Trolls in the Hamptons

by Celia Jerome

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  EVERYONE ON THE STREET WAS RUNNING AND SCREAMING.

  Then I heard cars slamming into each other, horns blaring, alarms going off. Bikes lay smashed on the sidewalk as flat as tortillas; the pavement glistened with shards of glass from doors and storefronts and windows, between new piles of bricks and rubble. What the hell? An earthquake in Manhattan? A terrorist attack? The UN wasn’t all that far away.

  I looked down the block to see if I could figure out what was happening, and then I shook my head to clear it. No way could a troll, a red granite giant, be swinging his fists and other proportionately massive appendages as he—definitely a he—slogged down my narrow street. Parking meters bent so coins went flying; stair railings twisted into wrought iron spaghetti; the floor beneath my feet shook.

  There he was, my Fafhrd, the creature I had just drawn. And no one saw him but me. I was not God, not Frankenstein jump-starting his creation with a bolt of lightning.

  No, I was crazy.

  DAW Books Presents CELIA JEROME’s

  Willow Tate Novels:

  TROLLS IN THE HAMPTONS NIGHT MARES IN THE HAMPTONS

  (Available May 2011)

  Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Metzger.

  All Rights Reserved.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1527.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44521-1

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

  First Printing, November 2010

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S.A.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Don Wollheim, Terry Carr, and Ace Books, for introducing me both to Georgette Heyer and the world of fantasy.

  CHAPTER 1

  NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF imagination. Never overestimate it, either. Take me, for instance, Willow Tate. I’m thirty-four and I can almost support my family’s Manhattan apartment and myself by writing and illustrating graphic novels for young adults. I’m good; they sell. I sign them with the non-gender specific Willy Tate, but they are all my work, my inspiration, my ideas. Sometimes I write not so good poems, too. And I’ve made candles, painted murals, built birdhouses, and strung beaded necklaces for friends. But that’s creativity, not Creation.

  Think about it. The screenwriter can create an entire new world and make it come to life in a movie, so real you think you are there on the desert or the mountain or some other planet. The artist can paint flowers you can almost smell. A romance writer can tell a love story so touching you weep into your hot chocolate. They all come out of thin air and active minds.

  But neither imagination, nor creativity, nor great art can make something actual and alive. Fantasy simply does not translate into reality, no matter how lovely. You cannot move into air castles or subsist on pie in the sky. Otherwise I’d have conjured up my own perfect hero long ago. He wouldn’t need to be cover-model gorgeous, but he’d definitely be as noble, honorable—and hot—as the heroes of my action-adventure books. Maybe his only superpower would be making my heart beat faster, but that and a good sense of humor would be enough. And a steady job.

  Instead of pulling a Romeo out of my hat, I am single, to my mother’s horror, and the only man who gets my pulse thumping these days is Lou the Lout, the super of the brownstone building across from mine in the Murray Hill neighborhood, and that’s adrenaline, not lust I feel. The old man terrifies me. He’s never been aggressive or nasty, but he stares, even when he’s sweeping the sidewalk, shoveling snow, or picking up after the pigs who don’t clean up after their dogs. From my third-floor apartment—no elevator, no doorman, but a great midtown location on the East Side—I can see him looking up, into my window. That’s what he does when he’s not sweeping or shoveling or bagging garbage: he stares up from his place under the entry steps of his building, or from the barred window of the subfloor where I suppose he lives.

  Both my parents tell me to close the blinds, which is about the only thing they agree on. It’s easy for them to say, when Mom lives a block from the beach out on Long Island and has a garden in the backyard, and Dad has nothing but another high-rise senior citizen condo in his view.

  Why should I block the sunlight and the scenery outside the walls of my apartment? I was raised in these same rooms, which is how I have an affordable rent-controlled unit. Mom got the summerhouse in the divorce. Dad got the Florida condo they bought for retiring. I got the city apartment. It works for all of us, except for Lou.

  I spend most of my hours right here, working, sleeping, reading, or stringing those beads. I will not give up my view of the street, the pedestrians, the pigeons. I need that open space in the city. Besides, I refuse to let any old lecher steal my freedom. Okay, I won’t walk on his side of East Thirty-Eighth Street, but that doesn’t mean he’s winning his war of intimidation.

  The tenants of Lou’s building don’t seem to find him threatening, but to me he’s like the monster under the bridge, waiting for unwary travelers. He’s no cute gnomish old man, either, just a large, lumbering, and middle-aged troll.

  . . . A troll.

  Now there’s an idea for a new series of books. No one does trolls. Vampires and werewolves are a dime a dozen. Dragons, witches, and psychics are done to death. Ghosts after death. But trolls?

  I picked up my pen—red with a fine point—and a lined yellow pad I always keep on the round table by the window that’s my office. (And dining room if company, or my mother, comes.) The ’puter and its drawing tablet are for later, once I know what I want. I took a sip of my green tea and thought, Yeah, a troll. I switched to a thin-line marker and started sketching. He’d be big, rocklike, wide-faced, with red skin. Green was overdone, and Lou was always flushed and angry looking, chapped in winter, sunburned in the summer. Even on a nice spring day like this one, I bet he dripped with sweat and smelled, but I never got close enough to tell.

  I forgot all about him as I sketched and made notes for possible story lines. Should a troll wear clothes or not
? Was he hero or villain, victim or avenger? He needed a name. Or was he a she? Girls bought my books, too. They might like a rough-and-ready female character. Or not. Trolls with boobs? Trolls in love? I’d have to run it by my editor after the weekend. For now my character was Fafhrd, after the Fritz Leiber classic fantasy hero, a gentle giant of a warrior, and best friend of the Gray Mouser.

  Ah, to be in the same realm as Fritz Leiber. Right now I was flying on the wind of imagination. This was what I lived for, what made it all worthwhile, the bad reviews, the minuscule royalty advance payments, the low print runs and lack of publicity. To hell with all that; this was the fun part: the rush, the brain stimulation, the euphoria of a great, new idea that a few brushstrokes, a couple of lines, could make into something. That’s the creative high, the confidence, the glow, the near postcoital satisfaction. No, this was more like the start of a new relationship, fresh, exciting, full of tingly possibilities. Who knew how it would turn out, but this might be The One.

  I stopped to look at my sketches, my pages of plot, conflict, and character. Damn, I’m good.

  The tea was gone, along with a dusty chocolate kiss, a stick of sugarless gum that lied about whitening teeth at the same time, and most of the afternoon. Lined yellow pages and pink sticky notes and drawings covered the table; new files and folders appeared on the computer. I could have gone on for hours; I was on such a roll. . . .

  Which reminded me I’d missed lunch and my afternoon snack. Maybe I deserved Ben and Jerry’s instead of a banana. And I’d burn some of the calories by walking to the deli around the corner to get it. I’d been sitting so long my neck was stiff and I could feel my rear end spreading. I looked out the window to see if I needed a sweatshirt, by checking what everyone on the street was wearing, but they were running and screaming. Then I heard the cars slamming into each other, horns blaring, alarms going off. Bikes lay smashed on the sidewalk as flat as tortillas; the pavement glistened with shards of glass from doors and storefronts and windows, between new piles of bricks and rubble. What the hell? An earthquake in Manhattan? A terrorist attack? The UN wasn’t all that far away.

  I looked down the block to see if I could figure out what happened, if I should flee the building or hide under the bed.

  It was a good thing the mug was empty or tea would have been all over my carpet, I grabbed the table edge so hard. Then again, it was a good thing the table was there or I would have fallen over.

  I shook my head to clear it. I’d been working too hard, that was all. And I was light-headed from hunger. No way could a troll, a red granite giant, be swinging his fists and other proportionately massive appendages as he—definitely a he—slogged down my narrow street. Parking meters bent so coins went flying; stair railings twisted into wrought iron spaghetti; the floor beneath my feet shook.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them, figuring the daytime nightmare would disappear. It did not. Holy shit, that was a troll—my troll, Fafhrd—smashing the fire hydrant on the corner as if it were a plastic cup. Water fountained out and up, making rainbows in the sun, and floods in the gutters. The troll stood under the streaming geyser, gazing at the colors, splashing his size thirty feet and catching handfuls of water, acting like a child at the beach, or a kid with a bottle of soap bubbles. And then, and I swear this is true, he looked up at my window and grinned at me before disappearing around the corner.

  My fingers were numb from clutching the table. I had to pry them off to reach for the phone.

  “Nine-one-one? This is Willow Tate.” I gave my address, but stuttered over my phone number. They had it on caller ID anyway.

  “Just relax, ma’am. Take a deep breath and tell me what the problem is.”

  I took a deep breath, which did not calm me in the least. I tried to keep my voice from shaking, or screeching. “There’s been”—a what?—“some kind of catastrophe on my block. An accident. Cars, buildings damaged, windows broken.” On the second stories!

  “Are you injured?”

  “No, I am on the third floor. I cannot tell if anyone else is hurt. People are all standing around, some are crying. I don’t see anyone on the ground.” Crowds were racing toward the street from other blocks, jumping out of cars and rushing out of buildings.

  “Yes, we are getting other calls.”

  I could see cell phones in everyone’s hands. I’d guess the lines would be flooded. No, those were the streets.

  “A fire hydrant is broken.”

  “We are dispatching ambulances and fire trucks. I’ll notify the water authority. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “A tr—A tr—”

  “Calm down, ma’am. Help is on the way. Was it a truck?”

  That sounded plausible. “Red.”

  “A red truck. Anything else?”

  I could hear sirens already. “Big.”

  “Yes, thank you. I have your name and address. I am certain an officer will want to speak to you later. Please try to recall as much as you can. You might jot down some notes, so you don’t forget any details.”

  Details? They were all over my computer, my drawing pad, my table. I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed for a pen as soon as I hung up the phone. Despite my shaking hands, I draped a scarf around Fafhrd’s hips to cover his privates. Then I had to laugh. Okay, the laughter might be hysteria, but I had to smile at my own hubris, thinking for one second that I had anything to do with whatever had just happened. My burst of mental creativity had not given birth to a physical menace. Could not, should not, would not. So there.

  I am good.

  I am not that good.

  CHAPTER 2

  SOMETIMES I WISHED I DRANK. Or smoked, or had a stash of prescription or proscribed drugs. But my mother pops in whenever she feels like it, to go shopping, visit friends, find fault with my housekeeping. I know, I’m not a kid, and the apartment is in my name now, but she’s still my mother. Too much alcohol gives me headaches, smoking would kill you, and the other stuff scares me. I may as well admit it; a lot of stuff scares me. And that was before a figment of my imagination wreaked mayhem on Manhattan.

  I settled for some frozen yogurt with freezer burn. I’d had worse.

  I tried not to look out the window, or listen to the sirens and the bullhorn orders and the beeping of tow trucks backing up. I also gathered all my notes into a manila envelope and locked them in the bottom drawer of my desk, along with the computer files on a disk. I don’t think anyone can sue me for having a wild new idea. If they try, I can always say I jotted down my impressions after the fact.

  After what fact? That a troll came from nowhere, created chaos, smiled at me, and vanished? Oh, yeah. Maybe I should call The Times now. Instead I called Arlen, the guy I’m dating. He’s not The One, the Happily Ever After, but he’d be better company than my thoughts, and maybe he’d bring some Häagen-Dazs.

  “Arlen, something awful happened.”

  “I know. It’s on all the news.”

  I should have thought of turning on the TV or the radio. “It was right here, on my block.”

  “They showed your building from the helicopter camera.”

  So that was why the building kept feeling like it was shaking. “Um, Arlen, if you saw that my building was in the middle of the mess, how come you didn’t call to see if I was all right?” I mean, I would have.

  “They said no one was hurt. And you said you’d be working all day, not out in the streets.”

  Arlen worked on Wall Street. He was very disciplined about work and had a hard time with my looser idea of scheduling. He could never understand a sudden need for a street pretzel to untangle a plot, or a quick walk to jar a character into shape. I’d never handed a manuscript in late yet, so what did it matter whether I worked from ten to three during the day or ten to three at night?

  “Do you think you could come over, maybe bring in takeout? My treat.” Arlen was also very careful about money.

  “No can do. Your neighborhood is cordoned off. All of midtown is at a
standstill. Maybe later. I’ll call, okay, dear?”

  I hate when he calls me dear, as if we are an old married couple. After three months? Maybe he calls all his girlfriends “dear” so he doesn’t have to remember our names. But he’s really nice, and good-looking, and likes movies. Of course, I would have found a way to get to him if he’d been traumatized. I would have found a sushi place, too, even if I like Chinese better. But I was desperate. “Later?”

  “Sure. I’ll listen to the news to see when the streets are open.”

  I looked outside. That wouldn’t be for hours. They had the water turned off, at least, and a lot of the cars dragged away. Barricades and blue uniforms kept most of the crowds at a distance. One cop car was blaring that everyone should stay inside.

  As if I wanted to go get trampled by a troll.

  My best friends were unavailable. Sherrie was on her second husband; make that honeymoon. Daisy’d be at court all day. Ellen tutored after school. My family was hours away, the ground-floor neighbors spoke little English, the second-story groupies hate me because I complain about their music when I’m trying to write, the gay guys on the fourth-floor level work all day, and Mrs. Abbottini who has the rear apartment on my floor is nearly deaf.

  I hated myself for feeling needy enough to say, “Please try,” to Arlen, but I said it anyway. My thoughts were not going to be good enough company to erase that toothy, trollish grin. Independence is all well and good, but not when a fairy-tale ogre comes to life.

  Arlen said he supposed he could tell the cops he was coming home after work so they’d let him pass through the barriers if they were still up in a couple of hours. He couldn’t leave the office early anyway.