by R. L. King
“Something up?”
She paused. “There might be. I’m—I know it sounds silly, but I’m hearing noises in here. Like maybe somebody, or an animal or something got inside the store.”
Dwight’s voice didn’t sound too concerned, but it did sound accommodating. “We’ll come by right away to check it out, Ms. Pearsall. Probably just a raccoon or a cat or something got in. Don’t you worry, just sit tight in the office and we’ll be there pronto. Five minutes, max.”
“Thank you, Dwight. I appreciate it. I hate to take you away from the warm—”
“No problem, Ms. P. Just sit tight.” The line went dead with a couple of final crackles.
Eleanor replaced the mic in its cradle and slumped into a nearby chair. She was a little surprised at the relief that washed over her at the thought that someone else was going to be here soon and help her get this sorted out. The more she thought about it, she was sure it had to be a cat or other small animal.
But cats don’t giggle, said a little voice in the back of her mind.
She waited in silence, willing herself not to sneak glances at her watch or at the clock on the wall. She didn’t hear any other noises outside, but she didn’t think the little sounds she’d heard would be loud enough to be audible through the closed office door. It was hard not to imagine something furtively sneaking up, waiting for her to open the door so it could pounce—
“Don’t be an idiot,” she whispered. In truth, she had no idea why this was frightening her as much as it was. She had dealt with far worse, at night and alone. Again, she decided it must be the nightmare and lack of good sleep playing hell with her nerves. That was all.
“Ms. Pearsall?” A faint voice filtered through the door. “You there?”
She leaped out of the chair and hurried over to open the door. She had rarely been so happy to see anyone as she was to watch Dwight’s portly, flashlight-wielding form approaching through the dry-goods department, followed by his taller and thinner partner, Kurt.
“I’m here,” she called. “Thank you so much for coming.”
“No trouble at all,” he said. “Now let’s check out this sound. Where did you hear it again?”
She told them the approximate locations of the three different sounds she’d heard (or thought she’d heard) and they set off in two different directions with their flashlights blazing. She remained at the front of the store, near her display, and watched the lights bobbing around, up one aisle and down another, until at last both young men reconvened near the store’s front door.
Dwight sighed and shook his head. “We didn’t see anything, Ms. Pearsall. No sign that anybody’s here or anybody’s been here.”
She stared at him. Would it be possible for an intruder to hide well enough to fool two security guards—even if they were, admittedly, not among the highest in the professionalism department? “You looked under the spinning clothes racks? Behind the furniture—?”
Kurt, who hadn’t spoken yet, nodded. “Not that many places for a person to hide in here,” he said. He was a lanky young man with a shock of unruly dark hair, a dusting of pimples across his forehead, and a bad case of jug-ear.
“And you checked the back room?”
Dwight nodded. “When we came in. We locked the door behind us, and looked around back there to make sure nobody was tryin’ to make a break for it.”
“We even checked the johns,” Kurt added. “Nobody in here but us, Ms. Pearsall.”
Eleanor sighed, feeling embarrassed now. “I’m sorry, guys. I really didn’t mean to drag you all the way out here for in the cold for—”
Dwight grinned, waving off her apology. “It’s fine. Really. You know this is the dullest job in the known universe, right? Anything that lets us get out and pretend to do something useful is cool with us.”
“Bonus if we don’t have to do anything dangerous,” Kurt added with his own rather goofy grin. Eleanor noticed that both of them had the definite whiff of the heathen weed hovering around their persons.
“Well—all right, then,” she said, conceding. “But don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”
“Not a problem,” Dwight said. He nodded toward the window. “That your display? Santa looks—different.”
“Just something new I’m trying,” she said, turning back to look at her work. “You just wait till it’s finished.”
“You know,” Kurt said in a conversational tone, “It’s really a shame you didn’t decide to join us.”
Eleanor was about to say something else about her display when oddness of the guard’s words sunk in. She turned around, convinced that whatever he had said, she’d misheard it. “What did—”
Methodically and without any change of expression, Dwight pulled a long-bladed kitchen knife from behind him and buried it in Eleanor’s gut.
She didn’t even have time to scream. Kurt, as if he had been expecting Dwight to stab her, moved forward and clamped one hand over her mouth while the other grabbed one of her wildly flailing arms and locked it behind her back. Dwight had not yet pulled the knife out; instead, he took a tight grip on its handle and sliced downward, its sharp blade encountering only minimal resistance against the soft organs it was cutting through. Blood sprayed out in all directions, covering Dwight’s uniform shirt, his face, his hands.
Eleanor, desperate with panic and incoherent with pain, could do nothing but flop back and forth in ever more feeble attempts to pull herself free of Kurt’s grasp, but she accomplished nothing more than to worsen her already grave situation. Her blood, her intestines, and her life essence were flowing out of her, and she knew, even amid all the pain, that there was nothing she could do about it.
She saw and heard two things before unconsciousness and then death mercifully took her: the first was Dwight’s face, slack-jawed and transported with near-rapturous pleasure; the second was the far-off sound of giggling, accompanied by the mental image of a dark forest clearing ringed by trees.
The next morning at sunrise, a lone figure shuffled along Main Street, pausing to poke hopefully into various trash receptacles with a long pole. He moved with a swaying, methodical gait, still feeling a little out of it after his previous night of drinking. Mostly he paid attention to the sidewalk and the trashcans, but something made him look up as he passed Hillerman’s Department Store. Perhaps he remembered in some back corner of his mind that there would be something to see in the window this morning.
What he saw, however, made him stagger backward and almost fall into the street, his big green backpack dropping to the snowy sidewalk beside him.
The left-side display window at Hillerman’s, the place where Santa and his woodland elves were intended to frolic while ringing in the holiday season, showed an entirely different scene. Santa, still in his brown robe and wreath of twigs, held a bloody knife menacingly above his head. Below him, spread out on a sheet-covered table, lay the bloody form of a middle-aged woman, her body covered with slashes and cuts, her arms and legs spread out and tied to the legs of the table like some kind of ritual sacrifice. Her mouth was open in a silent scream of terror, and Santa leered over her with a bloody face and gore-strewn beard. Around the table, the elves, still in their green and red traditional garb, looked on with macabre glee. The window itself was streaked with dried and clotted blood, providing a grisly frame for the scene.
“Oh, God…” Ted whispered to himself, tears springing to his crinkled eyes. “Oh, God, Miz Pearsall…why didn’t you listen to me and be careful…?”
He sagged to the ground; he was still there when the early-morning sale-seekers arrived soon after, eager to discover what Eleanor had done to surprise them with the display this year.
Acknowledgments
Once again, a lot of people helped me get this book ready to go (as it happens, many of the same people!), so once again I want to thank them. I am forever grateful to Dan Nits
chke, my spousal unit, best friend and favorite Captain America cosplayer, for putting up with a lot from me as I go down the writer’s rabbit hole and only come up for air every now and then. There’s nothing better than knowing he’s on my side. Supportive spouses rock for writers, let me tell you. Thanks again to Mike Brodu, my “picky beta reader,” for suggestions, comments, and encouragement (see, Mike? You got your wish! The prologue’s gone!); to my editor, John Helfers, for general awesomeness, pointing out where I could make things better, and especially for helping me work out a very sticky timeline issue; to Glendon at Streetlight Graphics for another fantastic cover and for formatting my ebooks; to Mary Decker and Marty Costello for answering some cop-related questions and for encouragement; and to the folks from the Silicon Valley branch of the South Bay Writers Club for general encouragement.
And last but absolutely not least: a huge thank-you to every single person who purchased Stone and a Hard Place. I know it’s not easy to sell indie books, so I’m eternally grateful to all of you for supporting an indie author, and indie books in general.
About The Author
R. L. King is an award-winning author and game freelancer for Catalyst Game Labs, publisher of the popular roleplaying game Shadowrun. She has contributed fiction and game material to numerous sourcebooks, as well as one full-length adventure, “On the Run,” included as part of the 2012 Origins-Award-winning “Runners’ Toolkit.” Her first novel in the Shadowrun universe, Borrowed Time, will be published in Spring 2015.
When not doing her best to make life difficult for her characters, King is a software technical writer for a large Silicon Valley database company. In her spare time (hah!) she enjoys hanging out with her very understanding spouse and her small herd of cats, watching way too much Doctor Who, and attending conventions when she can. She is an Active member of the Horror Writers’ Association and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and a member of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.
You can find her at rlkingwriting.com and magespacepress.com, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AlastairStoneChronicles, or on Twitter at @Dragonwriter11.
Author’s Note
Some sharp-eyed readers might have noticed that this book is listed on the copyright page as “Second Revised Edition.” This is because, originally, The Forgotten was intended to be the first volume of a trilogy. Much of it is similar, but when I finished the second volume of the trilogy, I realized that what I really had was a series, and that Dr. Alastair Stone was its star. That decided, I went back to the drawing board, wrote an introductory novel for the series (Book 1, Stone and a Hard Place), and retooled The Forgotten (now Book 2 of the series rather than Book 1 of a trilogy) to make it fit better with the series and the new focus on Stone.
This version of The Forgotten includes about fifty new pages, and a fair bit of material that didn’t fit with the series focus was deleted. So if you happen to see references to the First Edition (or even own a copy!) this explains why the two are quite different, particularly in the first few chapters.
Praise For Stone And A Hard Place
“Somewhat reminiscent of the Dresden Files but with its own distinct style.”
—John W. Ranken, Amazon reviewer
“I am reminded of Jim Butcher here…Darker than most Urban Fantasy, not quite horror, but with a touch of Lovecraftian.”
—Wulfstan, Amazon Top 500 reviewer
“Dramatic protagonist sucked me right in…I instantly wanted to spend more time with Alastair Stone…I definitely want to see more from this author!”
—Shawna Reppert, award-winning author of
The Stolen Luck, Ravensblood, and Raven’s Wing
“Fast-moving fun!…[t]he book is full of the things I like in a book, and they are presented in a clean, brisk style. This is a book well worth checking out.”
—Jason M. Hardy, author of Hell on Water,
Drops of Corruption, and The Last Prophecies
“…a great entry into the urban fantasy genre.”
—Randall W. Wilson, Amazon reviewer
“Stone is a completely believable protagonist, and, frankly, damned likeable. We all wish we had college profs as engaging as he is!”
—Silas Sparkhammer, Amazon reviewer
“This was a damn fine book, I enjoyed reading it, and it was well worth the price…I will be waiting for the next one in the series.”
—Lincoln S. Farish, author of Junior Inquisitor