... I will be posting here (exclusively) an excerpt from A Cracked and Broken Path for your consideration. Bear in mind, it may be late tomorrow night, but it's on its way. Needless top say, it will be a longer than usual post, so prepare to do a lot of scrolling.

_________________
"If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."

This is beyond awesome.

(speechless)

It's 11:09 p.m. here. I wonder how late late really is?

If it's midnight late, I'm good. If it's 3:30 a.m. late, I may be in trouble.

Here you go, an exclusive excerpt (3200 words); bear in mind this hasn't gone through the last polish-pass phase.

Every character in Cedar Hill has had a backstory thus far ... except one, and it turns out, his is the most crucial. So this will appear somewhere in the middle of the novel:


1: Across the Street, One House Down

Before he became a permanent fixture at the Cedar Hill Open Shelter, as well as the Reverend’s fourth in command (after Sam, who was missing an ear, and then Ethel, who was the nice old black lady who took donations at the door), before he’d seen either the Gates of Bleak Pthahil or the terrible thing guarding them, and long before he found himself on the streets, a sad and shabby little man freezing in a threadbare coat, Timothy Oberfield was a seven-year-old boy who went with his parents one summer to visit Grandma and Grandpa in upstate New York. After dinner the night they arrived, his parents and grandparents sat in the living room, talking about the state of anything and everything that had nothing to do with little kid-dom, so Timothy was on the floor playing with a red rubber-wheeled firetruck Grandpa had given him as an early birthday present. It had lights that spun around and a spotted dog that barked and a siren that really worked, but Timothy wasn’t using the siren or the barking dog right now. That would be rude.

The tone of the adults’ conversation changed after all of them had “freshened up” their after-dinner drinks: what had been almost pleasant to listen to took a dark turn and Timothy started feeling nervous. Whenever this happened at home, sometimes Daddy broke things or hit someone; Timothy, or Mommy, or both. And he always said mean things. Goddamn kid is never going to be right in the head. A fuckin’ retard. What’m I supposed to do with the likes of him, anyway? Mean things that made Mommy and Timothy cry. But Daddy always felt bad the next day, and would apologize and tell them how much he loved them and give them both some extra money to buy themselves a present.

“They’re just not our kind of people,” Grandma said. “Douglas, didn’t you see their house when you drove up? It’s across the street, one house down.”

“Guess I wasn’t paying attention,” Daddy said.

“The one with the car up on cement blocks in front?” Mommy asked. “Yes, I saw it. I can’t imagine that being at all good for the neighborhood. Leaving junk like that on the lawn, it might draw mice…or worse things.”

“There’s garbage strewn over half that property now, and it used to be a nice place.” Grandma took a couple of deep swallows from her tall frosty glass, and then went on: “They’re letting everything to go to pot. The paint is peeling off, the gutter is hanging loose, and they’ve patched up the broken windows with cardboard. Cardboard! Can you imagine such a thing? Oh, and the children! The children run around like wild Indians, leaving broken toys all over Hell’s half-acre. The parents treat them so poorly, they’re growing up to be nothing better than trash.”

“Katherine,” said Grandpa to Grandma. “Let's not be getting up on our high horse now”

Timothy didn’t understand that one at all. He thought maybe his grandfather was afraid that Grandma might go attack the little Indians on horseback the way the cavalry did on TV.

He didn’t get much more out of the conversation, except that Mommy and Grandma started sounding kind of silly the emptier their glasses got, and Daddy and Grandpa kept telling them to shut up and act their age (Daddy wouldn’t break anything or start hitting, not in front of his own parents). But without any of the adults having to tell him, Timothy understood that he should stay away from the bad family across the street, one house down.


2: With Apologies to Mr. Rat

During the two-week visit Timothy tried not to look at the bad family’s house, but on the last day, as they were packing the car for the drive back to Cedar Hill, his curiosity got the better of him and he snuck a peek... and then gave what he saw a long, hard look because he couldn’t believe it.

There was the car on top of the cement blocks, the engine in pieces all over the fenced-in yard, there was the run-down house gone gray and dirty from lack of care, there was a big dirty shaggy dog with a bunch of flies circling its head and tail, and, finally, there was the child lying dead inside the overturned garbage can near the curb.

No, it can’t be, Timothy thought. It must just look like a child. It must be trash; a softball for a head, a wadded, stained towel for a body, sticks and old rope for limbs. So, okay, then. He felt lots better, and then something buried in the garbage can banged on the side, once. He jumped at the sound, unable to look away because maybe the child was still alive and trying to crawl out. Or maybe…maybe it was just a big old rat, digging around for something to eat. Mommy had said that junk on the lawn would attract mice, and Timothy knew that where there were mice, there would soon be rats. He’d learned that from watching Marlin Perkins on Wild Kingdom. So maybe that big old rat saw the softball head, the stained-towel body, and the rope- and-sticks arms and legs and decided he’d just chow down…except now the rat was finding out there wasn’t anything to eat, that he’d been tricked, so maybe he was thumping his long tail against the inside of the garbage can to raise a racket because he was irritated (that had been Timothy’s New Word Learned for the week) and wanted everyone to know about it.

He smiled, quietly proud of himself for having solved the mystery just like Encyclopedia Brown did in all those books. He leaned down a little, focusing his gaze on the inside of the garbage can, waiting for the rat to show himself. Banging its tail against the inside of the can once more, the rat scurried out. It had something long, wet, and shiny clamped in its awful jagged rat-teeth. Something long, wet, shiny…and with a clump of blonde hair attached to it. As the rat made his getaway, the very end of the wet blonde-hair thing dragged against the sidewalk, leaving a thin trail of blood. Before disappearing into the bushes, the rat stopped. A shudder ran through its body. It put down its meal, placing a paw on top of it in case any other rats showed up and try to take it from him. Then it turned and stared directly at Timothy.

The tingling started between his eyes, soft and relaxing, the way Mommy would stroke his brow when he was having trouble getting to sleep, it felt…nice. At first. And then it spread out and down, swirling behind his eyes, his face being pelted by thousands of needle points, and it hurt but he couldn’t move, couldn’t even call out for his parents, he was a statue. The needle points began to pull away, all of them moving up and in toward his eyes, and Timothy had just enough time to pull in a deep breath before everything twisted up into his skull and became a corkscrew that bit, chewed, and tore into the middle of his brain. He began to shake but no one noticed because no one came to help him.

The rat kept staring at him and Timothy thought, I’m sorry, Mr. Rat, I didn’t mean to stare at you, please make it stop, but it didn’t stop, it only…changed. It was like the corkscrew had gnawed out a small section of his dumb old brain so that it could be used as a secret hiding place or something. The corkscrew stopped and then withdrew, allowing him to breathe once again. He bent over, hands on his knees, gulping in air and trying not to throw up. He could feel the empty space in his dumb old brain, he could feel it. With a shaking hand, he reached up and rubbed his right eye, and then his left, both times pushing in just a little bit to see if his brain would give way any. He knew from school that if you took something out of the middle of something that was soft, you could push in farther than you could before.

Both times that he pushed, he saw a flash of bright light-blue that for a moment colored everything in the world. But there was something else in there, something that he couldn’t see because it appeared and disappeared as quickly as the light. He didn’t want to push on his eyes for too long, or push too hard, because you only got one set of eyes and if you messed them up, then you’d never see anything again. And Timothy liked seeing things.

When he looked up again, the rat was gone; so was its meal. But where it had been there now stood a tall, thin man dressed in a black pin-striped suit. His shirt was so white it almost shined, and his tie was so red it could have been a streak of blood. He looked fancy, like that guy who played Mr. Steed on The Avengers, except that this guy didn’t have an umbrella that shot knockout gas like Steed’s did – but he did wear the same kind of hat. Whenever they watched The Avengers Mommy called Steed’s hat a “bowler” hat; Daddy called it a “derby.” Timothy just wanted Mrs. Peel to show up. He liked seeing Mrs. Peel.

The Fancy Man was looking at him, so Timothy did the first thing that came to mind: he waved. The Fancy Man, seeming pleased by this, smiled and waved back, and then started crossing the street. As soon as he reached the middle of the street, a car going way too fast came screaming down on top of him. Timothy didn’t have enough time to call out a warning. It didn’t matter: the Fancy Man just walked straight through the car – first the passenger side, then the driver’s side – and emerged unharmed. It seemed like he didn’t even notice the car.

“Good young sir,” said the Fancy Man, removing his hat and bending lower so that his face was closer to Timothy’s. “Might we ask a favor of you, the rats and all animals and I?”

Timothy tried to speak – he wanted to speak, to ask questions – but his throat wouldn’t let him, so he just nodded his head.

“Excellent. I can always spot a child of quality character.” He put the hat back on his head and slipped the other hand into his jacket. “I have a business card that I would like you to pass on to a…a certain individual, if you’d be so kind.”

Once again, Timothy nodded – but as he did, he caught quick glimpses of several odd-looking things that were all over the street; a lithe female figure with the head of a black horse, its ears erect, its neck arched, vapor jetting from its nostrils; another was tall and skeletal, with fingers so long their tips brushed against the ground: it hunkered down and snaked its fingers around the trunk of a tree, as if absorbing something within the bark; some hopped like frogs; those without legs or feet rolled; others scuttled around on root-like filaments covered in flowers whose centers were the faces of blind children.

“Don’t mind them,” said the Fancy Man. “A few of my friends who don’t…get over this way very often.” He clicked the heels of his shoes together like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, leaned forward, and presented the card to Timothy the same way a magician finishes a trick with a flourish. “Ta-da,” he sang.

Timothy reached out and took the card, which read:

H. Trismegistus, Agathosdaimon
Psychopompos
Keepers

“I know you seem to have lost your voice,” said the Fancy Man, “but you needn’t worry. It will come back to you soon enough. You want to know to whom you should give this, correct? I thought as much. Well, I can’t tell you his name because I don’t know which name he’ll be going by over here, but – and this will be your secret mission, dear boy, you’ll be like a spy – you will recognize this man the moment you meet him. And meet him you shall. Do please give that to him when you do, and tell him I said, ‘The gaps are getting too wide, and I can only be in so many places at the same time.’ Do you think you can remember all of that? Hmm, well…” With another flourish, he produced the prettiest pen Timothy had ever seen. Taking the card back, the Fancy Man scribbled his message on the back of the card, blew on the ink until he was certain it had dried, and then gave it back. “Now, young sir, if you’ll forgive my being so abrupt…” And with that, he tipped his hat, stepped to the side, and dissolved as if tipping into an invisible pool of water. With him went all the odd and frightening creatures he had called “…a few of my friends…” All of them, that is, except one.

Atop the roof of the bad family’s house squatted a creature that looked like it was part camera, part bird, and part wolf. It leaned forward, snick’d a quick photo of Timothy with both its shutter-eyes, and then – just like the Fancy Man – stepped to the side and disappeared.

It was only after he found himself standing alone again that Timothy realized the world had turned a sharp light blue while the Fancy Man and his friends were here. The sudden return to the vibrant everyday palette of colors made Timothy momentarily disoriented and dizzy, so he did what he always did whenever he felt woozy and confused; he picked one thing to stare at for a few moments, that always did the trick.

He looked back at the garbage can and this time, this time he knew he wasn’t imagining things, because he saw the little girl’s bleached-looking hand flop forward from the darkness at the bottom of the can, land in a clump of something soft and spongy, and remain still. Timothy knew this as sure as he knew his own name. “Terrible,” he whispered to himself, his throat finally freeing his voice from its prison. “Just terrible.”

His mother called him over so she could clean his face. He usually hated it when she wet her handkerchief with spit and wiped at a spot of jelly or dried run of snot on his face, but this time he was too busy being afraid and thinking about all he’d seen. His head still hurt from whatever the rat had done to him, and he couldn’t believe that the Fancy Man and all his friends had actually been here. He looked down and saw that in his right hand was a business card. He slipped it into his pocket and stumbled toward his mother, the dizziness in no hurry to be on its way.

As his mother wiped his face, Timothy thought about what was inside the trash can. If it really was a dead little blonde-haired girl in there, then the people who saw her, other neighbors, the mailman, his grandparents, people walking by on the sidewalk, someone would call the police. Unless they’re all afraid, he thought, unless they’re scared that if they let on that they knew about the bad family’s crime, they might be killed. This family was so bad even the police were scared of them, otherwise they wouldn’t put their dead child out on the street where everyone could see it. Timothy realized he didn’t want to anger the family by looking at their dead little girl, so he kept his eyes turned away.

He wasn’t sure why he never said anything to his parents about any of it, but what could anyone do about it if he did tell? Call the police – but then the bad family might have time to hide the body and then they’d know who it was who called the police and maybe then they’d sneak over here in the middle of the night and kill Grandma and Grandpa and put them into trash cans, or maybe they’d follow Timothy’s family back home and kill them. Or what if it wasn’t the bad family who did it? What about the Fancy Man’s friends? Maybe they weren’t so friendly. Maybe some of them knew the bad family and the bad family made them do the killing. If they could just fade in and out like that, just step to the side and disappear, maybe all they had to do was step back at a different spot and they’d be in the middle of your living room or kitchen. How could you hide from something like that?

He almost started to cry, he was so confused, but he didn’t; crying was a sissy thing to do, Daddy always said so, and Timothy didn’t want to look like a sissy to his daddy because then Daddy might hit him. So he got into the car with his parents and his red rubber-wheeled firetruck with the lights and dog and siren, and they drove away.

Just as they were pulling out of the driveway and moving toward the intersection, Timothy turned around in the backseat and looked once more at the pale hand lying in the overturned trash can. It remained still, but then it began to move – not on its own, not like the little girl was alive or anything like that, no; this was like there was someone else below her in the trash can, pulling on her legs. The pale hand jerked to one side, then the other, thumping both sides, then it was still again for only a moment before it was just yanked – zzzzip!, like that – toward the darkness at the bottom. As the car turned the corner Timothy thought he saw a flash of light come from inside the trash can, like a big shiny light-blue wink, but it could have just been the glint of the sun against the polished lid of the car’s trunk. So Timothy turned around and sat staring at his feet, cradling his red rubber-wheeled dump truck and trying to stop himself from shaking. He kept whispering, “Terrible, just terrible,” over and over to himself. For the rest of the drive home, he said nothing else, only, “Terrible, just terrible.” And even then he made sure that Mommy and Daddy couldn’t hear him.

The gaps are getting too wide, and I can only be in so many places at the same time.

And once again, with a shudder, Timothy wondered: how do you hide from something like that?

_________________
"If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."

Thank you Gary!

It looks as if the story you printed here in Horrorworld last year, "In Seeing" (?), is going to be a major part of the new novel.

Tt

Yes, it is. And there's a lot more to it.

_________________
"If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."

It also looks like I'll have to dust off Keepers for yet another read-through.

_________________
When night falls she cloaks the world in inpenetrable darkness. A chill rises from the soil, and contaminates the air.

Suddenly, life has new meaning.

Not necessarily ... but it wouldn't hurt, since what happens to Gil Stewart plays an active part in the secondary story line.

_________________
"If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."