FOUR NOVELLAS

Includes the terrifying short novels:

The Invisible Dance

A Step Deeper, A Step Darker

Cellmates

All-In

A few times during the chaos, Barker could be seen hillside with a bone whistle in his mouth, wheezing a creet! sound through it, which shepherded owls from their various perches down through the flooding streets. They scraped low over the water, or sometimes to men and women on porches, snatching objects and scraps of paper, what looked like useless twigs and at least twice a pair of wooden matches, and each trip ended with the owls returning to Barker, making their tiny and discreet deliveries. Children pointed when they saw the owls carving their dark paths, but most people seemed not to notice. Or they seemed accustomed to it. Barker always accepted what the owls brought to him, pocketing the objects, never discarding them. That would show disrespect. The cooing owls themselves always returned to their branches or to the guttered rooftops, some to the iron gates of the cemetery, their eyes housing perfect torches in the night’s imperfect gloom.

THE DARK WAS GETTING USED TO THEM

The paragraph had been written by the old man. I remembered it, having read it once already, and scanning it now I was able to recapture his cadence as he’d perched upright, so gentlemanly upright, over the black typewriter, punching the keys, the words almost delivered directly to my mind as he typed them, pecking away, as if his fingers and even the jutting pistons of his arms could transform empty space into syllables into language into images . . . he’s not writing about himself and yet . . . it seemed like he was, that he was only ever doing that . . .

The paragraph was short and brief, the sentences not choppy but efficient. A man escaping down an embankment, toward a railroad tunnel, collapsing against the track. Staring at the darkness of the tunnel and escaping the damning glow of the moon.

I knew who that man was. His name was Hank Ryson and he’d been a character I had created ten years ago. The old man had begged me to use him in this project. “Let’s write him together,” he’d said. “For old times’ sake.” Old times. We’d never written a Ryson novel together. We’d never written anything. The idea had been wild and all the more innocent for its wildness . . . until we’d sat down and tried.

But did I really have any choice?

Gwen was still missing.

And this was the deal we had made.

HE COULD BURN HERE. HE COULD DIE.  

Roll, damn you.

But it was that first croak of breath that David still hadn’t achieved. The muscles in his neck went taut and the veins there bulged. His shoulders trembled, earthquake-vicious, and then the groan at the back of his throat picked up momentum, something from a deeper engine down there in his guts, and the first gulp of air was shoved out of him. He heaved in the next breath, devouring the oxygen surrounding him, something like what a dragon must do when it yawns. Then his vision cleared. Something dripped from his hands. It was more of that mud but something shined, something scarlet, and he saw blood forming eerie candle-wax rivulets down his wrists. I’m bleeding. I’m finally bleeding. It isn’t just mud. I’m not a creature. I’m actually alive.

THE STAKES HAVE NEVER BEEN HIGHER  

They dragged us onto a boat. Cooper — or someone — had set a plank over the water. Their footsteps were perfect and dry. The journey revealed a harsh sunset. They squinted and sweat ran from their faces, dripping onto us. They delivered Sasha first, the woman pawing at her even more greedily than the wheezing man, and then, as they carried me aboard, the scar-faced man with the sunglasses, who Cooper had called Mr. Black, was up there lighting a pipe. The recognition flared again. His face was different. Wider, swollen. But the rest of him —

“Don’t drop her!” Cooper nearby. They were arguing about where to set us and when the payment was coming. The woman asked again, “We really can’t have her? He needs both?” Cooper muttered something to squash the debate as the Man approached. Mr. Black’s not your real name. “Bring them with you,” the Man said.