly began clenching with cramps. “Why don’t you show yourself, you lousy coward! Let me see what sort of monster terrorizes little girls!”

My identity is no secret, love, but you refuse to see me for what I am.

“You’re nothing! You’re a ghost, you’re confetti! Worse, you’re shit!”

I am Lost, Forsaken, Forgotten.  I am your mother and your father, your breath and your life, your birth and your death.

“Get out of here,” Annie cried. “I want you to leave me the hell alone.”

Your father is trying to betray me, but I cannot allow him to do it.

“Betray you?” Annie said. “How? Why? How does he even know you?” Her belly was really clenching now, she was bent over clutching it, spasms wracking her.

See the power I have over you, love?

“You have nothing to do with me!”

Oh, child, you are so wrong. It has been such a long road from where Edmund De Roche and I first crossed paths. You see, long ago your father and I struck a bargain.

“A bargain?”

His immortality for my mortality. His soul for my heart. If you will allow me I will show you.”

“Show me? How?”

Inside your head.

“You stay out of my head.”

This won’t hurt, I promise.

“But I don’t know . . . if I . . . can,” Annie said, her resolve weakening even as her contractions began to subside. She remembered things in her head from years ago, things she never wanted to relive, and she was suddenly wary, certain somehow that this would be just another of those terrible, terrible nightmares.

Of course you do, love. It’s easy. Just open your mind and let it flow.

“No!” she said, but the entity was a stealthy bugger and he was inside her before she could utter another protest.

Laid out before her was the image of a muddy battlefield with two huge armies clashing. These men fought like titans, their weapons spears, arrows and swords, and they wore uniforms of some long ago campaign. The image zoomed to an area near the battle’s left flank on the bank of a silt-filled river. Here a wounded soldier struggled to lift himself to his feet. Blood covered his face, and his armor was pieced in several places. From these wounds more blood oozed. There was something familiar about the soldier that made Annie uneasy. She tried to make out his features but there was too much blood to see him clearly. In his struggle to lift his body from the muck the soldier’s hand sank beneath the silted surface. When he pulled it back it contained an object. Seeming confused as to what it was, the soldier washed the object in the river’s flowing waters and brought it up close to his face. Recognizing it for what it was, the soldier drew his arm back as if to fling it far out into the currents.

Just then, a figure approached from behind, not walking exactly, but gliding just above the blood-soaked battlefield. The figure was cloaked in a hooded robe and, from Annie’s vantage, could have been a simple monk from some ancient religious order. Annie could not see the face but something told her that she was looking at the entity that now held sway over her thoughts.

Sensing the close presence of another individual, perhaps an enemy who wanted to finish him, the soldier lowered the hand that held the object and twisted around for his sword.

In that instant Annie recognized the soldier.

“Daddy?” she said, unaware until the word was out of her mouth that she’d spoken it aloud.

Yes, child, said the collector of souls. Only he cannot hear you. I am allowing you to witness an event from a very long time ago. You are seeing across space and time to another reality.

“I don’t understand any of this,” Annie said.

You see, child, I had been searching for the object since the day I was exiled to this earth, with little success, and here, a soldier of no importance on a battlefield forgotten by time, plucked it from the silt of a river. He did not want it, so, feeling charitable, I struck a bargain with him. In exchange for the object the soldier would survive the war and go on to found a great family dynasty. He would enjoy wealth and luxury and a very long life. But there was one condition.

“What condition?” Annie asked.

When the time was right he would produce an heir who would produce an heir. The time is right now, love . . . The collector stopped talking, allowing his words to sink in.

Annie’s eyes flew wide open in surprise. “No fucking way!” she said curling her body forward, hugging the roundness of her belly, protectively shielding it from the creature’s scrutinizing eye. “You’re not touching my baby.”

We shall see, child. We shall see.

“Tell me why the time is right now?” Annie demanded. “Why not five-hundred years ago? Why not two-hundred years ago? Why does it have to be now? Why does it have to be me?”

Simple, love, said the creature. The father of the child had to be just the right one, and Douglas McArthur was not born until thirty-five years ago.

“So this is what mine and Doug’s lives have been about?” Annie moaned. “We were born to serve your twisted purpose?”

Purpose, yes, twisted; well, that is a matter of opinion.

“You tricked me into coming back here,” Annie said. “You destroyed my house, you killed my husband and now you want my child? Dream on asshole, you’ll get nothing more from me.”

Ah, such a hot-headed child. You always have been, little Annie. But I’m afraid petulance will serve you no purpose this time. You no longer have the will to resist my persuasions.

“Oh yes I do.”

And how will you prevent me from taking what is rightfully mine?

“I’ll kill myself. That’s how! And I’ll take my child with me!” The words spat from Annie’s mouth before she could stop their expulsion.

You would kill your own child?

“Before I let a monster like you have it, yes! Doug’s gone and without him I have nothing left to live for.”

On the contrary, love. You have everything to live for. The child needs a mother. Someone to raise it and love it, someone to teach it manners, grace and respect, see that it is properly educated so that it can become what it is meant to become. You are the only one who can do it. Tell me that you will, Annie?”

Annie felt her resolve weakening. She knew the monster was right. She could not kill the child she’d dreamed of having her entire life. When the time came she would birth it, raise it and do well by it. This was an incontestable fact. There would be time to steer it away from the collector’s persuasions. She was sure of it.

With renewed assurances of Annie’s acquiescence the collector ceased to be in her presence. Annie felt its departing like a void in her consciousness.

She lay on the canvas-covered floor for a long time thinking about her child and grieving for the lost love of her life, cursing fate for dealing her such a twisted hand. In time a litany of thoughts began to form and find their way to the private place inside her mind, the three-lock-box of secrecy where no one was allowed to go. Not even the collector. She knew now what she had to do and she needed to get on with it.

So she heaved herself up off the canvas-covered floor and headed for the shower, all the while formulating her plan.

An Introduction to The Holocaust Opera

By, Vince A. Liaguno

Music and horror have always shared a symbiotic relationship. Think of a scary movie and, inevitably, some ominous snippet of soundtrack accompanies the memory. Try and imagine Halloween and not hear the synthesized notes of John Carpenter’s score, or The Exorcist without Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. Or the menacing chords of composer John Williams’ two-note title theme to Jaws or the screeching violins of Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho score that ushered in Janet Leigh’s showery demise. Music is an essential element to the horror experience, helping to create mood, enhance atmosphere, and foreshadow the imminent terror lurking around every dark corner. It’s as fundamental a sound to horror as the scream itself.

But while we’re intimately familiar with music as an accoutrement to horror, what about music as the source of horror itself – the composition of harmony and melody as a catalyst for terror?

In the novella you’re about to delve into, Mark Edward Hall tunes his instrument – in this case a blood-tipped pen – and launches into a haunting melody of words to give voice to one of the greatest real-life horrors in history: The Holocaust.

Sixty years after the SD-Einsatzgruppen – the mobile killing units known as death squads – went on their first routine mass killing mission in Lithuania during the summer of 1941, we struggle to assign depth and dimension to the horrors of the Holocaust. In The Holocaust Opera and its juxtaposition between the beauty of the story’s titular musical composition and the abject ugliness of the colossal failure of humanity that resulted in the extermination of six million people at the hands of a madman and his followers, Hall uses the defined parameters of music composition to frame his story and bring shape to the horror.

All so that we may see.

Like the best genre fiction, The Holocaust Opera illuminates that which hides in the darkness – the darkness of history, the darkness of human betrayal, the darkness of our own reluctance to face what is, for many, unbearable. It’s not pleasant to see what the darkness hides, not pleasant to loosen a few of those tightly-woven knots that keep our comfort level safely moored. But Hall isn’t really bothered by our level of discomfort – in fact, he flips the reader a solemn middle finger with The Holocaust Opera. Good storytelling isn’t about maintaining arbitrary comfort levels, but rather flying in the face of them. Good fiction – good genre fiction, in particular – peels back the painful scabs of healing wounds and forces us to face the raw tissue underneath.

Last November, in anticipation of writing this introductory note you now read, I traveled to Washington D.C. to tour the National Holocaust Museum. Call it my wanting to put a face to a name or whatever motive you’d like to assign to such an action, but, fact is I did it. And the experience was horrible.

Just as it should have been.

As I cast my eyes upon image upon image of unimaginable human suffering, there cataloged and organized by chronological atrocity, I experienced myriad emotions and sensations, from outrage and disgust to sadness and shame at being part of a race of beings whose cruelty and depravity know no limits, whose capacity for evil seems boundless. But the strongest emotion I felt was fear – overpowering, blood-curdling fear. Fear of the knowledge that the atrocities of the Holocaust occurred during civilized times, nary sixty years ago. An event that took place while my own father was a young boy of twelve sneaking into movie matinees and discovering his pre-adolescent love of the New York Yankees and a pretty little songbird named Connie Francis.

For me, that was the real horror of what I saw in the museum that day; that something so fundamentally evil could happen right under the noses of industrialized nations, many of which stood idly by while men were separated from their wives, children taken, crying, from their parents. Human apathy emerged for me as the greatest horror of the Holocaust.

“That’s the trouble with this world,” Jeremiah Gideon – Hall’s madman-or-maestro composer of the fictional music piece at the center of The Holocaust Opera – observes. “People try too hard to forget. They believe that forgetting is healing. It’s a mistake, I tell you. We must always remember. Remembering is healing. If we forget, then we’ll keep making the same mistakes over and over again.”

And indeed we have. One only needs to look at the more recent ethnic cleansings in regions like Bosnia and Darfur to realize that the possibility for mass apathetic denial is less a fear and more a sad, quiet reality. With society’s emphasis on blocking out anything unpleasant from our peripheries, there is an entire school of thought out there that finds teaching about the Holocaust in schools too morbid, while others outright deny the extinction of millions of Jews – a mindset that ‘s inexplicable and culturally irresponsible when one considers the physical and photographic evidence, the eyewitness accounts. It’s that same aversion to the unthinkable that’s kept us more focused on “reality” TV and reduced images of mass graves in Bosnia and reports of gang rapes in Darfur to background noise in our collective consciousness.

Perhaps it’s in his recognition of the enduring tragedy of public indifference that served as Hall’s catalyst for The Holocaust Opera – a story in which a young singer named Roxanne Templeton is drawn to a piece of music whose chords and melodies are so unfathomably strong that she cannot ignore, cannot relegate the disturbing images it conjures to the back of her mind. Through the work of fiction you’re about to read, Hall imagines a world in which evil cannot be ignored and human suffering cannot be snubbed by changing a channel. He forces his characters to confront the atrocities of human cruelty through eyelids being held open with invisible toothpicks – in this case, a haunting musical opus. Even when his characters want to shutter away the horror, they can’t. This seems to be his message for humankind: You can’t blink away the horror.

Despite its dominant horror elements, at the heart of The Holocaust Opera is a message of hope. After all, as Hall’s protagonist philosophizes, “the human spirit is not capable of existence without hope.” So, even while we’re bearing historical witness to the continued blind eye of the collective, there is always hope – ever-present and sustainable even in the worst of circumstances as demonstrated by the survivors of genocide and other unspeakable human atrocities.

So permit Hall permission to prop your eyelids open with the invisible toothpicks of this haunting little tale. Let the rhythm of his prose pulse beneath your skin; allow the melody of his narrative to carry you along that great continuum between horror and hope. For it’s in living through the horror and reaching for the hope that we uncover the truth of the human spirit in all its ugliness and beauty.

Vince A. Liaguno

Long Island, New York

January 12, 2011

Here’s a synopsis:

1939, deep in the heart of the Egyptian desert archeologist Winston Smith has made the discovery of a lifetime. An old kingdom Mastaba tomb. But Smith suspects, from the markings on the door, that this tomb contains relics from the period of the new kingdom, the eighteenth dynasty. So begins an adventure that takes Smith deep beneath the Egyptian desert, while on the surface a storm is kicking up and a child is about to be born. As each adventure unfolds simultaneously and at breakneck speed the reader is taken along on a dizzying thrill ride of wonders and horrors, while elsewhere the architects of the future are making plans for an important arrival.

The Breath of Life is a fun, fast paced thriller steeped heavily in the tradition of the pulp novels of the early twentieth century.

Doug stood at the foot of the bed watching Annie sleep wondering how his life had come to this moment. Ten years gone. From where he stood right now it felt like another life entirely, not his and Annie’s life. They’d been happy, hadn’t they? Or was it all some sort of illusion. Now, suddenly all his hopes and dreams were in jeopardy. Annie had come under the spell of some terrible darkness, factions beyond his worst nightmares wanted his firstborn for reasons yet unclear, De Roché wanted him dead; the hammer blow could come at any moment. The man might not be mortal, perhaps he wasn’t even human. And if he wasn’t human then what of Annie? If she’d come from the seed of a monster then what was she? And what of their unborn child? Suddenly there were far too many questions without answers. Grief wanted to drive him to his knees, but he knew now, more than ever before in his life, that he had to be strong.

He drew the bedcovers up over his sleeping wife, careful lest he wake her. He’d only gotten a few hours of restless sleep. They’d made love until nearly dawn, tumbling, struggling, coupling and uncoupling in the dark until they were nearly delirious with fatigue. They were both scared shitless, each for their own reasons; Annie, the past; Doug, the future, and they’d been attempting to scatter their demons with the power of obsession. As a result, Doug’s demons only burned brighter within him. He could only guess as to Annie’s.

He picked up his trousers from the tangle of clothing on the floor and slipped them on. He felt for the airline ticket he had bought yesterday and tucked into the breast pocket of his new jacket. For a moment he panicked. It wasn’t there, but then he discovered it in the opposite side of the jacket.

He’d been startled awake by something shortly after falling into an exhausted sleep, and he’d lain for a long time trying to puzzle it out. When he’d forced his mind to focus on identifying it, he saw black flapping images with cold red eyes. Birds, bats, fluttering demons. They were one and the same; ugly tumors at the center of Doug’s very existence.

He looked over at the door.

The burden is now yours. You are the chosen one.

He didn’t understand what those words meant now any more than he had the moment the dying old priest had uttered them.

Follow your heart.

His heart, his plan, had simply been to find and stop those who would destroy his home, his family, his future. Those who would rob him of everything he had ever dreamed of. Is that what the old man had meant by follow your heart?

One of those destroyers, he knew, hid behind the walls of this very house, and if he could find proof of his intentions he would bring the proof back to Annie so that she too could see the true face of the monster hidden inside the man.

Leaving Annie was probably the most difficult thing he’d ever done. He had the feeling that when he walked out that door he might never see her again. But the old priest had told him that if Annie and the unborn child were to be saved it would have to be this way. Was he supposed to believe that? Was he supposed to trust the words of a dying old man? The truth was, he did, and he did not know why. Had it been the undeniable sincerity in the old man’s voice? Or was it because he had known Doug’s true heart better than Doug himself had known it?

He’d said that there would be a great test, and if he survived he would have the direction he needed. If he survived. There were no guarantees. It all seemed so crazy.

And what of Annie? Would she be safe remaining here with a father who might be in cahoots with the Devil himself? Doug didn’t think so, but whatever persuasive powers he might have once had over Annie were now being eclipsed by a greater power. What happened yesterday at the cemetery had not been a natural occurrence. The bullet that should have killed De Roché, the bullet that passed straight through his heart, had done no damage at all, and now, less than twenty four hours after putting his wife in the ground, De Roché was most probably planning his future as king of the world; it was as if Rachel’s death and Annie’s coming home had been the catalysts necessary for De Roché’s continuation. But in the final analysis none of this actually mattered. The old man at the cemetery had been right when he’d said Doug must follow his heart, because his heart told him to put as much distance between De Roché and himself as was humanly possible.

So without the benefit of further thought Doug opened the door and slipped quietly out of the room.

He tiptoed through the upstairs hallway to the top of the stairs, stopping and listening, careful lest he encounter De Roché, the man who might not be a man at all.

Halfway down the stairway he stopped abruptly . De Roché’s voice sounded from the direction of his study, and there were both humor and vitality in it, sending a chill scurrying down Doug’s spinal column and reaffirming his suspicions about the man. Stealthily, he made his way down the stairs, through the foyer to the door, where he slipped carefully out into the new morning. He scanned the yard looking for some sign of life. There was not a living soul in sight, but that did not mean he wasn’t being watched; this place had ears and eyes; he knew it without a doubt.

Doug walked purposefully down the drive toward the gate, expecting the hammer blow to come at any second. He stopped at the gate, gazing through it at the lane he hoped would lead him back into the world. There were no keepers this morning, and the gate was closed. He scanned up along the wall but saw nothing. No security guards. No dogs with glittering teeth and silent voices. He turned and looked back across the dew-covered lawn to the gray stone mansion, paying particular attention to Annie’s bedroom window. He had an unsettling vision of Annie succumbing to whatever persuasive forces lived within those walls. Had she finally come home to stay? He wiped the thought from his mind; it made him feel sick and helpless.

“I’ll be back, Annie,” he whispered. “You can count on it.”

He turned and gingerly tested the gate. What the hell, he thought. Electrocution is as good a way to go as any. But instead of frying him to a crisp, the gate began to trundle open. He turned again scanning the guardhouse for signs of life. There were cameras mounted there, but he saw nothing alive. Still, he understood that his every move was being monitored. De Roché was no fool. If he’d wanted him dead, he’d be dead.

As the gate closed behind him, Doug stepped beyond the walls of De Roché Manor and back into the world.

Several hundred yards down the lane he turned left and walked into the woods, carefully marking his way through thick undergrowth. At the base of a particularly large cypress tree he stopped and looked around him. He saw no one and heard nothing except birds calling in the trees. He dropped down onto his hands and knees and began digging in the soft, sandy soil at the base of the tree. He extracted the object wrapped in a soft piece of fabric. He had hidden it there yesterday after returning from buying his airline ticket. He opened the fabric and stared. It seemed to pulse mildly, but it could have been his imagination. He closed his eyes then opened them. The object did not change color or shape.

There are those who believe it is the path to God, the old priest had said.

The path to God? Doug thought. This? How? Why?

It is a fragment from an ancient weapon.

Without warning, Doug was attacked from above by a large black bird with beating wings and a single crimson eye. It slammed into Doug’s chest, attaching its talons to the fabric of his jacket. Its bill pecked and grabbed the artifact from Doug’s hand. Doug smashed his closed fist into the bird’s body. The creature dropped the object and fell away, landing on its back among the palmetto bushes, its misshapen talons flailing wildly skyward. Doug lunged at the vile creature, fully intending to kill it with his bare hands. But he’d lost sight of the artifact, and when he turned to retrieve it, the creature found its opening, righted itself, and lifted into the air, cawing loudly as it sped away. Doug watched it go as he remained on his knees waiting for his heart to settle down. With hands that shook, he retrieved the artifact from where it had fallen to the ground, wrapped it back in the soft cloth and dropped it in his jacket pocket, vowing that he would never again be so careless with it. He got to his feet and continued on his way.

It was slow going along the dusty lane that passed through quiet, deserted citrus groves and dark cypress swamp. It took more than half an hour to reach the boulevard. Although he kept close watch for one-eyed birds he was not bothered again. Finally he reached the boulevard, giving a sigh of relief for having been allowed to get this far.

Traffic zoomed past in either direction. He picked the south-traveling traffic and stuck his thumb out. Vehicles streamed by in an endless procession. Finally, a van with Florida Dreams fancily air-brushed on its side panels pulled over onto the shoulder, sending dust puffing up into the air in a choking cloud. Doug ran and opened the door. A kid with long, stringy, brown hair sat beating his hands on the steering wheel in time with the loud music that blasted out of the stereo.

“Hey, amigo, jump in,” the kid shouted, smiling infectiously. But now Doug could see that he wasn’t a kid at all, just some wannabe hippy in his late thirties or early forties.

“Where you headed?” the guy asked.

“Tampa International!” Doug had to shout to be heard above the music.

The guy reached for the radio and turned down the music. “Sorry about that, man. You get t’ groovin along with the tuneage and sometimes you forget how loud the shit is.”

“Yeah,” Doug said, “happens to me all the time.” The day had warmed considerably and he took off his jacket. He was looking over his shoulder for a place to put it.

“Just shove some of that shit out of the way and drop it anywhere,” the guy told him.

Doug saw that the van was loaded with tons of electronic equipment.

“Name’s Jeff Dean,” the guy said, seeing the look on Doug’s face, “and this is my mean surveillance machine.”

Doug nodded.

“Got into this shit a couple years back,” Jeff Dean explained. “Work for three or four private investigators. Mostly divorce cases. You know what I’m talking about? Hey, what can I say, it buys the beans.”

“You’d never know it from looking at the outside,” Doug said commenting on the van’s general appearance.

“That’s the main idea, amigo. Just some old hippy, come down to Florida for a bunch of fun and sun. No one’s the wiser.” Jeff Dean shot Doug another wide grin.

“You know how to use all this stuff?” Doug was amazed.

“Don’t seem the type, right, amigo?” the guy said grinning again. “Like I said, that’s the general idea. If I seemed the type, well, wouldn’t get away with much, now would I? Actually I’m some kind of genius. Least that’s what my mom tells me.”

“Name’s Doug,” he said, offering his hand. Jeff Dean shook Doug’s hand vigorously. He pulled the van out into traffic and soon they were moving south on Alternate 19 toward Clearwater. “You can take me as far as you’re going. Appreciate the ride.”

“Hell,” Jeff said. “I’ll take you all the way. Got to cross over the bay sometime today anyway. Might as well be sooner as later.” He reached in his pocket and fished out a card, handing it to Doug. Doug quickly scanned the bold black lettering. It said, ‘Jeff Dean, Professional Surveillance’ and stamped on all four corners surrounding the lettering were speakers with waves emanating from them. “If you ever need to spy on anyone just give ole’ Jeff a call. I can tune into your living room from half a mile away and hear ice melting in your highball.”

“Comforting thought.”

Jeff Dean slapped the wheel and laughed. “You wouldn’t believe some of the  unbelievable shit I’ve heard.”

“I’ll bet.”

“If you lose the card the number’s easy. I’m out of Clearwater, so as long as you got the Clearwater exchange the rest is easy. 1776. Just like the ole’ American revolution. No problemo.”

Doug stared at the card for a long moment.

Jeff Dean gave Doug a sidelong glance. “Put it in your pocket, amigo. Never know when you’re gonna need some surveillance.”

Doug stuck the card in his shirt pocket.

The guy yapped all the way to the airport, and when he dropped Doug off he said, “Adios amigo, stay cool and watch your back.”

Doug closed the door feeling both melancholy and uplifted. It was the first dose of sanity he’d experienced in more than two days, yet there was something about the encounter that intrigued him, as if it had been more than coincidence. Ah well, it was comforting to know that there were sincere, if not entirely sane people left in the world.

He went through the terminal, received his boarding pass and promptly forgot about Jeff Dean and his mean surveillance machine.

Rick Jennings stood in the airport terminal waiting area watching the television monitor, which was tuned to CNN. He could not believe what he was hearing and seeing. Possible Presidential candidate, Edmund De Roché was shot and wounded at his wife’s funeral yesterday. The gunman, who apparently acted alone, had been shot and killed by one of De Roché’s security personnel. The gunman was an elderly man who had not been carrying identification. The FBI was now in the process of trying to identify him through other means. The camera panned to a shot of De Roché kneeling on a mound with Annie, his daughter, kneeling at his side. Jennings scanned the shot looking for Doug but did not see him.

The news clip went on to say that De Roché’s wound hadn’t been serious and that he had been taken to a local medical center where he’d been treated and released.

Furthermore, it seemed the media had learned of Doug’s and Annie’s house explosion and were trying to draw a correlation between De Roché’s wife’s murder, the attempt on De Roché’s life, and the apparent attempt on his daughter’s life in Maine the morning before. The belief was that factions were trying to derail De Roché’s presidential hopes.

Derail was an understatement, Jennings thought. Even so, it was the same correlation he had been trying to draw since all of this started. And he was at as much of a loss in explaining it as was the media. Nothing made sense. He wondered what would happen if the press picked up on Spencer’s suspicions that Doug was somehow connected to the strange murder of a New Hampshire family and the disappearance of their child. But that was too far out there for the media to draw any sort of correlation, wasn’t it? As far as Jennings knew, the only two people who suspected a connection at all were him and Spencer.

He’d tried calling Spencer twice this morning at the number he’d left with Rosemary, but had received no answer and no voice mail. What the fuck was going on? What kind of game was Spencer playing? Nothing made sense.

Jennings decided he was not going to hang around and wait another minute longer. He’d booked a flight to Tampa and he would go directly to the source. He would find Doug and Annie and bring them back physically if he had to.

His flight was called. As he began making his way toward the security gate his cell phone rang. Anxious, he pulled it from his jacket pocket looking at the caller ID. The number told him nothing. He answered it.

“Rick, this is Doug.”

Jennings heaved a massive sigh of relief. He stepped aside to let others behind him go through the security checkpoint. “Doug, Christ, I’m glad to hear your voice. Where are you?”

“Tampa, just getting ready to board my flight for home.”

“Why didn’t you call me sooner? I’ve been worried sick about you.” Jennings stepped away from the line and began pacing the waiting area.

“It wasn’t possible, Rick. Listen, a lot has happened.”

“I know they tried to kill you.”

“Yeah,” Doug said. “And they’re not through yet. De Roché wants me out of the way.”

“Shit! You think it was him?”

“Who else?”

“Christ, are you safe?”

“I don’t know.”

“Listen, Doug, the FBI’s looking for you. You might have a better chance if you just turn yourself in.”

“Not on your life!” Doug exclaimed, his frustration nearly boiling over. “There’s some sort of sick conspiracy or something going on. I know that sounds paranoid, but I’m not kidding and I’m not taking any chances. It’s bigger than anything you can imagine. It’s somehow connected to all the shit that happened when I was a kid.”

“I think you’re right about that,” Jennings said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I’m pretty sure the government is interested in you.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure yet, but it’s possible they’d like to use you.”

“Use me?”

“Yeah, you know, try to figure out what makes you tick.”

“Bastards!”

“Listen, Doug, I’m wondering if it’s safe for you to get on a plane.”

“I don’t know what else to do. If they’re going to kill me, I can’t imagine they’d try it with all those people . . . .” His voice trailed off as an odd thought struck him. He remembered looking for his airline ticket this morning and finding it in the opposite pocket from the one he remembered placing it. He was certain that De Roché knew about the object. That’s why he’d hidden it in the woods outside the estate’s grounds. And he would not have been surprised if someone had gone through his pockets looking for it while he slept. If so, then they knew his flight number.

“Doug?”

“I’m here, Rick. Listen, I think I’ll be safe, at least until I get to Boston. Tell me something. If the FBI wants to nab me, why haven’t they done it?”

“Good question. Something doesn’t add up.”

“You sense it too.”

“It’s more than a sense. Doug, there’s something I need to tell you, but not on the phone.”

“It happened again, didn’t it, Rick?”

Silence on the other end of the line.

“Rick?”

“Yeah, Doug.”

“The little girl’s been calling out to me. If I don’t find her I think I might go crazy.”

“Listen to me, Doug. You’ve been through this before and there’s nothing you can do. Right now your biggest job is to stay alive.”

“Where are you now, Rick?”

“Funny you should ask. I’m at the Portland Airport getting ready to board a flight for Tampa. I had planned on coming to Florida and bring you back by force if I had to.”

Doug sighed. “Don’t go near that place, Rick. It’s evil. That man is evil.”

“Is Annie with you?”

“No. She stayed with her father. I didn’t want her to stay, but it was her decision. I just hope it was the right one. I think her father is exercising some sort of control over her.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know. She’s acting weird. Listen, there’s a lot you don’t know about De Roché. Stuff I’ve never talked about.”

“Like what?”

“He’s very clever. He’s got some sort of gift. But there’s more.”

“More?”

“I have this thing . . . this artifact. It was given to me by the man who shot De Roché.”

“Jesus, Doug, an artifact? What sort of artifact.”

“I’m not actually sure, but I think it has something to do with all the shit that’s going on. And there are others who want it. This is going to sound crazy but I think it has some kind of power.”

“Power?” Jennings said.

“Yeah, I think it might lead me to the little girl, and all the others that disappeared.”

“Christ, Doug, don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t, but it’s why I need to get as far away from De Roché as possible. He’s been searching for the artifact and I think he knows I have it. In any event I’m fairly certain Annie will be okay there for a while.” Doug’s voice faltered again as the dying old priest’s words came back to him: Do not take your wife. She is stronger than you know. She will take care of her own.

“Doug, are you there?”

“Yeah, Rick, when I’m sure it’s safe I’ll go and get her. That’s all I can say right now.”

“Listen, Doug, is your flight coming into Boston?”

“Yep. Two and a half hours, give or take.”

“My flight is scheduled to land in Boston in about 45 minutes,” Jennings said. “How about I take it and hang around until you get in. I’ll meet you there and we’ll rent a car and drive up to Maine together. It’ll give us a chance to talk things over.”

“Yeah, Rick, I’d like that.”

“Doug, I’m sorry about everything.”

“Don’t be. None of it was your fault.”

“Yeah, I know. I just want this nightmare to be over.”

“Me too, Rick. You don’t know how much.” After giving Jennings his flight number and hanging up the phone, Doug pulled the heavy scrap of fabric from his pocket, opened it and stared at the object for a long moment. It was neutral now, inert. There seemed nothing unusual about it, just a small hunk of ancient metal in an exceedingly classic form, worn smooth from centuries of handling. What are you? He wondered. Why are you in my possession? He gave a quick and guarded look around him, considered pulling the chain around his neck and wearing the artifact, but at the last minute decided against it. Instead he wrapped it up and dropped it back in his jacket pocket. He glanced around once again before heading for the gate, wary of anything unusual; suspicious body language, strange expressions. He decided he was no good at detective work. Everybody and everything looked maddeningly normal.

In Portland Jennings rushed back to the boarding gate and made it to security.

The place was empty. “You’re a little late, sir,” the attendant said with a frown. “They’ve already boarded, and they’re pulling the gate back.”

Jennings pulled out his badge and ID, showed it to the attendant. “This is police business,” he said. “I need to be on that flight.”

The attendant picked up the phone and made a call. “Okay,” he said and hung up. “No problem, they’re putting the gate back. Right this way, sir.” The attendant rushed him through. Jennings lumbered into the tunnel toward the waiting aircraft.

As he was settling into his seat he felt edgy and his mind was heavy with thought. Something was wrong. He felt it in his bones. He could not in a million years have guessed just how right his instincts were. If he’d known what would happen over the course of the next several hours he might have lost his mind.