In the Memory House, a new supernatural thriller, is now available at
Amazon.com,
Amazon UK, and
Smashwords with other formats (including print) to follow...
From In the Memory House:
They never planned to enter the house.
They never knew the house existed. If not for the snowstorm, they would have never found the house—or, moreaccurately, the house would have never found them. As it was, five friends stood on the concreteslab porch while wind whipped snow in small eddies around them Johnny, tall andangular in a light jacket, rapped his knuckles on the door. The two girls—Kelsey with her dark, ropeycurls tucked under an ivory stocking cap and Sarah, blonde and pale and pretty andwearing pink—huddled together against the siding. Ben, soft and thick with a lingering layer ofchildhood fat, leaned against the railing, staring across the white field.
“Nobody’s home,” Jared said. Hewasn’t wearing a proper coat. As theyscrambled from the ditch, Kelsey had looked at his grey sweatshirt and jeansand had said he would freeze. Jared, hisbrown eyes dark enough to challenge a moonless night, had smiled and said,“I’ll be fine.” On the porch, he didn’teven shiver. “Doesn’t look like we’re getting in. We should head down the road,see if we can find someplace, any place to ride out the storm. Nobody has any cell service, so we can’t callsnow-plows-r-us.”
Ben rolled his eyes. “We’d befine if dipshit hadn’t landed us in the ditch.”
Johnny wheeled from the door. His blue eyes sparked. His fists clenchedand unclenched. “Dipshit? I didn’t seeyou volunteer to drive. Damn SUV needsnew tires. They’re as bald as Sarah’s dad.”
“Hey,” Sarah said.
Kelsey squeezed her arm. “He’s right. Your dad is pretty shiny upstairs. But I’m freezing. Right. Now. Can we just break in or something? I’m sure Farmer Bob or whoever owns this placewould rather have a broken window than five humansicles in his field.”
“Farmer Bob?” Jared poked his head out from under the porch roof. “Damnplace is brick. Three stories. How do you figure a farmer lives her
(for chapter one, check here)
I slowed a bit, not so sure if I wanted the wax relic to notice me. Something wasn’t right. His hair was weird, wispy and thin like stretched bits of cotton, and he hunched over, sort of like his spine was cracked in two and he learned to walk without it.
Maybe the House seeped into my brain a little too much. Maybe I was already missing my friends. The Hollow was cell phone black hole for sure; I lost service as soon as Dad steered around the final curve in our approach to town. The clouds didn’t help—not the best omen on moving day, especially in the usually dry midsummer heat.
“Nick,” Mom said, smiling her best, though exhausted. “This is Mr. Sanderson, one of our new neighbors.”
The relic poked his hand at me, and I mean relic. I thought at first he lost his hand in the war, whatever war he was young enough to fight. Then I noticed fingers unfold from the splotchy thing he offered me. When I touched it, though, my heart eased into a cruising speed. Not the clammy paw I expected.
“Nick,” I said.
“Hello, Nicholas. I’m Jeb Sanderson. I had a son like you, once.” His voice eked out, small and quiet. I almost had to ask him to repeat himself. Then his grip tightened on my hand, and he leaned closer, looking me over with his eyes, two wet marbles with too much white. He smelled a little like black licorice. “Welcome to the Hollow… or Evergreen Estates, as it stands now.”
Jeb Sanderson was the first person to call the place “the Hollow,” and, for me at least, the name stuck. He looked hollow, especially his eyes—like something was missing.
“Jeb was telling us a bit about the new development,” Mom said. “Says one other couple has moved in.”
“Great.” I slowly retrieved my hand from Sanderson’s grip. “I’m going to head in, see about sorting my clothes or something.”
“Nice to meet you, Nicholas.”
I nodded quickly, trying to smile at least a little, then brushed past Mom on the way inside. Sanderson watched me the whole time, burning me with those wet marble eyes.
~
My sister, Tabby—althoug
I kind of have a rant brewing (I'm sure it will spill over tomorrow), but instead of joining in that negative suck, let me share a story from:
"Billy Boy" (originally published at
Every Day Fiction and selected for
The Best of Every Day Fiction Three)
Billy found the keys in his dad’s truck one day, shortly after they shuttered the kitchen store and the place that once sold bargain books. His dad had changed light fixtures, mended walls, and tightened pipes for five years, but without the tenants, the building no longer needed maintenance. Searching for work at the bottom of a whiskey bottle, he didn’t miss the keys. Not until later.
So the mall was abandoned, a playground in which our imaginations touched other places.
We rode our bikes after school and stashed them out back, in the high grass just off the trail near the railroad tracks behind the building. Billy was always eager to go on nights his mom worked late. We first entered the dark spaces while the world shed her summer greens for the browns and tans of fall, the dingy grey of winter lurking behind the turn of the calendar.
The game was Billy’s idea.
We built a circular wall of boxes in the storeroom of one of the anchors to the mall, the largest building on the south end. In our circle, our sanctuary, we told stories, we pushed our imaginations to the blackened corners to flirt with spiders and dust. Our stories grew arms and legs, fingers and eyes; they flickered just past our musty cardboard fortress. Our flashlights inspired stacks of empty boxes to cast shadows of strange cities on the walls. Games of chicken hung on who could bear the darkness the longest, who could leave his flashlight off in the dead, empty space.
We made monsters, and Billy was the best.
Maybe his father was the inspiration: the rasping, liquor tainted voice, scuffed knuckles, and glassy glare. Maybe Billy saw something different through the bruises around his eyes. Maybe he found something in the worry lining his mother’s face. Billy’s beasts crawled out of the darkness and ran their stunted claws over the cardboard boxes on the outer ring of that wall, sending a twist of delightful terror into my bones. Gabe’s expression echoed mine, both of us pale and contorted, hanging on Billy’s voice.
A tiny voice, really.
5 Comments on #samplesunday Monsters Among Us, last added: 5/16/2011
Spring break officially ends tomorrow, but here's a tiny bit to read to day: the first page from the reviewer-favorite "In Hollow Fields" a short story available both in my ebook collection, The Bottom Feeders and Return of the Raven (edited by Maria Grazia Cavicchioli):
"In Hollow Fields"
Rolling fields of golden wheat and green pasture swallowed a silver Honda as it sped along a stretch of snaking asphalt. The driver leaned forward and shrugged his shoulders, trying to stay awake after three hours in the car. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and tightened his grip on the wheel with the other. His passenger, eyes flitting from the asphalt ahead to the side mirror as if measuring the length of road, shifted in her seat.
“How far will we be from a hospital?”
Zach leaned back. “Don’t worry, Court. I think there’s a hospital in Springdale—about fifteen miles away.”
Courtney’s shoulders dropped. She rested both hands on the top of her bulging belly. “I’m just not really comfortable, you know.” She tilted her brown eyes out the window, watching acres of Kansas prairie melt in an amber blur. “I’m seven months along, Zach. Seven months. I don’t really want some redneck doctor delivering our baby.”
“Everything will be fine. If all goes well, we’ll be out of this little shit-hole in a couple of days. A week at most.” He smiled and patted her leg. “This could be it, Court. The goldmine. The old bastard had his fortune wrapped up in the farm. The land has to be worth thousands. Hundreds of thousands.”
The car crested another hill and sped into the valley below. The town of Broughton’s Hollow lay in front of them, a loose arrangement of graying houses and broken streets, a dying carcass of a village, left to fester in remembrance of an era when family farms, railroads, and general stores ruled the American Midwest. No fewer than four church steeples rose from valley.
Courtney shivered. “Well, at least we won’t be short on Jesus.”
Zach offered a meek chuckle, but neither spoke again as Zach steered the Civic through the dilapidated main street and out the other side, toward his grandfather’s farm.
And on that farm...Want to read more?
Kindle -
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Return of the Raven
Welcome to Sample Sunday...
1: We’re All Liars Here, or The Death of Leonard Jantz
Here’s the truth about growing up in a small town: you tell lies to survive.
I worked at a grocery store during high school, part time on the evenings and weekends. I saw plenty of strange things there: avocados stuffed in a barrel of fresh popcorn left to rot, a coworker who punched holes in the caps of beer bottles with an awl, pies marked “Verda’s own home-baked” which came frozen on pallets with the Sunday dairy truck. I found a body in the trash bin once, but nobody can prove who put it there. No one can prove it was there.
There were too many bodies for a town the size of Springdale. The name of the town is a lie, but the bodies aren’t. All of them. When you find a body lying with the outdated yogurt, wilted lettuce, and cardboard boxes, you make up stories to cope. You can’t process a body in the grocery store trash bin. A trick of the light, you say. The way the shadows fell across certain bits of debris like the coat hanger beast in a little boy’s bedroom. That head of lettuce, there, in the corner, looks like a human hand.
Bodies are bodies.
Dead is dead.
And lies are lies.
~
We killed a man during the fall of 1992, our senior year. I say we, but BJ did the killing. The rest of us were just there.
BJ was a big kid, six-feet tall, four feet wide, all linebacker. The local team, the Saints, kind of sucked—sucked as in they won seven football games during our four years—but BJ made all-league three times. He managed forty-six tackles for losses during his career and dished out seven concussions. One guy, a lanky kid from Abilene, still gets tingles in his toes when the weather changes. At least he says as much on Facebook. BJ was boiled over anger and clenched fists, and he hated Leonard Jantz.
Jantz had fired BJ’s father from the grain elevator.
Mike, Dan, and Tony were all there when BJ killed Leonard. I was there, too, after my shift at Larry’s Grocery. We were all drunk, either from stolen beer or revved hormones. I’d met them at the Shack after work. I still wore the red polo from Larry’s. Red polo and jeans, the store dress code. The other guys, little Mike with his embarrassing mustache, fat-mouthed Dan, and Tony the liar, had been hanging out at the Shack, telling stories and passing out a battered copy of playboy Tony had stolen from his father’s stash. The beer was his dad’s, too.
Tony lied so well his old man never suspected a single can went missing. The lies came easily, especially after years of practice. By the time he was sixteen, Tony had lied about grades at school, fights, which girl he kissed at recess, and even how Max, the Robertson’s cat, died. That was a big one, but not as big as Leonard Jantz. The big lies he reserved for special occasions, but all of them—big or small—came from his lips with a sliver of magic.
Lies can be a shield, a force field, a special aura of protection.
Lies can keep you from seeing the truth, no matter how grim.
2 Comments on We are the Monsters #samplesunday, last added: 3/20/2011
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By: Aaron Polson,
on 6/12/2011
Oh hell!
I want more.
Very nice. You know, I believe this house may have a thing or two in common with another house that is very near and dear to my heart.
This looks very good indeed, Mr. Polson.
Thanks, Danielle!
Barry - I had no idea until I finished the book and looked back at your synopsis. Of course, I'm not sure my comes together in the same way in the end...