Violette pulled the boy close in an awkward embrace. “...our boy, Brendan. Well, our foster son. We... after his mother passed in the terrorist attack…”
The sound of the table cracking snapped Mitch back to reality. A black tendril snaked from the tip of Sophie’s finger across the Formica tabletop. She stared at the television with a dark look. He leaned in between her and the TV and said, “Should we go?” She nodded. He dropped the twenty-dollar bill on the table along with another ten from his wallet. It was probably twice the amount of the check, but their server had been nice. He climbed out of the booth, wrapped up his own uneaten dog and fries in the paper basket lining, in case Sophie got hungry in the car, and they slipped out of the restaurant.
As Mitch pulled the car onto the Interstate, the newsreader on the radio declared, “The Reanimate Child Identification and Registration Act is now headed to the Senate after passing overwhelmingly in the House. Sources close to the Oval Office have said that the president intends to sign the bill into law and strongly encourages the Senate to send it to his desk. Elsewhere in the country—” He jabbed the “SCAN” button on the radio and settled on a local NPR station broadcasting bebop jazz. He wasn’t really a fan, but it kept his mind off the approaching border better than road noise. After a few miles, he heard Sophie’s quiet snoring and he breathed a sigh of relief. She deserved some rest. They both did.
Maybe they’d find some on the other side.
THE END
Afterword
I’ve been writing fiction for just about as long as I’ve been able to write complete sentences. I’ve been writing horror almost as long. In the fourth grade, I remember we were given a homework assignment to come up with a Christmas story to read aloud to the class before the holiday break. I wrote a tale about Santa Claus saving a child in a vicious and bloody battle with H.R. Giger’s alien from the Ridley Scott film. It was a different time then, and I wasn’t expelled and the police weren’t called, although my teacher sent a sternly worded note home to my mother and I was discouraged from writing anything like it ever again.
It was my first literary rejection.
But I kept at it, and eventually sold a story around the same time I found out about the Northeastern Writers’ Conference, or Necon for short. I wanted to learn more about writing and publishing, and maybe meet a couple of my heroes, so I signed up for it. It was there that I met the organizer and creator of the con, Bob Booth, a.k.a. “Papa Necon.” The first time I encountered Bob in person, I owed him an apology for having fucked up my registration payment and inconvenienced him. He smiled at me and said Necon had eventually gotten the money and I had made it there, so what did I have to apologize for? He then invited me to sit down with him and talk. He asked about my work, and I told him I had a single publication to my name, a five-hundred-word story published in a magazine that went out of print and out of business immediately after. He proceeded to treat me like both a professional and a colleague that entire weekend.
That was Bob Booth.
A year later, I was sitting at the same table with Bob at the next Necon and told him that I’d sold my first novel, Mountain Home, to a small press in Canada. He reacted with the kind of joy and pride at my accomplishment that people typically only show their own kids. He treated me like a member of his family every single day I knew him thereafter.
That was Papa Necon.
Another year later, and I was sitting with Bob while he was struggling with cancer, and he asked if I’d be interested in writing a novella for a project that he was thinking about. I said of course I would write for him, and began writing a new book the Monday after the conference let out. I wrote as fast as I could, trying to finish in time for Bob to read it, and got about two thirds of the way into the story when he went into hospice care. When he died, I struggled to finish the story, but I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me, and I limped along at a quarter of the pace I’d written the beginning. I eventually phoned in the last third, hit “save,” and closed the file. I let the book sit on my hard drive and didn’t let anyone see it or even know it existed. It hurt too much to think about the book I failed to write in time for my friend to read it.
A couple of years later, again at Necon, Brian Keene, with a cigar in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other, asked me whether I could write and deliver a book to him by the following September for the Maelstrom imprint of Thunderstorm Books. I was stunned by the offer and very nicely buzzed by my fourth or fifth IPA and I think I shouted, “Hell yes, I can!” I didn’t have to think about it.
And the book I thought I had buried forever on my hard drive came back to life.
That following Monday, I printed out and began reading Come to Dust (which at the time was called God Loves All the Dead Kids). I hadn’t realized at the time I was writing it that the book was a howl against the pain of losing someone you love. The first time I read it all the way through (the first time I had since Bob died), I cried. And then, I started to mark it up with a red pen. And then I wrote a new outline, and a new middle act and ending that wasn’t rushed. And when I wrote “The End,” I cried a little again, knowing that Bob would have been proud of this book. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve written.
As I sit here and write this afterword, I still feel the loss of my friend and wish I had one more chance to tell him how much I love him. I wish I could put this book in his hands and personalize it. I would tell Bob how much it meant to a brand new writer to be welcomed the way I had been into the family of Necon writers who had a thirty-year history with each other already. How much it meant to me that he was my friend. In lieu of being able to fulfill that wish directly, I’m writing the following five words, and saying no more:
This is for Papa Necon.
Acknowledgments
First of all, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Brian Keene. He gave this book the spark of life that brought it back from the dead. Thank you, my friend, for the chance to do right by this story and by our friend Bob. I’d also like to thank Paul Goblirsch for his work at Thunderstorm Books and Maelstrom bringing this project fully to life.
To my influences, colleagues and, best of all, good friends, Christopher Golden, James A. Moore, Paul Tremblay, Jonathan Maberry, Nicholas Kaufmann, John Mantooth, Chet Williamson, John Dixon, Adam Cesare, Thomas Pluck, Errick Nunnally, Christopher Irvin, K.L. Pereira, Jan Kozlowski, Jack Haringa (must die!), Adrian Van Young, Brett Savory, Sandra Kasturi, Michael Rowe, Brendan Deneen, Gabino Iglesias, Rob Hart, Kasey Lansdale, Joe Lansdale, Andrew Vachss, and Dallas Mayr, you all inspire me to work harder and be better at what I do. Thank you.
My son, Lucien, helped me find my way both into and out of the darkest places this book took me. Any truly terrifying moment in here came from the places in my heart and head where I couldn’t bear to think of being without him. Thank you, sweetheart.
Lastly, my undying love, respect, and gratitude go to my wife and ideal reader, Heather. True until death!
Bracken MacLeod is the author of the novels Mountain Home and Stranded. His short fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies, including LampLight, ThugLit, and Splatterpunk, and has been collected in 13 Views of the Suicide Woods. He lives outside of Boston with his wife and son, where he is at work on his next novel.
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