Kill Creek Read online

  “This is perhaps the most important element of any good Gothic horror story. Without it, what do you have? A shitty old dump with a dark history no one remembers or cares about. You need that one person who ensures that the evil lives on.”

  From a shelf inside the lectern, Sam picked up a well-worn paperback. He held the book high so the entire class could see the elegant hand-drawn cover art and the classic font of the title and author’s name.

  “Last One Out Kills the Lights by Sebastian Cole. You all should have a copy of this now.”

  The majority of the students nodded, some displaying their own copies as evidence that they had done as Sam had asked.

  “You’re probably wondering why I made you buy the entire book if we’re just going to discuss one of the short stories inside. Well, it’s because Sebastian Cole is one of the greatest horror authors ever. And I want to know that all of you own at least one of his books. Who here has read Sebastian Cole before?”

  Several hands shot into the air, though sadly not as many as Sam had expected. From the center row, a pimply faced kid called out: “A Thinly Cast Shadow.”

  Sam nodded enthusiastically. “Arguably Cole’s best book, although picking a favorite from his vast body of work is, at least for me, incredibly difficult. Now, the story I asked you to read for today is—”

  A hand shot into the air. It belonged to a young man of Middle Eastern descent. Even sitting down, he was clearly an exceptionally large person, his long legs bent awkwardly, knees pressing into the seat before him. His hand seemed to be reaching to touch the ceiling above.

  “Yes?” Sam asked.

  “What about your own books?” the young man asked. “How does all of this apply to them?”

  Another voice, a female, from somewhere on the right side of the hall, followed this by calling out: “Tell us about Under the Rug!”

  Several overzealous students whistled and whooped.

  Careful, Sam warned himself. They want to peel you like an onion.

  He gave the rough, reptilian flesh of his scarred arm a squeeze.

  The applause died away.

  “Okay. Fair enough. How is the Gothic tradition represented in my work? Well, in Under the Rug, I tried to take advantage of these four elements to create a modern Gothic horror novel. A blue-collar worker, a single dad, moves his young son to an old, dusty Oklahoma farm. There’s number one on our list: Emanation from a Single Location. He hopes that his blood and sweat will breathe new life into the rocky soil, that he can coax the earth into once again growing something, but he doesn’t realize that this forgotten patch of land is barren because of what had happened there a century before. If you’ve read the novel, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, I won’t spoil it for you, but it involves a child murderer and a stolen baby and an act of violent revenge. That’s number two: Forbidden History. Number three—Decay and Ruin—comes in the form of the farm itself. But it’s also in what happens to the relationship between the father and his son. First, when the father’s efforts to grow a crop result in nothing more than weeds, and later as the son begins to show signs of a strange, frightening psychic power. And there’s number four: Corruption of the Innocent. See, the power this boy begins to exhibit isn’t a gift from God, but the side effect of a greater evil attempting to be reborn. Stir in some thematic parallels regarding fertility and the fragility of masculinity, give it a good shake with some hopefully unexpected deaths and startling violence, top it with a trapdoor literally ‘under the rug,’ and you’ve got yourself a smooth, tasty sip of modern Gothic horror with just enough bite to remind you it ain’t a kids’ drink.”

  There was a soft ripple of good-natured laughter. A pale, red-haired girl raised her hand. Before Sam could even address her, she asked, “So what’s your secret?”

  Sam tasted smoke. His breath caught in his throat, nearly choking him. The air suddenly had a harsh gray taste to it, like cinder and ash.

  “I’m sorry,” he said when he had managed to swallow the breath. “What do you mean?”

  “You said these types of books and movies, they’re all about secrets, right?” Her thin lips barely moved as she spoke, her voice so faint that Sam realized she was forcing him to lean toward her. The involuntary action filled him with a sudden, inexplicable anxiety.

  “Yes—” he began.

  She didn’t let him continue. “You’ve said that writing is personal, that an author always puts a piece of themselves in their stories. So, you know, what’s your secret?”

  Sam fell silent.

  From the last row of the stadium seats, a voice called down:

  “She wants to know why you write horror.”

  He peered up at that last row. The narrow shaft of sunlight had begun to arc across the seats of the lecture hall, but it had only reached the middle rows. The upper rows were in almost complete darkness. It was impossible to tell from which of the featureless shadows the statement had come.

  That thin wisp of smoke slithered down his throat and between his lungs, constricting, pushing breath through his teeth. The smoke serpent twisted beneath Sam’s ribs and squeezed tighter, its gray head slipping around the ribbed stalk of his trachea. It pressed its upturned snout against the upper lobe of his lungs, probing for a way in.

  “Why do you write horror?” the deep voice boomed again.

  Sam McGarver was no longer in a grand lecture hall on the campus of the University of Kansas.

  He was ten years old, clothes spattered with blood that wasn’t his own, the angry light of an unstoppable fire illuminating his face. He was just a boy, a tiny silhouette against the inferno.

  Sam, now a grown man, stood silently before his students until the bell rang, saving him from a question he did not want to answer.

  Eli Bloch sat in a crumpled suit on the porch of the Free State Brewery, a pint in one hand and his phone in the other. He’d barely touched the beer. He was only concerned with two things: writing a fuck you email to his assistant using as few characters as possible, and meeting with his number-one client, Sam McGarver.

  “Jesus, you look miserable,” someone said.

  Eli looked up. Sam. Finally.

  “Yeah, well, I am. I hate this place. I want you to move to New York immediately.”

  Sam gave a weary smile. “Not gonna happen.”

  Eli made what room he could on the crowded bench. “Sit.”

  “I’ll be back. I need a beer.”

  “Drink mine.” Eli passed his glass to Sam without waiting for a reply.

  Sam sat down on the bench’s limited real estate. He tipped the glass and drank half the beer down in two large gulps. Tiny, lighted pumpkins dangled overheard in zigzagging strings. One pumpkin was flickering on and off, on and off, threatening to give up the ghost at any moment. Sam leaned back against the wooden rail and took a deep breath, watching the pumpkin flicker. On and off. On and off.

  “That bad?” Eli asked.

  Sam swallowed another mouthful of beer. The glass was now almost completely empty. “What do you want, Eli?”

  “Just checking in. Wanna know how you’re doing.”

  “And you fly in for that? You can’t just call and ask?”

  It was Eli’s turn to fall silent as he searched for the right words. There were none. May as well rip the Band-Aid off.

  “Erin called me. She’s worried about you.”

  “She shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I’m worried about you too.”

  The last of the beer slipped through Sam’s lips. He held the empty glass up to a nearby waitress, mouthing the words “pale ale.” She nodded and disappeared inside.

  “You’re not writing,” Eli said bluntly.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Eli.”

  “Yeah? So you have something to show me? You have pages to share?”

  “When it’s done.”

  “And when’s that?” All of the pleasantry was gone from Eli’s voice. “Ba
d Blood slipped off the paperback bestseller list over a year ago. People are asking when your next book is coming out, and I don’t know what to tell them. I’m starting to doubt it ever will.”

  “It’s close,” Sam said defensively.

  “Bullshit. I haven’t seen page one of it. Neither has your editor.”

  “You both will when it’s done.”

  “And when will that be?” Eli asked, a bit of desperation bleeding through. “You’ve been working on it for two years. Or you say you have.”

  There was no discernable movement in the crowd, but the waitress was somehow miraculously there again. She handed the fresh beer to Sam, who tilted his head toward Eli. “Put it on his tab.”

  She looked to Eli. He gave a sharp nod, and the waitress disappeared once again.

  Eli rubbed his sweaty hands on his pant legs as if trying to smooth out the wrinkles. “What are you doing, man? You’re not writing. You’re hiding out in a damn classroom, teaching—talking about other people’s books.” He paused, not quite sure if he should bring this up. “And you’re about to go through a divorce.”

  “We’re separated,” Sam corrected Eli.

  “Mm-hm. Fine. And how many separated couples do you know who worked things out?”

  Sam said nothing.

  “Why are you trying to throw your career away?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Well, you’re not fighting to keep it.”

  The crowd shifted suddenly as someone made their way toward the front door. The entire mass rippled like a segmented insect inching its way up a leaf. The movement caused a bearded guy in front of Sam to take a step back, bumping Sam’s shoulder. The beer in Sam’s hand sloshed over the rim of the glass, a cold line coursing down his wrist and into the haphazard grooves of his scars.

  “Everything I write feels thin, fake,” Sam admitted abruptly. He frowned, as if surprised by his own words. “Everything I write, I hear Erin saying there’s a better story in me.”

  “Is there?” Eli asked. It was not an insinuation of doubt. It was an honest question.

  “I’m sorry you flew all the way here,” Sam said. He downed half of the new beer. “I love ya, Eli, but you could have just called.”

  “I know,” Eli said.

  Sam stood, patted Eli on the shoulder, and started to push his way through the crowd. He was almost off the porch and onto the sidewalk when Eli called after him.

  “Why do you write horror?”

  Sam stopped cold.

  There it was. The voice that had called down from the shadows high in the corner of Budig Hall.

  Slowly, Sam turned back to face him.

  “That was you?”

  Eli did not look away. He was ready for a fight, if that was what it would take. “I had to see what was keeping my most talented writer from actually writing. Whatever’s stopping you from finishing your book, you need to face it and move on. You can’t hide out in a classroom forever.”

  “Fuck you, Eli.”

  “If you think Erin is right, Sam, if you think there is a better story in you, then tell it. Write something you actually give a shit about. If there is something you give a shit about these days.”

  Sam didn’t bother with a response. He slipped through an opening in the crowd and was gone.

  The bottle of Bulleit was still on the counter.

  There was the clink of glass as Sam took a tumbler from a cabinet and poured himself two fingers of whiskey. He sipped, the burn loosening the constrictor in his chest. The suffocating cloud of ash and smoke was replaced by the soothing heat of alcohol. He closed his eyes and felt the warmth spread from his chest to his extremities.

  Sam drifted into the living room and stood in the perfect stillness of the empty house. There was a separate dining room beyond this, and above, two bathrooms and three bedrooms, one of which he used as his home office. All were exactly as they’d been when he and Erin had first moved in five years ago. Only they were his rooms now, his house.

  Sam raised the glass to his lips but did not drink. He stood there, an insect frozen in amber as time marched on without him. He wished he could exist only in this spot. He did not want to go to bed alone. And he did not want to sit in front of a blank page on his computer and be judged. He wanted to be here, right here, never moving, safe from the dangers of his own momentum.

  From the room at the end of the second-floor hallway came a faint ding!

  His office computer announcing the arrival of an email.

  A second later, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

  Sam fished out his phone and the screen illuminated.

  There she was, Erin, more beautiful in her midthirties than she’d ever been, green eyes bright and filled with joy, arms wrapped around Sam’s waist, her cheek pressed against his.

  Time to change the ol’ wallpaper, Sammy.

  He pressed the Home button, grateful as the photo was covered by a sea of apps.

  A 1 in a red circle hovered over the corner of his Mail app.

  Sam tapped it. His inbox appeared. The new email stood out in bold, black letters.

  His brow furrowed as he read the subject line:

  An Invitation

  And above this, the address of the sender:

  [email protected]

  He opened the email and scanned the body of the message.

  Around him, the empty house waited patiently for Sam to break the silence.

  TWO

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8

  THE BLADE SLICED downward, easily exposing the wet red flesh beneath. The man’s thick tongue licked his lips anxiously as he slipped the bit of meat between his crooked teeth. Clear juices ran down to the edge of his chin.

  “You know how excited we are to work with you,” he said around the mouthful. “We mean it. We’re still very, very excited to work with you.”

  T.C. Moore watched the doughy, balding man in the baggy black suit devour his steak and thought to herself, So this is what it is. Not a chance to repair the fissure. This meeting is a complete fingerfuck. And not even a good one.

  She had gone to the dinner hoping it would defy her expectations. They had greeted her with smiles and hugs, with kisses on the cheek. One of them had actually pulled out her chair for her, as if the four-legged piece of furniture were too complicated a contraption for her to operate. They had ordered stiff cocktails, each trying to impress with their intimate knowledge of whiskey and scotch. They had nibbled on small plates of house-cured meats and local cheeses, on grilled octopus and hamachi, beef tartare and lamb belly. They were all easy smiles, even as she sat in the dim light of the West Hollywood steak house with her sunglasses on, arms folded across her chest. They assured her that they were here to discuss the project on equal terms. They wanted to move forward with a clean slate.

  But they were all full of shit. She could tell by the hollow compliments, the tentative praise. There was another shoe to drop.

  Goddammit, she should have known this was going to happen.

  The man in the baggy black suit wiped his mouth on a linen napkin and began to eagerly cut off another slice of filet mignon.

  “So,” he said, tongue lapping at the juice on his chin. “We just wanted to hear how you see this project. You know, what you think it’s really about.”

  He shoved an even larger hunk of steak into his mouth and chewed noisily.

  Moore looked from this man to the men sitting on either side of him. The man in the center was Gary Bryson, the head of the studio. To his left was his vice president of development, Tanner Sterling, a rail-thin weasel in baby-blue glasses and a checkered button-down shirt. Tanner always had half a smirk on his stupid face, as if everyone he met was a flat-out idiot and therefore deserving of endless contempt. To Gary’s right was Phillip Chance, the producer on the project and a genuinely okay guy. But a nice disposition rarely came paired with a backbone. Phillip shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his underseasoned and overpriced meal barely touched. He w
as in his midsixties, thin skin hanging loosely from his skull. Above deep canyons of shadow were kind brown eyes. He clearly did not enjoy being caught in the middle.

  “What I think it’s about?” Moore asked. Each word was a sliver of ice.

  “If you don’t mind,” Gary said, lips smacking loudly.

  Tanner leaned in closer while Phillip shrank back in his seat.

  Moore ran a hand over the jet-black length of hair draped over her shoulder as if it were a beloved pet. The sides of her head were shaved to the scalp. The darkly tinted lenses of her sunglasses caught the reflection of a nearby candle, the flame dancing as if her eyes were on fire.

  “What do I think the screenplay based on my own novel is about? Are you fucking serious?”

  Gary’s mouth hung open as he froze mid-chew.

  “We just . . .” He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “We want to know what your vision is.”

  My vision. You mean my book?

  Moore leaned back in her chair and looked at the people seated at the tables around them: a shallow collection of wealthy industry types in skinny suits; bearded hipsters with poofy, greased-back coifs; and skeletal blondes with lips as thick as blood-filled leeches. Unidentifiable electronic music thumped from round white speakers mounted in the ceiling.

  For an uncomfortably long time, Moore said nothing.

  Tanner rubbed his sweaty palms together. When he spoke, Moore thought of an annoying little cartoon mouse in thick, round glasses. The kind of character you hope gets ripped to shreds by a hungry cat.

  “We’re just trying to get on the same page here.”

  Moore snapped her head around so quickly, her mane of black hair rose up from her shoulder like a striking snake.

  “Have you read my book?”

  “Of course I’ve read it.”

  “Describe it to me.”

  Tanner shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I don’t think I have to—”

  “Describe it to me,” Moore repeated.

  Tanner was in the hot seat. He gave a sharp, incredulous snort. “Are you serious?”

  “You seem to be the expert.”

  Tanner looked to Gary. He did not want to speak out of school.