What's Coming for Gon in the next installment of the Oldest Living Vampire Saga?

In the next volume of the Oldest Living Vampire saga, the 30,000 year old immortal encounters a village that is populated by the descendants of the tribe he was born to as a living man. The tribe of fisherman still remember their "god" Thest, and welcome him into their midst, but peace eludes Gon as he must contend with his vampire child Ilio, who has become smitten with a mortal female. Uncomfortable with being worshipped as a demi-god, Gon nevertheless accepts his former role as protector of the river people, and lives for the first time among mortals.


Despite Ilio's rebelliousness, years pass in relative tranquility... until Gon's people are assaulted by the nomadic vampire raiders who destroyed Ilio's tribe. Gon's preternatural powers are tested to their limits as he tries to defend his people from the bloodthirsty raiders. Yet, even amidst the battle, the lonely Gon finds himself drawn to the beautiful and fierce vampire Zenzele, leader of the raiders, and she to him. Zenzele, like Gon, is a true immortal, and though the Oldest Living Vampire is powerful, his enemies are numerous.

Zenzele has a simple solution to their stalemate: if Gon agrees to join her, she and her roving band of vampires will spare Gon's descendants from further depredations. In fact, she swears, they will help him to protect his people. But refuse, and she will wage war against Gon and the family he protects, even to the last man, woman and child.


"Surrender to me, Thest, and you will be lavishly rewarded," Zenzele whispers with a seductive smile, her words more plea than promise.


"Surrender to me, and I, in turn, surrender to you."

Gon's selfish decision will forever alienate him from his vampire child Ilio, but he is helpless to resist the allure of the immortal warrior princess.

As Gon relates the details of their tempestuous love affair to the murderer he holds captive in modern day Belgium, the Oldest Living Vampire continues to shift the pieces of his secret plan to end his own immortal suffering.

The real star of House of Dead Trees-- The Forester House

This excerpt is from Chapter Six, Titled "The House". In this segment, the show's director and a couple of its technical crew get their first sight of the infamous Forester House. Please be aware that this is a work in progress...

Robert Forester was leaning against the side of his car when Raj and the two Dans came jouncing over the last hill and pulled to a stop a couple feet away. Forester was a tall, thin fellow, thirty-three years old, with sandy blonde hair, a beard and a fair, freckled complexion. He reclined against his car, a dark blue Mercedes, his arms crossed, and watched as the doors of the Ghost Scouts’ black SUV swung open and three men clambered out. His mouth was a thin line, his eyes narrow. The sun had just lowered itself upon the jagged horizon, squat and red as an overripe tomato, and his shadow stretched long and thin across the grassy gravel drive.

“You’re late,” he said.

Raj took the lead, approaching the thin man with his hand held out. “I apologize, Mr. Forester. We had a bit of trouble finding the turnoff. I had the address programed into the GPS, but it kept sending us in circles.”

Robert Forester stepped away from his car and clasped Raj’s hand. They shook briefly. “I suppose it couldn’t be helped, then. Truth be told, I had some difficulty finding the place myself when I first got into town. Please, call me Robert. And you are?”

“Rajanikanta Chandramouleeswaran.”

“Wow. That’s a mouthful.”

“Everyone calls me Raj.”

“I guess so,” Forester said, the furrows around his eyes softening a little. “Yeah, so anyway… Sorry you got lost. Maybe I should go down to the end of the road and tie a red bandana around a tree. I’ve been trying to get someone to cut back some of that brush, but nobody wants to do any work on the property. I guess the people around here are superstitious.”

“You’re not a local?” Raj asked.

“No, my parents lived up north until they died. After that, I sort of… drifted a while. I’m a freelance artist, so I don’t have to stay in any one place for work. No wife or kids, either. I pick up and go whenever I feel like it.”

“Until now,” Raj said.

Forester smiled. “Yeah. Now I own this.”

As if that was their cue, both men turned to look at the Forester House together.

The house was big. That was Raj’s first impression. He’d caught little peeks of it as they bounced up the winding and washed out driveway—the flash of the sun on a window, the spires of its roof—but this was the first time Raj had seen it as a whole, and with his own eyes. He’d seen photographs, but photos were a pale approximation.

The first thought that went through Raj’s mind was: What a monster!

It was a sprawling Queen Anne Victorian, but his impression wasn’t motivated by physical dimension alone. The Forester House had a presence. It seemed to crouch, and looked ready to gobble up the first unwary soul unlucky enough to venture too close.

And it was ugly.

The house was asymmetrical, with a steep, pointed roof, a jumble of towers and gables and arched Palladian windows, but the asymmetry of its design was no excuse for the way roof met wall and wall met foundation, every angle just slightly off, none of its lines exactly square or level. There was a broad, sweeping porch. Balconies jutted from several of the second-story rooms. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to its architecture, only that the edifice was meant to be great and excessive and overwrought. From its decorative spindles to its heavy stone piers, its tangled topiary to it Byzantine bracketing, there did not seem to be any region of its surface upon which the eye could rest comfortably or for long.

All its pretentious flourishes seemed disproportionate in their abundance. Its strangely patterned wood and stone siding was repugnant. The delicately turned porch posts, the dentil molding, the half-timbered gables, the copious stained glass windows. It was too much to take in all at once. Its features, in their excess, came together in unexpected and unpleasant ways, and seemed individually to spring out when the eye stumbled across them.

Robert Forester glanced toward Raj as the two men absorbed the atmosphere of the house, and the expression on Raj’s face made him laugh. “It’s a sight, isn’t it?” Forester asked.

It’s hideous, Raj wanted to say, but that would have been rude. Instead, he replied, “It certainly is.”

But the home’s new owner seemed to catch wind of his thoughts anyway. Robert Forester turned back to the house, the humor fading from his eyes, and he said, “Maybe I’m crazy for planning to stay here. It seemed like a grand idea when I was living in the city. Reclaim the ancestral home, you know. Live in the famous haunted house. But now, after actually setting eyes on the place, being inside it for the first time, I think I might be making a mistake. What do you think?”

He glanced back at Raj, who shrugged noncommittally.

“If you’re asking me for advice, I can’t tell you anything one way or another. Not until we’ve investigated the home.”

“Do you really believe in ghosts, Mr. Chadramoolease—Er, Raj?” Robert Forester asked. “I mean… I’m sure you have to say you do, but… do you?”

Raj nodded. “We’ve been doing the show for nine years now, Mr. Forester. In that time, I’ve seen things that lead me to believe there are indeed phenomena in this world we have not yet quantified scientifically.”

“The supernatural,” Forester said.

Raj shrugged. “Call it what you will.”

“What do you call it?”

“The underpinning of the universe… The quantum substratum… The laws of physics get a little fuzzy below the subatomic level.”

“So you would call what you do the science of the supernatural?”

Raj tilted his head.

“And you think you can help me? Your team of ghost hunters?”

“We try to help when we can.”

Behind them, Big Dan and Little Dan had finished unloading the back of the SUV. They shuffled toward the house, large aluminum cases bumping against their knees.

“The place got lights?” Little Dan asked the owner.

“I had all the utilities turned on when I first arrived in town,” Robert answered. “The electricity is working, but I can’t guarantee how reliable it is. I hope you have surge protectors.”

“Oh, yeah,” Little Dan said with a friendly grin. “This ain’t our first rodeo.”

“If you could show us inside,” Raj said to the owner, gesturing toward the front door. “I’d like to get some preliminary readings, familiarize myself with the layout of the home. Plus, I’d personally love to have a look around. This house is quite famous in paranormal investigation circles. But I’m sure you’re well aware of that.”

They started across the lawn toward the front porch, their legs swishing through knee high grass that had been allowed to grow unchecked—probably for ages. As they walked, a grasshopper or two flicked into the air, buzzing away on wings that rattled like rice paper. Aside from the flick and buzz of the grasshoppers, however, the air was strangely still. There was no birdsong in the forest that encircled the big house on the hill. No whirring cicadas. Only the sound of the wind in the treetops, and from time to time, a furtive little crackle, as something small and timid fled through the underbrush.

The grass, too, was lifeless. Withered. Yellow. Raj could feel it crunching under the soles of his shoes as he walked, brittle as spun glass, but the main of his attention was centered on the house.

The house… the famous house…

He could feel his heart begin to race as the quartet approached the veranda. His chest got tight, as if his windpipe had shrunk to the size of a pinhole.

THE house!

Forester House was the most infamous haunted house in North America, rivaled only by the Winchester Mansion, the Villisca Ax Murder House, Waverly Hills Sanitarium… and his team had exclusive rights to document its hauntings! No paranormal investigators had been here in decades! None would have the chance to investigate after, as the new owner planned to completely remodel it.

The home’s new owner, Robert Forester, was rambling on about his aunt, who had left him the house in her will, Robert being the last living male descendent of the home’s original owner. His aunt had written him a letter shortly before she died, Robert said, explaining the conditions of his inheritance, that he must never sell the house or take up residence within its walls.

“’The land is cursed, and the house doubly so,’ she said,” Robert related over his shoulder with a grin. He dug his keys from his pocket as he climbed the veranda steps. “’It is our burden to safeguard the innocent from the wicked things the hearts of men are led to do here.’ I thought she was being melodramatic. You know, because of the house’s infamy. Until the first time I stepped inside.”

Raj started up the steps… and felt dizziness wash suddenly over him. He snatched instinctively for the step rail, waving his left arm, but his flapping fingers couldn’t find it. Luckily, Big Dan was right behind him.

“Hey!” Big Dan exclaimed as he shored up the listing director. “You okay, boss? What’s wrong?”

“Whoa, careful, dude!” Little Dan cautioned.

“I’m so sorry!” Raj said, pinching the bridge of his nose. He wavered for a moment, drew himself upright. “It’s passing. Must be my allergies. My inner ear... it threw off my balance for a moment.”

Robert Forester was standing in the open doorway, his brow furrowed. He looked as if he wasn’t sure whether Raj was being serious or playing out some little piece of theater.

“Are you going to be okay?” Forester inquired.

Raj stood and waved to the homeowner. “I’m fine now. I have very severe allergies. I took my allergy medicine this morning, but, I guess, all this grass and… the woods…”

“Are you sure? It’s not any better inside. I can assure you of that.”

“Yes, yes. I apologize. Please. Let’s continue.”

Raj put his hand on the rail and finished climbing the steps. Still frowning, Robert shifted aside and gestured for his guest to precede him.

“Enter freely, and of your own will,” Robert said with a ghoulish smirk as Raj walked past him.

Raj smiled politely, but, stepping into the dark throat of the house, it didn’t seem particularly funny.

Between Two Ficuses with Jeff Strand

It is my pleasure to chat today with a Bram Stoker Award nominee and... just a truly, truly talented horror, fantasy and suspense writer. He is the author of Wolf Hunt, Mandibles, The Sinister Mr. Corpse, Pressure, Dweller and many, many other "gleefully macabre" novels and short stories, most of which can be had for a pittance for the Kindle ereader device, or in various hardcover and paperback forms at your local closed bookstore. Best know for weaving humor into his terrifying tales, let's all say hi and get to know this prolific bestseller a little bit better.

Rod: First of all, I’d like to thank you for agreeing to sit down with me here on Red Ramblings. It makes me really uncomfortable when men stand so close in front of me while I’m talking.

Jeff: Sorry about that. I’ll stand behind you.

Rod: Ok... thanks.

Jeff: (Stumbling around behind the set)

Rod: Here. Just sit here. Oops! You okay? Here. There ya go... I really appreciate you taking time out of your hectic schedule to visit me today. It is such an honor to interview you for my blog! Please excuse me if I seem a little nervous. I’m not the type of guy to get all gushy and star struck, but I have to confess, it’s pretty nerve-racking for a new writer like me to be talking with such a… legend in the field of horror and fantasy fiction. So, anyway… first question: Your novels Ghost Story and Shadowland are two of my favorite novels of all time. Of the books that you’ve written, which are your personal favorites, Mr. Straub?

Jeff: Thanks! I appreciate the compliment. Personally, my favorite of my own books is...wait a minute, WHAT?!?!?!? You sloping-foreheaded dullard, you've got the wrong interviewee! I'm Jeff Strand!

Rod: Jeff Strand? Who’s that? (Typing) Hmm… wow. Did you know you’re not on Wikipedia? (Typing) In fact, I really can’t find out much about you at all. Are you sure you’re famous?

 Jeff: Yeah.

Rod: Okay, here you are… sorry about that. So, um, Jeff… out of all the “books” (quotation fingers) that you’ve written, which is your personal favorite?

Jeff: They're all awesome in their own way. I think my favorite is a tie between Wolf Hunt and Pressure and Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary) and Fangboy and Benjamin's Parasite and The Sinister Mr. Corpse and Mandibles and Single White Psychopath Seeks Same and A Bad Day For Voodoo and Gleefully Macabre Tales and Dweller and half of The Haunted Forest Tour and Out of Whack and Kutter and How to Rescue a Dead Princess and Elrod McBugle on the Loose and The Severed Nose.

Rod: Did you know that your photos on the internet make you look like a red-headed Freddie Mercury? What’s that like?

Jeff: Is he the guy who did that Wayne's World song that's like a bunch of short songs put together? He totally rocks. "Flash! Ooooohhhhh! He saved every one of us!" Is it copyright infringement to quote a lyric from the Flash Gordon song here? I hope so, because you'll be the recipient of the lawsuit, not me. Hahahahahahaha!!!

Rod: I think that falls under "fair use" law... sort of like the plots of your books. Ahem... I see that you’ve been nominated for the Bram Stoker awards—more than once, in fact. Three questions: Which of your books were nominated? How much does it cost to buy a Bram Stoker Award nomination? And how does it feel to be the Susan Lucci of horror novelists?

Jeff: Pressure, Dweller, and Gleefully Macabre Tales were nominated. If you've got my kind of connections, you can buy a Stoker nomination for a pack of cigarettes and a gun with the serial number filed off. And why do people who lose an award, like, twice, always say "I'm the Susan Lucci of the [Insert Award Here.]." According to the Google search I just did, Susan Lucci lost 19 times! If you didn't lose 19 times, quit frickin' comparing yourself to Susan Lucci! Also, she finally won back in 1999, so this question has been irrelevant for over a decade.

Rod: I didn't know that. (Note to self: no more Susan Lucci references...) We have a lot in common. I see here you started writing in grade school, drew comic books, and had a poem published by Pizza Hut. I also started out making my own comics books in grade school, and in seventh grade I started selling risqué slogans to a company that manufactured humorous pins and novelty greeting cards for $25 a one-liner. My best one was “Keep a stiff upper lip… or I’ll shoot it up your nose.” What kind of humorous childhood stories can you share with us to help fill up some of this dead space?

Jeff: I don't get the stiff upper lip joke. Is the point that it doesn't make any sense? When I was a kid I had some hermit crabs and they died, which was not a particularly humorous event but for the purposes of this story we'll pretend that their deaths were accompanied by wacky sound effects.

Rod: Like "Pingyoooowwww!" or more like "cruuuuuunch"? Haha, that's funny... Jeff, you’re probably best known for mixing humor and horror in your novels. Have you ever considered writing something good?

Jeff: Briefly, in college.

Rod: Did you know that my eBooks on Amazon generally outsell yours? I just wondered if you knew that. You don’t have to answer.

Jeff: No, no...the lower numbers are better in Amazon sales rankings. When your ranking is over 2 million that doesn't mean you sold 2 million books.

Rod: Ouch. That was... kind of mean. So... Mandibles is one of your most recent books. Question: why?

Jeff: It's actually not. It's a book from 2002 that I recently re-released as an e-book. Nice research, dude!

Rod: Do you have any advice for aspiring young artists or writers who think they might have a chance of competing with bigshot writers like you and me? I mean, aside from telling them to “just give that shit up”? Ha ha! Right? Right? High five!

Jeff: (Looking at Rod's notes) Did you suddenly switch from a numbering system to a lettering system with these questions? You are the drunkest interviewer I've ever endured.

Rod: Moving on...! You co-authored Draculas  with some really high-profile horror authors… and J. A. Konrath. What was it like working with that hack, and how did it feel to be his little bitch? Did you split the proceeds four ways, or was it more of a three-on-one? You know, he never would Facebook friend me… that butthole.

Jeff: It was a 25/25/25/25 split, minus expenses, which thanks to a glitch in our Excel file means that we all owe Konrath about fifty bucks a month. He spends the money on colorful yarn, yet nobody ever sees him knitting. It's very odd and disturbing. He probably didn't accept your friend request because your profile picture was his head on a stick.

Rod: Finally, this is the part of the interview where you get to plug your latest crap… I mean, books…  or whatever. (Orders pizza)

Jeff: What kind of pizza are you getting? Will it have jalapenos? Can I have a slice? No, no, don't get Dominos. I gave them another try after their freaky "We know our pizza used to suck, but now it doesn't!" commercial, but they still offer a sub-par pizza experience. If you order from Marco's, I'll totally pitch in for half.

In conclusion, I’d like to thank Jeff for coming down to the meat packing plant for this little interview, and for being such a great sport.  You didn’t let anyone know you were coming down here tonight, right, Jeff? Cool. So come over here. I want to show you something. Do you know how we deal with competition down here…?

Jeff Strand was the author of Wolf Hunt and Fangboy and some other books. Well, technically, he's still the author of those and the others...he's just dead now.  Which means that his books are going to sell even better. Dammit.

Click here to purchase the excellent Wolf Hunt, along with all the rest of Mr. Strand's books on Amazon.com for the Kindle ereader... or in archeological paper format if you still prefer the smell of rotting wood pulp and ink.

After a hard day of writin' bestsellers, Jeff and Rod like to

kick it with a couple bottles of fine malt liquor and

hang with their peeps at the Stinky Clam! *

( * Disclaimer: Jeff and Rod are not that cool)



Wolf Hunt by Jeff Strand Only $2.99 for Kindle

BUY IT TODAY!

Excerpt from House of Dead Trees! Featured character: Allen Mandel

Allen Mandel is the "leader" of the Ghost Scout team, and one of it's founding members. Allen is a pragmatic and rational man. He became interested in the supernatural following the death of his father, who he worshipped growing up. He seeks incontestable proof of life after death as much for himself as for the fame, but he's recently been distracted by a marriage which seems to be stalling out.

Please remember this is a work in progress...

From Chapter Two...

Allen Mandel cursed as he sliced the ball and watched it arc across the greens, its descending trajectory angled straight at the water hazard on hole eight of Diamond Lake Golf Course. “God DAMN it!” he cried, and his golfing partner, Jim Dagstine, chortled. Allen squeezed the grip of his driver, trying to quash the image that flashed suddenly in his mind: him, wrapping his golf club around his buddy’s skull. His ball went into the little pond with a distant ker-plunk! and then he felt the tension drain out of him, and he couldn’t help but chuckle, too.

Fucking whore! Fuck-shit!

“I hope you piss straighter than you golf, my friend, or I feel sorry for your housekeeper,” Jim said with a pat on the shoulder.

“Naw,” Allen said with a rueful grin. “My aim in the bathroom’s just as terrible.”

 “That’s nasty, dude. I wouldn’t have admitted that,” Jim laughed. Allen stepped out of the way and Jim squatted to place his tee. “So what’s up? You’ve been golfing like shit for the last two or three weeks.”

As Jim bent to place his ball on the tee, Allen wondered if his buddy knew just how fat his ass looked in that position. Jim was dressed in one-hundred-dollar-a-pair, green and yellow argyle Loudmouth golf pants, and the breadth of his derriere was really quite remarkable. Jim Dagstine had a peculiar pear-shaped body, normal-sized everywhere but through the hips. Allen considered mentioning it to his friend—a little jab for all the enjoyment his buddy had derived from Allen’s terrible showing so far today—but he held his tongue.

Save it for later.

“You having problems with the old lady again?” Jim asked, as he stood upright and squinted across the fairway. He shaded his eyes with his gloved hand, lips pulled back from his teeth. The chrome-bright June sun glimmered on the surface of the water hazard, the ripples made by Allen’s golf ball still oscillating outward from the spot where it had plunked into the drink.

“Trouble? No. There’s no trouble,” Allen said. “I wish there was trouble. That would be better than what she’s doing.”

Jim glanced at Allen sympathetically. They’d been friends for five years, practically from the day Allen moved next door to him. They didn’t have much in common aside from sharing a demented sense of humor. Jim was a proctologist, and Allen… well, Allen was a famous television personality, star of the cable reality program Ghost Scouts. But they got along pretty well. They’d even been known to admit they were best friends from time to time, but only after they’d gotten enough beer in them to get a little maudlin.

“She giving you the old silent treatment, huh?” Jim asked.

“It’s more than that,” Allen said while Jim slid a club from his golf bag. “It’s like she’s just shut down. Or shut me out. When she looks at me, it’s like she’s looking right through me, like I’m not even there. It makes me feel like Bruce Willis in that movie The Sixth Sense.”

“You guys still fucking?” Jim asked, examining his 9 iron.

“Nope. It’s probably been two or three months since we made love.”

Jim grimaced. “Yikes! Two or three months? I noticed your forearms were getting bigger.  I just thought you were going to the gym more.”

Allen chuckled. “I’m even getting callouses.”

Jim stepped up to the tee. He thrust his gigantic ass out and wiggled it around, then took a couple practice swings. “You should have an affair,” he said after a swing or two. “Famous TV guy like you… I bet you could take your pick from a million nubile groupies.”

Allen cocked an eyebrow. That was actually not far from the truth. He could take his pick from hundreds of eager female fans—young, good-looking, hot-for-his-dick Ghost Scouts fans. He’d had plenty of offers, been followed to his hotel room when Allen and the gang were on publicity tours, even got cornered in the men’s room a couple times. One gal, a thirtyish bleach blond with giant breast implants, had walked up to him in the back room of a convention hall, dropped to her knees without saying a word and dived straight for his zipper. She’d actually had his pecker out before he’d had time to collect his wits and disentangle himself from her.

And then there was Tish. Young, attractive, unattached and willing.

“But I don’t want them,” Allen said stubbornly. “I want Sharon.”

Jim stepped to the tee and swung. It was a beautiful drive. Both men stood and watched the little white ball rise into the blue porcelain sky. It hung in the air for a moment, then gracefully descended to the green, bouncing once, twice, then coming to rest just a few feet away from the cup.

Allen laughed as Jim grinned back over his shoulder at him.

“You’re a real cocksucker,” Allen said, shaking his head.

“Don’t you wish,” Jim replied smoothly.

They shouldered their bags and headed toward the golf cart.

Step One: Kindle Cloud Reader, Step Two: Ubiquity

When Apple changed their in-app purchase policy, forcing ebooks vendors to remove their integrated stores, Amazon quietly began developing a web-based Kindle reader to bypass the restrictive new rules. Their solution to Apple's understandable efforts to restrict competition is the Kindle Cloud Reader.

The Kindle Cloud Reader grants you the ability to access your Kindle library from the Ipad, as well as a couple PC browsers like Chrome and Safari. You can peruse your library, download a limited number of books for offline viewing, and shop for new reading material, all in one intergrated HTML5 web app.

Early reviews across the web are positive, with a lot of readers giving Amazon a thumbs up, not only for the pleasant new Kindle reading experience, but for their cleverness in sidestepping Apple's efforts at suppressing competition with their own ibookstore.

However, I have a feeling the ramifications of this new wrinkle in the unfolding ebook saga are going to turn out to be much larger than some might realize. Most dedicated ebook readers have some type of web browser functionality. How long will it be before we see the Kindle Cloud Reader optimized for Android, the Nook Color's web browser, and smart phones?

By creating a web based reader, Amazon has basically set the stage for ubiquity. Pretty soon, I imagine we'll see the Kindle Cloud Reader app being optimized for nearly every device imaginable, from cheap Android tablets to the Sony Reader's web browser. After all, how hard can it be to tweek a simple thing like display size now that the underlying programming is finished?  And I'm sure we'll see all the other ebook vendors follow suit. Kobo, in fact, has already announced theirs.

Click the link below to visit Amazon's new Kindle Cloud Reader... and be sure to purchase one of my books (or all of them) to read on your fancy new cloud service!

Kindle Cloud Reader

Excerpt from House of Dead Trees! Featured Character: Jane River

One of the original Ghost Scouts, Jane is an extremely intelligent and resourceful woman, but she is plagued by almost crippling insecurities. She has quickly become my favorite character in the book thus far...

Please note, this is a work in progress.


From Chapter Four...

After eating at the Cup of Stars Café, the group found a Red Roof Inn a little further down the road. They rented three rooms, two singles and a double for the Dans, who always bunked together. Jane unloaded her overnight bags and nested. Her room was clean and pleasantly decorated, lots of tans and golds, and there was cable TV and two small recliners. She cracked the window to air the room out—it was a bit stuffy from being closed up—and then she went to Raj’s room. The four of them often spent the evening together when they were on an overnighter. They were supposed to discuss the next day’s itinerary, but usually they just snacked on junk food and watched TV, and tonight was no different.

They ended up watching ‘Salems Lot on TBS, the original, not the remake starring Rob Lowe. It was a good movie to watch in a group. They laughed at the seventies fashions, made fun of the poor special effects and cheesy acting. When the little vampire kid floated out of the fog to scratch on his friend’s bedroom window, Little Dan pointed out the chair the young actor was sitting on, and the wires the whole contraption hung suspended from.

“Why does everyone in this movie have giant bedroom windows?” Jane asked. “Have you ever seen giant bedroom windows like that?”

Raj shrugged. He was lying on the bed beside her, his long skinny legs crossed at the ankles. “Not me,” he answered.

“I can’t believe this scared me when I was a kid,” Big Dan said. “I remember sneaking out of my bedroom and hiding behind the sofa to watch. It scared me so bad I went to the bathroom and stuffed toilet paper in my ears so I couldn’t hear any more. Poor Ma had to pick the tissue out of my ears with tweezers later that night, when I couldn’t get it out.”

“You know what the scariest movie I ever saw was?” Little Dan asked.

“What?”

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Little Dan answered. “No, really!” he cried, as everyone voiced their disbelief. “Those fucking Oompa-Loompa’s freaked me out, and I thought Willie Wonka was murdering all those little kids… just for being disobedient. It was horrifying!”

“When I was a little boy in India,” Raj said mildly. “My father took us to a small village in West Bengal. He had gone there to work at a neighboring leper colony. One night, I woke to find that a tiger had stolen into my bedroom. The house our father had taken us to live in was little more than a shanty. The tiger simply pushed through the flimsy door and walked inside. I woke to find that great beast looking into my eyes, and then it took my younger sister, who was sleeping beside me. Sometimes I still wake in the middle of the night, hearing my sister screaming in the jungle. These films…” He flapped a hand at the TV. “They do not scare me.”

Everyone had fallen silent.

“Shit, man,” Little Dan murmured.

Raj smiled grimly and shrugged. “That is what we all fear, at the primal level, is it not? We fear being eaten, and all the rest—your vampires and werewolves, blobs and giant bugs—they’re just metaphors for that fear.”

“That’s deep,” Jane said, impressed.

“That’s what she said,” Big Dan said quickly, and all three men broke up laughing.

Jane rolled her eyes.

She was hoping the Dans would wear down and retire for the night, give her some privacy with Raj, but they’d had soda and chips and they were in rare form. Jane found herself nodding off before everyone else. When Little Dan poked her in the leg, she came to with a start. On TV, David Soul was pounding a stake into a vampire’s heart. Dispatching one of Raj’s metaphors. Jane swung her feet to the floor and stumbled toward the door. “Well, that’s it for me, guys. Time to turn in,” she mumbled.

The three men bid her good night, and she plodded down the hallway to her room.

Once she changed into her nightgown and slid beneath the covers, however, she found she could not return to sleep. She grabbed the remote and turned her television on and flipped through the channels for a while.

She didn’t want to watch vampires-- not alone, that was just asking for nightmares, especially with a belly full of cheese doodles—but there wasn’t anything else playing that even looked halfway interesting. She’d seen Tommy Boy about a dozen times already. She watched Chris Farley do his fat guy in a little coat dance, then flicked the remote, thinking, Dead.

Billy Mays was hawking laundry detergent on the next channel.

Flick.

Dead.

JohnWayne in True Grit.

Dead.

Ritter on Three’s Company.

Dead.

The Golden Girls.

Dead-dead-dead.

Disturbed, Jane turned the TV off. She got out of bed and dug a book from one of her overnight bags. Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Hemingway was dead, too, she thought, feeling a chill worm its way up her spine. Depressed and suffering from chronic pain, he’d gotten up in the middle of the night and stuck the barrel of his favorite shotgun in his mouth, a death as declarative as his sentence structures.

Trying to ignore a mounting sense of foreboding, Jane slipped back under the covers and read. Despite Hemingway’s concise prose, however, she found her mind wandering, unable to concentrate on the book in front of her.

Which of their group would be the first to die? she wondered. After the show had run its course and their fifteen minutes of fame was over? Would it be Allen? Allen was a big guy, and he was already taking blood pressure medicine. Billy, maybe? She knew he had a penchant for risky sex. He confided in her sometimes about his sexual escapades. Rough trade, he called it. Anonymous sex in public bathrooms, those little booths in adult bookstores, and he rarely used protection.

Maybe it would be an accident. A slippery road or a plane crash. A random act of senseless violence. A crazy fan. The world was a tiger, and it had sharp teeth and a pitiless appetite for human flesh.

Maybe she would be the first to check out. A little cancer of the brain, like her mum. A loathsome black rat of diseased tissue, gnawing through the stuffing in her skull. Beverly Rivers had had Janey and her husband for comfort when she’d withered and died, but who would sit at Jane’s bedside, hold her hand, when her time came around? Who would make sure she took her medicines, and fetch her blankets when she was cold? Her father was barely capable of caring for himself now. She had no husband, no children…

“That’s enough, Janey!” she said suddenly, and the crow-like sound of her voice sent a shiver of goosebumps up and down her body. She set her book on the nightstand, turned off the lamp and lay back on her pillows with a sigh.

Staring at the bar of light on the ceiling, the dread began to ease. She dozed without realizing it some time later, and dreamed she was lost inside a maze-like house.

The hallways were dark-paneled and winding in the dream, a ghost house if she ever saw one. She’d been inside countless haunted houses, but this dream labyrinth was the epitome of Bad Places, the apotheosis of cursed dwellings. Cobwebs, like coagulated spirits, hung lifeless from the corners of the ceiling. Strangers in period costume stared at her through a patina of dust from heavily framed portraits, their faces grim and reproachful. She turned left and then right as she ran down the passages, but she couldn’t find her way out. The layout of the house seemed to change every time she turned the corner, and even when she doubled back, the path behind her seemed subtly to have changed.

She didn’t know how long she’d been running through the hallways. It might have been five seconds, or five hundred years. She suspected it was a long time, but time had no meaning for those who dreamed, she knew.

Or the dead.

Was she dead? Was she a ghost now, racing mindless through the murky afterlife, like a smeared image in a photographic negative? When had she died? How had she died? She couldn’t remember, but maybe she wasn’t supposed to remember.

Finally, she came to a door. She could see bright light glimmering around its edges. Relieved, she pushed through and Raj was lying on a bed, waiting for her. The room was open and bright, with big bay windows full of blue sky and sunshine as yellow as egg yolk. He gestured to her, smiling, and she rushed to him.

Saved!

She climbed on the bed and embraced him, pressing her face to his chest, squeezing him in her arms, breathing in the good, familiar scent of his body, but he crackled when she hugged him, and she drew back in confusion, wondering why he was so stiff and light. She looked down at him, and had to clamp her hands over her mouth to cage a cry of horror. He wasn’t a living man at all, she saw, but a scarecrow made of sticks and burlap, an empty effigy, with button eyes and X’s stitched across his face for a mouth. She tore the front of his shirt open, her breath coming in harsh hot gasps, and dry leaves and dead flower petals spilled out of him. Beetles crawled among ribs of dead grape vine.

Jane didn’t wake, but she stirred in her sleep, moaning and clutching her spare pillow to her breast. Her fingers plucked at the pillowcase as she tore the Raj-scarecrow’s chest open in her dream, but the fabric didn’t rend like it did in her dream, and there were no dead petals in her bed when she awoke.