This is so awesome - thanks Gary!!
Can we look forward to seeing A Cracked & Broken Path in 2012?
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| The Long-Promised Excerpt http://horrorworld.org/msgboards/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=11234 |
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| Author: | GaryBraunbeck [ Sun Jan 08, 2012 5:16 pm ] |
| Post subject: | The Long-Promised Excerpt |
This id not the entire Prelude to A Cracked and Broken Path, only the first fourth of it. When I have Jason's permission to do so, I'll post a little more when the pub date approaches. I hope you like this, and that it gives you some idea of how the story is going to unfold. Sorry I made you wait so long. Mea Culpa. PRELUDE: THROUGH THE WINDOW THAT IS NOT THERE “Through the window that is not there, we see our children searching the old ruin for toys they lost yesterday and turning up clay jars from centuries ago. The chasm between generations fills up with dust and sand, human bones, animal bones, a multitude of broken vessels. Broken jars speak the truth. A new jar is a lie of beauty.” -- Yehuda Amichai, “Summer and the Far End of Prophesy” Hic quod Interdum 1. My name is … was … might have been Ashley Millhauser and I was killed by a monster that wasn’t really a monster and didn’t mean to kill me, anyway. When I remember what happened right before I died it’s, well … kind of funny in a way. At least now it is. It was almost like that really funny scene in that old Marx Brothers movie, A Night at the Opera, where everybody gets crammed into this really tiny, tiny room and then when someone opens the door from outside the people just burst out like jelly from a squeezed doughnut. It was kind of like that, only in the movie nobody died. See, when all of us fell, he accidentally tore my head off, and now I’m here talking to you. I just realized how silly that sounds – he tore my head off. But that’s what happened. It didn’t hurt much. I was still able to see his face when he started crying. I didn’t know that a head could still see for, like, fifteen seconds once it was torn off your neck. Sometimes I forget to remember my body. That’s a really bad thing. Everyone else here, they have to worry about themselves, about remembering their bodies, remembering they once had them. You see, if you forget about your body for too long, you won’t be able to remember it at all. There’s a guy here who was blown in half when he stepped on a landmine in Vietnam; when he forgets the rest of his body he just sort of sits there like a really grumpy tree stump. But he always remembers just in time what his arms and hands and legs and feet looked like before he was killed. Then he’s not so grumpy and sometimes even plays his harmonica. Which he really needs to practice on. Kind of a lot. Everyone here has something missing from their body: an arm, a leg, part of a face, even bones. I call this the Place of Partial People, but only to myself. I’d never say it out loud. I feel sad for the people who forgot for too long and have to go on with only a part of their life-body. I feel sad because I would have turned ten on my birthday, and it was supposed to be the New-Cell-Phone-That-Has-Video-and-Texting birthday. That would have been cool. I feel sad, but sometimes, when I think about Mom and Dad and my little sister, I get mad, too, and can’t look at the ones who forgot. They seem selfish to me. I don’t know why. There’s a lot to do here but most people don’t do anything except walk around. There’s a bunch of toys, and a playground with a swing set, teeter-totter, and monkey bars, but the kids have played with all of them so much that it’s not really fun anymore. The adults, they have things like restaurants, movie theaters (kids can go there, too, if something good’s playing), regular theaters where they put on plays and have concerts, a basketball court, a baseball diamond, ten-speed bikes … but they don’t use them much. Once in a while, I’ll see a broken toy lying on the ground. I wonder if it’s lonely, if it’s like one of the toys from the Toy Story movies. Maybe it can walk and talk, tell jokes, sing a happy song. I think that would be nice, to hear all of the broken and forgotten toys around here sing a big, loud, happy song, you know – one so cute that it’s stupid. It maybe would make the rest of us feel a little bit better. Some of the adults, they talk to each other (but never to the toys). Mostly they just nod to me like we were passing each other in the mall or something. It makes me feel even more lonely. So I walk around, careful not to step on any toys and making sure I remember my body and what it looked like. I guess I looked okay. Adults were always telling me how cute I was, then they’d look at Dad and say, Thank God she got her looks from her mother, and then everyone would laugh. I kinda liked that, because I thought Mom was the prettiest woman ever. Whenever I got upset about something and started crying Mom would always smile and brush her fingertips against my cheek. That always made me feel better, and it always made Mom even prettier. I think, if she could visit me, she might like it here. At least for a while. It’s all sunshiny here, but there’s no sky, no clouds. The temperature is really nice – not to cool, not too warm – but the season never changes. It’s like there’s a fifth season that only the people who end up here know about. There are clocks all over the place, but none have any hands so you never know what time it is. I don’t think time matters much here. Sometimes I think it doesn’t even exist here. Or maybe that it never existed at all. There’s wind here – breezes really – and it’d be so great for flying kites but I don’t have one. I love flying kites. I always built my own. Dad always helped me pick out all of the supplies, and then him and me, we’d design the kite on paper, with lots of detail, like we were designing an airplane or a zeppelin. Dad showed me pictures of what a zeppelin looked like, and I thought it was so awesome. Especially the gondola at the bottom where all the people would stand around looking out the windows, maybe seeing fluffy clouds and then, when there was a break in the clouds, seeing the cities below. I’ll bet they looked super tiny. But me and Dad, we never got around to making a zeppelin (even though the kite store sold the kits) because we weren’t sure we could do it. So we designed kites, and built them, and flew them way up high on breezy days, and it was fun. I think about that a lot, about how much fun it would be to do that here because there’s no trees for your kite to get tangled up in. That’s not exactly right. I’m sorry. There is one tree that you can always see. It looks like it’s about a million miles away sometimes, but you can still see it. Other times, it moves up real close to us, and it looks higher than Jack’s Beanstalk. When it gets this close, we all know it’s Story Time. We know this because it’s called the Story Tree. No one ever sees it moving toward us; one second it looks like it’s a million miles away, and then, right after you blink, there it is, so close you could reach out and touch one of its branches. But when it’s this close at Story Time, the tree picks who’s going to tell the next story. We all gather around it, holding hands. If someone doesn’t have hands because they forgot that part of their body, then you put your hand on their shoulder and it still counts. Then we all look up at the autumn leaf that dangles at the end of one of the branches, and we wait. I love looking at that leaf because it reminds me of a James Thurber story Mommy used to read to me when I was sick in bed, except in the story it turns out the leaf was painted outside the sick boy’s window. It’s a great story, but it always left me feeling both sad and happy at the same time. I guess a lot of my favorite stories end that way. I wonder why. Okay, so here we are, all of us holding hands and standing in a circle around the Story Tree, and the breeze gets a little stronger, and the leaf, it kind of swings back and forth like it’s waving “Hello!” to all of us, and a second later it pulls loose from the branch and starts falling toward us, making these cool looping movements on its way down (I always thought it looked like it was trying to draw the number “8” in the air), and then, finally, it lands on someone’s head or shoulder, sometimes on their leg or foot, and this person picks up the leaf because they’re the one who’s been chosen to sit at the foot of the tree and tell a story. You can tell more than one if you want. The Story Tree will take all the stories it can get. Everyone loves Story Time. It’s the one thing we all look forward to. One of the neatest things that happens is that, when someone is telling a story, the branches on the tree – all of the branches – will grow a new branch, and that new branch will grow a new branch, and then that new branch will grow a new one. It keeps going like that until the story is finished, and by then there’s, like, hundreds of new branches reaching out and up even farther than before. Someday it’s going to have so many branches that they’ll fill the sky (or the place where the sky would be if we had one), and it’ll be like we’re living under this giant circus tent of tree branches. Well, today – if that word even means anything -- the leaf fell into my hair, and I thought I would just burst right open I was so excited. I haven’t been here as long as some of the others, and the leaf almost never chooses someone new like me, so this was a pretty big deal. I put the leaf in my hair so it wouldn’t fall out. I walked over to the foot of the Story Tree and whispered, “I’ll tell some good ones, promise.” Then I sat down and waited for everyone else to join me. The thing about telling stories here is that all of them are connected in some way. There are stories with people who tell stories about another story where someone tells a story … stories inside of stories inside of stories. It’s like a magic matryoshka doll – isn’t that the coolest word? A lady at a shop in the mall showed one to me and told me its real name. Most people just call them Nesting Dolls but I always thought that if something had a proper name, especially a cool one, you should always use it. Anyway, one of the strange things is, when you start telling a story here, you know everything about everybody – what they say, what they think, what they do. It’s weird. Anyhow, we’re all here now, and I think Rebecca can hear me – I hope she won’t mind that I’ll be telling a bunch of this through her – so I have a story to tell that has other stories inside of it. I’m not sure about the ending of this one I’m going to start with now. I think maybe someone is still living it. But I’m sure that, if you listen carefully, at the end, you’ll be someone else. Once upon a time there was a man named Geoff Conover who had a very smart and pretty wife and two children, a boy and a girl. When he was little, Geoff had something terrible happen. He was the only person who survived. His whole life long he felt kind of guilty about it. Why did he live and no one else? He became an English teacher and wrote books and stories when he was alone because he hoped that by writing books and stories he’d be able to figure out why he was the one who lived and maybe not feel so guilty all of the time. One of his stories ended like this … 2. … I had one more question. “Why here? Why someplace like Cedar Hill?” The Reverend scratched at his beard, clearing his throat. “Every place in Heaven has a counterpart on Earth. Hell is located on the north side of the Third Heaven – think of it as being the really poor section of town where the residents can never get out and almost no one ever comes to visit. It’s not a place of eternal punishment and damnation. All that hysteria about the fire-and-brimstone-and-Satan’s-pitchfork-up-your-ass? Well, Satan is not, I repeat, not Lucifer. That little bit of confusion came about because of a still-uncorrected misinterpretation of Isaiah 14:12. And the popular version of Hell? Again, complete myth. Fiction. Hoo-ha and horseshit. Anyway, just as there are seven Heavens, there are an equal amount of Hells – Dante almost got it right.” Everything inside of me went cold. “That’s right,” he said. “And allow me to be the first to officially welcome you to Level Five. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep this between us, though. Somehow I don’t think the folks around here would embrace the idea of their literally living in Hell on Earth. Will you stay and help me?” “Yes.” “Even though you have what you came for?” “Yes.” The Reverend rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, then. So now it starts getting weird. Are you sure you’re up for this?” “I think so, yes.” I almost sounded as if I believed myself. “Then let’s go.” He began guiding us deeper into the grotto, into areas where we’d have no choice but use the flashlight he carried. “So,” he said as we entered into darkness, “all in all, how would you rate your first day here?” Beneath our feet, the ground trembled. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the shadows. I had a feeling I was going to be spending a lot of time in them over the next several days, if not forever. 3. “‘… if not forever,’” Alex Conover snarled, throwing the well-read paperback across the room, knowing that he’d pick the damned thing back up in a few minutes and use whatever amount of tape was needed to make repairs; it was the only copy he and his sister possessed of their father’s last novel, an almost maddening piece of metafiction that was eviscerated by the few critics who bothered reviewing it. He sat up on the edge of his bed and stared at the book. “Could you possibly have ended it with a more melodramatic, self-conscious line? Don’t think so! And would it have been that big of a pain in the ass for someone to put a … oh, I don’t know … a ‘to be continued’ after that instead of ending everything, for all intents and purposes, in mid-sentence?” He closed his eyes, covered his face with his hands, groaned as he exhaled, then yanked his hands away and slapped them against his legs. “I’m yelling at a book. And a much-abused book, at that. This cannot be a good sign. Unlike talking to myself. Which I seem to still be doing.” For the umpteenth-hundred time he wondered why he felt compelled to re-read the thing every month or so; it wasn’t as if he didn’t know every word by heart – hell, he could probably recite the entire book word-for-word if he tried. You know goddamned well why you do it, he thought. Dad was always big on word-puzzles, on hidden subtext – Christ knows he couldn’t have written a linear storyline if someone held a gun to his head. There has to be a clue in there someplace. Sometimes he was too clever for his own good. No wonder his writing career didn’t amount to much. He stared at the book. It offered no response. As he rose from the uncomfortable single bed in the cramped hotel room he shared with his sister and niece, his cell phone beeped. Once. He froze, then looked at the land-line phone. “Please, no” he whispered to himself and Who- or Whatever else might be listening. The land-line phone rang. Alex yanked the receiver from its cradle, his hand shaking. “We got shades and shoes,” said his sister, Patricia. Shades and shoes. Their private codeword for “Feds.” “How many?” “At least two, but I think there’s two more.” “Call me back on Three.” Alex dropped the receiver back in its cradle. Moving quickly across the room, he grabbed one of the three duffel bags that were always kept packed, unsnapped a side pocket, and removed a second disposable cell phone, one of many that he and Patricia possessed. Powering it up, he did a quick mental inventory to make sure that everything else he’d need to grab was within easy reach. He was checking his back pocket for his wallet when the phone began to pulse. “So where are you?” he said. “Coming out of the clinic pharmacy.” “Any problems getting Rebecca’s meds?” “No. You were right – the place was a madhouse and all the doctors were in a hurry.” “Never doubt your little brother. Twenty minutes. Get me a large Coke or Pepsi and a double Whopper with cheese only.” “Your wish is blah-blah-blah.” He listened to the sounds of the city from Patricia’s phone. “Alex? Are you all right?” “Almost five months this time. I really thought we were going to able to get an apartment and be here for a while.” Patricia sighed. “Yeah, me too. On the bright side, at least there were no murders this time.” “Strike up the band.” “See you soon.” Alex snapped the phone closed. He bent down to pick up his father’s last novel. It had, surprisingly, suffered no damage during the current tantrum. He wrapped it in a shirt and packed it inside his duffel bag, then made quick work of packing Rebecca’s and Patricia’s bags. He lifted the mattress on his bed and removed the three manila envelope underneath; combined they contained a little over thirty thousand dollars. No bill larger than a twenty. They always used cash. Always. He stuffed one envelope into Rebecca’s duffel, one into Patricia’s, and – after grabbing four hundred in tens and twenties – the last into his own duffel. Next he pulled out his key ring and removed the hotel-room door key, tossing it on the bed. He took out his wallet and emptied it of all identification, knowing that Patricia was doing the same thing at this moment. There were still three more complete sets of papers for all of them; phony birth certificates, medical files, school records, driver’s licenses, vehicle registrations, proof of car insurance, Social Security cards, everything they’d need to assume new identities in wherever it was they were going to end up this time. They had been sickeningly expensive, full sets for several years’ worth of being on the move, but worth every cent. Making one last sweep of the place, he went over the usual mental notes: get hair-coloring kits, more disposable cells phones, switch out the van’s plates, a seemingly endless list of what needed to be done and done quickly. He opened the single window in the room and one by one set the duffel bags on the ground outside. Another constant; they always got a room on the ground floor, somewhere near the rear of the building. Alex took a deep breath and began to climb out the window. Halfway there, one foot on the ground and the other still on the cheap carpeting, he paused just long enough to whisper his own personal mantra in order to steel himself for what lie ahead. “Fortunately, I keep my feathers numbered for just such an emergency ….” Then it was to make like Kerouac. Again. … at least there were no murders this time … Cold comfort, that. 4. You know the legend, you’ve lived here nearly all of your life. You know all about the thing. Oh, it had probably always been there in one form or another, this legend, this myth, this tall-tale, but it wasn’t until the autumn of 1924 that the people of Cedar Hill gave it an official name: “Hoopsticks.” Said to roam the streets of West Cedar Hill, he was the nightmare dread of every child, an umbrella repairman whose deformed twin brother, Gash, grew out of his back. The two of them wore a quiver slung over their shoulder, a quiver that was said to be filled with the severed spinal cords of unruly youngsters. You know it well, this fable, as well as countless (and sometimes absurd) variations on it heard throughout your childhood and adolescence. Anyone who’s lived in Cedar Hill since the late-1800s has encountered some form of the tale; a few even took the time to write it down for posterity – after all, what better way to scare your children into behaving themselves than to threaten them with a visit from Hoopsticks if they didn’t do as they were told? You always thought it was just a local myth, one that took on a phantasmagorical life of its own after, say, something like a terrible murder took place before there was television or radio or the Internet or cell phones or texting. A lot has been written about Hoopsticks over the decades, some it fascinating, some of it sickening, some of it outright silly, all of it to be taken with a grain of salt and a “nice-little-story” grin. Because such things can’t actually exist. You’re an adult, you know the difference between myth and everyday truth; you can tell where to draw the line between the factual and the fanciful; and you damn well understand that there is a proper time and appropriate place for the telling of such stories. In short: you know a whimsical (if oddly dark) bit of bullshit when you encounter it. Hoopsticks equals hogwash, bunkum, and twaddle. You know now that this assumption equals wrong. So very wrong. # In memoria illorum quisnam vires have been 5. I guess I should tell you that, just like the story of Hoopsticks, there are some other stories that are going to move in and out of this as it goes along. These are -- I think, anyway -- going to be kind of important: Once upon a time there was a man named Robert Londrigan whose wife and daughter died at the same time on the same night, but their physical deaths were more like a lizard’s tail that, once cut off, grew a new lizard. Or even two. Or dozens. Robert Londrigan met angels, and half-human beings who were born of angels and humans who are called the Hallowers. One of them is going to show up soon. Twice upon a time there was man named Gil Stewart who believed that the sick and dying dog underneath his back porch came, in a way, from another place not-Here, not-Now. He believed that this dog was followed by a group of dangerous demons calling themselves Keepers. All of them will join us. Thrice upon a time there was a woman named Lucy Thompson who lost her daughter, Sarah, and then lost part of her mind. She helped give birth to a creature of vengeance called Mr. Hands. It will join us, as well. Sarah is here with us, near the Story Tree. She’s told us all about her mommy and how much she misses her. I think maybe we can help with that. Maybe. Next upon a time were two police detectives, Ben Littlejohn and Bill Emerson. Ben Littlejohn is long gone and no one really knows what’s happened to him (well, I kinda do, but I’m not supposed to tell). Bill Emerson is still around, and he has memories of the many strange things he’s witnessed over the years. He’ll be part of this story, as well. He’ll be a part of almost all of the stories. There is also a man everyone calls “The Reverend,” who is magic; there is a man named Timmy, who doesn’t say much; there is a lady called “Long Red” who used to be with a circus; there is a place called “Coffin County” that is sad and scary; there is a place called Moundbuilders Park that is full of secrets waiting to be discovered; and there are those of us here, at the foot of the Story Tree, watching the new branches grow out and out and higher and higher. Last upon a time there is You, even if we or You don’t know who You are yet. |
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| Author: | Craig Cook [ Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:14 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Long-Promised Excerpt |
This is so awesome - thanks Gary!! Can we look forward to seeing A Cracked & Broken Path in 2012? |
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| Author: | ttzuma [ Mon Jan 09, 2012 11:28 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Long-Promised Excerpt |
Like breathing in fresh air after being trapped under a mound of books for a couple of years. Looking forward to this one. |
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| Author: | AdamHughes [ Tue Jan 10, 2012 12:00 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Long-Promised Excerpt |
Amazing,,,you have given us much to look forward to Mr. Braunbeck Can't help but wonder though,,,is this Rebecca person the same Rebecca from Prodical Blues? |
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| Author: | GaryBraunbeck [ Tue Jan 10, 2012 3:38 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Long-Promised Excerpt |
Actually, no, it isn't. I chose her name because of the Biblical reference ... now I wonder if I should change it so that folks don't make that connection. Hmmmm .... 
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| Author: | AdamHughes [ Tue Jan 10, 2012 4:56 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Long-Promised Excerpt |
No, did I just single handedly push back the publishing date cause of a name change???!!?! Random thought though,,,Aryn in a pretty name 
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| Author: | DutchErik [ Wed Mar 21, 2012 1:46 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Long-Promised Excerpt |
Hello Gary, What we all want to know, is just one thing: When will A Cracked and Broken Path be published? Take Care, Erik |
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| Author: | DutchErik [ Sun Dec 16, 2012 7:39 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: The Long-Promised Excerpt |
Hello Gary, Any news about A Cracked and Broken Path? Take Care and Best Wishes. Erik |
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