Ryne Douglas Pearson's Blog, page 12

I've previously posted Chapter One and Chapter Two of my dark mystery novel, All For One, for easy sampling. Today I'm posting Chapter Three.

 

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What is All For One about?

Mary Austin is the kind of teacher that parents adore and children wish for. Firm and compassionate, a guiding light in their lives, she would do anything to protect her students.

But that loyalty is tested when the school's sadistic bully is found dead on campus, and suspicion falls on six children in her class. None willing to talk. To point the finger.

To reveal the killer.

Faced with this, Mary finds herself confronted with dark memories from her own childhood. Fragmentary flashes from the past that test the bounds of her reality, the onslaught worsening when a tenacious detective is brought in to close the case.

On loan from the Seattle Police Department, Detective Dooley Ashe is plagued by his own demons, but focuses on breaking through the wall of silence the children have erected. Up against a town indifferent toward the crime and suspects virtually untouchable by the law, Dooley turns to Mary as an avenue to the truth.

As an unlikely closeness develops between Dooley and Mary, the suspected children close ranks, worried that one of their own is ready to break and give the detective what he wants.

But when unseen adversaries push back, with both damaging and deadly results, Dooley and Mary are forced to face their personal limits as they each discover the unthinkable identity of the real killer.

I hope you enjoy the sample and will enjoy the entire book.

 

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Three

The rain stopped about five, the clouds blown eastward toward the Cascades by an Alaskan cold front. Seattle was going to have its first icy night of the season.

Dooley laid two pieces of split pine on the fire and drew the wire mesh screen shut. He sat in his den in a chair that was close enough to feel the heat thrown from the growing blaze, but from which he could also look off through the bay window and watch the boats flit about in the harbor.

Every so often a small burst of embers would crackle sharply from one of the logs, and every so often Dooley would twist the cork from a bottle of chardonnay and add a bit to his glass. He sipped, watched the boats, and let himself be warmed by the fire.

And he waited.

Near nine in the evening the doorbell rang pleasantly, a soft chiming that drew Dooley's eyes from the parade of fishing boats straggling in for the night. Feet shuffled on the old planks of his porch, and when he looked past the kitchen and through the darkened living room to the front door a foggy black smudge moved across the frosted pane set into the wood.

The bell rang a second time. Dooley set his wine aside, light from the fire glinting off the sweating glass in dazzling four-point sparks. He went to the living room and stood in the quiet night filling the space. The shape on the porch shifted back and forth in silhouette. In halting, visible shivers as the cold took its toll on whoever was blotting the yellowed light of the streetlamp.

But this shadowmaker was not an enigma. Dooley knew who it was. Knew who it would be even before the moment came.

The shadow stilled as Dooley approached and opened the door.

"Detective Ashe," Joel Bauer said, his determination to speak some piece as apparent as the white, misty breath that rolled off each word. "I don't know you at all, but from the little I've been told I get the sense that you're a good cop. The kind who could never walk away from a case. The kind who'd never give up." An icy gust moved across the porch, tossing the hem of his overcoat. He looked into the wind, short hair barely moving, then back to Dooley. "I'm a good cop, too, Detective Ashe."

A heady proclamation, Dooley could have thought, but the expression Joel Bauer wore, equal parts steel and plea, might have been his some ten years earlier. Or ten months.

Certain crimes got under a good cop's skin, and itched, and nagged, and refused to go away. Couldn't be salved into remission, not with rationale, or promises, or even time. Certainly not with bad booze.

Or even good wine...

Dooley's eyes dipped briefly, then traveled again to Joel Bauer. "You look cold."

"I am."

Dooley stepped aside, opening the door wide. After a moment's hesitation, Joel came in from the cold.

*  *  *

Only one boat remained on the water, a tight cluster of white lights bobbing toward its mooring. Joel stood close to the window, a glass of wine held gut-high.

"Is this good?" Joel asked, lifting the glass and turning to face his host. "I'm usually a beer drinker. Bartlett doesn't pay enough to drink much else."

From his chair Dooley attempted a polite smile, but the expression was barely an approximation. "Wine Spectator rates it a ninety-seven."

"So that's good?"

Dooley nodded.

"You have a nice place here," Joel said. His eyes played over the room and its precise, complimentary furnishings. "View. Everything."

"My ex decorated it."

Joel nodded and took the seat opposite Dooley. A low, cedar table separated them. "You were married."

"I was."

A slow, agreeable nod now, and Joel said, "Ten years now for me. We have two kids. Our son's nine and we just had a girl three months ago." He flashed a smile that died of loneliness a few seconds later. "Do you have any?"

"No," Dooley answered. It felt like a lie, though it was most definitely not.

Joel noticed his host shift where he sat, eyes drifting off to the glowing hearth. "I was surprised when Lieutenant Evans told me you'd be at Anchor Bay today. Were you—"

"You came for a reason?" Dooley focused a hard, sour gaze on Joel as he interrupted the inevitable question.

"I did. I think you know why." Joel cupped his glass now in two hands as he leaned forward, forearms on knees. "That's why you wouldn't talk to me earlier. I told you where I was from."

"I read the papers," Dooley confirmed blandly.

"We had a thirteen year old male killed at school," Joel began to explain, looking occasionally to the golden swirl of chardonnay. "Just a kid. His skull was crushed by a single blow from a baseball bat. Six of his classmates found him, and their prints are the only ones on the bat. One of the six had a broken arm," he qualified with a raised brow. "The day before a few dozen kids used this bat. Not a print from anyone else on the handle. Not a one. The state lab says the handle was wiped clean before the kids' prints got on there."

"One-armed kids don't play baseball anyway," Dooley commented obviously.

"And sixth graders aren't supposed to kill each other," Joel reminded him.

Dooley lifted the bottle of chardonnay by its neck, swished the scant contents, and tipped the remains into his glass. He dipped a finger into the liquid and, content that the chill was still sufficient, drank slow on it for a moment. "Since when are sixth graders unsupervised?"

"It happened at recess, behind a classroom. There's a fence there and an orchard beyond that. It's not a witness-friendly environment. Their teacher was on her break in the teachers' lounge, and the ones watching the kids at recess were on the opposite side of the building leading a game. Softball or kickball. Something like that. The first any adult knew about it was when one of the six kids came to the office for help."

"And what do these kids say happened?"

"They say they found him laying there with the bat next to him. And they all deny touching it."

Dooley let his hand and glass drape lazily over the arm of the chair. His expression edged toward softness. "Kids can lie."

Joel nodded. "You ever try getting permission to hook an eleven year old to a polygraph?"

"Eleven, no," Dooley answered.

Realization showed quickly in Joel's expression, as a curious, morbid eyebrow raised. He started to say something, hesitated, then finally asked, "Jimmy Vincent's almost thirteen now, isn't he?"

Dooley nodded. "Almost."

"Were you there to see him today?" Joel probed further, testing earlier waters.

Words strung together with a rising tone at the end. A question. How close it came to picking at a scab reluctant to heal. "Don't be fascinated by him. He's not remarkable. He killed three little boys. Anyone could kill three pre-schoolers."

"But you got him to admit to it," Joel said. "What did the headshrinkers try for? Six months? You broke through in one."

"Six weeks," Dooley corrected, noting the admiration in the young detective's voice. Far too much, he thought. "Criminals eventually talk."

"Eventually is a long time to a family wanting to know why their child had his head bashed in at school," Joel observed, and the brief sideways glance Dooley steered his way told him that his words had hit home.

"How much cooperation are you getting?"

"The school district is behind us," Joel answered. "They need to know who did what as much as we do. More than that, they can't look like they're hindering the investigation."

Dooley nodded slightly. "How long did it take the family to get a lawyer?"

"Eight hours. Just in time for a weepy press conference on the late news. The papers should be filed tomorrow morning." Joel 'tinged' his glass with a flick of his finger. "One hundred million dollars."

"How about the parents of your six suspects?"

"Not as easy. No one's little angel would do such a thing, and how dare I suggest they would. They're cooperating, barely."

Dooley stood and approached the window looking out to the harbor. He stood close, his breath leaving transient, foggy ovals on the glass. "And the kids just found him."

Joel stared into the fire, hot yellow licks spiraling upward from crumbling knots of orange and black. "These six, I don't know..."

"But you're thinking something," Dooley said. "So share."

"Perfect little kids. Polite. Smart. Good kids. Five of them run the class. President, vice president, stuff like that."

"But?"

"I spent hours with each one, but afterward I got the feeling that there was one little brain telling the mouths what to say."

"Rehearsed?"

"I wouldn't doubt that at all."

"It sounds like a tight, happy group."

"Tight as tight gets. I would have thought more than one would be scared enough to tell the truth. One little girl I was sure of. But they're not. They're together on this. As for happy..." Joel shook his head at the rug. "I don't think they should have the choice to be happy. I think they should be dogged until one of them breaks."

"You think one of them did it and the rest are covering?"

Joel contemplated the question for a moment. "They're all guilty, if you ask me."

A faint, knowing smile reflected back at Dooley in the glass. "How long have you been working murders?"

"Murders?" A muddled snicker slipped from the detective. "People don't get murdered in Bartlett that often. I made detective three years ago and I've worked five. Four of those were drug related, and the last one was a lady who got tired of her husband beating the crap out of her and administered some twelve gauge justice to his sleeping head. I solved them all."

The smile dissolved. "Felt good to put 'em away, didn't it?"

"All but the wife."

"Ah, so you do know what you get when you mix black and white."

"Pardon?"

Dooley turned away from the window and eased over to the fireplace, letting an elbow rest on the simple mantle, his wine glass dangling. It was nearing empty. "Nothing. An objective lesson. So, all your guilty little children..." A quick, improper toss finished off the remaining chardonnay. "Why kill their friend?"

"I'm pretty sure he wasn't their friend."

Animus alive and well in sixth grade. Murderous hate, too? Dooley remembered fistfights and playing dodge ball, all with the same kids and within hours of each other.

"To be totally honest, no one at that school much misses the kid," Joel said. "Or anybody in town, for that matter."

"I'm feeling drunk enough that that doesn't even make me mad," Dooley said. "Did this kid have a name?"

"Guy Edmond. The word from the school was that he was one Grade-A pain in the ass. Parents, too. We knew him pretty well at the station."

"I guess Guy deserved it then," Dooley cracked. "That makes you and me irrelevant."

"I didn't mean—"

Dooley shook his head. "I'm drunk enough to talk crap, too. Forget it."

"I can't break through," Joel said after a momentary pause.

Dooley slid to a sit against the red brick surrounding the hearth and closed his eyes. The subtle blaze tickled hot on his right side.

"You have," Joel added solemnly.

"It's not like flipping some switch on," Dooley said, reluctant eyes opening.

"I know. I've tried."

"You've tried," Dooley parroted.

The remark had enough of an edge that silence was all Joel could immediately offer in response. After a moment of reflection he asked, "Was that you, or was that the wine?"

"A little of both." Dooley shook his head. "It's a hell of a thing when your job requires you to prove that a kid can kill a kid."

"If I had that problem you'd be drinking alone right now," Joel said.

"Consider yourself blessed," Dooley said. "It can mess with you."

"It's a murder."

"It's that, and it's stuff you don't even want to imagine."

"It's still a murder. Someone has to pay."

Dooley nodded, the peace of the knowing in the gesture. "Someone always does." He stared into his empty glass. "So, you came for advice from the man who put a twelve year old away for life."

"I'd like more than advice."

"I can't give more," Dooley said. "I know you want more, and I know you have to ask, so consider the question asked and consider the answer given. I'll look at the file, I'll answer questions. That's what help I can give."

"Can you solve a case without getting close?" Joel challenged.

"This isn't my case to solve. Five and one, or six and oh; that's up to you."

"Please."

Dooley stood and looked past his guest, out over the harbor to the black night spilling from the sky. "The roads are going to be tricky. Slick as snot on a doorknob."

Joel put his glass of wine on the simple pedestal table next to the chair. "Just let me..."

Dooley walked off toward the living room. "You can crash on the couch if you want. There's a throw blanket on the rocker. The lights are on a timer so don't play with the switches."

Joel stood and took a few steps after Dooley. "Detective Ashe—"

"Just Dooley. Got it?" He turned down a hallway in the dark and was gone. A door clicked shut a few seconds later.

Joel Bauer fell back into the overstuffed chair and let his head burrow sideways into the cushion. He watched the fire slowly die and drifted off to sleep thinking of a poor little bastard of a kid with his head caved in.

*  *  *

A defiant burst of embers erupted from the hearth's coal-black center sometime after midnight, batting a sharp crack through the darkened den. Joel stirred at the sound, eyes opening to see an orange glow struggle to live again on the brittle surface of the spent pine. He straightened in the chair, rolled the stiffness from his neck, and blinked to adjust his eyes to the din.

When they had, he saw Dooley sitting across the cedar table from him, the hearth-side of his body cast a pale red—the red of a sunrise trickling over cold gray granite peaks.

"Dooley? What time is it?"

"Late. Early." Bare above the waist, Dooley did not take his eyes from Joel. "What were you dreaming of?"

"Dreaming? Was I dreaming?"

"You were talking to someone named Julia."

"Julia?" Joel wiped his eyes.

"Is that your wife, or your baby girl?"

Joel shook his head. "An old girlfriend. She dumped me the day before the prom."

"Funny." Dooley breathed slow, deep. "We dream of pain."

"Is that what we do?"

"I was dreaming of checkers," Dooley said.

"Nixon's dog?"

"The game. Have you played it?"

"Everybody's played checkers."

"Smoke before fire. Do you remember that? Black moves first? That was the explanation for it. When I was a kid we'd accept that without even asking how there could be smoke without fire. Red should move first, by all rights."

"It's been a long time..."

"Kids really love the game."

"You were dreaming of playing checkers," Joel said.

"Yeah."

Joel twisted in his chair and crossed his arms tight across his chest. With but a wanting show from the hearth, a crisp, prickly chill had invaded the den. "Playing checkers is painful?"

"It can be." Dooley ran a hand over the stubble on one cheek. "These kids you suspect—are they likable?"

"Likable? I don't know."

"You said they were good kids. Do you like them? Could you?"

"Knowing what they did, in all honesty, no," Joel answered, and growled the sleep from his throat. "But then I think the feeling is mutual, so it's a wash."

"You played bad cop with them, didn't you?"

"I was direct," Joel replied, twisting the query his way.

"You should have played checkers," Dooley said.

"What is this thing with checkers?"

Sixty-four squares and little circles skating across them. Smoke and fire. "Maybe I'll tell you when I find your killer."

Joel edged forward in the chair. "You're going to help?"

"I don't want a shadow," Dooley said.

Joel's head bobbed in a rapid nod. "I'll stay out of your way."

"You'll thank me when this is done. I may hate you."

An agreeing grin started to show on Joel's face, but withered before becoming when he realized that no jest was attached to Dooley's statement.

"What made you change your mind?"

"Maybe I'm sick of sitting around this house. Maybe I'm a good cop, like you say."

"You don't sound very sure about those reasons," Joel observed.

"Maybe you're right," Dooley said, drawing a smile from his guest. He looked away from Joel and into the hearth, at the pulsing glow crawling in worm-like tendrils over the fractured log. A wisp of smoke was trailing clearly up toward the flue. Smoke before fire. "Or maybe I thought this time things might turn out better."

"Better? You put the last one away for good."

Dooley's head shook slightly at the fire. "Better for me."

 

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All For One is available as an eBook for Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony Reader, PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other devices using the appropriate reading apps. You can purchase All For One from the following online retailers:

Amazon   Amazon UK   Barnes & Noble   Sony   Smashwords   Kobo

In addition, you can purchase All For One directly from Apple using the iBooks app on your iPad or iPhone.

Thank you!

Especially ours. Wait for the 'love' our little guy gives the camera near the end.

Sometimes you get a good review. Sometimes not. But what I really enjoy is reading a review that shows me the reader not only enjoyed what I wrote, but 'got it'. Basically, that they were engaged by the story in the manner I had hoped.

Here's a link to a review of Confessions over at Catholic Fiction. And thanks Kathleen for taking the time to review my novel.

 I'm posting Beholder, a full story from my collection, Dark and Darker. After the story you will find links to where you can purchase the complete collection from your preferred online retailer.

 

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What is Beholder about?

Two police officers step inside a suspect's personal hell, and discover just how close they are to the real thing.

 

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Beholder

Walter Royce clawed his eyes out when he was nine. Then again when he was twelve. And a final time on the day he turned nineteen. After that he gave up and closed them.

He didn't open them again for ten years. Until the day the policemen came.

*  *  *

Cold case. It was a catchy moniker. Some detective somewhere had dropped the phrase into a random conversation and a whole industry was born. TV shows. Documentaries. Movies. Glamour. Triumph. Closure.

It wasn't like that, Rick Mellon knew. What Hollywood dreamed up was the exception, not the rule. The truth lay in the case folder on his lap. The demise of a college student told in clinical forms covered with the scrawls of an investigator who didn't have a clue what happened. Mellon flipped the folder open as his partner drove, turning to the last thing the investigator penned in the file ten years before—a question mark.

"You ever been on one this weird, Mellow?"

Mellow... It was a nick that had stuck since the academy. Nothing phased him. Well, nothing until he was paired with Eddie Gray. The guy was wound tight as a tick inside, just a thin skin no more stout than candy glass holding it all in. Usually the young ones had that tendency, a few years on the beat chasing bad guys through back yards and over fences convincing them they could throw the same bucket of adrenalin at a crime with a detective shield clipped to their belt. Piss, vinegar, and a Glock to the rescue.

That lasted a while, usually until the paperwork numbed them to the point that they started to act lobotomized. Usually.

Gray had somehow held onto the fire for twenty years, three more than Mellon had been wearing the badge. Sure, he knew how to play the part. Keep it cool. And if the unlucky soul he was questioning knew his or her place, and demonstrated such, all would stay cool. Gray liked to hear a lot of yessirs and nossirs from suspects. From everybody, really, because, as he liked to put it, 'Everybody's guilty of something.'

"Weird how?"

Gray kneaded the steering wheel and swung left through a stop sign, looking to his younger partner through the whole maneuver. "You're serious?" He straightened the car out, accelerating fast down the narrow side street. "You don't find this one weird."

Mellon slapped the folder shut on his lap and fixed his gaze ahead. "Nothing natural about anyone going missing."

That was hard to argue with. Gray decided to give it a go. "Seems to be damn natural for folks close to Walter Royce."

*  *  *

He should have listened to his mother when she said to never, ever, come out of the basement. And when the man from the school came to see why the new boy living with his aunt hadn't enrolled in Grayson Middle School, he should have kicked and screamed when the man reached to take his helmet off.

"He's painfully shy," Aunt Rose had explained to the man as she stepped from the small dining room to take the screaming teapot from the stove. Why did she have to leave? She should have just let it shriek and stayed with me. She continued the lie by crafting a story—that bore a grain of truth—about her husband turning an old football helmet into what the man saw now resting atop Walter's head, face shield turned solid, some sort of thin metal riveted to the structure beneath. The contraption, which enveloped Walter's head like a misshapen globe, gave him his 'peace', Aunt Rose told the man as she spun the burner to off.

When she came back into the dining room the man was gone.

*  *  *

Gray steered the car to the curb in front of the address they'd been given. Mellon reached to open the door but stopped, feeling his partner's stare. He turned back and saw those two black eyes zeroed in on him, inky pupils bleeding to where most people had splashes of green or blue or brown.

"Listen, Mellow, this is for show, all this cold case follow up crap they're dumping on us." He wasn't wrong. Mellon knew this was all about dollars. Some fed grant money to run down unsolved cases. Of course there'd be a skim left over for the department to buy new radios or fresh tile for a precinct. So you went through the motions, knocked on doors, interviewed old witnesses and persons of interest. Check the box and move on.

Except it seemed that Gray didn't embrace that concept. For all his faults, it could never be said he turned away from making bad guys pay. It seemed that, to his way of thinking, the man who lived in the house they'd just arrived at might be deserving of some justice that had been too long delayed.

Mellon opened the door and stepped out as Gray did, each looking to the small house across the street, window shades drawn and a NO SOLICITOR sign on the fence that racetracked the narrow property. A BEWARE OF DOG sign was tacked to a post that mostly held the roof over the leaning porch, and just to the right of the steps an alarm company placard was staked into the ground.

"Someone doesn't like visitors," Gray said, and they headed across the street.

*  *  *

He screamed—she never did. She was just gone.

He ran back down to the basement and collapsed to the floor, screaming that he was sorry. Promising through sobs that he'd never leave the basement again, just like his mommy had warned him.

But he knew that promising wasn't enough. He wasn't a baby. Sometimes he could hear the kids next door talk about not being 'kindygartners' anymore, and though he had no idea what a 'kindygartner' was he was sure he was not one, just like the outside kids. He was nine. Nine! And nine year olds had to do the right thing. They did. And he knew what that was.

It hurt. A lot. And he cried. Tears mixing with blood as he dug his fingers into the socket around his right eye and pulled. Something that felt far back inside his head popped and the eyeball detached, slipping through his fingers and dropping to the basement floor. Walter watched it with his remaining eye as it rolled a few inches.

Then he went to work on the left one.

He fell asleep on the floor of the basement knowing that it was over. All the bad he did. But when he woke his eyelids fluttered open and he could see light sneaking in past the boarded up windows. He held his hand out in front and could easily see the red-stained fingers. And past it, on the floor where they had dropped, his eyes lay in a shared puddle of slimy blood.

They were back.

Walter sat up and stared at his eyes as the phone upstairs rang and rang. Stared at his eyes as his aunt and uncle pounded on the back door a few hours later. Stared at them until his mother's sister and her husband broke through a side window and everything went black as something thick was wrapped around his head.

*  *  *

They entered with hands on their holstered pistols after the man who confirmed he was Walter Royce unlocked the half dozen latches on his front door and stepped clear. Mellon saw him first, wispy thin and shoeless, a couple yards away in what would be the living room in any other house, but here was filled with a single chair and stacks of books and magazines, and a computer powered down on a small folding table in the corner. But not a single lamp to cut through the forced twilight within.

"Mr. Royce, just for everyone's safety, can we see your hands, please?" Mellon was glad he had said it. Coming from Gray it would have been an order barked to scare the man shitless.

Walter was facing away from the policemen, but he did what was requested and eased his hands away from his sides. They were empty.

"Turn around, sir," Mellon instructed, and Walter did. Gray took a small flashlight from his pocket and directed the beam at the man, illuminating a near skeletal form, tee shirt and pajama bottoms hanging from bony shoulders and jutting hips.

"What the..." Gray uttered the puzzlement softly as he shifted his light upward, to Walter's head, revealing an angular, emaciated face, eyes hidden behind a pair of welding goggles, the darkened lenses covered by layers of tape and a thick substance reminiscent of roofing tar.

"Mr. Royce, we'd like to talk to you about Donna Weston," Mellon said, easing his hand from his pistol.

Walter said nothing. Just nodded.

*  *  *

She wouldn't go away.

"Please, Walter, I want to see you."

Her voice wasn't quite pleading, but close. A desperation in it that he could plainly understand, though his was a hundred fold what hers was. He wanted to let her in, beyond the door and really in. In to everything about him. But he couldn't. He knew that.

"I'm not leaving until you let me in," Donna said through the closed door, Walter standing inches away within, turned away, oversized sunglasses anchored on his face. He stood there, listening to her, wanting her, and wanting her to leave.

"I have to see you," she did plead now. "I have to know—is this true?"

This. He'd somehow allowed the possibility that contact with the world was possible, if only in one direction, so he'd enrolled in an online course at a local college. Then another. And finally one where a requirement was submission of a poem.

Born of the downstairs man

Cursed by the touch of his hand

She was crying now, beyond the door. He listened to her soft sobs until they receded, porch steps creaking beneath her and gate swinging shut behind as she fled. Gone in the good way.

*  *  *

The policemen said he could sit, so Walter did.

"We're following up on Donna Weston's disappearance ten years ago," Mellon said, waiting for Walter to react in some way. He didn't. "You were the last person to see her. You told the investigator back then..." He opened the file and found the old notes. "'She stopped by, we talked, and she left.'" The file closed with a soft slap in his hand. "That's still how you remember it?"

Walter did react now. Confirmed the lie with a nod.

*  *  *

He was dreaming. Hours after Donna had fled, weeping, he drifted to sleep, wanting visions of her to dance through his slumber.

'The man upstairs will not have you!' It was his mother screaming amidst the sound of breaking glass, not Donna laughing and holding him on some preternatural island paradise. 'The man downstairs will take you back to his fire if you know your true self!' More glass breaking. In the bathroom. In her bedroom. Something small from her bureau drawer smashed.

Walter...

It was Donna's voice. Invading his dream, he thought.

He was wrong.

"Walter..."

She'd come back. And found a way in. He felt the bed shift as she sat next to him, and before his rational self could crawl up from sleep, his eyes opened, and he saw her, a dark beauty just an instant, before a microsecond of terror washed over her and she was gone.

Walter reached out to embrace her but grasped only air and a misty wisp of sulfur. He rolled off the bed to the floor, slamming his fists against the hard wood until they were bloody. After a moment he rocked back on his heels and sat against the bed, thinking through tears, his hands coming up after a minute and, like he had after beholding his mother when he was nine, and the man from the school when he was twelve, pressed his fingers into the sockets of his eyes and gouged them out.

*  *  *

"Do you mind if I look around, Mr. Royce?" Mellon asked, and Walter's head angled toward him, shrouded eyes seeming to fix on him without seeing.

"Go ahead."

Mellon glanced to Gray and headed down the hallway, his partner stepping close to Walter and running fingers over the books stacked around his chair. Tiny bumps lived in groups upon each.

"Braille," Gray observed, moving behind the chair. He glanced at the computer and saw an odd keyboard and tactile reader sitting where a monitor would normally be. "Nothing in your file about being blind."

Walter felt the detective circle him and begged whatever power might hold pity over the man to please let this come to a conclusion quickly. If engaging his inquisitor would help that along... "I was born with a condition."

"Fraser something." Gray recalled it from the file.

"Fraser syndrome," Walter explained. "My eyelids were sealed."

"Hmm." Gray picked up a book, ran his fingers over the pimply upward dents. "You told the other investigator about that." He dropped the book back onto its stack. SMACK. Walter shuddered in his chair, startled. "You told him something else. Didn't you?"

Walter nodded.

*  *  *

Mellon waded through the rooms, every space dark, windows shaded heavily. Some covered fully with flats of plywood hammered to the frames. He swept his flashlight through bathroom and kitchen and bedroom, recalling from the file that this was the house Royce had grown up in. He'd lived with his aunt and uncle for a while, but returned to the vacant property when he turned eighteen. Why he would want to do that was beyond the detective to comprehend.

This was the place where Walter's father had slit his eyelids with a straight razor when the boy was five. Some form of home surgery to correct a birth defect. The act seemed too much for the man, since he up and left after that, never to be heard from again.

And Walter chose to come back. To that sort of memory.

Mellon paused just outside the bathroom and directed his light in against the wall over the sink. There was no mirror, just the faded outline on the wall where one had been. He returned to the back bedroom and shifted the beam to a bureau across from the bed, its antique luster muted in the harsh white light playing over it. A large, oval frame rose from the back of the solid piece of furniture, the kind which would be expected to hold a mirror. This one did not.

He puzzled over this and flipped the file open, reading the investigator's notes by flashlight. The missing mirrors were noted, but no explanation given. The idiot hadn't even asked Royce about the oddity. All the other t's were crossed and i's dotted—no trace evidence belonging to Donna Weston was found. Blood was found near the bed on the floor, identified as belonging to Royce, who explained it as the result of a cut. Both of his hands had shown signs of abrasions. He'd pounded the floor in a fit of melancholy after a dream about his mother.

So he said.

*  *  *

Gray came fully around the chair now and stood facing Walter where he sat.

"Pop slices your eyes open and, poof, he hits the road." Gray let that have a second to get under the man's skin. The first step in a guided trip down memory lane. "A few years later mom up and disappears. Then a truant officer stops by your aunt's house and is never heard from again." He leaned forward, close to Walter. "Then Donna stops by one night and joins the rest of them in great bye bye."

Walter's head dipped as the detective straightened, standing over him like judge and executioner. Just skip the jury altogether.

"Was it something Donna said that set you off? Something from that last e-mail she sent you?"

He tried not to react, but the tell was clear, his chin rising a bit before he caught himself.

"Bingo," Gray said.

*  *  *

She'd read the poem three dozen times at least. Once or twice would be the norm for a piece of writing she'd been assigned to critique from a 'satellite student' (hermit, troll, and leper were the more common unofficial brands given those unable to participate in person on campus), but something about Walter Royce's stumbling, rhythmic piece had touched her.

Beholder Blind

By Walter Royce

Told I am one

Not meant to see the sun

Or the Son

Born of the downstairs man

Cursed by the touch of his hand

Beholder I am

Leave this earth one way

Some day

Too far away

Part of the plan

Made by the downstairs man

Beholder I am

Buried in the poetry was something that did more than touch Donna. One word spurred a memory. A concept buried deep, planted the previous year from readings she'd completed for a class on Lore. Beholder.

She'd dredged that recollection from where it might have drown in saturated synapses had Walter's poem not been assigned to her. Now in the library she spent an hour pouring through a dozen books until she found the one of consequence. Its title chilled and thrilled her as she pulled it from the stacks—The Devil's Seeds. A thickish volume of legend and lore born of beliefs that Satan touches the living world in many ways, through many beings begotten of his relations with mortals.

Beholder. Two paragraphs related that term. Explained it. A child of the devil, spawned to send souls to its master with nothing more than a look. Destined to return to its father when it knows its true self.

Donna closed the book. Her hands were trembling. Heart thudding. A warmth building within.

*  *  *

His mother sat behind him on the floor of the basement, his eyes taped shut and black strapping wrapped around his head, telling him a story. Or what he thought was a story. It was about a woman who had a son with a special father. The son was supposed to do bad things, but God stepped in and made it so the son could not do those bad things. That was a sign, the woman realized.

But her husband thought the son's destiny to do bad things might bring power and riches, so he decided to cut away what God had done and let the boy be what he was supposed to be. The mother warned him, but the husband did not listen, and so he was the first soul taken.

His mother told Walter that the son must never look at himself, or he would be sent to sit with his father in the fires that burned for the damned.

Later Walter realized this was the story of his life that his mother told him. He was five.

*  *  *

Mellon sat on the edge of the bed and flipped back through the file, stopping on the last documented communication between Walter and Donna. An e-mail she'd sent him from a computer in the college library. One of many. Straightforward at first, then spinning off to probing. Even suggestive. On her part, at least. He never responded to her innuendo. Never took the bait. Didn't agree to the hinted liaisons she seemed to be using to lure him from his refuge.

He turned away from that last e-mail briefly, to look at the photo of Donna Weston included in the file. She was a pale vision painted goth black, pierced lips, lids, and nose, innocence the canvas and defiance the art upon it. Like other kids Mellon had encountered embracing an alternative appearance and lifestyle, she had that look in her eyes. The look of a seeker. Wanting that something which would allow the inner self to match the outer veneer.

Dreaming of a darkness that might be real.

*  *  *

Gray chuckled lightly. "What was it she said? 'I want to know that it's real. I want to know his strength.'" Walter's head angled up now, hidden eyes aimed at the detective. "Crazy come-on line, I guess. But expected. She thought you were some...monster." The chuckle again, not so light this time. "Some beast in human form."

The detective was enjoying this, Walter sensed. Mocking and dismissing in the same breath. Just go, please. Open the door and go.

"What was that thing she said in the e-mail?" Gray asked, feigned interest dripping with derision. "About dear old dad?"

*  *  *

'I want to know your father...' Mellon read the girl's words softly. 'You can send me to him. You can do anything. No one can hurt you. You're not like us. You're immortal.'

Immortal. Mellon closed the file. There was a bucket of delusion in there. He glanced around the room, one space in a dungeon Walter Royce had made for himself, thinking that a fair amount of crazy lived here as well.

He stood and left the bedroom, moved down the hallway and into the kitchen, hearing his partner's faint, measured haranguing of Royce. Gray was wired for this exact interaction, probing for buttons and then pushing them relentlessly. He was living up to his nature. Or down to it.

Donna Weston had thought Walter some child of Satan because of a poem and a book and a deficit in the self image department. Her world, Gray's, Walter's, each was a shade of fucked-up they were willing to live with.

From the front room Mellon heard his partner tell Royce to stand up. He might flip him face first to the wall and frisk him, hard hands leaving a few choice bruises during the pat down. He'd let Gray have his fun harassing the man a while longer before returning from his walk-through to brand the place clean and suggest they head out.

First, he wanted to give the kitchen a once over. Considering the original investigator's apparent lack of follow through, not to mention his piss poor questioning as laid out in the reports, Mellon could not completely discount the possibility that Donna Weston's frozen head might be in the freezer behind half a leftover Thanksgiving turkey.

That possibility, however unlikely, evaporated the second he opened the ancient refrigerator, its warm interior empty. Checking the freezer he found the same. He turned to the cabinets, opening them one by one, expecting to find cans of chili and boxes of cereal. What he found were empty shelves and a stack of plates webbed over by some spider after years (decades?) of non use.

'You're not like us.' The words from Donna's last e-mail to Walter flashed in Mellon's thoughts. He shook off the oddity and spun the faucet—no water came out. Next he tried the stove—it hissed a last gasp of gas trapped in its pipes for years, then went silent. He looked for a trash can, where certainly there would be Subway wrappers and pizza boxes. There was none.

'No one can hurt you.' The words of the missing girl again echoed in Mellon's head, some part of him appending an unsolicited addendum...

You can't even hurt yourself...

*  *  *

Gray didn't spin Walter Royce toward the wall for a rough frisking. Where was the flair in that considering the freak before him? He simply made him stand and stepped close, reaching a hand toward the goggles hiding the man's eyes from the world.

"No." It was a clear act of defiance, the motion of Walter's own hand in concert with the word, wiry fingers clamping around Gray's wrist.

The detective moved fast, his free hand—his gun hand—drawing his pistol and pressing the muzzle to the soft skin under Walter's chin. He added no warning, no direction. If any was necessary, Gray knew, he'd simply pull the trigger and it would be written up as a suspect going for his gun.

Walter eased his grip. Withdrew his hold from the detective's wrist. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen. He breathed out, wishing it could be his last.

"That's a good boy, Walter," Gray said, patronizing off the scale. He brought his pistol down, but kept it aimed at Walter's midsection, free hand gripping the roughened frame of the goggles now. "Let's see what daddy did."

Walter felt the goggles pull away and slammed his eyelids shut, the jagged skin that edged them letting light bleed in, and shadow, the shape of the detective blotting out what limited brightness there was. He rolled his eyes down, not wanting to see. Not wanting to behold the man before him.

"Daddy was no surgeon, was he?" Gray taunted.

He wasn't my daddy.

"Open those eyes and let's see what—"

He could have resisted. Could have spun his head away like when the man from the school took his helmet off, only to have his slick, thin fingers guide his gaze back to the front. Here, too, he would be made to look, so he did.

It happened in less than the blink of an eye, just time enough for Gray to sense his end. All about him sizzled, from head to toe, his essence seeming to dissolve to vapor. A pungent mist which swirled like a cyclone into Walter's eyes, the detective's form being consumed from head to toe, no time to resist. Only an instinctual reaction possible, Gray's finger squeezing the trigger and sending a bullet slamming into Walter's stomach.

*  *  *

The unmistakable sound cut through the house like thunder. Mellon was out of the kitchen and in the hall while the sharp crack was still echoing toward the back of the house. He drew his pistol and advanced rapidly toward the living room, beam of the flashlight in his free hand cutting the dark ahead, sweeping back and forth, searching for his partner.

"Eddie?" he called out sharply, getting no response as he leaned his way around the last corner and lit up the living room. Walter stood across the space from him, turned away, an odd cloud of vapor dissipating next to him. "SHOW ME YOUR HANDS!"

The command was stark and threatening. Walter could almost feel the angry breath behind it from across the room. But he did not immediately comply, keeping his hands over the spot where the bullet from the detective's gun had punched into him. He glanced down and could see the flow of blood slowing as it trickled past his fingers. Could feel the wound within already beginning to heal.

"Eddie where are you?!" Mellon listened, creeping to the side to look past Walter. His partner had to be over there somewhere. On the floor, maybe, down and shot. Right? He had to be. "Eddie!"

"He's gone," Walter said, glimpsing the small puddle of blood at his feet, scattered beam of the flashlight reflecting off of it.

Reflecting...

Mellon set his flashlight on a stack of Braille books and took the radio from his belt. "Ten David, ten thirty three, officer down! Fifteen zero one Sycamore!" He clipped the radio back and slid past the lone chair. "Where is he?!"

Walter eased his hands away from the wound, just an inch or so. The red gush had stopped completely.

No...

"Dammit, where is my partner?!" Mellon demanded, the first sirens screaming now in the distance.

Walter heard the shrill warbling as it drew nearer and nearer. A flood of people would be here in a minute. A supply of souls.

It had to end. He took a step backward toward the remaining detective.

"Show me your hands!"

Another step.

Mellon fired twice. BAM! BAM!

Walter felt the rounds of hot copper and lead drill clean through him, from front to back, twin gouts of blood spilling from both sides. He stepped back yet again.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Three more holes. More blood pooling wide on the floor at his feet.

Yes...

Mellon recoiled a step. He'd put five rounds into the sonofabitch, all with hardly a flinch from him. 'No one can hurt you.'

BAM! BAM! Mellon called bullshit on Donna Weston's claim with two more rounds. Walter stopped backing toward him and went to his knees. Went, not fell, lowering himself gently as if assuming a position to pray.

Sirens howled from every direction, tires screeching. Walter knew he was out of time. He eased forward, placing his hands in the glistening pool so he was on all fours. For a moment he took in the sounds, the last of this life he would sample, then with a breath deep and sweet and free he tipped his head toward the floor and opened his eyes wide to see his image reflected in the wet red sheen. The sensation tore through him, one of welcomed dread, as his body and soul turned to a wash of putrid smoke that spun downward in a vortex, disappearing into the image of his eyes mirrored in the skim of blood left behind.

The gun slipped from Mellon's hand and thudded to the floor. What he had just witnessed could not be. Walter Royce was there, and then gone. For a moment he stood frozen as fast footsteps raced up the walkway outside, then he took a step toward the pool of blood. And another. Until he was standing over it, looking down at the image of Walter Royce, eyes closed, receding into the crimson darkness below.

Gone.

 

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Three other stories are included in Dark and Darker.

Creation... What is art? Derek Devine thinks he knows. But a visit from a dangerous stranger, who looks uncannily like a subject in one of Derek's older paintings, leads the young artist to a place where the line between life and art seems not to exist at all.

The Key... Jason Riley's wife was brutally murdered. When he comes across evidence that the police missed, he plans his own unique brand of justice for the killer.

Shark... A lawyer learns there are consequences to winning in court when he accepts a dinner invitation from the party he successfully sued.

The full collection can be purchased for just .99 from the following online retailers:

Amazon   Amazon UK   Barnes & Noble   Sony   Smashwords   Kobo

In addition, Dark and Darker can be purchased directly from the iBook Store using the app on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod.

I hope you enjoyed the sample and will give the full collection a look.

Thank you!

I love libraries. Always have, always will. But I worry about their existence in the age of digital distribution, though not to the extent of traditional brick and mortar bookstores.

The argument that libraries, if not doomed, face a very challenging future goes something like this: In an age when every book, song, movie, magazine, and newspaper will be accessible by your computer at home, or an eReader you carry, why would someone need to visit a physical location?

Granted, not every piece of media I list above is yet available for digital distribution, but they will one day be. What, then, makes a library necessary? Or, what will make libraries necessary? More provocatively, will libraries actually be necessary?

I'm going to make some enemies here when I say no to the last question. They will not be necessary. But that's not a bad thing. Hear me out.

The term 'necessary' relates to necessity. A need. But ask yourself this: would you rather need to go to a library, or want to go? I know what my answer to that question is. And, I believe, so do those library professionals who are looking down the road to assess what they need to be, or become, in order not just to survive, but to thrive.

A lot of talk has surfaced about 'value-added' service as it relates to bookstores surviving the revolution brought on by digital distribution. One could make the same suggestions about libraries. I may even have. But I think there is one thing that will, and can, and in many cases already is laying the foundation for the survival of the library.

The librarian.

The best librarians I've encountered, both in person and through virtual interaction, have been those who exude a complimentary mix of persona and passion, particularly where their youngest patrons are concerned. They become ambassadors not of books, but of excitement. They push knowledge, not paper products.

I remember exactly this type of librarian from my childhood, and through the ever-expanding circle of people I know 'virtually' I've been pleased to find others. One in particular is Rita Meade, who I 'met' on Twitter. Her handle there (@screwydecimal) should give you a hint that this is no rigid, cringe-inducing librarian of yesterday's popular culture. How do I know this?

[image error]
That's Rita on the right in this image courtesy of Save NYC Libraries. She dresses up like a Zombie not for her job, but for her calling. And if you read any of her posts on Twitter or her blog, you'll find a mix of the irreverent comments about less than kind patrons, and touching snippets of her interactions with a library's most precious commodity--children.

She is the kind of person who makes you WANT to go to the library. The kind of person who makes children beg their parents, 'Please, can we go see Miss Rita today?! Please! Please!'

She, and those who make libraries a place of fun and wonder, are the hope for their future.

But what else can be done in an age where the budgets just aren't there to fund every library to the extent that they have been? What sort of arrangement can be made that would 'reward' places where the Rita Meades of the world go above and beyond to make libraries a destination, not just a building?

I have an idea. It's crazy. It takes giants like Amazon and Barnes & Noble and eBook distributors to partner with willing authors, and it goes something like this: bring your Kindle, your Nook, your iPad, your eReader of any kind and purchase your books using the WiFi of your favorite library. You'll save 10% off the top from the advertised price, and another 10% of your purchase will go directly to THAT library. You get your book, Amazon and its kind get their sale, the author gets a reduced cut, and the library suddenly has a revenue stream.

This would take all kinds of machinations to work. Maybe the biggest would be the author agreeing to take a 20% cut, or the distributor and author splitting that. But what comes from that is a helping hand to help nurture the next generation of voracious readers.

As an author, let me be the first to say, I'd agree to that in a heartbeat.

I'm posting a chapter from the middle of my dark mystery novel All For One here for easy sampling. After the snippet below you'll find links to online retailers where you can purchase the eBook.

 

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What is All For One about?

Mary Austin is the kind of teacher that parents adore and children wish for. Firm and compassionate, a guiding light in their lives, she would do anything to protect her students.

But that loyalty is tested when the school's sadistic bully is found dead on campus, and suspicion falls on six children in her class. None willing to talk. To point the finger.

To reveal the killer.

Faced with this, Mary finds herself confronted with dark memories from her own childhood. Fragmentary flashes from the past that test the bounds of her reality, the onslaught worsening when a tenacious detective is brought in to close the case.

On loan from the Seattle Police Department, Detective Dooley Ashe is plagued by his own demons, but focuses on breaking through the wall of silence the children have erected. Up against a town indifferent toward the crime and suspects virtually untouchable by the law, Dooley turns to Mary as an avenue to the truth.

As an unlikely closeness develops between Dooley and Mary, the suspected children close ranks, worried that one of their own is ready to break and give the detective what he wants.

But when unseen adversaries push back, with both damaging and deadly results, Dooley and Mary are forced to face their personal limits as they each discover the unthinkable identity of the real killer.

I hope you enjoy the sample and will enjoy the entire book.

 

 

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Twenty Six

Mary woke to the caustic smell of ammonia fuming in her nostrils. She coughed and put a hand to her face. Her eyes squelched tightly at the scent, then blinked open to see Dr. Cleary leaning over her, his hand pulling back from her, a small glass vial in it.

"Are you with us again?" Dr. Cleary asked spryly. Mary tried to sit up, but a gentle hand on her shoulder guided her back down. "No, no. You just lay there for a minute and get your wits back."

Mary looked at the doctor for a moment, then around the room. It wasn't the examining room she remembered. "Where am I?"

Dr. Cleary's mouth curved into a big smile. "A question. You're thinking; that's a good sign."

"Where..."

"My office, Mary," Dr. Cleary explained. "Those examining room tables are far too high for me to lift someone to. Maybe when you were a youngin, but..." His head shook pleasantly. "...you're not a youngin anymore."

"I don't remember..."

"I don't think you would. You passed out almost onto my feet, and I got you in here and onto my couch." He tossed the capped vial a few times in his palm. "This always did the trick."

Mary started up again.

"You should—"

"I feel better," she said quickly, and continued until she was sitting on the couch, turning so her legs were over the edge, feet on the floor again. On good solid ground. "I really am sorry."

Dr. Cleary nodded and stepped close. Mary instinctively tipped her head back a bit as his hand came to her cheek, his thumb pulling her lower eyelid down. He examined one eye, then the other, using his penlight to check the pupils' reactivity. "It doesn't look like you did any damage on the way down..."

...way down...

"...sweety."

Mary nodded and brushed her hair back with both hands. She suddenly felt very stupid for doing this, for coming thousands of miles to an old worn out town to see a frail country doctor. It wasn't right that she was here. The urge to flee rose like a sailor's wind within, pushing her. She should just go.

rrrrrriiiiiight

The pleased purr came from inside, low and sweet. Happy at her doubt. At her...concurrence?

Mary knew right then that she would not leave. That coming had been the right thing to do. That being here meant she was safe.

She thought she heard an angry little laugh, but decided that it was just the good doctor, who was coughing against the back of his hand.

"Pardon me," Dr. Cleary said. He backed to a chair that faced the couch and eased himself unsteadily into it, his hands grabbing at the arms for balance.

"Are you all right?"

Dr. Cleary chuckle/coughed at her. "I'm the doctor, young lady."

She smiled at him. A false smile barely hiding worry.

He saw this and waved off her concern. "I'm old, Mary. This is how old people are, all hacking and aches. Now, forget about me and tell me about you."

Mary hesitated and glanced out the office door to the waiting room's empty counter. "Nurse Angela isn't with you anymore?"

Cleary shook his head. "No, no. She left me ten, eleven years ago. Moved down to Florida to live with her granddaughter. I get a Christmas card from her every year. Ugliest damn things you've ever seen, with palm trees on 'em and Santa in cutoffs."

"Really," Mary said, nodding, avoiding the doctor's gaze, which had become pointed and fixed on her.

"You said the headaches have come back," Cleary said. "That's what you said just before you passed out."

Mary did look at him now. A rancid taste rose in her throat. Her eyes floated hollow in her head. "Yes."

"Bad?"

She nodded, her eyes bobbing against the motion as if disconnected from who she was.

It had been a long time. Longer than it took for the specific maladies of most patients to be forgotten. Sure, he could look the old gashes and breaks and fevers up in a yellowed file if need be. But here that wasn't necessary. He remembered Mary Austin quite well, and her headaches. And when they had started. And why.

He would have liked to have forgotten the latter.

"They're just like the ones I got after my father died, with—"

"After your father died?" Cleary asked, leaning forward.

"Yeah," Mary confirmed, puzzled at first but understanding coming as she grasped how much the man across from her had changed. How could she expect a man this old, a man who'd had thousands of patients, to recall every detail of their lives? "Remember? He died when a garbage truck ran the stop sign at Crowley and Trask?"

Cleary edged farther forward in his seat, his head cocking quizzically. "Mary, how much do you remember about your father's death?"

"Some," Mary answered. "I mean, I remember that it happened. And when. It's all kind of foggy. I just get snippets of it."

"But you remember the garbage truck running the stop sign?" Cleary said.

"That's about all I remember," Mary said apologetically, embarrassed that such a watershed event in her life was escaping her. Had escaped her already. "And it was after that that the headaches started. The bad ones. You gave me some pills that my mother mashed up in applesauce because I had trouble..."

...swallow...

"...swallowing pills." Snippets, she thought. Like clips of old movies flicking on and off, a word here, an image there. I had trouble swallowing pills. So what? I remember that. So what? It means just that.

rrrrriiiiight

The purr left a chill drooling down the back of her throat.

Cleary settled back in his chair. She didn't remember. She really didn't remember. Was that a curse, or a blessing?

"I didn't know who else to come to."

Cleary nodded slowly. "Are there flashes of light?"

"Yes. Just like back then." Well, not just like back then. Then the light hadn't been as bright, as threatening, and it certainly hadn't come in the form of two glaring animal eyes inside her head. But they were still lights. That's all he'd asked. He didn't need to know more.

yourenotgoingcrazyMARYyourenotItellyou

"And the sounds?"

"Them too." Again, not the same. Something like grinding gears it had been then. Now... What? Are you going to tell him you're hearing voices? One really mean voice, one like an animal might have if an animal (hound?) could speak. And another quieter, quickspeaker that could be me just talking to myself in my head...

rememberme?

...but I'm not even sure of that. I mean, is this me talking now? Me talking to me?

"Are you losing any time, Mary?"

"Excuse me?"

"Are you coming up with missing time?" Cleary said again. "Like you're one place, and then suddenly you find yourself someplace else, and you have no idea how you got there?"

Mary started to shake her head, because that had most certainly never happened to her. She was having headaches. Bad ones with bright lights (eyes) and sounds (voices). And sometimes, like now, the voices (a voice) came without the bright throb behind her eyes, spitting small and rapid thoughts at her. That was all. It was enough, but it was not 'losing time'. So she went full into the gesture of denial and...

...it stopped cold dead as the memory of the lesson plans sprang out of nowhere. Her eyes flared as the moment came back, her mother's phone call the Sunday before last, and looking to the lesson plans on her lap, only they were no longer on her lap. They were on the coffee table. And the time. (Losing time?) It had been light outside, then dark when the phone rang. Losing time? Was that losing time? Was that losing time?

Is that losing time? Oh my God is that losing time? Am I losing time?

And then, more frighteningly, Mary began to ask herself, to contemplate, What happens during time that is lost?

you'renotlosingtimeMARYnotattallwhatasillynotionthatyouwouldlosetimeMARYwhywhatasillythingMARYandabadthingandasillythingandaverybadthingandyouknowwhattodowithbadthingsyouforgetthemandmoveonyouforgetthemyouforgetthemyou FORGET THEM

"I..."

theydontletCRAZYpeopleteachMARYrememberthattheydontletCRAZYpeopleteach

"I sometimes doze off."

Damn you, Jean Louise. I told you to take her to Chicago. I told you she needed a different kind of doctor. The old doctor's head wanted to shake with disgust. Twenty years. Good Lord, it'd been twenty years. He was terrified by thoughts of what twenty years inattention might have done. Being a doctor, Cleary knew what happened if you let an open wound sit without proper care. Without being dressed. My good Lord... It festered. And things grew in a festering wound. Tiny, dangerous things grew.

"Are you sure that's all it is?" Cleary pressed her gently. "Just dozing off?"

ofcoursethatsallitisMARYofcourse

"Of course," Mary told him, but there was no conviction in her words.

Cleary scratched at the pocket of his white coat, the one over his heart. "Mary, I want to ask you something." There was great care in his words. As much care as he would have used wielding a scalpel in years gone by. A cut was a cut, he knew, by blade or otherwise. It exposed what lay underneath. "The headaches, they started up again just recently?"

She nodded.

"Did something happen around that time?" Cleary watched her struggle with the question for a moment. "Anything traumatic?"

shhhhhhhh

"I'm...a teacher," she said, other words dancing atop those that passed her lips. They don't let crazy people teach. "And, about two weeks ago, one of my students was...killed."

A teacher? My dear Lord, why that? "I'm sorry. How did it happen?"

shhhhhhh

"He was beaten to death outside my classroom at recess," Mary explained, her eyes floating again, the pre-vomit taste slithering up from her stomach like a venomous snake. She swallowed, making it go down, forcing it back. "And the police think that one of my other students did it."

Her voice was thin, mostly breath now, as if her strength was leaving her with every word. Cleary looked hard into her eyes. He had the unsettling impression that no one was looking back. "Did one of them do it, Mary?"

quietnow

"I... I don't know." From rock-solid certainty in the negative to this. How? Why?

But Cleary was receiving quite another message, both from the trepidation in her voice and manner, and from echoes that were more than twenty years old now. Echoes that should have faded, but that he feared had simply been rattling around in this poor girl's head for that long, like a bell sounding perpetually in its tower. "Do you know who did it, Mary?"

Her head swung precisely back and forth.

"Mary."

"Yes, Dr. Cleary?"

Cleary mustered his strength and, with his hard rubber heels, scooted his chair close enough to Mary that he could hold her hands. He took them in his, massaging the soft skin with his tired old thumbs. Caressing, seeking a connection as he searched her eyes. "Mary, I want you to listen carefully to me."

shhhhhhh

enoughnowenoughnowshhhhhhh

shhhhhhh

"I'm listening."

Twenty years, Cleary thought, and squeezed her hands firmly.

"Mary, do you remember..."

enoughnowshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

"...someone named Bannister?"

shhhhhhhhhhh

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

—

Mary's head snapped toward the thunder.

"What?!" The singular question left her as a frightened breath. Where... Where...

The engine in her chest began to throb mercilessly as her eyes seized the familiarity of her surroundings, darting from place to place.

To the mismatched curtain, a fresh bolt of lightning burning it briefly white.

To the door. The front door, and the coat closet behind. You could only open one at a time because the doors blocked each other.

To the wall behind her, and the pictures on the wall. The pictures.

To the chair in which sat.

And the clothes she wore, sweats and her TOTY top.

Meeoww.

Her eyes snapped to the sound. To Chester, sitting in the half-light of the hall.

I'm at home. Oh my God, I'm at home.

Mary stood slowly from her chair, afraid that any sudden motion might send her spiraling into nothingness. She felt faint. Not on the verge of passing out, but faint. Like her limbs were hardly there. Like her whole being was hardly there. Not all together. Scattered.

But she was there. Home. And on her feet now. She could feel the rug under her bare feet, her toes testing for the solid hardwood beneath that. It was there.

She took a few tentative steps, one leg bumping against the coffee table as she went around it to kneel on the couch. Her hand reached out and pulled the curtain aside.

Outside it was dark, and raining, and past the vaporous reflection of herself in the glass she could see the lidded trashcans waiting at the curb. Her trash was out. And the neighbors' cans were out. The garbage man came on Friday mornings. She always put her trash out the night before.

It was Thursday. Thursday night sometime.

Mary let the curtain sway shut and felt for the watch on her wrist before looking, afraid that it might not be there. But it was and she looked. Six fifty-five. Almost seven o'clock. And I'm home. I'm here in my home and not in... Not in...

Where was I? Or was I even anywhere? She got up and walked more steadily now to the piano, her fingers lacing back through her hair. Where was I thinking I was? I was thinking I was somewhere. Where?

"I didn't go to work today," Mary said aloud, pulling a deep breath in and leaning against the graceful bulk of the instrument. "I called in yesterday."

Was I sick? A weak chuckle escaped her. I don't feel so hot now.

She moved along the curve of the piano, her hands walking its top, and sat easily down on the bench. One hand lifted the cover from the keys. The black and white keys.

Black and white. Right and wrong.

But what does that have to do with...

Mary felt the spit gather in her mouth and swallowed it down. "I was sick. That's all. I called in because I was sick."

I don't remember calling.

"With the weather changing so quick I must have caught a bug. A virus or something."

I don't remember being sick.

"Yeah."

I don't remember today.

"I'm just not feeling well," Mary said, nodding to herself and letting her hands come up to the keys. Her fingers began to touch them. Notes rose from strings hidden deep within.

 

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All For One is available as an eBook for Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony Reader, PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other devices using the appropriate reading apps. You can purchase All For One from the following online retailers:

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I love movies. I also love movie trailers. So I decided to gather together some of the trailers from my favorite movies and post them here.



It's a bit of a walk down memory lane, particularly when you compare trailers from thirty years ago with those from more recent movies. How times have changed.



First, Ordinary People.







Next, Rudy. The best sports movie ever made.







Now, The Exorcist. Imagine how groundbreaking this was in 1973.







And we come to Alien, which really, along with John Carpenter's The Thing, gave the Sci-Fi Horror genre a jumpstart.







For westerns, there are few better than Open Range.







I could add more, and more, but I won't. What are some of your favorite movie trailers?

Words are funny things. Spelling them is especially amusing at times. For me, at least. Why?

Because I misspell...or should I say 'mistype' the same words incorrectly again and again. A few of them are up there in the post title. My favorite?

Thnak. Yes, my twisted version of 'thank'. Why is that one so freaking hard to type correctly? I say it a lot. 'Thank you for your help.' 'Thank you very much.' 'Thank you for letting me borrow your wolverine for an extended period.'

But typing it? Thnak. Thnak. Thnak. I'm wearing out my backspace key on 'thnak' alone.

What? Auto-correct? Uh, no. I've seen the damage that can do in text messages. 'Mom, I'll burn Roger's back.' Followed by, 'WTF?' And, 'BE RIGHT back. BE. BE.' And even if that would not happen in Word, I'm morally opposed to auto-correct on comedic grounds.

Buy. Yes, 'buy'. Instead of 'by'. That mistake makes me seem so consumerist.

Stoping. What, I'm too lazy to tap the 'p' key just one more time?

Fro is pretty common, I believe. At least fro guys like me.

Yuo is pretty unique. I can't say I've ever seen anyone else consistently mangle 'you'. It's as if I'm trying to imprint a new Chinese term on the reading world. Unless there is already a Chinese word spelled 'yuo'. There is, isn't there? Now I'm a mistyping plagiarist.

If you hang with me enough I'd lay odds that I'm going to muck up 'I' at some point. Cnout on it.

Starting a new book is hard. For me, at least. And by 'starting' I mean beginning in a way that I know I will be able to sustain until the finish line. And by 'way' I mean voice. And by 'voice' I mean...

Let me stop there.

'Voice' is one of those things that writers throw about to explain a myriad of magical things associated with what they create. And you know what, it is a bit magical.

Now, I'm not getting all artsy here. My personal view is that writing is a craft. You practice it. You get better. Maybe you master it, I don't know. But there is something about a flow that a story takes. The cadence of the narrative. The seamless blending of word and intent that makes it all come together.

To me, that's voice.

And I've lost it before. The first was with a novel that I started with a bang, everything flowing, words pouring out, the story building until page 166. I paused there to tackle another project.

I never finished it. While the interrupting project was quickly completed, the interrupted novel stared back at me like I'd sprouted lobster claws from my head. When I tried to jump back in after a couple months away it was as if I'd stumbled into another person's house and couldn't find the sock drawer. It was worse than not knowing where anything was, or where it was going.

I couldn't feel the story anymore.

When I forced myself to write, what came out was a limp imitation of what had existed just months before. It was flat. It was soulless.

I was a stranger trying to finish my own novel.

The second time I lost my voice was when I stopped to let someone read a partial manuscript, and when they'd passed judgement and told me to continue, well...lobster head and sock drawer, just as before.

What I've learned from this is a very simple fact, which, conveniently enough, spins nicely off my favorite writing advice (don't get it right, get it written). That fact is this--once you start, don't stop until you finish. Take no extended break. Even if all you can write is a single solitary paragraph on the project for the day, do so. Keep SOME momentum going. Keep your head in the story, and the story in your head.

I do this now, because I'm forever haunted by where page 167 might have taken me.

If you head over to LM Stull's website you can check out an interview with me done by a fellow author and bacon lover.