Insanity Writer

A while back my site was hacked and I lost a fair bit of material. That included my audio story The Mountain King, one of the hilights of my twenty four 3-Day novel marathon. Here it is again in four half hour installments. Five year old Dennis Ryan is facing the worst Christmas of his life as his parents’ marriage falls apart, but the gift of a snowglobe opens a far flung world of wonder. Enjoy!

The Mountain King, part 1:

http://www.24novels.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Mountain1-Part-1-of-2.mp3

The Mountain King, part 2:

http://www.24novels.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Mountain1-Part-2-of-2.mp3

The Mountain King, part 3:

http://www.24novels.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Mountain2-Part-1-of-2.mp3

The Mountain King, part 4:

http://www.24novels.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Mountain2-Part-2-of-2.mp3

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CHORUS

In those days when I was old

I fought and died and lived and told

so many tales

some even true

I’d gladly offer one to you

If you’d care to sit and choose

to lend and ear and to peruse

this well worn tome

with angst and grief

and slapstick farce comic relief

contained herein

And if in passing you do see

a mirror for humanity

then I will rest content to know

that I have sown all I can sow

within your mind

the smallest seed

the kernel of a noble thought

or the nonsense pride hath wrought

you may decide

but so you may

I humbly pray

come and abide

 ______________________

My horror novel Cambrian is available from Kobo Books. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Kobo Reader. Kobo books can be read on your computer, tablets and smart phones. You can find it here:

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Cambrian/book-XTzWgQGdj0eEVmQFr3bEQg/page1.html

Follow @Britt_dj

There are gaping maws within me

filled with cathedral light

the slanting hues of autumn

on a throat that’s slit just right

 

My carotid lay open

still pulsing out the flow

which once gave life and meaning

within that Christ light glow

 

The sanctuary carpet

itself a sweet deep red

grows darker by the droplet

that drips down from my head

 

“So erudite and pithy,”

perhaps they’ll say of me

“His gift for elocution

had the power to set men free.”

 

But like the blood now flowing

in the church where I did preach

my gifts all lay abandoned

and quite beyond my reach

 

Another maw spreads open

beneath that sacred floor

my soul slips through the shadows

and will walk this land no more

 

Here’s a link to my horror novel Cambrian, available from Kobo Books:

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Cambrian/book-XTzWgQGdj0eEVmQFr3bEQg/page1.html 

 

Follow @Britt_dj

It’s been some time since my last. When last I blogged, I proclaimed the death of my dream:

http://www.24novels.com/2012/02/11/i-dont-believe-in-fairies/

My announcement that I had given up all hope of making the break was met with a thunderous silence. Except for the thunder. There, uh, was none. That’s cyberspace for ya. The place where no one cares if you scream. During my 24 3-Day novel marathon I considered putting up a video feed while I wrote. People could have caught priceless moments, like the one when I walked around holding my head and shrieking, full throttle primal screams, for a good five minutes. That was somewhere around entry twenty. Then there was entry 23, which I wrote naked while flicking feces at the screen.

That never happened. Honest. Never trust a writer. But, am I a writer? I haven’t been writing lately, really not since I stared off into the middle distance while sitting in the bathtub, after realizing that all hope had died in me. It might have been sensible at that point to take care of things. I could have scratched that itch on my head with an exploding shotgun shell. But I didn’t. Instead, I went off and got busy living a post mortem life. One free of the only dream that has defined me.

An entire industry exists that preys on that dream. Every Writer’s Digest and Writer’s Market, every writing conference and online seminar, exist for one reason. It’s not to help you make the break. I’m reminded of a line in the film Cinderella Man, where the great Paul Giamitti pitches the big fight to a promoter. “We all know what this game is about. And it ain’t pugilism.” As surely as sex trade professionals profit off that other drive, the writing industry thrives on those who dare to dream a dream, and who are more than willing to put out cash in the pursuit of it.

My native Nova Scotia puts out a tour guide every year. The Doers and Dreamers Guide, it’s called. That title puts me in mind of a question. What do you do if you stop dreaming? Is the death of your dream a conscienable choice? Many say euthenasia is. To die well. That’s what the term means. An end to needless suffering. Death is coming anyway. Why delay the inevitable if you don’t consider the meantime worthwhile?

In a world that cries ‘Never Give Up’ I have dared to cross a certain threshold inside myself. I have surrendered the dream of becoming a professional author. I’m left with a couple of questions though, ones I’ll toss into the gaping maw of cyberspace. Have you allowed your dream to die? Do you believe you should hold onto your dreams ferociously for a lifetime? Is there a point where your dream is just too painful to hold onto, in the face of the merciless indifference of the world around you?

There is a moment in the 2003 film adaptation of Peter Pan that has always brought me to the point of tears. The mother tells the children about the courage of their father. The children blink at this, disbelieving. They know him to be a kind but timid man. She tells the children about the dreams he had, dreams he once held to ferociously. Then, for the sake of his loved ones, he put those dreams away, locking them in a chest. Once in a while he and his wife would go to that chest, and look through his dreams. But eventually this became too painful for him, and he stopped looking. This was a sacrifice he made for them all. And that, in the mother’s estimation, was the nature of his courage.

Is it wrong for dreams to die? And is there a life worth living once they do?

Love to hear your thoughts.

Follow @Britt_dj

A gaping maw has opened beneath Sheila, with the return of mass murderer Martin Stickler. Abducted and unconscious, Sheila has an encounter in the theater of her mind.

At this rate the last chapter of my novel will be issued in late June, but you don’t have to wait that long to see what happens. The full novel is available from Kobo books. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Kobo reader. Kobo ebooks can be read on computers, smart phones and tablets. You can find it here:  http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Cambrian/book-XTzWgQGdj0eEVmQFr3bEQg/page1.html 

 _________________

Chapter Sixteen

She was sailing, sailing on Meadow Lake. The boat glistened white as it cut a fine line, straight toward the setting sun through the golden shimmer dance on the water, a highway of light. No one else was topside. Sheila was alone. Yet the sails were full. The ship swept on, arrow straight, heading due west under a cloudless sky.

A sound then, from below. A bang, and then another, followed by a kind of hissing, but one with pleasant connotations. It reminded her of the propane tank when Dad fired up the barbecue, the hiss as the gas got flowing. Only this was much louder.

Sheila headed below deck, down the few steps to an open door. Welcoming, inviting. So much joy and laughter happened down here, with a family that was whole. She entered the low ceilinged cabin, all wood paneling and brass fixtures. ‘So Seventies,’ Dad always said. The orange swivel chairs sealed the verdict in her father’s mind, although Sheila never understood why. The hissing was so loud. Sheila rounded the corner of the stairwell and stopped as she saw the source.

A welder was at work, kneeling next to the outside wall, wearing coveralls and one of those big visors that was more like a helmet. The flame from the torch blazed away, making a straight vertical line in the bulkhead.

“WAIT! You’ll sink us!”

The torch was turned off and Sheila breathed a sigh of relief. The welder put the instrument aside and turned toward Sheila. For a long moment Sheila stared into the black visor, and a pang of fear began to pulse within her. What might be hiding under there?

The welder answered the question by flipping the visor up, to reveal a beaming countenance.

“MOM!”

Sheila flew across the room and into her mother’s arms. Their embrace was long and sweet. Her mother rocked her slowly back and forth, like she always used to. Sheila slipped to her knees, tears of joy streaming. She ran a hand down one of her mother’s milk and roses cheeks, and then brushed back a lock of chestnut hair. Mom always let her bangs grow too long.

A million questions fought to get out, fought so hard that none of them came.

Her mother broke the silence. “Sheila, I need you to listen to me very carefully. We don’t have much time.”

Fear then, like a rising tide in Sheila. “Not mu . . . no! I want you to stay. You and me, here together.”

Mom shook her head firmly and grabbed Sheila’s hands. “You have to listen to me. Now more than ever.”

“I . . . I always listen to you.”

“I know. I know you do.” Her Mom smiled and settled back against the wall. Sheila slipped down against her and they held each other close.

“It was wrong for Claire to take your case. She’s too close. She was blinded by a desire to make things better. What she did was apply a patch. A kind of quick fix. The type of thing that sometimes holds, for a while.”

Sheila was awed by the weight and substance of the woman in her arms. She knew the truth. Of course she knew. This was a far off world, a million miles removed from the real Meadow Lake, where she last knew her mother’s embrace.

“Whataya mean?” She asked. “For a while?”

“I mean there are bulkheads that are going to let go, places beyond them that we just don’t have the power to keep out. Strength, real strength, isn’t measured by how big and powerful each fortress is. Because sometimes no wall is strong enough.”

Her mother tucked a hand under Sheila’s chin and lifted her face, until Sheila was staring up into earnest, dark green eyes.

“Strength, Sheila, is what keeps you, you, when all the walls of life come tumbling down.”

“But you stopped being you. That’s why Dad gave up on church. He never told me so, but I know it. You got hit on the head, and you were gone. You kept living for a while, but you were gone. Whatever it is that made you, you. Whatever it is that makes any of us who we are. Reverend Wilson called it a soul. But it’s just our brain. The thing I’m inside now, that’s imagining all this. And someday I’ll be gone too. Me and Dad and Will and that monster and everything else.”

Her Mom let out a wry chuckle and shook her head. “You’re right, Sheila. Up to a point. Yes, I was gone, after that blow to the head. The thing that made me, me, left, long before my body stopped breathing. But have you considered the possibility that ‘to go’ just might mean ‘to be somewhere else’?”

Sheila blinked and looked down. She had not considered that.

Her Mom reached out then, to the wall, to that crack in it, caused by the blowtorch. She grabbed onto the crack and started pulling.

Frantic, Sheila grabbed her mother’s arms. “No! You’ll sink us!”

Her mother would not be stopped. She pulled open a long strip in the hull. But no water came in. There was only darkness on the other side of the wall.

“Sheila, this is a wall you can’t hold. You called what’s beyond it a dark circus ride. Claire said it was something you had to avoid, as though going there is nothing more than a bad choice we make. But sometimes in life, those choices are made for us. Whirlwinds arise, plagues come. And we are thrown into a place, well . . .” She nodded to the darkness in the wall. “A place like this.”

There came a howling then, distant but unmistakable, from the other side of the wall.

“Remember the eye, at Notre Dame?”

Sheila nodded, while staring in mute horror at the darkness. More howls. First one, then another, and another. A pack was crying out, a sound both sad and triumphant.

“You were so scared,” her mother said. “I really didn’t think you were going to crawl out, and look down.”

But Sheila had. On their one and only trip to Europe, their last good year. Their travel agent had told them to ask about the eye when they went to Notre Dame. It was the only way to be taken there, as it wasn’t part of the regular tour. Up the endless stairs they went, to a place where you could crawl out and look down at the cathedral, through a hole at the very top of the dome. Sheila had crawled out and looked through, and was swallowed up by what she saw. What she later called ‘the ginormousness’ of it, to the amusement of her parents. Now Sheila leaned in, and peered into the darkness before her. She was stupefied, awed, consumed by ginormousness, all over again.

It would have just been a blackness without depth or scope, a meaningless wall of dark, were it not for the one pool of light far below. Sheila locked on this. Not breathing, not thinking, she stared at the destroyer of her world. All while the howls continued, reverberating through the vast expanse around her.

The pool of light lit up a portion of a garage, one wall where a shelf ran above a workbench. All was bare, except for the anvil, perched on the shelf’s edge. Part of it was jutting over the edge, Sheila knew. Something she had noted so long ago, while watching her father work. She had almost mentioned it, but didn’t. For no reason she could think of.

Sheila tried to turn back to her mother, only to realize the pull that was now upon her. A magnetic thing. As though the anvil was exerting it, forcing her to turn back, and lean forward, into that gateway to her own private hell. The howls were almost deafening now, a victory din, summoning others to the feast.

“No,” Sheila whispered. Or tried to. Her word was swallowed up by the darkness, as though plucked from her mouth before it could be spoken.

“Sheila,” her mother said, behind her, “what you became after I left can’t help you now. Not where you’re going.”

“Whu . . . whataya mean?”

“You stopped believing in everything you couldn’t touch. That means you’re not open to the truth, that you are not alone, the truth that there are others who long to help you.”

Sheila was sobbing now, gasping. But even these were swallowed up by the blackness. Each tear, each breath, was stolen from her, yanked away into the dark.

Movement then, from below. A jackal trotted into that pool of light. It stopped and looked up in her direction. Then it joined in the howls of its brothers.

“And yes,” her mother added. “There are those, too. Who long to tear you apart.”

The pull increased exponentially, yanking Sheila forward. Her arms flew out, grabbing the wall. But they slipped fast, down to the tips of her fingers.

“WHAT DO I DO? MOM, WHAT DO I DO!?”

“Believe,” her mother said.

The whole wall gave way, blasting out into the darkness. And with it Sheila Jarvis, who tried to scream as she fell, only to have her cries drowned out, swallowed up by the howls, the howls in the dark.

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I’m honored to welcome Canadian author David Hallman to my site. David and I connected a while back, while I was lost in the throws of my ‘ultimate act of writing insanity’. Our lighthearted exchanges on twitter have been a source of encouragement to me, and a reminder that we writers need to get out of our caves far more often and bask in the glow of kindred spirits. I believe, in David, I have been fortunate enough to find such a soul, a fellow traveler on the road, who understands.

David is the author of August Farewell and Searching for Gilead.  You’ll find links to his works and to his site below. David, thanks so much for your contribution. Here’s his post:

_________________

At a session of the International Festival of Authors in Toronto several years ago when I was more naïve and less experienced as a fiction writer, I challenged an author on a panel who was talking about all the revisions she did after negative feedback from readers to an early draft of hers. I said, “But isn’t what is important that you are true to your own voice, whatever others may think?”

She replied, “But if what I’ve written doesn’t communicate with the reader, what’s the point?”

To which I responded, “The point is we write primarily for ourselves. At least, I do.”

I was speaking out of the context of having written a very personal memoir “August Farewell” that initially I had no intention of publishing and being in the midst of writing my first novel “Searching for Gilead” that was also precipitated by personal and systemic issues that I wanted to tackle.

Well, now I’m at a point where I agree with Lao-Tse, “The more you know, the less you understand.” Meaning, the more I’ve written and published, the more confused I’ve become.

My current dilemma is in relation to a collection of inter-related short stories that I’ve begun. I finished the first one and sent it out to a few friends to read. I’ve gotten mixed responses. One person, who is an editor by profession, said, “But nothing happens in it.” A second friend, an avid reader, said, “I just didn’t connect with the main character.”

However, a third wrote me, “What stays with me a few days later is the feeling of intense passion that is conveyed by the story…I identify personally with the feeling behind the words, but I also think they have enduring and universal appeal… a very successful writing project.”

The short story in question is intended much more as a character study than an action thriller. And I happen to like it pretty much as it is. It speaks to me.

Though the creative satisfaction is by far my principal motivation for writing, I’m no longer in the place where I am writing just for myself. My life has been immensely enriched by the touching reader feedback that I have received to “August Farewell.” I’m learning a great deal from the responses that I’m getting to “Searching for Gilead.” The author-reader dialogue in person and through social media such as Twitter and Facebook is a big part of my life now.

I want to be as fine a writer as I can be which suggests that I have much to learn from feedback. But, I also want to be authentic to my own voice and not tailor my writing to the expectations and tastes of others.

How do you resolve this dilemma in your writing?

 * * *

My memoir “August Farewell” tells the story of the two weeks between my partner’s diagnosis with pancreatic cancer and his death. Interspersed among the scenes are vignettes from our thirty-three years together as a gay couple.

Information on “August Farewell” and on my novel “Searching for Gilead”, including YouTube video book trailers on each, is available on my website at http://DavidGHallman.com

Both the memoir and the novel are available for order from your local bookseller or on-line retailers including http://amazon.com,  http://barnesandnoble.com/, http://amazon.ca/   http://chapters.indigo.ca, http://amazon.co.uk

Follow @Britt_dj

This installment of my horror novel Cambrian sees the return of Martin Stickler, who Sheila last saw when she was stabbed in Freeman’s Gully. Now the monster erupts back into her world, and whisks Sheila off into a whole new realm of terror.

At this rate the last chapter of my novel will be issued in late June, but you don’t have to wait that long to see what happens. The full novel is available from Kobo books. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Kobo reader. Kobo ebooks can be read on computers, smart phones and tablets. You can find it here:  http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Cambrian/book-XTzWgQGdj0eEVmQFr3bEQg/page1.html  

____________________

Chapter Fifteen

Amanda cut the scooter about a block from the park entrance, at the top of a downhill grade. They coasted in silence down to Senator’s Corner, with high evergreens to their left, backlit by a blue-white light. As they reached the corner Sheila saw the first of the trailers beyond the gate, and heard laughter, light and easy, men and women.

Amanda hopped off. Helped by the last of the scooter’s momentum, she ran through the intersection, holding the handlebars. She needed the head of steam to push the scooter with its cargo up the little rise where the street met the sidewalk. Then they passed the gate, to where a neatly tended hedge took over as a border to the park. Amanda ploughed into the grass and was almost ground to a halt. She dug in and pushed hard around the first bush at the start of the hedge, and only stopped once the buggy had reached some cover, out of sight from the street. She flipped down the kickstand and rested the scooter against it. Then Amanda slumped down on the grass next to Sheila.

“Bravo,” Sheila whispered.

Amanda waved the accolade aside. “Wasn’t nuthin, partner.”

Three trailers were in view now, lined up back to back, maybe sixty feet away. The middle one was the biggest, white with a picture of the Globe and four big letters on it – WGBN. On either side were smaller silver trailers with no markings. Sheila could see one floodlight, its top just visible over one of the trailers.

There was a big burst of laughter from the people gathered on the other side. A man came into view between the first and second trailers, laughing loud. He flicked ash from his cigarette and took a long pull from a beer bottle. It was that cameraman, Nick.

Amanda rose to a squat. “Okay, I’m gonna circle around, and come to them from the other side. Then head back the same way. They won’t have any reason to check things out over here. Hopefully.”

“Sounds good,” said Sheila.

With a nod Amanda was up and off, back the way they had come. Nick the cameraman stayed in view for a bit. He turned back, involved in a conversation that Sheila couldn’t quite make out. Then he eased forward, and out of sight.

Sheila looked out to the street through the thick hedge. Headlights washed over the road and Sheila’s heart started racing as a police cruiser came into view. There was a moment she was sure she’d be spotted, even with the hedge. She was sitting in an overgrown bumblebee, for Pete’s sake.

The black vehicle crawled past. It was one of the state trooper cars. The man in the passenger seat looked in her direction, his face lit faintly by blue light from the dash. For an instant it looked as though he stared straight at her, but the car kept rolling. It came to a stop at the intersection. Craning her head, she willed the car to turn left or go straight, any direction away from the park. The car did not obey her. It turned right and started down Grove Street, alongside the park.

Sheila’s mental energies found a new focus now. Amanda. She had visions of the cops catching a glimpse of the twelve year old as she chatted with the group of reporters.

‘Wait,’ Sheila thought. ‘Wait.’

She craned her head the other way. The car came alongside the journalists’ camp sight, and slowed to a crawl.

“Get out of here,” Sheila whispered.

After a few seconds, the car picked up speed, and was gone.

“Well hello!”

It was a man’s voice from the gathering, loud and surprised, but pleasant. An excited chatter followed, and Sheila caught a few words. “What brings you out?” from a woman. “Everything alright, kid?” From a man.

The talk dropped in volume again, below earshot.

Sheila stared hard at the thin slice of ground between the trailers. For a long moment, it stayed empty. Then Amanda crossed through it, at the insistence of the group on the other side of the big trailer.

Sheila smiled at the sight of her. Amanda had left with her helmet on. Something Sheila didn’t think about at all. But it was nowhere in sight now. Clearly, she thought to ditch it somewhere along the way, to avoid any inconvenient questions about the bike that wasn’t with her.

With Amanda out of view there was nothing to do but wait. The murmur of conversation sounded pleasant, even welcoming. Maybe she should have volunteered for the job. What would it matter? Would they really have ratted on her, for taking a midnight ride with her friend?

She shifted in her seat and grimaced at the pain that small movement caused. Perhaps it was for the best that she laid low and stayed still. There was a walk waiting, after all. Amanda would only be able to take her so close to home before dropping her off, to make sure the cops wouldn’t hear the scooter.

A rustle then, from the hedges up ahead. It sat Sheila up straight, and wincing. The pain was now getting really sharp. There was a pause. Then the rustle came again, maybe a dozen feet away. A shadow came into view. A small animal was emerging from the hedge. Well, if it was a cat, it was pretty big, actually. But there was no way to make it out.

Yes there was! She reached into the left pocket of her jeans and drew in a sharp breath. It felt like the knife was back in her belly. She got the flashlight out, pointed, and clicked it on. A raccoon! It froze like a deer in headlights, eyes wide and glowing.

A raised voice then, from the gathering. “Come on kid, you can trust us. Let her take you home!”

Sheila caught a blur of motion to her left, Amanda on the fly, running straight back toward Grove Street. Then a woman, sprinting after her. It was Miss Hollis.

“PLEASE!” The reporter yelled. “IT’S NOT SAFE!”

Amanda was gone lickety split, back to the line of evergreens by the street, and up away to her right. Miss Hollis chased to the treeline and then stopped, shaking her head. She just began to turn back toward the others when she froze,

And locked right in on Sheila.

The Light! Shit! Sheila fumbled with the switch, bathing herself in its glow. She finally flicked it off, but it was too late.

The reporter started straight for her. “It’s alright. Just talk to me, okay? I’m here to help.”

Sheila thought about it, considered staying, considered talking. For maybe a full second, until she thought of the man’s words. ‘Let her take you home.’

She tried to jump out of the buggy, but only managed to roll over the side instead. The plastic pressed into her wound and she gasped. Dropping the flashlight, she plopped onto the grass. Miss Hollis was running for her now. Sheila tried rising, but it felt like her belly was on fire.

“Shit,” she whispered, as tears stung her eyes.

The woman was at her side now, crouching down, grabbing Sheila by the shoulders. Her eyes widened as she got a look at Sheila’s face. “You’re . . .”

Desperate, Sheila grabbed the reporter’s arms. “Please, Miss Hollis, don’t let me get caught, don’t let anyone know I’m out.”

A man’s voice called from behind. “Hey. It’s another kid.”

Others were approaching now, chattering away. Miss Hollis stared earnestly into Sheila’s eyes for an electric moment. Then she smiled. “Call me Karen.” Turning to the others, she called out. “Stay back! Stay back or she’ll bolt. Just . . . give us a minute.”

There were at least a dozen people approaching now. They slowed down, murmuring to each other.

“Keep your head down,” Karen said. Sheila looked to the grass as the reporter called out again. “PLEASE give us a minute.”

It was clear from the chatter that the others were reluctant. Sheila stole a peek. The group was holding up, staying a good twenty feet back.

“Is she hurt?” Someone asked.

“Nick,” Karen called.
One of the group closed at a trot. Sheila looked again and her eyes met the cameraman’s. He froze at the sight of Sheila’s face. Kicking herself, Sheila looked back down.

“Your car keys,” Karen said.

There was a tinkle of keys as they were fished out of a pocket.

“Let’s make this quick,” the reporter said. “I’ll lead the way and get the door open. You carry her behind me.”

In a blink, Sheila was scooped up into Nick’s arms and the news team was on the fly.

“HEY!” Someone yelled.

“Don’t look back,” Nick said, as he ran.

This time, Sheila obeyed. She burrowed her face into his plaid shirt, even though it stank of cigarette smoke.

The other reporters were giving chasing. A woman yelled as they came. “COME ON, KAREN! WHAT GIVES?!”

They made a sharp turn. Sheila guessed they were rounding the hedge. She peaked down. They were on concrete now, and moving fast. She heard a door open ahead of them. Sheila looked and saw Karen, jumping into the passenger seat of a dark colored hatchback. She kept going, shimmying over to the driver’s seat. Then Nick and Sheila were there. The cameraman pushed down on Sheila’s head so it didn’t hit the door frame as he jumped inside.

It was a hard landing, which made Sheila gasp.

“Sorry,” Nick said, as Karen started the car.

There was the pounding of footsteps on pavement. Nick reached out and grabbed the open door, as Karen shifted into gear and floored it. The door was still open as the hatchback squealed away from the curb.

A man’s hand flew into view, grabbing at the handle. “KAREN!” He yelled.

Nick slammed the door shut. Sheila looked over his right shoulder, and saw the group running all out after them, shadowed figures with arms flailing.

“It’s like something out of a zombie movie,” Sheila said.

“Yes,” said Nick. “Scoops do that to us.”

“Ow!” He added, as Karen punched him on the arm.

The car sped on, ignoring stop signs and speed limits. Karen threw a shoulder check back. “They smell blood, that’s for sure.”

“Are they mean people?” asked Sheila.

Karen mulled the question over. “No more than anyone, with only one purpose for living.”

Nick chuckled. “Oh I dunno. Bill Frieson is flying model airplanes now.”

His partner shook her head. “Boys and their toys.”

They raced on for another minute or so, slowing just enough for one sharp turn, then another.

Nick was looking back as they went. “I think we’re fine. No sign of ‘em.”

Karen made another shoulder check and, with a satisfied nod, eased up. “How bad you hurting, Sheila?”

“Uh, not too bad.”

The reporter looked at her, a long look for someone driving. She turned ahead again as she repeated herself. “How bad you hurting, Sheila?”

“Pretty bad. Hurts to move, and to breathe.”

“You should prob’ly be back in the hospital,” Nick said.

Sheila froze, and gave herself another mental kick for using that blasted flashlight. Then a breath caught in her throat, one that had nothing to do with the pain.

‘Amanda!’ she thought. ‘O Mans, I am SO sorry!’

Karen seemed to read her thoughts. “Any chance that was your best friend back there?”

Sheila looked down, feeling every inch a traitor. Worse. Like a soldier, who abandoned her best buddy on a field of battle.

“Always and forever,” she said.

“Then I hate to break this to ya,” Karen said, “but you’re made.”

Sheila looked up sharply. “Made? Whataya mean?”

“They’ll find out it was you,” said Nick.

“HOW? No one else got a good look at me!”

“Was that your scooter?” He asked.

“No. Hers! They won’t connect that to me.”

Nick sighed, and spelled it all out. “Sheila, those reporters back there aren’t stupid. First of all, your friend isn’t getting her scooter back tonight. She’ll have to go home without it. Tomorrow they’ll put word out around town that they found a scooter. Within a day, probably less, they’ll know it belongs to your best friend.”

Karen took over. “And that will just confirm suspicions they’re already forming. Right now they’re asking themselves, ‘What kid would they do this for?’ And they’ll be coming up with a shortlist of one.”

She rounded another corner and pulled the car over next to a squat brick building. Sheila looked at the words ‘Edith Kessler Memorial Junior High’, lit by lights on the grass. The school she’d be starting at that week. Or should have been, if it weren’t for a certain knife wound.

Nick opened the passenger side door, and gingerly extricated himself from Sheila, leaving her on the front seat. He squatted down on the sidewalk next to the door.

“Look,” Karen said, “we’re telling you this by way of explanation. There’s just no choice. We have to take you home.”

Sheila stiffened at this and opened her mouth to protest. But a car came into view ahead of them, turning from the next corner up, in their direction. Sheila knew the make, it was a Duster. Dad used to have one, and Mom had always teased him about it. She thought he was a little long in the tooth to be driving what she called a ‘muscle car’.

They were all quiet then, as the car passed. Sheila got a look at the driver, a teenage boy who looked familiar, but she couldn’t pin down from where. He only spared the hatchback a glance as he went by.

“Then there’s your condition,” Nick said. “I think you should be checked out at the hospital, ASAP.”

Sheila shook her head and fought to hold back the tears that were suddenly close. Then she remembered. This night, this whole blasted night, really began because of tears. Amanda’s sobs on the phone, the ones that had cut into Sheila so hard, tears born of fear that Sheila was being stolen from her, by that psycho, by the police, by reporters, like the ones with her now.

Steal me back! Sheila had said.

“I have to know she’s okay,” Sheila said, hating the little quiver in her voice.

Karen nodded. “And the best way to do that is to let her Mom know what happened. And the police. They’ll pull out all the stops, trust me. They’ll find her and see that she gets home safe.”

“Although she’ll probably make it simpler, by just going home,” Nick added. “I was impressed with your friend. She struck me as a really bright girl.”

Sheila let out a wry chuckle. Even that hurt. “She is, yeah. But you don’t know her. She’s not going home without that scooter.”

“So much the better,” said Nick. “She’ll stay close to the park, casing the joint, looking for her chance to grab it. It’ll be easier to find her.”

“No.” Sheila shook her head firmly. “I’m not just going back. Not just letting her get in trouble. You . . . you guys have no idea. What we been through together. It’s not just kid stuff.”

“Like all the stuff with your Mom,” Karen said, gently.

Sheila was taken aback. “You know about that?”

There was genuine compassion in the reporter’s eyes, a world of it. “Sweetie, it’s what I do. I don’t know if there’s any way you’ll believe me, but I do care, more than you know. Your family has been through more than enough hell. I swear we, Nick and me, really want to help you.”

“That’s why we got talking to your Dad today,” Nick said. “Why we gave him information we think he really needs. Information a lot of people didn’t want him to have.”

“Yeah,” Sheila said, looking down at her hands. “He told me.”

They were quiet for a bit. In the silence, Sheila thought of her father, looking so lost, as he paced in front of the fireplace. And so weary, as he sat on her bed and explained they might be leaving after all. Only then did it strike her, how incredibly selfish this all was. This midnight ride. The terror he would go through, if he saw she was gone. The pain she would be causing, on top of everything else they’d been through.

Sheila turned back to the reporter, earnest now. “Okay, I’ll do what you want. I’ll go home, but let me sneak in the back. And . . . and as soon as I get into bed I’ll yell to Dad. Tell him my gut’s hurting. Ask him to take me to see the doctor. I promise I’ll do that.”

Karen shook her head slowly. “Sheila, we’re involved in this now. And it WILL get out. I guarantee . . .”

“And I’ll give you an interview. About that night. Everything. Sometime in the next couple days. By phone if we have to. But I’ll give it to you, I promise. I’ll do that, if you let me go back home the way I want. And if you make those reporters give Amanda back her scooter.”

Karen and Nick exchanged a long look then. Sheila looked back and forth between them. It looked like they were talking to each other with their eyes, with each squint and raised eyebrow. Something Sheila had seen before, with Mom and Dad. Finally, Karen looked to her. “Alright Sheila. We’ll play it your way.”

Another car approached, this time from behind, a station wagon which slowed as it came.

“Get down,” said Nick.

Sheila slipped off the seat and crouching down in front of the glove compartment. Karen rolled down her window. Nick stood up on the sidewalk, and offered a little wave.

“Evenin’.” An old man’s voice, coming from the wagon.

“Hi,” said Karen. “Fine night.”

“Hey! You’re that, uh, TV girl, ainchya?”

Nick smirked at this. He looked down, chuckling.

“I am. Be sure your sins will find you out.”

“Aren’t ya stayin at the park? With all them other reporter types?”

“Yeah. A little sick of the sites there. Me and my friend just thought we’d take a little spin.”

“That your fella?” The old guy asked.

That was too much for Nick. He turned away, laughing.

“You’re . . . very direct, Sir.”

“Only way I know how to be. Didn’t mean no disrespect, Ma’am.”

“None taken. But like I said, we were just trying to get a little privacy.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I better leave you to it then.”

“That’s very kind. Thank you.”

The station wagon started off again, with a little toot of its horn. Nick pushed the passenger seat forward, long enough for him to hop in the back, pulling the door shut behind him.

Karen started up the car. “I think a little more privacy is called for.”

“Aye aye, TV Girl.”

“Nick, don’t even start.”

Sheila settled back into her seat as Karen steered into the school parking lot. As they went, Nick started humming the theme from Superman.

“Nick, I do NOT want . . .”

“It’s a bird. It’s a plane. NO! It’s . . . TV GIRL!!”

That was too much for Sheila. She doubled over laughing as the Superman theme kept coming. The laughter was contagious. They all yucked it up as they rounded the back corner of the school and came to a stop in the more secluded rear parking lot, which also doubled as a basketball court.

As the wave of mirth subsided, Nick put a black box down in between the front seats. Karen took the cord and plugged it into the lighter as Nick took out the car phone.

“Ben?” Karen wondered.

“One and only,” Nick said.

Nick punched numbers on the glowing green keypad, then settled back and waited.

“BEN! What gives? . . . Sorry pal, but I’m not at liberty to say. How ’bout . . . okay fine. She’s an old family friend, who just happened to be out for a spin. We thought we’d slip off and catch up a bit, ya know?”

Nick pulled the phone away suddenly, and kept it a foot from his ear for a few seconds. Sheila smirked at the look of wide eyed innocence on his face. He threw her a wink and pulled the phone close.

“Look, Ben . . . BEN! That’s not what matters right now. What ma . . . Good Lord man, take a Valium. Or better yet, one o’ those little pills for your blood pressure. Sounds like you’re about to pop. Listen . . . Ben, LISTEN! What MATTERS right now is the Deveson case.”

Karen threw her head back, laughing, as Nick held the phone away again. He was just beaming now, for all appearances having the time of his life.

He pulled the phone in. “You owe me. You owe me. You owe me. And . . . BEN? Enough! Shut your trap, and stop trying to weasel out of it. ‘Anywhere anytime, man.’ Those were your exact words. ‘Anywhere, anytime.’”

Nick stopped again, but this time Sheila felt there was only silence on the other end.

“Good,” said Nick. “I have it on good authority that

the girl we were talking to is still close to the site, waiting to get her scooter back. Which I’m sure you’ve moved to . . . what’s that?”

Nick leaned forward and listened closely, eyes widening. “You what? That makes no . . . Confirmed? Whataya mean con . . . Ben, stop shittin me. What can be bigger than . . . BEN?!”

Nick threw the phone on the box. “The scum bag hung up on me.”

“Well?” said Karen.

“It seems your best friend forever is a resourceful girl. She managed to convince them to give her back her scooter.”

“YES!!” Elation tore through Sheila. She pumped her fists, Rocky like, and immediately regretted it. But even her gut couldn’t wipe the smirk off her face.

Nick was shaking his head. “They gave up the scooter. In exchange for somethin juicy. Ben already got a confirm, prob’ly from his source in the sheriff’s office.”

Karen stared down at the phone, or through it, lips tightly pursed. Then she looked to Sheila. “What did she have?”
Sheila blinked. “Huh?”

“Besides the red light you saw at the mill, what other information did she have that she could use as a bargaining chip?”

Nick chimed in. “Who Sheila is.”

“NO WAY!” Sheila shook her head firmly. “Mans ‘d never give me up. Wild horses couldn’t make her do it. Heck, not even her Mom!”

“I believe you,” Karen said. “What else does she know?”

Sheila drew a blank for a few seconds. Then it hit her, and she slapped herself on the forehead. How could she have forgotten that, of all things?

“The bodies,” she said.

The adults froze at this.

“Bodies?” Nick wondered.

“Yeah. They found two more bodies, earlier tonight at that psycho’s place.”

Karen leaned in close. “How do you know this?”

Sheila sighed and laid it down. As soon as she mentioned that Amanda’s Mom was the pharmacist, Nick took a pen and notebook out of his shirt pocket and started scribbling fast.

“What time did Amanda’s mom drop off the drugs at the hospital?” Karen asked.

“No idea. Just . . . earlier tonight. Before midnight sometime.”

Nick tapped the tip of his pen on the notebook. “We can do a break in from Stickler’s house. We won’t scoop radio, but if we move fast . . .”

They already were, turning around, heading back to the street.

“Break in?” Sheila wondered.

“Live coverage,” Karen said. “Which won’t be caught by many at this hour. But it’s . . . like a race, Sheila. We’ll be the first to have it on TV.”

“Do ya get extra money for that?”

Both adults laughed at once, a short, sharp sound. “No,” said Nick. “It’s just a game grown children play.”

Karen turned the radio on, and started tuning through the static.

“It’s, uh, still out.”

She flicked the radio off and slammed the dash. “Damn it, Nick. You’re not destitute, why don’t you own things that work?”

“The phone does.”

“And the car,” Sheila added.

Karen shook her head and sped on. “Okay, we’re playing it your way. We’ll circle around to that back alley. I won’t even bother asking if you’re up to walking, because I know you’ll say . . .”

Sheila jumped in her seat as the phone rang, a shrill sound, really loud. Nick snatched it up and answered.

“Yeah.”

The cameraman sat bolt upright, as though someone had punched him.

“Ben whataya sayin man.” A long silence then. Nick shook his head, eyes widening. Karen glanced back and caught the look on Nick’s face. Then she locked in straight ahead and floored it, closing the distance on Sheila’s home fast.

“How many?” Nick whispered.

Then Sheila saw it. Red and blue lights flashing, up ahead. The cruiser came into view, tearing right through a stop sign a couple streets up, pulling out from Clarke Street.

Sheila’s street.

The car fishtailed through its turn, straightened out, and raced up the road toward them. No siren, but all lights blazing. The police cruiser flashed past them, on and away from Sheila’s neighbourhood.

Sheila breathed out a huge sigh of relief. Whatever was happening, the emergency wasn’t at her place.

“Who went up there?” Nick asked.

Karen slowed the car as she approached Clarke Street. Sheila’s mind raced on two tracks, one part agreeing with Karen’s approach. Nice and steady, to get her close to home without drawing notice. The other part of her mind tried to wrap her brain around Nick’s last words. Sheila could only come up with one conceivable place ‘up there’.

She looked down Clarke as they passed, en route to the back alley. The police car was gone. It must have been that one that tore off into the night. There was a flash of elation, as Sheila realized it would be so much easier now. No fear that the cops would be on rounds, no chance of them hearing the reporter’s car.

“I don’t know, Sheila,” Karen whispered. “I don’t like this.”

“Okay,” said Nick, quietly. “Okay. Thanks Ben. Call when you know.”

He hung up as the car turned into the back alley. No one said anything for several seconds, as they crept along. Karen stopped the car, shifted into park, and looked back to Nick, her eyes full of a sorrow she didn’t know about yet.

Nick laid it down. “Four went up to the ridge, to check out that light. Fred, George, and those two kids. That CJCB team. I forget their names.”

“The girl’s Susie,” Karen said.

“Right. Well, there was a light. No question, a blinking red light. One of ‘em called it in to Ben before they went inside. And someone called again, a minute later, screaming that the place was booby trapped all to shit. Ben couldn’t even tell who it was, they were screaming so bad. Land mines, they said. Two of them were blasted to pieces. Ben didn’t know which.”

Something happened to Sheila then. The emotions that seemed so far away just a little while ago, the ones she imagined were sleeping back in her room, made themselves known. A cold dread, accompanied by a sick to your stomach feeling. It took a moment to realize it was a mixture of guilt and shame. She closed her eyes tightly, and leaned forward, as she realized the hard truth.

Karen’s hand fell on her shoulder. “What is it? Your wound?”

Sheila shook her head. “No. It’s . . . those people. People dead, because o’ what we did.”

“No one could have known,” Nick said. “Not you. Not anyone.”

Sheila couldn’t process it. People, alive and well a couple minutes ago, now dead. And not just dead. Blasted apart.

Karen embraced her, and whispered in her ear. “I’m taking you home. Home to your Dad. I’ll tell him what happened. He’ll be nothing but thrilled to see you. Thrilled that you’re safe.”

Sheila was past argument now, past anything but a desire for all this to be over, and to be safe and sound again, back with her family. Nick pressed a hand to Sheila’s shoulder as Karen got the car going and drove down the alley to the back of Sheila’s house. Soon they were all out beside the gate, the reporter and cameraman on either side of her, holding her shoulders tight.

“Can you walk okay?” Nick asked.

“Uh huh,” Sheila managed.

Nick swung open the gate and they all started up the walkway toward the back door. Sheila was staring glumly down at her feet when she was suddenly ground to a halt.

One of Karen’s hands dug hard into Sheila’s right shoulder. “Did you leave that open?”

It was Claire Montague that Sheila thought of, as she looked up and saw the half open door. Not her father. Not her brother. At least not in that first gut wrenching second, when she gazed at a door she had pulled tightly shut, and double checked to make sure it was locked.

She thought of Claire and of the wall they had talked about. Like the hull of a ship, with a whole ocean on the other side. Places that need to be shut out, dark circus rides that must never be taken. Tunnels to that other place, where demons reign, and jackals haunt the wastelands of your mind. Only this tunnel was real. This gateway was as tangible, as undeniable, as an anvil that falls from a shelf to destroy your mother’s brain.

Then her father and her brother erupted onto the screen in the theater of her mind. She drew in the deepest breath of her life, to scream the loudest scream of her existence.

A hand was pressed hard against her mouth before she could, by Nick. She looked up at him. He shook his head, eyes wide as saucers, and mouthed the words, ‘Don’t do that.’

It was the fear in his eyes that stopped her from screaming, more than his hand. She was scared into silence by the look of him. One filled with a cold, hard certainty. To scream then wouldn’t just be bad. It just might end up being the last mistake of her life.

She nodded, her wits suddenly back with her. Nick dropped his hand. The adults were holding her arms now, one on either side. Out of fear, Sheila guessed, that she would tear off into the house.

Instead, Sheila noticed something. The keypad by the door. It had been glowing when she had left, a bright orange glow. Only it wasn’t now. The light was out.

“Alright,” Nick whispered. “I’ll check things out. You two get back to the car. Lock it, and call the cops.”

“Nick, that’s insa . . .”

Sheila squeezed Karen’s hand furiously, silencing the reporter. Something else had taken over inside Sheila now, only seconds after she almost screamed in terror. Something bound and determined, and hell bent, that the rest of her family would not be stolen away from her. And this was the only way.

“He has too,” Sheila whispered. “There’s no time to wait.”

Nick nodded. “Right. Get moving.”

With that he headed for the door at a trot and slowed as he hit the steps. Crouching down, he peaked into the door. Then he glanced back and waved for them to head off.

Karen stared at the cameraman for a long moment, her eyes filled with fear and pain.

“God, Nick,” she whispered. “Please come back to me.”

Nick waved them off again, more frantically this time. Sheila pulled hard on the reporter’s hand, urging her on toward the alley. With a last lingering look to the door Karen turned, and together they started back for the car.

They moved quickly down the walk. Sheila spared a glance over her shoulder, just in time to see Nick disappear into the house. Karen opened the gate, which let out a squeak. Not much of one but enough to make Sheila cringe, for fear it would be heard. Nick was right. They had to get to the car, quickly and quietly. They had to call the cops.

Hand in hand they made for the car.

“Does he know how to fight?” Sheila whispered.

“He knows how to survive. When we were in Beirut, I saw him run across a field to save a stranded girl, with bombs falling around him like rain. He’s the bravest man I know.”

Sheila took this in, nodding. An odd calm had stolen over her, allowing her to push back the horror show that was trying to creep into her brain. The nightmare images of who might be upstairs with her father and brother, and what he might be doing to them.

‘Get in the car,’ she thought. ‘Get on the phone. Get in the car. Get on the phone.’

Sheila’s heart was pounding furiously as they reached the hatchback. But there was no sense of panic. Even fear seemed far away. She was in a zone, locked on a mental image of the phone in the car.

‘Dial 911 slow,’ she ordered herself, as Karen opened the passenger side door. ‘Don’t panic or fumble. More hurry, less speed.’

Karen nodded to the door. “Get in Sheila. Quick.”

Sheila obeyed. She locked the door as it slammed behind her and picked up the phone. ‘Slow,’ she told herself, as Karen rushed around the back of the car toward the driver’s side. The keypad on the phone was black. Sheila squinted and held it close. She pressed ’9′ and the phone lit up bright green.

Karen opened the driver’s side door. And that’s when it happened. Sheila caught a red light out of the corner of her eye. She looked and saw it was coming from the doorway. Her doorway! There was a bright pinprick of red light in the back porch of the house.

Karen screamed and fell back away from the car.

And away from the hatchback’s open driver’s side door.

Then a monster made of flesh burst from the house at a dead run. A Hansel and Gretel man, who killed children and left them to rot in a ditch.

Martin Stickler flew across Sheila’s backyard. He was holding a rifle and wearing an army uniform, that red light glowing atop his weapon. He didn’t take the walkway. Instead, he came straight at that part of the fence closest to the car. Sheila lunged toward the open door and saw Karen, lying on her back, not four feet away. The reporter’s right shoulder was gushing blood, but she was conscious. With eyes locked on Sheila, she made a gesture with her left hand.

A gesture to close the door.

A pounding on the hood. Sheila screamed as Stickler slid straight across it, reaching with his free hand to grab the door. Only to miss, barely, as Sheila yanked it shut and pounded a fist down on the lock.

Kneeling on the driver’s seat Sheila stared down at the phone, locking on it, making it her entire world. She punched in the numbers ’11′, only to scream again as Karen’s face was slammed against the driver’s side window.

The monster crouched down next to Karen and smiled in at Sheila. There was green paint on his face, for some crazy reason, and black smears under his eyes. He lifted up his rifle and pressed the business end to the reporter’s left temple.

Sheila pressed ‘send’ and held the phone up to her ear.

“Hang it up without a word, Sheila,” Stickler said.

One ring. Part of another. Then a click, and a woman’s voice.

“911. What is the nature of your emergency?”

“Hang up now,” Stickler said. “Or your friend dies.”

Sheila desperately hoped the woman on the phone could hear the psycho’s words. But her hopes were dashed as the question was repeated.

“What is the nature of your emergency?”

“Hang up,” said Stickler. “Or you’ll be killing this woman as though you pulled the trigger yourself.”

The operator’s voice, calm and collected, came again. “Are you able to respond? If not, tap the receiver.”

Sheila’s eyes locked on Karen’s. Karen stared back evenly. There was no fear in those eyes now. No panic. Karen held up a hand and pressed it against the window. Sheila pressed her free hand against the glass at the same place.

“Last chance,” Stickler said.

“Tap once if you’re in some kind of medical emergency, twice if you’re in danger from someone else.”

Sheila kept staring into Karen’s eyes. There was strength in those eyes. And anger. A hard and unyielding thing, like steel.

Then the television reporter mouthed two words to Sheila Jarvis.

Tell them.

“614 CLARKE STREET!! MARTIN STICKLER IS . . .”

Sheila shrieked like the damned as blood and bone and brains were blasted onto the window. (Silently. There was hardly any noise from the rifle, just a little snip sound.) Sheila fell back and away, holding the phone in a death grip tight against her ear.

Stickler threw the near decapitated body aside and shook his head in disgust. “Stupid bitches never learn!”

“The police are on their way,” the operator said, with that same calmness. “Can you get to safety?”
Sheila was lying on the passenger seat now, staring out the front window. She met the monster’s gaze for an electric moment. Then Stickler reared his rifle back. As Sheila realized his intent, she had time to scream five words.

“HE’S IN THE BACK ALLEY!!”

The butt of the rifle smashed against the driver’s side window. It almost gave way, but held, a bloody spider web of cracks, bulging inwards. Sheila dropped the phone and spun as the next blow came, smashing the window in, showering her in glass. All in one movement, Sheila unlocked and opened her door and began to tumble forward, out of the car.

Stickler snatched at her. Sheila felt his hand on her left calf as her hands hit the gravel of the alley. She put all her weight on the ground, ignoring the cutting and burning there, and kicked back with both feet for all she was worth.

It worked. Stickler’s hand flew off and Sheila fell into a bad shoulder roll. In a flash she was up and off, back down the alley, feeling no pain from her gut or her hands.

“FREEZE!” Stickler yelled.

A back porch light came on two houses down from theirs. Sheila saw a familiar silhouette in the window of the door. Mister McGinty! Will and Dad’s barber!

Sheila dove into the hedges at the back of McGinty’s yard. Maybe he had a gun! Or maybe they could lock themselves away in there long enough, until the police came.

Sheila belly crawled through the hedge and was on her feet again, bee lining for that door, banking on the hope that Stickler wanted her alive. Otherwise why not just shoot into the car and be done with it?

The gaunt man stared at her as she came, and then looked up and past her. The barber froze, filled with terror at what he saw. Sheila closed the distance in a flash, and was on his doorstep. She tried the door. It was locked.

“Let me in! Mister McGinty, please LET ME IN!!”

The man she had known so long, the man she couldn’t remember not knowing, stared down at Sheila. It looked as though all the sadness in the world was in those eyes. Then Mister McGinty reached out to his left, and flicked the porch light off.

“Finally,” Stickler said, from inches behind her. “A little practicality on the night.”

Sheila pivoted hard to her left and made to tear off again. But this time she didn’t have a hope in hell. Both her arms were grabbed and pulled back, hard. She let out another scream and tried to kick back at her assailant. Nothing worked.

She heard a little ‘snip’ sound, like a zipper being pulled up. She looked back and saw a row of plastic strips tucked under Stickler’s belt, right next to a sidearm that was holstered there. Stickler wrapped one of those strips around her wrists, pulling them tight behind her, cutting into her skin. Stickler plucked Sheila up and tossed her over his right shoulder. She started kicking and immediately regretted it. The ‘snip’ sound came again and another strip of plastic was wrapped around her ankles.

“If you scream again I’ll tape your mouth shut. It’ll make it hard to breathe. Your choice.”

Sheila shut up as Stickler bore her across the yard and back into the alley. The sound of sirens then, far off. So far off. Why were they taking so long?

“It looks like you cost me my wheels,” Stickler said. “We’ll have to use your friend’s.”

They were at the hatchback. Stickler shoved the passenger seat forward and threw Sheila into the back, the way you’d throw a sack of potatoes. Sheila gasped as she hit the seat. Broken glass dug into her left arm. Her gut chose that moment to start hurting like hell again. It was a burning sensation now, as though lighter fluid was sprayed into the wound and set on fire.

Stickler grinned in at her. “But first a little insurance, I think.”

He was gone then, up the alley, toward her house.

“No,” Sheila whispered, as tears started down her cheeks. “Leave them out of it. Please God. Make him leave them out of it.”

The sirens were getting closer, but were still far off. People had to know. The neighbours had to know what was going on. Her screams, the shattered glass, Karen’s body, lifeless on the ground. She thought of Mister McGinty. Those sad, sad eyes. The same as crocodile tears. Maybe people were looking out right now and staring at the car, real sad. Feeling so, so bad for dear little Sheila. But not enough to do anything that could risk their sorry asses.

“Bastards,” Sheila whispered. “They’re all bastards.”

Footsteps then, coming hard and fast. Sheila tried to push herself up, to see out the windshield. No good. She sucked in a sharp breath as broken glass dug into her forearm. Stickler was back, his rifle slung over his right shoulder. He was not alone. Stickler shoved Nick into the passenger seat. The cameraman’s hands were tied behind him, like Sheila’s, but he also had duct tape over his mouth.

“STOP!! RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, OR WE’LL SHOOT!!”

“YES!” Hissed Sheila. “YES!”

The shout came from up ahead. Stickler looked in that direction and nodded, as though greeting someone on the street. “Nice trick. Keep sirens going a ways off, while you creep in close.”

“DROP YOUR WEAPON!!”

Stickler dove forward, right on top of the cameraman. One shot rang out, to no effect. Stickler was in the driver seat now. Absently, he tossed his rifle back over his shoulder. It landed right on Sheila.

“Hold that,” he said, as he started up the car.

Sheila eased forward, hoping the rifle would fall in behind her. No luck. It slipped forward and fell down in front of the seat.

Stickler floored it, and the hatchback sprung forward. “I’d rather play chicken in my van,” he said, conversationally. “But any port in a storm.” The monster reached down and withdrew his sidearm. “You might want to keep your heads down.”

He slammed the brakes on hard. Sheila flew forward and her face bashed against the seat in front of her, as the car jerked hard to the right, so hard that it was skidding sideways and forwards at the same time. Sheila fell down on top of the rifle, and pain exploded in her left arm, blinding, searing pain. Worse than the gut ever was. Worse than everything. Pain so bad her world lit up white and then began to fade to black.

Sheila fell away then, from the car, from the madman, from the bonds that held her. She fell down and away from herself. Like a deep sea diver she left the world above, and sank into the depths.

A car door flew open. Gunshots. So close. Loud bangs in the dark.

“Mom,” she said.

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It’s that magic time again. I’d love to offer this story in an audio format. Then it would be that much closer to the glory days of the serial, the 1930s, when families gathered around their radios for the latest episode of The Shadow or Dragnet. I think I will record a chapter, just for fun. And I hope to have my story The Mountain King back up in the audio link above soon. My site has not yet fully recovered from the hacking it took a couple weeks ago. It’s in a very fragile emotional state, and in need of more counselling.

Things are heating up as Sheila and Amanda have their midnight getaway. Suspicious activities at an abandoned mill lead them to a moral choice, and set them on a path that will change their lives forever.

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Chapter Fourteen

The trickiest part had been fishing out the sleeping pill while taking all the rest. Her father was methodical, counting out each pill, dropping them into her hand, passing her the glass of water. Every night she took them in one gulp, and he’d smell a rat if she varied her routine.

So she didn’t. She watched carefully as the first three pills were dropped into her palm. The pale blue one was next. Casually, she pulled her hand back a little, just before that one dropped. Instead of falling into her palm, it fell between her index and middle fingers. She spread those fingers the tiniest bit. Almost too much. The pill nearly dropped between them, onto the sheets. But she caught it. And that’s where it stayed while she downed the rest of them.

Then she asked her Dad about the afternoon, about the commotion with the police and that reporter. Her father sat down on the edge of the bed with a sigh. Then he laid it all down.

“We might be leaving here. For a while.”

The words were a shock to Sheila. But she just waited, and listened.

Stu went on. “The reporter made a good point. Her crew hasn’t put our house on film, but others have. Everybody knows where we live. And you’re a very important witness.”

It wasn’t hard for Sheila to connect the dots. “She thinks it would be safer somewhere else?”

“That’s right. They’re even offering us a place. What they call a safe house, which could be more secure than the fishbowl we’re in.”

“But Dad, I thought you were sure we were safe. With the police and all.”

“Oh, I think we are. But . . . well, remember the tar baby the sheriff talked about?”

“You mean Monica?”

Stu shook his head. “I don’t mean her exactly. The sheriff said that’s how Stickler used her, right?”

Sheila nodded.

“Well, it’s possible, just possible, that the police are sorta usin us the same way.”

“As . . . bait?”

A grim nod from her father. “That reporter claimed she has a source, someone in the manhunt who said that’s part of the strategy. Some profiler, that’s someone who studies sickos like this Stickler, thinks he might show again. I gave the sheriff a call this evening. He got pretty defensive at the suggestion. But he did say he’d drop over in the morning. Then we’ll decide.”

That night, at ten minutes past twelve, Sheila slipped out of her room, zipped up her red hoody and made for the stairs. She paused on the top step and listened. There was no need to worry about Will, who always slept like the dead, but Dad was another story. She caught Dad’s light snore, nice and even. Nodding, she stole downstairs.

She had some misgivings about her midnight getaway. At some point, late in the afternoon, she almost decided to cancel. But she held off, not wanting to disappoint her friend. Then came that chat with her father. In the wake of it, Sheila found her resolve strengthened. For all she knew she might be heading for the hills before lunchtime. If this was her last night in Meadow Lake for a while, her and Mansy were going to spend it together.

She crossed the darkened living room and stopped by Big Red as she looked out the picture window. There was the state trooper, just getting back in the passenger seat of the cruiser out front. Sheila had watched from her bedroom window as he made his hourly walk around the house, pausing to poke his flashlight here and there, around the corner of the garage, and behind the garbage bin.

The other cop would take a turn in a little while, a half hour tops. They mixed it up a little bit, not always going at the same intervals. She guessed this was protocol, so someone watching couldn’t be sure when the next round was coming. Still, she was sure she had at least fifteen to twenty minutes, before the next check of the grounds.

Next up was the alarm system, which was locked and loaded for the night. Sheila went over to it. There were two codes. One set the alarm. By ten each night Dad punched that in. The same code, punched in again, turned the system off. The other code suspended the system. Her father and the alarm guy had settled on sixty seconds, before the system kicked back into place. Long enough to let somebody in, or to run something out the garbage, without the hassle of punching in more numbers when you were done.

She punched in the suspend code, 080901. The little yellow light that had been solid started blinking. Then she headed to the kitchen and started for the back door. Thankfully, Dad had sprung for two outside keypads. He almost didn’t, but the guy had talked him into it. That meant she could sneak back in when she needed to, through the back door, without the cops noticing.

At least that was the plan.

She reached the steps to the porch, then paused, looking back to the drawer closest to the fridge. Their everything drawer, they called it. She went over and opened it. Amid the assorted odds and ends of twine, tape and tools, there was a black metal flashlight. Small, not much bigger than a penlight, but with a surprisingly strong beam. Grabbing it, she eased the drawer closed, crossed the kitchen, and slipped out into the night.

Sheila spared the garage a grim glance as she made her way down the walkway to the back fence. She had been in there only once since the accident, to help her Dad get some pine logs for the fireplace. She made it three steps in before she froze at the sight of the bare shelf on the back wall. The grief had pounced on her, all teeth, tearing at her throat. Sheila fought back by grabbing the nearest thing at hand, Will’s baseball bat, and charging. She hacked away at that empty shelf, shrieking, and when Dad tried to pull her away, a back swing caught him in the face. He had a black eye for a week.
While nursing it, he went out to the garage. Sheila listened to the banging in there and wondered what was going on. Soon her father came out and dumped the pieces of the shelf in the garbage bin.

The night was damp, chilled. An Autumn night, through and through. By the time Sheila was through the gate and in the back alley she was wondering if her hoody was enough. She thought about going back to get a jacket. A look to the house dissuaded her. There was something about the shadow of it, set against the row of Dutch Elms lining the street, something grim and foreboding. It was a shell, an empty, hollow place, like the hole in each of them.

She realized then that she had just made good her escape. Sheila grinned and thought of Amanda as she headed down the alley and tucked the flashlight into the right pocket of her jeans. Pants she had to hitch up as she went. Absently, she noted they were a little loose now. They fit her fine earlier in the summer.

Amanda had picked a rendezvous only two blocks away. Something Sheila was thankful for. By the time she reached the end of the alley her wound was complaining. It wasn’t much of a wound, really. A straight inch and a half line, just left of her belly button. She had stared at it a few times since getting home, during dressing changes. It seemed such a little thing to be making such a fuss over.

Still, it hurt to breathe while exerting herself like this. She took slow, measured breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Dr. Mulgrove came to mind, warning her how important it was to take it easy, especially once she started feeling better. The thought triggered a wave of guilt, which in turn gave rise to a greater concern. Passing under a street light, she realized anyone looking out from any of these darkened windows would recognize her.

She gave herself a mental kick. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Reaching back, she bunched up her chestnut hair, hair more and more like her Mom’s with each passing year, tucked it in and pulled up the hood. She nodded, satisfied. Now she was just a girl out too late, and not the girl that everyone had been talking about for the past week.

She quickened her step as she headed up to the next corner and turned right, crossing the street. As she did, Sheila spotted a car a block up and turning toward her. She forced herself not to look as the headlights washed over her, and kept her pace nice and even, instead of scurrying out of the light like she had something to hide.

The car slowed, and her heartbeat quickened. Was there any chance the police that were protecting her did drive arounds too? She never noticed the cruiser leave. But she had never been up this late since the accident (she still thought of it as ‘the accident’), thanks to that little blue pill. So who knew?

The car picked up speed and Sheila breathed easier. She tried trotting then, something that lasted three or four strides, before the pain in her gut made her stop.

It didn’t matter. The video store was just up ahead, on the corner of Main Street. She couldn’t see Mansy. Sheila wondered if their code had worked. Did they both understand that ‘back one’ didn’t just mean the day, but the time as well? Amanda had said 1:30, but . . .

“Sneeds!”

A stage whisper in the dark, from the alley behind the store. It triggered something in Sheila, a joy that manifested in a dead run despite her gut. She flew the rest of the way as Amanda emerged from the alley wearing a white helmet, and holding the handlebars of her older brother’s scooter. Something she barely kept balanced as Sheila rushed into her arms and hugged her fiercely.

It was a giggle fest then, over nothing and everything. Both talked at the same time, a jarble of sing song words, almost none of which made sense. Amanda became Unk the Terrible at one point, the ogre king that had first dubbed Sheila ‘Sneedlepot’, all those years ago. The creature expressed its delight on seeing its subject by hip checking her repeatedly. (A sign of great affection among ogre kind.)

At some point they came back to themselves, at least enough for Sheila to notice two things. Her gut was screaming for mercy, and there was something hitched to the back of the scooter. Mansy had absconded with the bicycle trailer, a one seat wagon her little brother often rode in.

Amanda followed her gaze, and made a grand gesture with her left hand. “Your chariot awaits, Madame.”

The ‘chariot’ was a yellow plastic buggy, done up like a bumblebee. Sheila walked over to it, incredulous. There were blankets and pillows in there, along with a red helmet.

“You can’t be . . .”

She was silenced by another hip check. “I can and I am,” Amanda said, in her raspy Unk voice. “Question not the Great and Terrible One.”

Sheila didn’t. In fact, as she climbed into the buggy, she realized she was near the limit of where her feet could take her. Gingerly, she settled in, and only protested mildly as Amanda covered Sheila with a blanket and fitted her with that helmet.

Amanda got on the scooter and started it up.

“Where to?” Sheila wondered.

Amanda threw a mischievous grin back over her shoulder. “Out o’ Dodge.”

And so they went. Through the elm tunnel streets of Meadow Lake, due South, and up the long hill which took them from their valley town to the Ridge Road above it.

It was not a smooth ride. Sheila decided her bee-hicle was badly in need of a suspension system, or at least better tires, as she was jostled back and forth, up and down. The pillows and blankets all around her helped, but not much.

They crested the Ridge Road and started traveling East. Things got a little smoother then. Sheila settled back and began to enjoy the wind on her face. She looked to her left, down on the lights of the town that had been Sheila’s home since the age of four. A happy home until the age of nine, when it became a place pain and misery, where a Mom who wasn’t their Mom anymore laid in bed and stared through them blindly, until a leak in her brain ended it all.

Sheila looked back over her shoulder, craning to find Clarke Street. There it was. They were too far up to see anything but the lights. She guessed the other policeman had made his rounds by now. Pretty crappy job, actually, waiting around outside a house at night. They had to wish they were part of the manhunt, instead of babysitting Sheila and her family.

Sheila settled back again and closed her eyes, listening to the drone of the scooter. Rather like the buzz of a bee, come to think of it. Sheila began to daydream. She imagined the hitch slipping off the back of the scooter, and the buggy drifting off to the left, to the edge of the ridge, only to take flight instead of falling, and buzz its way lazily over the lights of Meadow Lake.

The buzzing sound cut back, and they slowed down. Sheila looked, and saw that they were approaching the old mill sight. Once, many decades ago, lumber was king in these parts. Most everyone worked for the man who ran the mill on the ridge. Someone named Chester something, field or son. Sheila couldn’t quite remember, although she had heard the name many times over the years. The man who built the town up from next to nothing, and who, by all reports, was like a mean version of Unk the Terrible.

Now all that was left was a long and broken shadow, overlooking the town he once ruled. Every window was smashed out and the center of the mill’s roof was caved in. The results of a tornado strike, years ago.

She thought Mansy was going to stop here, and was about to shout out her objection. A midnight stroll around that old haunt was the last thing she wanted. Or any stroll, for that matter. But no. Amanda went slowly for a bit, and stared in at the ruins of the mill, as though looking for something.

Then it happened, a blink of red light, just a flash, bright enough to light up the row of empty windows from within.

“What the . . .”

Before she could finish her question, Amanda cranked it, and Sheila was bumped and jostled down the road, as she stared back at the mill, dumbfounded.

On they went, up a slight rise and on down the ridge, for another two minutes. Then Amanda eased up again, this time with a destination in mind. Bender’s Look Off was just ahead. The kiss and cuddle capital of Meadow Lake.

Sheila made a mental note to make fun of Mansy for taking her here. But for the moment, as the scooter turned into the look off, Sheila tried to fathom what that flash could have been. She came up empty.

Soon they were settled on a park bench, with Sheila still wrapped in a blanket, at Mansy’s insistence. One mystery was solved. Amanda had seen two flashes of red light. That’s why she slowed, after the first one. Sheila had only caught the second.

“Aliens,” Amanda said.

Sheila chuckled and shook her head as she scanned the town below. “With you it’s always aliens.”

“Better theory?”

Sheila’s eyes settled on Wellington Park, normally a dark square at night. But it was aglow even now, well after midnight. As though someone had set up lights around the ball field and a game was in progress.

“Dunno.” Sheila shrugged. “I’ve been guessing. Everything from high tech hobos to . . .” (Not-My-Father) “. . . some reporter from down there, wandering around.”

“Oh come on, Sneeds. A reporter with a RED flash camera? They use red in dark rooms because it DOESN’T affect the film.”

“I know, I . . . don’t know, okay? You’re the brains of the operation. You figure it out.”

“You’re smart,” Amanda said. “I hate when you say things like that.”

“Not smart like you. Or smart like Mom.”

Silence then. In it, the wind picked up. Leaves rustled in the dark. Sheila breathed in deep, and the smell of pine touched her nostrils. She paused, disquieted, thinking suddenly of the pine logs in the garage, gathering dust and cobwebs.

“They found two more,” Amanda said, quietly.

“Two more?”

“Yeah. Bodies.”

Sheila looked at her sharply. “At that psycho’s place?”

A grim nod from Amanda. “Earlier tonight. Mom had to drop off some drugs at emerg. Saw a cop she knows. I heard her tellin Dad about it. It’ll be all over the news by morning.”

Sheila mulled this over. Or tried to. It was like the words wouldn’t quite sink in. She probed for her feelings. Any feeling. But they were far away. Down on Clarke Street maybe, sleeping in her room.

A wild notion struck her, one that flew in the face of every instinct of childhood.

“Do ya think we should tell someone? About that red light?”

“I was wondering that myself,” Amanda said.

Sheila leaned forward, staring at the lights from the park. “There could be a way to do it. Without, you know . . .”

“Getting our asses busted? My Mom believes in corporal punishment. Actually believes in it. She couldn’t get over how Reverend Davis doesn’t. Came home all disgusted when he preached against it. ‘But it’s in the Bible,’ she said.”

Sheila stared at her sweetly. “You risked your ass for me.”

“LITERALLY! Shit, I got a lickin for staying past curfew at Katherine Stinson’s last week. Mom wanted to drive home just how dumb that is, with a murderer on the loose. Now here I am, AWOL after midnight, and stealing you away from police protection.”

“Don’t forget grand theft bee-hicle.”

“Yes. Thank you. Sneeds, she’ll use the belt ’til I’m blue. There’s no way I can . . .”

“I know, I know. Chill, all right? Listen to my idea.”

Amanda looked nervous, but nodded.

Sheila nodded toward town. “I say we sneak down to the park and tell a reporter about the mill.”

It was Amanda’s turn to stare down at the lights of the park. She chewed on her lower lip, mulling it over. Then she shook her head slowly.

“What if somethin comes of it? Sure, they’d check it out. But what if the police got involved for some reason? They’d want to know where the reporter . . .”

“A source. That’s all a reporter has to say. It’s kind of a magic word for them. Besides, they don’t even know you.”

Amanda’s eyes bulged. “ME!? You want ME to talk to them?”

Sheila said, “I’m the poster girl of Meadow Lake! So you keep telling me.”

Amanda slumped back and crossed her arms, pouting. Then her eyes lit up. “A note! I’ll slip a note under the door of one o’ their trailers.”

“And what will you write it with? Did you bring a pen and paper?”

“Well, no, but . . .”

“I know,” said Sheila, with a facetious grin. “Why not break into your Mom’s pharmacy. She’s got a great stationary section. And what’s another felony on the night?”

Amanda gave her a shove.

“OR you could sneak back into your house and get supplies, sneak back out to deliver the note, then sneak BACK IN once you’re done.”

Amanda stared at Sheila with murder in her eyes. But she couldn’t do it for long. Her shoulders slumped in that special way. The way they always did, when the Mans Man gave in.

“I suppose I couldn’t just deliver a note tomorrow.”

Sheila didn’t have to answer. Their sense of right and wrong was one and the same, and Sheila knew it would be wrong to leave things go that long.

“Fine.” Amanda got up and started for the scooter. “Move your butt.”

Sheila did, slowly. She was surprised at how much her belly was hurting now. It hadn’t bothered her this much since the hospital. She hoped, earnestly, that she wouldn’t end up back there because of this midnight ride.

Soon she was settled into her buggy. Amanda fastened Sheila’s helmet in place, and gave her a pat on the head when she was done.

“You know,” said Sheila, “if we were boys, we’d be heading to that mill ourselves, to check things out.”

“Oh I know.” Amanda got on the scooter. “It’s amazing how most boys live to become men. They’re so stupid.”

Follow @Britt_dj

We have internet again. If it’s not one thing it’s another. First my site gets hacked, then the only dream of my existence up and dies ( http://www.24novels.com/2012/02/11/i-dont-believe-in-fairies/ ), and then our high speed bites the biscuit. Darryl, a chipper Sasktel employee, just came to the rescue. Oh he couldn’t do anything about the death of my dream, but our internet connection is now right as rain. A  little beige box has been replaced by a little black box. So I better start watching what I say, in case our house explodes and authorities comb through the wreckage.

My step daughter Crystal (Hi Crystal!) bought season one of The Walking Dead. Gathering around the tube on Sunday nights for the AMT hit is the closest many families come to a religious observance these days. I hadn’t experienced the show until now. Yesterday was a stat holiday in these parts. Sadly, it delayed Darryl from Sasktel’s arrival until this morning. But it also gave me a chance to stretch out on the couch and see what all the fuss was about. I watched one episode after another, and was left with two thoughts.

SIX FRIGGIN EPISODES?! HOW THE HELL CAN YOU CALL THAT A SEASON?!!? IT’S A FRIGGIN RIP OFF! I WANT CRYSTAL’S MONEY BACK! AND THE OTHER EIGHT SHOWS THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN SEASON ONE! AND I WANT IT NOOOOOOOOOW!!!

Ahem. Thought two contains a spoiler. If you’re one of the six people in the Alabama outback who hasn’t seen the season one finale be warned. Stop reading this post. Put down your iPhone 4S and get connected. One trip to Walmart  is all ya need. Big screen TV, a DVD player and a season one box set. It’ll change your life.

My other thought is this – I’m like the doctor and woman who choose to sit down and die at the end. Just get vaporized in a millisecond. Not even the time it takes to blink an eye. That is where the death of my dream, my hopes of being a full time writer, has left me. I’ve given up on the struggle. Oh I know, I know. I shouldn’t. ‘Never Give Up’ should be my battle cry. It’s better to press on, and to endure every sling and arrow that a cruelly ambivalent, zombie plagued world can throw at me. Far better that than to end all the pointless suffering in an instant.

But hope has died in me all the same.

That’s it. All my grand insights for the day. On to another belated installment of my horror novel Cambrian. We’re up to chapter thirteen. Here the stage is set for a midnight getaway for Sheila and Amanda. It’s a very bad idea. But of such bad ideas good stories are born. Enjoy!

_______________________

Chapter Thirteen

“I been calling and calling! What, too big to pick up the phone now?”

Sheila rolled her eyes and settled back in bed with the cordless, glad that she decided to give Mansy a call.

“Dad just had the ringer off, silly.”

Mansy sighed. “Well you owe me, Sneedlepot. Your best friend in the world slaved away at the library for you. On the last Saturday before school!”

“And?”

“And? That’s all the appreciation I get? AND?!”

Sheila spotted movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked to the window, and saw the white WGBN van roll to a stop in the back alley beyond the fence. The midday sun glinted off the windshield.

She sat up slowly, minding her belly. “Okay, okay, I’ll name my first born after you.”

“Promises, promises. Alright, it was a neat assignment, actually.”

Sheila slipped off the bed and padded over to the window as the driver got out of the van. Sheila recognized him. It was the curly haired cameraman who had been at the hospital when she was released.
“. . . threw me for a while. But ya can’t beat the Mans Man when she’s on a mission.”

“Uh huh.” That blond reporter was getting out the passenger side now, and the man was pulling his big TV camera out of the back of the van.

“. . . from the Bible. Cool, huh?”

“Uh. Yeah.”

It was the frosty silence that made Sheila notice the phone again, as the reporter went to the fence and turned so her back was to the house.

“You’re not even listening to me,” Mansy said.

“Sorry, Mans. A TV crew just pulled up. They’ve been chasing them away, but this one’s snuck around the back.”

Another sigh from Amanda. “So that’s it, huh? Next I’ll be going through your publicist, who won’t answer my calls. Then I’ll be jumping up and down at public appearances, trying to see you over the crowds.”

“No silly. You’ll BE my publicist!”

Mansy let out a snort. “I’d rather manage your brother. He has serious career ambitions. Astronomy. NASA.”

Sheila smirked. “Maybe you should marry him.”

“Ew,” said Mansy. “EW! Gross me green and call me Yoda.”

“Yoda?”

“Yeah. I hate the Muppets.”

“Alright, Yoda. Oh, by the way, Yoda. Remember all that exciting stuff you listed off? Things that were going on in the town while I was in the hospital?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Well, ya sorta left out THE DEAD BODIES!”

“I was under orders! From high, high up.”

The light was on in the camera now, and the reporter was talking, referring to the house, half turning and gesturing toward it.

“I knew it,” Sheila said, absently. “You’re scared o’ my Daddy.”

“Only since the pumpkin debacle! I tell ya, Sneeds, I saw his shadow side that night.”

Sheila chuckled at the memory. “You deserved to have pumpkin pie filling poured on your head!”

“All I said was how silly a Great Pumpkin party was!”

“You were at the party! MY party. And Dad worked his butt off all . . .”

“Okay, OKAY! I deserved it. Now, can we get back to the jackals?”

A chill coursed through Sheila. “The . . . jackals?”

“The REASON I slaved away at the library for you?!”

More movement outside. One of the police officers was making his way past the garage now, absently kicking Will’s basketball aside as he made for the fence and the TV crew.

“Oh, right.”

“Sneeds, is this a bad time?”

“No, Mans. Sorry. Please. Just . . . I need to use a free pass today. Okay?”

“I dunno. I only give you four o’ those a year. This’ll only leave you with one left.”

The camera guy pointed to the cop as he reached the fence. The reporter turned, and started talking fast to the policeman.

“I’m good with that,” Sheila said.

“Okay. Here’s the goods. It’s a quote from the Bible. ‘A haunt of jackals.’”

“Really?” The fact didn’t surprise Sheila, but for some reason it disturbed her. “Something Jesus said?”

“No. He talked about a den of foxes. And a viper’s brood. But this is from Jeremiah.”

The policeman was shaking his head and pointing down the road now. Undaunted, the reporter kept talking. “Jeremiah? The bullfrog guy?”

“You’re a heathen, Sneeds. Jeremiah is one of the greatest Old Testament prophets.”

“I’m not a heathen. I was baptized!”

“WhatEVER. Now, hush! In chapter nine of Jeremiah, the eleventh verse, it says, ‘I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals; And I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.’”

The debate was really getting heated outside. For the first time Sheila could hear the voice of the reporter. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was getting shrill.

“So, this prophet said he’d ruin Jerusalem?”

“Nope. Not the prophet. God. That’s who’s talking, through the prophet.”

Sheila blinked at this. “God? But isn’t that like . . . His city?”

“Yep. His city. His country. His people. Judah was the name for Israel then. Or the part that was still standing. It’s complicated. There was a civil war, and Israel got divided in two. The southern part became known as Judah.”

Sheila missed most of this, as she was lost in the drama outside. The reporter was in full tantrum now. She threw her microphone down on the ground and, with a final shout to the policeman, turned and stormed off. This shout included the first words Sheila could make out. Four of them.

“. . . TRYING TO PROTECT THEM!”

The camera guy picked up the microphone and started talking to the cop in a much quieter voice.

“. . . when it’s my turn to talk again.”

“Huh?”

“Just tell me when it’s my turn to talk again.”

“Oh. Okay. It’s your turn to talk again.”

Mansy was past sighs now. She just went on, matter of fact. “It’s God’s judgment that’s being spoken, because the people have refused to obey Him. They’ve worshiped other gods and got involved in all sorts of sins. So God is promising that Jerusalem’s gonna be wiped out. And it is, by the Babylonians.”

“Huh.” The reporter was back in the van now. Sheila could see her from the neck down in the passenger seat, her arms folded tight to her chest. The camera guy was keeping his cool, nodding slowly while the cop said something.

“So . . . those words are about what God is gonna turn Jerusalem into?”

“That’s right. And he did. Right around, uh, one sec, I got it here.”

A sound from downstairs, the backdoor opening. Sheila watched her father heading down the back walk to the fence.

“There it is. 586 B.C. There were a couple of deportations. But that was the big one.”

“Deportations?”

“Yeah. When the people were hauled off to Babylon. Like Bony M said.”

“Bony M?”

Mansy took to singing. “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down. And there we wept, as we . . .”

“Remembered Zion,” Sheila sang, nodding. “Yeah. I know that one.”

Her Dad was next to the cop now. The policeman was waving dismissively to the TV guy, and gesturing back to the house.

“So, it’s just about that city, and a long time ago?” Sheila asked.

“Uh, I guess so. Yeah.”

Sheila nodded. “That’s . . .”

The blond reporter burst out of the van and ran back to the fence. The cop tried to wave her off, but she kept talking to Sheila’s father with an earnest expression. Desperate, it seemed, to get something across to him.

“One sec, Mansy.”

“Don’t let me grow old here, Snee . . .”

Sheila dropped the phone on the bed. With some effort, she unlocked and opened the window.

“. . . been trying everything we could to talk to you,” the reporter said. “We’re not allowed on your property. You won’t answer your phone. We sent a couriered message, but the police intercepted it. This was the only way.”

“Ma’am,” the cop said, “I told you . . .”

The reporter interrupted, not taking her gaze off Sheila’s father. “We won’t be putting your house on television, Sir. There isn’t even film in Nick’s camera. We just wanted to . . .”

“MA’AM,” said the cop, “I can have you removed!”

“We’re on public property,” the camera guy, Nick, said. “And we have this family’s interests at heart. More than you.”

The cop unclipped the walkie talk from his belt and raised it. But Stu grabbed his arm.

“It’s alright, Officer. I want to hear what they have to say.”

The cop shook his head. “It’s not in your best interests, Sir.”

Everyone stopped at this, and stared at the policeman.

Finally, Stu spoke. “I judge what’s best for my family. You can return to your cruiser now.”

Sheila held her breath in the long pause that followed. Then, with a shrug, the cop walked away.

Stu turned back to the reporter. “Now, Miss Hollis.”

The two continued talking, but below earshot.

“SNEEEEEDS!”

Sheila went back to the phone and picked it up. “I’m here.”

“Well thank you for granting me an audience, Your Grace. I so do not wish to impose.”

With a grimace, Sheila stretched out on her too soft bed. “Look, Mans, there’s a lot goin on, okay? Please cut me some slack.”

“That’s all I’ve been doin. It’s just that . . . everything that’s been happening, you getting hurt and shut away behind a wall of police. I just . . .”

Suddenly Amanda’s voice was quivering with emotion. She let out a soft sob which cut Sheila, deep. It brought her back to the last time she saw the Mans Man cry. It was at the funeral home. Upon seeing Sheila’s Mom, Amanda had dissolved into tears. In seconds she had become a poured out thing, like that melting Wicked Witch of the West.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sheila said. “You’re stuck with me. Always and forever.”

“Doesn’t feel that way. Feels like you’re being stolen. By a psycho with a knife. By reporters and police. It’s like you’re on the other side o’ one o’ those police barriers, ya know? The ones that say ‘Do Not Cross’.”

Sheila found it hard to breathe all of a sudden. Her heart was creeping up the back of her throat, as though trying to crawl into the phone, to whisk across the wires to the East end of town, and be with Amanda.

Then inspiration struck. Fiercely.

“Steal me back,” Sheila said, sitting up. Her wound protested the sudden movement, but Sheila didn’t care.

“Whu . . .”

“Steal me back! Back across the police line. You’re right, there is one. Ya can’t see it, but it’s there. And I am sick of it!”

“How?”

Sheila opened her mouth to answer, but was stopped by a flash of paranoia. What she was planning wasn’t against the law, exactly. It’s not like she was under arrest. Although it felt like she was. Still, what she was planning would be kyboshed with a vengeance if it was found out. Not just by the police, either. By the highest court in her land. The Court of Dad. So he couldn’t know. Wouldn’t know. Unless, of course, she was ratted out. Say by certain policemen, who just might have the phone tapped.

She nodded slowly, as she formulated her plan.

“Say Mans, I think we should have a movie night.”

“Uh, okay.”

“Yeah. Let’s watch your favourite. Star Trek Two.”

There was a pause. Neither of them were Trekkies. But they had sat through Star Trek Two on video, earlier in the summer. It had been Will’s turn to pick the movie.

“My favourite,” Mansy said, slowly.

“Yeah. Remember that scene where Kirk’s stuck on the asteroid? He was talking to the Enterprise, right? But Khan was listening in too.”

Long pause. Sheila could almost hear the wheels spinning in her friend’s head. Mansy was brilliant, pure and simple. She didn’t get straight A’s. She got straight Hundreds.

Mansy laughed then. It was a great sound to hear.

“KHAAAAAAN!” She cried. “KHAAAAAAN!!”

Sheila frowned. It looked like Mansy was missing the point. She tried telepathy, thinking, ‘No uncoded messages, no uncoded messages, no uncoded messages . . .”

“Let’s go back one,” Mansy said.

“Back one?” Said Sheila.

“Yeah. The first Star Trek movie. How ’bout we watch that one instead.”

Sheila felt the grin steal over her face. Back one. There weren’t no flies on Mans. There might be flies on some of those guys, but there weren’t no flies on Mans.

“Okay,” Sheila said, nodding. “Back one it is. Let’s do it tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night it is,” said Mans.

Okay, that was the easy part. But the time and place? It would have to be psycho late, no earlier than midnight. And how do you pick a place, without . . .

“Tell you what,” Amanda said, “I have a dentist’s appointment, tomorrow at 1:30. I’ll go to the video store just before that. The flick’s on me.”

Sheila rammed a fist into her mouth to stop from laughing out loud. It really was like telepathy, having a best friend for life.

“That sounds perfect,” Sheila said.

“Perfect is all I do,” Amanda replied.

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My first 3-Day Novel was First Day Back. It’s the story of a teacher at a private Christian school who returns to work after a leave of absence which resulted from a nervous breakdown. Our hero finds himself in the bathtub one Saturday afternoon, so depressed that he can’t summon the strength to climb out of his tub.

Today, life imitated art. There I soaked, staring off into the middle distance with dawning horror. I sat in the cooling water as a weight of despair settled over me. This after returning from an early Valentine’s dinner with my wife. Dear Georgia is working out of town for the next five days, so we had an early celebration of our love. During it, she suggested I finally go back to school and take my B. Ed, while there’s still time to have a sensible career before our golden years. That suggestion came in the wake of a confession I made, an admission that was the death of a dream.

This is what I told my wife, while picking over my curried chicken. “I’ve given up. Sometime in the last few weeks. I realized that I no longer believe I’ll make the break. I now think I’ll die without achieving my dream of being a breakout writer.”

My wife sighed with relief. I’ll turn 44 this year after all. High time to put away childish things. I have spent more time on my craft than on everything else put together. My dear, longsuffering wife has been shunted aside in favor of my muse on countless occasions. It’s hard to compete with a daughter of Zeus. Damn nigh impossible in fact.

I’m not sure what spurred me over the edge into the death of hope. Years of rejections weren’t enough to drive me there. One of those rejections began with the words ‘You have talent’. The letter went on to assure me that the novel I was pitching was completely unworkable, and would never have an audience. I accepted the critique and moved on to another project. But first I cut out those words and pasted them to the top of my monitor. ‘You have talent.’

Things have changed. The acrid stench of mortality was part of it. A new bout of pneumonia recently left me hacking so hard that I thought I’d spew a lung, and so exhausted that it hurt to think. My twenty four 3-Day novel year took a brutal toll on me, one that only began to sink in in the wake of it. I have never known the weariness that has overcome me in recent months. I’m burnt out. Spent beyond all measure.

Then there’s the latest act of insanity, now still born. I started writing a full length novel live online, a high concept tale dubbed Infusion. That project has crashed and burned. It seems the conventional wisdom, always write your first draft with the door closed, is well advised. Flouting it is not. I wrote 150 pages amid an ever deepening conviction that this had to be good, not to mention coherent and engaging. At the end I proved to be a puny Atlas. The weight of the world I was creating amid such hauty expectations simply crushed me.

Then came a dream. I was playing the title role in an ambitious open air production of Peter Pan. I found myself on stage and completely at a loss. I could not remember any of my lines. Before waking I looked down at my sagging flesh, and heard the first hoots of derision from the onlookers. “Get out of those tights old timer,” someone said. On waking I heard myself whisper. “Forgive me Tink. I’ve stopped believing.”

A starving Scarlett O’Hara proclaimed tomorrow to be another day. But I write these words thinking there are no more tomorrows for my dream of dreams. Tomorrow I will awake with no expectations of any kind, and with no belief that the break will ever find me.

Maybe, then, I’ll be free to jot a few lines.

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