June of 2011 also marked the ten year anniversary of my marriage.  Fiona and I celebrated by having a lovely dinner at a local restaurant, The Global Palate, which has taken over the building that housed the restaurant where we had our rehearsal dinner a decade prior.  Our anniversary meal is one of the few I remember vividly from this past year:  an enormous local pork chop with a side of creamy scalloped potatoes for me; risotto and a homemade ice cream dessert for Fiona.  I'm not sure how to fit ten years of marriage, and twelve years together, into the space of much less than a very, very long book.  Suffice it to say, there's a reason everything I write is dedicated to her.  

Current Mood: content

For most of my adult life, each year has been so full of activity and events that it's often hard for me to remember what happened exactly when. 2011 was no exception; so, I thought I'd write down some of the year's more notable events.

No doubt, the year's most significant event for me, personally, was the birth of my first grandchild, Inara Mae Langan, to my son, Nick, and his wife, Mary, this past June. A grandfather at 41: who'd have thought it? But, I guess that's a chance you take when you have your first kid at the tender age of 21. Fiona and David and I visited the new family in their home of Baltimore at the end of July, and then they visited us in December. Needless to say, we saw huge changes in the baby, who grew ever cuter. (Yes, I know I'm fawning--it's a grandparent's right, okay?) This whole grandparent status has been kind of a strange one. There hasn't been the same kinds of dramatic changes in my day to day existence that accompanied the births of either of my sons. It's more a sense that my family has extended itself further into the future, that it hasn't grown just in number, but in duration.

2011 was also the year that Nick passed all the tests and was accepted to join the Baltimore City Police Department. He'd been trying to obtain a position with one of his local police departments for quite some time, and given a number of factors, including his age, the number of returning veterans applying for the same jobs, and the overall state of the economy, that he would succeed in finding a police job was not a sure thing. It came as a tremendous relief when he got the call from Baltimore City at the end of 2011. He'll start the academy in less than two weeks, now.

Nor was my younger son, David, any less busy.  In addition to completing second grade and starting third, he began taking classes in Tang Soo Do--what I guess you could call Korean karate--at the local Y in July.  Somewhat to my surprise, not only was he good at it, he was very good at it, and steamrolled through from his white to orange belts by December.  He seems to me one of the stars of his age group, and I won't be surprised if, by this time next year, he's earned his green belt.  

David's taking up a martial art also meant me ultimately returning to martial arts.  I had studied Isshin-Ryu Karate in New Paltz several years ago, until bad knees and the demands of my schedule necessitated me giving it up.  Watching David doing his moves class after class, though, I found myself missing the old routine.  He and his teacher were eager for me to join the school, but I was leery of muscling in on something he'd made his own.  So, we compromised:  once he obtained his orange belt, I would begin taking classes.  I should add here that I assumed it would take him at least a year to earn that next belt.  Needless to say, I was mistaken.  At the end of December, I put on the Do Bahk and started my training.  It's been cooler than I could have predicted, taking a martial arts class with one of my sons.  As of this writing, I've made my first, small advance towards my own orange belt.  We'll see how it goes.

The Colour out of Glitter: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Canadian Horror's First Boy Band

An expose by Laird Barron, Kurt Dinan, John Langan, and Paul Tremblay

The winds of change do not blow from random places; they blow mightily from Toronto, Canada.



In July of 2009, when there were only dark whispers and rumblings of a sleeping giant, one poised to take the pop music world by storm, three seemingly unassuming young men from up there in Canadia, somehow made it to Readercon, the conference of imaginative literature in Burlington, MA. Richard Gavin, Ian Rogers, and Simon Strantzas made an impression on the attendees as thoughtful enthusiasts of horror fiction and passionate fans of the musical oeuvre of NSYNC and Backstreet Boys. Two weeks after their very low key but important penetration of the American border, their hurriedly pressed EP Tundra: Three Canadian Chillers was released. The hit “Omens” took the music world by surprise. While the synthetic beats and Splenda-sweet melodies were not ground breaking, it was the moody, gothic lyric “the darkly splendid realm” sung in a delicious falsetto by Richard Gavin that enchanted listeners. Their unexpected overnight success took an early toll on Gavin in particular, as he turned to religion to cope with the newfound stress and expectations. Reportedly, Gavin attempted to meld aspects of Kabala, Pentacostalism (mainly the rattlesnake handling), Norwegian Death Metal, and Howard Philip Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos into his own concoction he termed Strantzasism. Rogers and Strantzas had difficulty with Gavin’s newfound and scattershot fervor. Heedless of the warning signs of the problems that would germinate from beneath the surface, The Colour Out of Glitter (or CO0G) began to work on their smash follow-up, A Very Canadian Boxing Day.



A Very Canadian Boxing Day proved a wild success in Canada, dominating the local college radio airwaves for sixteen weeks and achieving a measure of popularity in the United States, cementing the band's status as pop godlings in the making. But it was this very international stardom that would prove the undoing of COoG. The trouble began innocently enough, as these things often do. Simon Strantzas was energized by the rabid support of COoG's two fans from the US, Paul Tremblay and John Langan, both of whom sent countless fan letters. Strantzas, dedicated champion of the people as he was, insisted upon personally answering each and every letter, which numbered in the scores weekly. Ian Rogers knew something was amiss when he noted that Strantzas licked each and every return envelope and stamp despite the fact they were of the self-adhesive variety. Strantzas was addicted to more than love -- his passion for adhesives would soon spiral out of control and led to grave consequences that would threaten to rip the band apart. Bad as matters were, however, the worst was yet to come.



Strantzas's increasing battle with adhesive-addiction, coupled with Gavin's sudden decision to spend three months pursuing a therapeutic cleansing via bran and pig's blood at a monastery in the Carpathian Mountains, led to Ian Rogers being thrust into leadership of the band. Before Strantzas and Gavin had departed for the Betty Ford Center and Romania, respectively, each had laid down rough vocal tracks for what was to be the band's next album, a collection of covers of classic love songs whose working title was Valentine's Day Three Ways. When Rogers had seen each of his bandmates off at the airport, he had reassured them that he would not, as he put it, "bollocks things up." Left to his own devices, however, Rogers decided to abandon this project in favor of something far more complex, a Valentine's Day concept album which would tell the story of Felix Renn; a lonely private investigator's quest for love in a city filled with monsters and bacon. Rogers blended Stranzas's moving cover of Bon Jovi's "Runaway" (which he oddly renamed "Cold to the Touch") with Gavin's tender homage to Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla," adding his own, polka-inspired take on The Bay City Rollers' "Saturday Night" to the mix and setting it all to a sampling of Donna Summer's Greates Hits. The resulting album, Johnson for Hire, would consist of this thirty-eight and a half minute song, whose title, "Everything I Do" (Love Theme from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), would lead to a fist-fight between Rogers and Bryan Adams when the two bumped into one another at that year's Canadian Music Awards, held at the downtown Toronto Sizzler. And though Rogers would claim his title had nothing to do with Adams's mega-hit, and that the copies of the album with Adams's face on the cover were the result of a mix-up he had nothing to do with, it was clear that, in his hands, what had been Canadia's latest entry into the world of pre-fab post-adolescent pop was in jeopardy.



Newly-released from his stay at Betty Ford, Simon Strantzas launched an ambitious plan to restore the fortunes of the band that, as he had put it, had allowed him to move into a house with a solid-gold toilet bowl. Together with Richard Gavin, rejuvenated by three months of relentless bran, he set up and booked a tour whose focus on the group's earlier, more audience-friendly catalogue would re-establish their bond with the two groups of fans who had made them what they were: lonely, middle-aged men whose pretensions to literary grandeur had long ago been ground to dust by a cruel and indifferent marketplace, and soccer moms. Although initially sluggish, ticket sales for the "The Colour Out of Glitter: It's the U That Makes Us Canadian (And Not British. Really.)" tour picked up dramatically after the group's surprise performance at Mr. Sub's "Buy One, Get One Half-Price" promotion. Ian Rogers, though, was not happy with the new-old course the band was following, and once again, his taste for violence would get the better of him. When he overheard veteran Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot questioning the band's prospects while waiting for takeout at the Friendly Thai restaurant, Rogers leapt on the man with his full measure of fury. And though Rogers would subsequently receive almost half a dozen get well cards from his mother during his recovery at Toronto General Hospital, the delay his broken jaw, dislocated shoulders, ruptured spleen, and shattered knees threatened the tour with forced Strantzas and Gavin to a stern response. They publically suspended Rogers from the band, replacing him with Corey Hart for the remainder of the tour. To make matters worse for Rogers, he was the subject of a lawsuit by the Friendly Thai restaurant, which claimed that his actions had made their name a lie and forced them to change it "The Mostly Friendly Thai Restaurant." Together with the reggae-inflected cover of "Sunglasses at Night" Strantzas and Gavin recorded with Hart, which scored unexpected success on the elevator-music circuit, it was looking as if The Colour Out of Glitter might have lost its R.

It was during this time that Rogers had a meeting that would change his life, and ultimately, bring the original The Colour Out of Glitter roaring back to life. While picking up a jalapeno and pineapple crepe at Crepes a Gogo, Rogers felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see the grizzled face of Laird Barron smiling at him. Having heard of his old acolyte's troubles, Barron had leashed a team of half-rabid coyotes to an old bed frame and lashed them all the way to Canadia to deliver to Rogers a message that would steer him away from the cliff he was speeding towards: "Ian: cool it." Newly-empowered and -inspired by Barron's trenchant advice, Rogers steered his two-wheel segway out into the August snow and set off in search of the two men with whom he'd once shared such intimacy. As it turned out, Strantzas and Gavin were ready for his return: while initially happy for any measure of publicity, Corey Hart had become increasingly demanding, insisting that, for their next album, the group should release an album of German bratwurst songs. When Strantzas and Gavin saw Rogers reappear in the doorway of Strantzas's mother's basement, tears in his eyes, all was forgiven, and Hart was tossed out into the night, without his sunglasses.



So now, with a new lease on musical life The Colour Out of Glitter is back, headlining Buger King's "The King Isn't THAT Creepy" tour, working on their next album, It's Still the Eighties in Canadia, and ready for whatever life has in store for them.

This past Friday, Fiona and I left David in the capable hands of one of his friends' parents and took the train down to NYC to see a staging of my story, "How the Day Runs Down," by Nicu's Spoon.  The theater had first contacted me about possibly performing the story, which first appeared in John Joseph Adams's Living Dead anthology and is written in play-format, last summer.  I agreed to it, but my agent warned me not to get my hopes up:  lots of pieces get optioned for performances that never materialize.

Still and all, here we were, heading into the city in the midst of a rather intense rainstorm.  We were supposed to meet my agent for dinner, but due to a snafu, that didn't happen, so we located a Chinese restaurant on the way to the Spoon Theater, rushed through our respective meals, and got to the theater with ten minutes to spare.  Located at 38 West 38th Street, on the fifth floor, it's a small space; though still with enough room for about fifty or so audience members.  We found our way to a pair of chairs in the middle of the seating, and waited for the play to begin.

And what a show it was!  I suppose you could say I'm biased, but I like to think that, having written the thing in the first place, my standards for its performance were especially high.  The actors did not disappoint; while all of them delivered fine performances, the two pillars of the show were Mark Armstrong and Elizabeth Bell.  As the Stage Manager, he immediately established a free and easy rapport with the audience that gave his narration of and commentary on the play's events a kind of downhome authority; as Mary, she held the audience spellbound with her account of the disaster that befalls her character's family.  Honestly, I could not have asked for two better actors.  Although there's humor in it, this is not zombie as camp experience; this is a narrative that becomes ever-more bleak--as it was intended to be.

Afterwards, I had a brief discussion with the audience and cast members about the play, which Fiona taped.  If I can figure out how to work the Flip camera, I'll post some of it on You Tube.  In the mean time, I can't recommend this performance highly enough.  If you can make any of the remaining performances, I don't think you'll regret it.
    

Current Mood: happy

Recently, David decided he wanted to move ahead with the plans for a freshwater fish tank he and his mom have been discussing for a while, now.  They decided on platys, which are pretty little tropical fish.  We went to the local pet store and got a pair.

Maybe four weeks later, we have four tanks up and running:  a 20 gallon one for the majority of our fish population, and three ten gallon tanks, one for the most aggressive male platys, one for the dozen or so babies that have been produced by these surprisingly amorous fish, and a hospital tank.  Meanwhile, sitting empty in the mudroom is a Fifty-fve gallon tank.

And now we're pet-sitting one of David's friend's lizards, a leopard gecko.  Oh, I can see where this is heading...  

Current Mood: amused

What a thing to say (sorry, Aimee Mann).

Actually, I've already received a ton of very generous birthday wishes over at the Facebook. (See?  Now that I'm a grandparent, I can add the definite article to all kinds of words.)  I'm going to try to reply to each and every one of them, but in the meantime, thanks to one and all.  Not much in the way of plans for today:  David's started karate at the YMCA in Kingston, so I'll take him to his lesson this afternoon, and then he, Fiona and I will go out for Chinese food at the nice Chinese restaurant in Rhinebeck. 

I suppose your birthday is as good a time as any to take stock of your life.  The short of it is, I'm luckier than I have any right to be, and I'm grateful for it all.
 

Current Mood: contemplative

Yesterday morning, I awoke to a bag of charcoal sitting on my chest.  Fiona and David had gotten me an early birthday present, and this was part of it.  Once I dragged myself out from under the charcoal, I found a grill waiting for me on the kitchen table.  Just right for the Fourth of July.

Did I mention that the grill was in a box, waiting for me to assemble it, a process that the instructions assured me would take no more than 45 minutes?  If you have any idea of my mechanical aptitude, or, more accurately, my complete lack thereof, then the four hours it actually took me to build the thing won't seem either that surprising or that hilarious.  And let's not even go into the hour after that it took me to get the charcoal going...

That said, the grill is now up and running, and the hot dogs and veggie burgers we had for dinner were delicious!

Current Mood: accomplished

     Wow, it has been a while, hasn't it?  Sorry for all the dust...and I'll get that light seen to as soon as I can.  I thought it might be fun to open up the old place for the summer, see how that goes.  And since it's summer, that means Readercon, perhaps my favorite ongoing convention.  This year, I have a pretty full schedule--here, have a look:

Friday July 15

Saturday July 16

Sunday July 17

     It's a good mix of panels.  While I'm always happy to be part of the horror discussions, I'm also pleased to be included in discussions of writing craft.  Now, I just have to figure out what I'm going to read from...

Current Mood: cheerful

Coda,From Joe Pulver

June, 1987. Hitchhiking. Mr. Norris.

 

     Once, when he was eight, Laird had asked his father about hitchhiking.

     “Boy,” his father had said to him, “you do not hitchhike.”

     “You did,” he’d answered.

     “Times were different, then. Now…”

     “What if I don’t have a choice? What if it’s an emergency?”

     “You can call for help on the radio.”

     “What if the radio’s broken?”

     “Holmes’s cabin’s four miles due east. You should be able to make that in half an hour, easy.”

     “You have to cross the river to get there. What if it’s flooded?”

     His father had sighed, deeply, and the boy had felt the first stirrings of nervousness. “Why can’t you let this be?”

     He’d looked away. “I just want to know. In case there’s an emergency.”

     After a moment during which he could feel the weight of his father’s gaze resting on him, the old man had said, “All right. If the radio’s broken, and the river’s in flood, and whatever else I can’t imagine has left you with no choice but to hitchhike, then you wait and you watch. You pick a car with a family in it, a dad, a mom, couple of kids. You should be okay that way. You do not wave at a police car; you see a police car coming, you walk along like you’re on a Sunday stroll. And you do not, you absolutely do not, flag down a car or a truck with a single driver. No way, uh-uh. You’re better off staying with whatever disaster it is than getting in a car with some strange guy.”

     He’d wanted to ask his father why he had to avoid solo drivers, what was so bad about them, but he’d sensed his father at the end of his patience, and had let the question go unasked.

     Now, nine years later, his head still spinning from whatever had been in the cloth Mr. Norris had pressed to his face, his arms and legs useless, Laird thought, Right you were, Dad.

     Ten feet in front of him, the man who had offered him a ride on the outskirts of Big Delta had the trunk of his car propped open and was bent over inside it. To either side of him within the gaping space, Laird could see what looked like bricks, stacked in rough mounds. Ballast, he supposed, for bad weather; a car as old as this one would need all the help it could get once the weather soured. His worn tweed jacket riding up the back of his white shirt, Mr. Norris stretched for something deep in the trunk. He was whistling: “I’m On the Top of the World.” Head still down, he withdrew a pair of squat candles, one of which he set on each of the brick mounds.

     Pretty much the moment the car door had slammed shut, Mr. Norris had offered one soft hand in welcome and declared himself an accountant, retired early to see these grand United States while he was still able to enjoy them. Never settled down, Mr. Norris had continued while his cathedral of a car had rolled along the Alaska Highway. Just…never happened. Used to think it was a failing on his part, but now that he’d left his job behind, there was no one holding him back, no one telling him he couldn’t drive cross country if that was what he felt like doing for the next year. He’d gone on like that for a while, describing the spots he’d visited in the bland enthusiasm of a travel brochure: The White House, the St. Louis Arch, the Grand Canyon.  The man hadn’t seemed an accountant; he’d projected none of the crispness, the precision you would expect from someone who’d spent his adult years managing people’s money. His threadbare tweed jacket, his wrinkled shirt and trousers, had marked him as a member of a less prestigious profession, an assistant manager who’d never advanced. Even the itinerary that had continued to spill out of his mouth had sounded forced—rehearsed, lines in a monologue he’d written for himself. If a little peculiar, Laird had judged it none of his business. Plenty of people came to Alaska looking to reinvent themselves, leave the calamities of their old lives behind and become something else, something new. So Mr. Norris wanted to be a retired accountant: let him be a retired accountant.

     He’d seen the white handkerchief in the man’s right hand, but hadn’t registered it as a threat. The recitation of place names pouring out of Mr. Norris’s mouth had numbed him, somehow, so that even when the cloth had pressed against his nose and mouth, it had taken him an almost shocking amount of time to process what was happening, and then it had been too late.

     There was a couple hundred dollars in his bag, the proceeds of a month’s assorted odd jobs for an old woman whose cataracted sight had contracted her world to the first floor of her bungalow. Laird hoped that might be enough for Mr. Norris, but he doubted it. When the man withdrew from the trunk of his car and turned to him, the roll of duct tape in his left hand and the length of knife in his right confirmed that doubt.

     Laird had his own blade tucked down the back of his jeans, a KA-BAR he’d bought off an old trucker in his cups who claimed it had seen him safely out of the Chosin Reservoir. As yet, Mr. Norris had not discovered it, but if he intended to truss Laird up (and especially if he had any designs on, say, removing Laird’s jeans), then he’d find the knife and that would be that. The adrenaline surging through his blood felt as if it were burning up whatever had soaked that handkerchief, but not fast enough.  There was no point in calling for help: for one thing, his tongue was as sluggish as the rest of him; for another, the evergreens clustered around them were a clear indication Mr. Norris had left the highway in favor of a more secluded location. He waited until Mr. Norris was crossing the distance between them to say, “Wait.”

     The man had not realized he’d regained consciousness. His whistle died on his lips, and he stopped in his tracks, which put him slightly beyond the reach of Laird’s right boot. His brows lowered in consternation.

     “If it’s money,” Laird started.

     “It isn’t money,” the man said.

     “You can’t—”

     “Oh yes I can,” Mr. Norris said; although his words lacked the confidence it would have required to make them sound truly threatening. However many times he’d done this before, Laird guessed, his victims had been unconscious. He said, “Why?”

     “You wouldn’t—”

     “Does it have to do with that?” He shook his head at the trunk, its brick piles with their candles.

     The look that passed over Mr. Norris’s face was equal parts fear and admiration. “Maybe you would understand,” he said. “Although,” he added through a half-laugh, “I’m not sure I do.” He lowered himself into a crouch. “This car,” he said, “it’s not a car. Well, of course it is, but it’s also something else. It’s an instrument, like a pen. Yes, a pen. The earth is its paper. I’m using it—I’m like the hand that uses it to write a sentence. Only, in this case, it’s not so much a sentence I’m writing as a word—a kind of word—a word that’s also a hole in the paper—and what comes through the hole. I know, it’s all very confusing. 

     “Anyhow, a pen needs ink, or what good is it? A pen that’s doing this kind of work requires special ink. I don’t suppose I have to tell you what that is, do I?”

     Laird said nothing.

     “I didn’t think so,” Mr. Norris said. “What I’ve done is, I’ve tinkered with the floor of the trunk, so that, once I have a fresh source of ink in there, and I’ve made the requisite…openings, the ink can spill out in a uniform stream that’s fine enough not to attract the notice of any of the authorities. You would be amazed at how far I can travel, how much penmanship I can complete, before I have to stop and look for a new source.

     “I’ll tell you one more thing, and then I’m going to have to resume my work. I’m very close to being done. I’m not sure if you’ll be quite enough for what remains, but I can’t imagine I’ll need even all of another young man or woman after you. I can’t tell you… Can you feel it?” Mr. Norris swept his arms around him, almost upsetting his balance. “I’m no longer alone; I haven’t been for some time, now. The Word’s attendants, its supplicants… As I’ve drawn nearer to the end of my task, I’ve had glimpses of them—not enough to say what I’ve seen with any certainty, just that they’re present, all around me.”

     As if in reply, the branches of the evergreens around them clashed in a sudden breeze, and Laird thought the spaces between them darkened. There wasn’t time to worry about that, though; if he were going to make a move, this was the time. He concentrated on his right foot, on throwing himself forward and lashing out as hard as he could, connecting the toe of his workboot with Mr. Norris’s face, or, better, his throat. He didn’t see much point to a prayer, so he went ahead with the kick.

     His leg failed him. Instead of crushing Mr. Norris’s nose or collapsing his windpipe, it made it no higher than his left knee. The man yelped and, his eyes wide with shock and pain, toppled onto his ass. Forcing himself to move, Laird turned on his side, grabbing for the KA-BAR and catching its hilt on the first try. He rolled back, bringing the knife up to meet what he was sure would be the downward stroke of Mr. Norris’s blade, but the man had dropped his knife and was struggling to his feet. The roll of tape was still in his other hand. Laird lunged for him, but his legs hadn’t regained sufficient strength, and he fell, slashing wildly as he went. He heard a scream, then was on his face. The scream continued as he strained to push himself to his feet. Finally, he had to settle for flipping himself onto his back, the knife up in the best guard he could manage.

     He need not have worried. Mr. Norris was on his knees in front of the open trunk. The backs of his trousers, the skin and meat beneath them, had been sliced open, skin and fabric bright with blood. Laird’s swipe had hamstrung him. He supposed he was not out of danger, yet, but he found the continuous scream climbing from the man’s mouth oddly reassuring.

     By the time his legs were steady enough to stand on, Mr. Norris’s scream had faded to a drone. He’d wiped the KA-BAR clean on the grass; now, the knife held point up in front of him, Laird circled around Mr. Norris until he came to the front passenger’s door. It was open. He reached in for his bag, and saw as he did so that the key was still in the ignition. For half an instant, he contemplated taking the car, before rejecting the idea. That was what he needed, to be pulled over driving a stolen car whose trunk was a forensic scientist’s nightmare of swirled bloodstains. Even had he been willing to chance it, his gorge rose at the prospect of sitting surrounded by this thing, this rolling abattoir.

     That left the question of what to do with Mr. Norris. Ten minutes ago, fighting for his life, he would have had no trouble opening the man from nave to chops with his knife. The battle over, though, the man bested, crippled, killing him became a more problematic affair. Not that Laird saw anything wrong in dragging the KA-BAR across Mr. Norris’s throat, but he might be able to provide the police with information about the people he’d bled to death in the trunk of his car, and that might mean something to family members still hoping for news of their son or daughter. The man had not changed his position; afraid, no doubt, of further pain; and Laird did not figure him for much of a flight risk. All the same, he dipped back into the car, shoved his knife among the wires tangled under the steering wheel, and did what damage he could.

     A single path, more an indentation in the underbrush, led out of the clearing. The sun hadn’t moved too much in the sky, so he probably wasn’t that far a walk from Big Delta. Maintaining a wide space between himself and the back of the car, Laird made for the exit. He did not hold his knife at the ready, but neither did he return it to its place under the back of his jeans.

     As he passed the trunk, Mr. Norris stopped moaning. The KA-BAR raised, Laird stopped and turned to him. The man’s face was white as flour. “Where are you going?” he said.

     “Back to Big Delta.”

     “You can’t do that! You can’t leave me here!”

     “Don’t worry, you’re not gonna bleed to death. Not before the cops get here, at least. It doesn’t look like I hit any arteries.”

     “That’s—they’re coming! Do you understand me? They’re coming!”

     “I know: I’m going to fetch them.”

     “Not the police, you stupid hick. The attendants. The supplicants. They’re all around us, and they won’t be able to resist the blood…”

     Laird had some smart reply ready for the man, but movement on the far side of the car stilled his tongue. He looked in that direction, towards where the evergreens were thickest, where it was darker than it should have been this time in the afternoon. The trees shifted with a breeze he didn’t feel, and then he saw it wasn’t the trees moving, it was what was between the trees, the tall, spindly things he had mistaken for their shadows. For a moment, he watched them stepping forward, raising legs that were much too thin too high, a comedian’s parody of walking quietly, and then he was running as fast as he could in the other direction, out of the clearing along the path that wound across a great meadow.

     He tripped, caught his foot and went into a forward roll from which he emerged up and running. Somewhere behind him, he was aware of a terrible sound, but he did not let that stop him. His chest was a bellows full of white-hot air. His arms and legs were knots of pain. He kept running until he reached the highway, until he was nearly run down by a UPS driver. He took the ride the man offered him and did not once look back at the way he’d come.

     He did not tell anyone about Mr. Norris, or any of it.