She talked non-stop the whole way to the station. She kept looking back over her shoulder, checking all around, and he started doing the same thing. Now what was the matter? The streets were empty. Nothing but a couple of colorless motels and closed shops lining the road. Just enough of a burg for the families of the patients to buy the necessities for their ill children, schizophrenic wives, bipolar husbands, over-tranqed parents. You had to wonder about a town whose main source of income was the import of psychotics.
Dr. Brandt made a joke about the factory where he'd can the fish. It wasn't funny. He heard himself responding to her animatedly, and even with some sardonic humor. It struck him as funny and he hacked out a guffaw. A low, flat sound almost evil in its implication. She turned her head and looked at him, and he smiled pleasantly.
The trick question, here it was.
"Will, what's the first thing you're going to do when you get to the halfway house?"
This one you had to be careful with.
You couldn't say get laid, get drunk, get high, take a shit, call some friends from the time before you were sick. You couldn't tell her you wanted to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling until the roof peeled back and you saw a hundred faces peering down at you. You couldn't admit to your rage. You couldn't go chat with the other lunatics and plan the revolution. Couldn't mention Jane, say how he wanted to see her grave, wail and rip out chunks of weeds from around her headstone. Come back and teach Ernie a few manners. Kill anybody in the Ganooch syndicate he'd missed before.
"Will?"
"Yes?"
"Tell me what you're going to do."
Her voice had a shrill, anxious quality to it, but he sensed it had nothing to do with him. She was nervous all right, but about what? A flicker of fear filled her eyes and then dispersed. Her smile was rigid and sexless. He got the feeling she was asking questions that didn't matter to her.
He said, "Introduce myself to the administrator of the house, have an early dinner, read the newspaper and catch up on the sports scores"—sports were okay, current events weren't—"and get a good night's sleep before work in the fish cannery tomorrow. I've got to be there nine a.m. sharp."
It was a good answer. You couldn't say you were going to sit on the bed and read the Bible all night, even if you really were. There was too much of a chance that they'd think you might start hearing the voice of God coming out of the paperboy's ass, run around shooting people in their naughty bits.
Again, the flash of disappointment in Dr. Brandt's expression even though he knew he'd given her what she wanted. She nodded sadly, her wet hair flapping around her shoulders.
Christ, if they didn't beat you with the meds then they went and did it with this vague look of shame. He was obviously doing something wrong here, but he couldn't figure out what it was.
"Do you miss teaching?" she asked.
"Teaching?"
"You remember. We've talked about this. You used to be a high school teacher. You taught twelfth-grade English literature."
"Yes, I know. And no, I don't miss it. Not much."
When they got to the train station, the place was empty. Water puddled around them on the tile floor as she visibly relaxed and even allowed herself a relieved smile.
He grinned back at her feeling very stupid. What the hell, let's stand around and be happy, tomorrow I start canning fish for the rest of my life. The joy can't be contained.
She took his hand and squeezed. He tightened his fingers around hers and thought about how weak he'd become, even if he had broken Ernie's nose and hadn't quite seen it. Once his hands had been strong, he thought. Almost unbelievably so.
Perhaps it was true. These fists weren't entirely his anymore. Maybe they never had been.
Dr. Brandt led him over to the automatic ticket booth and she started punching numbers and feeding bills into the machine. He wondered if he should pay, but he didn't know if he had a wallet or any money on him. He stuck a hand in his pants pocket and pulled free a folded piece of paper.
The note, written in a ornate cursive handwriting, read:
Don't take any more of your medication, no matter what they tell you. Protect Doctor Brandt, she's in danger. They all are. Remember Cassandra and Kaltzas and Pythos. The dead will follow.
Dr. Brandt couldn't get one of the bills to work in the machine. It kept spitting the dollar back out at her. Her fingers trembled. "Oh, damn."
"Flatten it."
"It is."
"Uncurl the edges," he said.
"They are."
Pace shrugged. That was about it so far as his ability to help went. He wasn't sure where they were going, which button she intended to push for the tickets.
Where did they can fish? He'd never seen a fish cannery before.
The things you had to worry about, one second to the next. Didn't they have robot slaves to do that sort of shit yet?
A scraping sound drew his attention to the left.
He turned and, shoving his hair from his eyes, watched as three figures rose from the corners of the waiting area. A girl scuttling out from beneath a distant bench, two men unfolding from behind the ATM across the station. Even muggers would never lower themselves to hide in such spots. Nobody in their right minds would.
He tapped Dr. Brandt on the shoulder and she said, "The edges are uncurled!"
"Don't worry about that now."
"I hate these stupid things."
"Forget that."
For a moment the station seemed filled with people. A cacophony of voices and noise erupted around him. Pace bit back a yelp and steadied himself against the side of the ticket machine.
The benches and aisles suddenly overflowed with people and animals. Wings flapped past, brushing his neck. A dog howled forlornly. A woman with blue skin and obsidian eyes began writing flaming runes in the air. A nun was running around with a yardstick screaming, "Don't eat paste!" Kids laughed. An Indian with lengthy braids twirled a pair of six-shooters and aimed here and there, practicing taking the tops of skulls off. There were others Pace couldn't focus on, who moved in and out of his vision, shifting and fluctuating. Blurred colors and activity swept across the station, through his head, and appeared to reach some kind of a peak as he went to one knee, then stopped altogether.
Dr. Brandt couldn't handle wrestling with her dollar bills anymore and started checking the bottom of her purse for coins. "Maybe I have enough change."
"Really, that doesn't matter anymore."
The three figures that had climbed from their hidden corners continued forward, faces unclear as they approached. His eyes were focused, everything else was distinct, except for their faces. They came at him sort of frolicking, what they used to call gamboling when people would do that sort of thing. Silently easing nearer. Features dim and clouded, but their names somehow known to him.
Pia.
Faust.
Hayden.
The closer they got, the more obscured their features became. Pace stepped out in front of Dr. Brandt. Change fell to the floor and she said, "Will?"
"I think we should leave."
"What?"
"The fish cannery is going to have to do without me."
She turned and the three figures slid past him and were on her. Pace thought, This is why she was afraid, she must've been expecting this. He shook his head. But if that were true, then why didn't she let Ernie escort her? Why didn't she just give me a train ticket to the halfway house and drop me off at the curb?
Dr. Brandt let out a shout—a strangely feminine sound that was part annoyance, part indignation. He threw a wild punch and missed all three of the intruders, no easy achievement considering how close they were to him. Somebody took one of his wrists and somebody else took the other.
"My God," Pia said. "He's so slow."
"He's not going to be any good to us in this state," Faust said. "Our father who art inhibited."
"He can hear you just fine though," Pace told them.
Hayden twist
ed Pace's arm. "There was a time when nobody could put a hand on you, if you didn't want it there."
"When was that?" Pace asked, genuinely curious.
"You were stupid to let them do this to you."
"I think I might have to agree."
He looked at where the guy's nose would probably be, waiting for his hands to snap out and break it, but they didn't. He expected Dr. Brandt to scream or start speaking in that cold, indifferent way, but she didn't. He couldn't figure out what was going on and kept hoping something else would happen that he wouldn't be responsible for. Something that might reveal a truer nature.
Faust almost came into view for a moment before fading again. The faceless figure approached, inch by inch. Without features it managed to peer into Pace's eyes and say, "Ah, our father who art indifferent. I think they may have cured him."
Buy your copy of Nightjack today
"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 Chatala
ha 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....
978-0-553-90154-2 ebook / 978-0-553-58720-3 paperback
A Choir of Ill Children
"A wonderfully wacked, disorienting, fully creepy book…The poetic nature of the prose and seriousness of intent carried the day in every scene." —DEAN KOONTZ
Since his mother's disappearance and his father's suicide, Thomas has cared for his three brothers—conjoined triplets with separate bodies but one shared brain—and the town's only industry, the Mill. Because of his family's prominence, Thomas is feared and respected by the superstitious swamp folk. Granny witches cast hexes while Thomas's childhood sweetheart drifts through his life like a vengeful ghost and his best friend, a reverend suffering from the power of tongues, is overcome with this curse as he tries to warn of impending menace. All Thomas learns is that "the carnival is coming." Torn by responsibility and rage, Thomas must face his tormented past as well as the mysterious forces surging toward the town he loves and despises.
978-0-553-90040-8 e-book / 978-0-553-58719-7 paperback
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.
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