Hayden came limping down the tunnel, totally drenched. He took a quick look around, and said, “Jesus, what happened. What’s that smell?” Sniffing like a dog. “What’d you do, man? Is he dead? Is she dead?”
“No.”
“They look dead. Sorry it took me so long to get here, but there was lightning all over the place. How did you run down the mountain? I couldn’t do that. Nobody else could ever do that. I think I broke my ankle.”
Pace stared at Hayden and asked, “What do I need to do with you?”
“What?”
“Tell me. You got some grievance with me?”
“Are you eating paste?”
“No.”
“Don’t eat paste!”
“I won’t.”
“What the hell happened to you? You’re all burned up again, man!”
Faust began to come around. Pace set him down and Pia worked her fingers through Faust’s hair, soothing him like a child. She caught Pace’s eye and gestured to Hayden.
She said, “Go on. Go do it, Will. It’s not for us, you know, that’s not why you’re doing it. It’s for you.”
Hayden said, “Oh no, oh no, what is this? You’re not going to hurt me, are you, man? We both hate tuna. We are brother tuna-haters! You can’t hurt one of your own!”
Pace didn’t need to hug him or make any contact with him at all. He reached down and took Hayden’s endless letter to his mother—the paper soggy and pulped together, the ink washed away—and again felt the sense of other people entering into him, leaking from the pages, the will behind all that writing, Hayden’s flesh, through his cells, and across Pace’s body, being absorbed into his skin. Crumble danced in circles, moving closer and closer to Pace’s leg. Sister Lurteen took her Bible and the broken pieces of her yardstick and followed.
Hayden was holding out his arms to them, going, “Wait...hold it...wait! Don’t! Don’t go! What’s happening here? This...this can’t...what’s happening? I don’t want to be lonely!”
“You won’t be,” Pace said. “You’re going to go out into the world and find a job, rent an apartment, and get yourself a girlfriend.”
“Oh Christ, oh Christ no!”
“I’m sorry, Hayden.”
“No!”
Too full of sorrow to even cry, Hayden’s knees gave out and Pace caught him before he fell. He knew the feeling—the fear of becoming a whole person, of living only a single life. All three of them in the dirt were looking up at Pace, who stood above them carrying all the many wraiths of their stolen histories.
Pace led them single file through the tunnels. The three of them staggered after him, Pia occasionally calling for her father, Hayden for his mother, Faust stuffing his finger into his scar trying to push something back into his skull.
When they came up out of the underworld, the storm had broken. The black smooth night, heavy with promise and charged with possibility, seemed endlessly wide and empty around them, through which their small and forlorn passage meant everything and nothing.
~ * ~
In the morning, Pace sat on the beach and thought about going to look for the pit that Stavros...the second Stavros...had told him about. You dive in and go straight through the island and you don’t stop.
Are you cured?
It was a trick question.
Was anybody, ever?
He would not give up his place. As ugly and ridiculous as it might seem, even to himself—to all the many hims—Pace simply enjoyed life too much.
Eventually Cassandra came down to the sand.
He wasn’t sure if he could cure her of the affliction. He didn’t know if he’d infected her or if she’d infected him, or if it mattered at all.
She stood over him and said, “The others are leaving. They don’t want to see you.”
“All right,” he told her.
“One of the pilots will fly them to Voros in the helicopter. I’ve given them each one hundred thousand dollars.”
“That was nice of you.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
Pace asked, “Why wouldn’t you take your father’s money, Cassandra? When you came to the States?”
“Because I wanted to prove myself. That I could stand on my own and be my own person.”
Pace turned away and stared at the sea again.
She said, “They wish to return to Garden Falls, but Vindi, our attorneys, and the accountants believe we can force the state to shut it down, so we can buy the land. I want it closed. I want the others to leave and go somewhere else, anywhere else. I want it ended.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her, It will never end.
“Why did you steal pocket change from Emilio’s?”
“To show that I was independent. That I could pay my tuition by myself.” She tried to take his hand but it was like trying to grasp rock. “Please, let us go up to the house.”
“I’d rather sit here a while.”
“I want you to see the baby’s room.”
“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” he told her.
“You shouldn’t look so sad, you’re one of the richest men in the world now.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” he admitted.
“It will one day.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Anything you want is already yours.”
“I don’t want anything.”
The knife moved between his hands. He stopped it, grabbed the blade between two fingers, and threw it in the ocean.
“You’re still holding it,” she said. “You pretended to throw it away, but you’ve still got it in your hand.”
Pace looked and there it was, in his fist. He sheathed the knife and wondered if he’d ever be rid of it. Or it of him.
“We must take care of your burns.”
“I’m all right.”
A hint of impatience tightened her voice. “You’ll learn to love me.”
“Maybe,” he said.
She left and he sat and watched the waves curling, crashing, and receding. His father said, Thanks for taking out the garbage, son. But you forgot to put the rock over the can and the raccoons got in again, there’s shit strewn all over the place, you think I got nothing better to do on my day off than run around the yard picking up old tuna cans?
Always with the tuna cans.
Robbie came by and sat in the sand. Pace asked, Hey, where’s all the chicks? Robbie’s chest opened and a martini and a lit cigarette popped out. He said, The chicks, sport, they’re way too much, the chicks will drive you crazy.
The others followed and filled the beach, one by one. Jimmy Boyd, Smoker, all the kids building sand castles, making little moats, digging holes deep as graves. Jack stood at the shore wearing his leather apron, washing his red hands in the ocean. The tide grew bloody.
Pace thought he heard the baby who would be born in a few months, trying to tell him something important. Pace turned his ear and listened, but the whispers of the child were lost in the churning of the ocean. Jack cocked an ear too. He wanted a son badly and would fight to be the father.
Out there, in the red waters, Princess Eirrin watched him as the ghosts of drowned sailors swam about her.
William Pacella tried to rise to the surface one final time, but the guy was too weak and Pace resisted. There was a brief animal mewl of anguish, a breath heavy with tobacco and chocolate, and then nothing more.
Crumble ran by and the kids threw down their shovels and chased after him. Daedalus circled far above, catching a warm air draft as he sailed above the limestone caves in the cliffs. His tears fell like rain across the harbor. Thaddeus, friend and companion to St. Paul, was still spreading the word of Christ across a troubled world, going person to person along the beach, holding Paul’s head out before him.
He whispered in Pace’s ear and told him that Armageddon approached.
Pace didn’t argue.
A moment later, Sariel and Rimmon sat beside him, waiting for the end times.
Rimmon, who
grants success and good fortune, governor of the first order of seraphim, angel of lightning and fire, commanding 29,000 legions of burning choirs, stared into the horizon with a playful smile decaying on his lips. His sword was half-drawn, prepared to point at the sun.
Sariel, issuer of new bodies to the dead, chief of the repentants, possessor of the four keys to the four corners of the earth, and who will, when instructed by God, re-open the gates of Eden locked after the fall of humanity and guarded by the damned, reached out and offered Pace the keys.
Pace took them, raised them to his ear and gave them a little shake. The gentle ringing lifted the red waves higher and brought the moon closer. He still wasn’t sure if he was the guy who was supposed to build the ark this time or the one who just makes it keep raining.
You’ve come a long way since sewing the pajamas in the Work Activities center. He wanted another shot at making an ashtray. This was the place where all our psyches have been driven down by love. Eros is the god behind vulnerability, who exposes all of mankind, through love, betrayal, and cruelty to the inseparable blend of pain and pleasure. Pace was prepared for the place beyond love and hate.
He opened his fist. There was another torn, curled slip of paper in it. He refused to read it, for now.
He sat at his post, guarding the oblivious and ongoing sleeping world around him, awaiting the next call from the Lord to put everything down again.
About the Author
www.tompiccirilli.com
www.thecoldspot.blogspot.com
Tom Piccirilli is the author of twenty novels including SHADOW SEASON, THE COLD SPOT, THE COLDEST MILE, and A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN. He's won two International Thriller Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards, as well as having been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, the Macavity, and Le Grand Prix de L'imagination.
"Tom Piccirilli straddles genres with the boldness of the best writers today, blending suspense and crime fiction into tight, brutal masterpieces."
—JAMES ROLLINS, New York Times bestselling author of The Judas Strain
Don’t miss any of these acclaimed novels by Tom Piccirilli
Available in paperback and e-book
Shadow Season
~International Thriller Writers Award nominee
“One of the most chilling thrillers of the year…[Piccirilli] does a convincing job of portraying the life of a man who can’t see, adding a unique and inviting twist to what is already an exciting plot.”—Chicago Sun-Times
An ex-cop, Finn was left literally blinded by violence. The one thing he can still see is the body of his wife, Dani, and a crime scene that won’t fade from his mind’s eye. Now a professor, Finn never would have guessed that an isolated girls’ prep school could be every bit as dangerous as city streets. Especially when he stumbles upon a local girl lying in a graveyard in the middle of a raging blizzard. A group of innocent students has been put in harm’s way by a pair of vicious criminals stalking Finn for unknown reasons. Secrets are creeping from the shadows around him—the kind that even a man with perfect vision never sees until it’s too late. They’re about to become terrifyingly clear to Finn—and it all begins with the scent of blood.
978-0-553-90634-9 e-book / 978-0-553-59247-4 paperback
The Coldest Mile
~Winner of an International Thriller Writers Award
~A Deadly Pleasures Best Mystery/Crime Novel
~Sequel to The Cold Spot
“Pedal to the metal for 352 pages. Don’t miss it.”—Booklist
Raised to be a thief and getaway driver, Chase left the bent life after he found his true love, Lila. For ten years he walked the straight and narrow—until Lila was murdered. Now Chase is looking for his grandfather Jonah, the stone-cold-killer con man who raised him and is the last living repository of his family’s darkest secrets. First he’ll need a score. Chase thinks he’s found it as a driver for a dysfunctional crime family, but with the Langans’ patriarch dying, the once powerful syndicate may unravel before Chase can rip it off. If he survives the bloodbath to come, he’ll face an even uglier showdown. Because his grandfather Jonah is waiting for him at the coldest family reunion this side of hell.
978-0-553-90618-9 e-book / 978-0-553-59085-2 paperback
The Cold Spot
~ Edgar Award nominee
“Both funny and ferocious…[Piccirilli’s] stories are worth their weight in gold.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
Chase was raised as a getaway driver by his grandfather, Jonah, a con man feared by even the hardened career criminals who make up his crew. But when Jonah crosses the line and murders one of his own, Chase goes solo, stealing cars and pulling scores across the country….And then he meets Lila, a strong-willed deputy sheriff with a beguiling smile who shows him what love can be. Chase is on the straight and narrow for the first time in his life—until tragedy hits, and he must reenter the dark world of grifters and crooks. Now Chase is out for revenge—and he’ll have to turn to the one man he hates most in the world. Only Jonah can teach Chase how to become a stone-cold killer. But even as the two men work together, Chase knows that their unresolved past will eventually lead them to a showdown of their own.
978-0-553-90496-3 e-book / 978-0-553-59084-5 paperback
The Midnight Road
~Winner of an International Thriller Writers Award
“I read this novel nonstop. A combination of noir suspense and humorous ghost story, Piccirilli…is at the top of his game.”—Rocky Mountain News
As an investigator for Suffolk County Child Protective Services, Flynn has seen more than his share of misery, but nothing could prepare him for the nightmare inside the Shepards’ million-dollar Long Island home. In less than an hour, that nightmare will send him plunging into a frozen harbor—and awaken him to a reality even more terrifying. They’ve nicknamed Flynn “The Miracle Man” because few have ever been resuscitated after being dead so long. But a determined homicide detective and a beautiful, inquisitive reporter have questions about what really happened at the Shepard house—and why the people around Flynn are suddenly being murdered. Flynn has questions of his own, especially when one of the victims dies while handing him a note: THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT. Flynn has returned from the Midnight Road—and someone wants to send him back.
978-0-553-90384-3 e-book / 978-0-553-38408-6 paperback
The Dead Letters
~A Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Nominee
“A powerful meditation on the nature of revenge, structured like a psychological thriller…A terrific novel.”—Locus
Five years ago, Eddie Whitt’s daughter Sarah became the victim of a serial killer known as Killjoy, and Whitt vowed to hunt him down—no matter what the cost. The only clues to Killjoy’s identity lie in a trail of taunting letters. And even as they lead Whitt to a deadly cult—and closer to his prey—he begins to suspect that, like his wife, he’s losing his grip on reality: Sarah’s dollhouse is filled with eerie activity, as if her murder never occurred. As dark forces rise around him, Whitt must choose—between believing that evil can repent…and stepping into a trap set by a killer who may know the only way to save Whitt’s soul.
978-0-553-90297-6 e-book / 978-0-553-38407-9 paperback
Headstone City
~Named one of the Salt Lake City Tribune’s "Best of the Literary Crop"
~Bram Stoker Award nominee
~International Thriller Writers Award nominee
"A beautiful and perversely funny sort of crime novel.... [Piccirilli has] the authentic surrealist's gift of blind trust in his imagination, and that enables him to throw off striking metaphors like sparks from a speeding train….Headstone City gives you the distinctive shiver…all good writing provides: the certainty that the writer’s own ghosts are in it.”
—New York Times Book Review
The night Johnny Danetello drove a dying girl through the streets of Brooklyn in his cab, he was trying to save her life. Instead he ran down a cop and lost her
and his freedom. Every day in prison, Johnny knew that Angie Monticelli’s family blamed him for her death, and that going home would be suicide. But Johnny has unfinished business with his former friend turned mob boss, Vinny Monticelli. Survivors of a long-ago freak accident, Johnny and Vinny share access to alternate realities no one else can know–and to a past and present that will all become the same in a city only one of them can leave alive. . . .
978-0-553-90235-8 e-book / 978-0-553-58721-0 paperback
November Mourns
“Tom Piccirilli is the master of the Southern gothic, quietly building horror where the chills grow with increasing strangeness….When he is done, the uneasy horrors of Moon Run Hollow are in your bones.”—Denver Post
Two years ago Shad Jenkins went to prison for assaulting his sister’s attacker. Now he has returned to the southern mountain town of Moon Run Hollow, only to find that Megan is dead. No one knows how she died–or why she was found on Gospel Trail Road, a dirt path leading up to the gorge high above the Chatalaha River, where victims of yellow fever were once brought to die. Shad must pierce the townsfolk’s superstitions and terrible secrets to find out the truth about his sister’s death. But the Blood Dreams he’s suffered from since childhood have taken on an eerie urgency, revealing to Shad the nightmarish form of an unseen adversary....
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