Eyes of the Forest

by April Henry

  “I’m working on it,” Bob said. “It’s going to be big, and big takes time.”

  “Then give us the first half. We’ll put it out in two volumes.”

  He made a face. “Just because they did that with the TV show doesn’t mean I can. That’s not how books work for me.”

  They paused for the waiter to serve “hay-smoked beef and polenta parchment.” If Bob’s mouth was full, it gave him an excuse not to talk. So he kept doggedly eating as one plate replaced another. Gnocchi and cuttlefish and squab and lamb and finally dessert. The servings were small, and they ate with forks (a fifteenth-century invention that had originally been considered blasphemous, a rejection of God-made fingers), but the elaborate meal wouldn’t have been out of place at a king’s court. All it lacked was jugglers, a court fool, and staged pageantry between courses.

  Finally, Bob leaned back with a groan. “Jamie, can I ask you a serious question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you trying to kill me? Are you thinking if I drop dead of a heart attack you could hire a ghostwriter?”

  Jamie looked shocked, but was it an act? They must have considered what would happen if he died before finishing the series.

  Once you started typing in the Google search bar, it would helpfully autocomplete the most-searched-for phrases. So Bob knew what words came to mind when people thought of him:

  rm haldon weight

  rm haldon sick

  rm haldon heart attack

  rm haldon age

  rm haldon diabetes

  rm haldon health

  is rm haldon dying

  is rm haldon writing

  On Reddit and Goodreads and Amazon, fans posted they were worried about him. Opined that he wasn’t looking so great. That he was overweight. That he was sixty-one. That the way he was going, he might not be around to finish the series.

  And, according to his fans, he owed them. They were angry he played video games. Resentful he watched basketball. Upset he went to movies. They didn’t want him to travel for conventions or research.

  He’d even gotten hate mail saying he should be shackled to a typewriter until he finished the book.

  Now Bob looked at the cable connecting him to the desk. It seemed they had gotten their wish.

  BRIDGET

  Something in Common

  “Oh.” Ajay’s eyes were big. “I’m sorry about your mom.” Two years ago, he’d moved to Portland from Seattle, so he only knew the Bridget she was now, not the Bridget she’d been as a kid. The Bridget who used to laugh a lot. The Bridget who’d had friends, until she had pared them all away to focus on her dying mother.

  She took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have said it so abruptly. My mom had cancer, so it wasn’t like her death came as a surprise. There were three or four years where she was either undergoing treatment or trying to recover. No matter what the doctors did, the cancer always came back. But those books—they took her out of herself. I begged her to read them to me, but she said I was too young. So I snuck King of Swords into my room and read it when my parents were asleep.” As she spoke, she felt her past selves crowding in.

  She was eight, hiding under the covers with a flashlight and King of Swords. The fictional murders and monsters were less frightening than her suddenly bald mother.

  She was ten, reading aloud for long hours, with the occasional correction or explanation from her mom. Her mom’s hair was as short as a boy’s. It had grown back curly after the chemotherapy.

  She was eleven, lying side by side with her once-more bald mom in her parents’ bedroom. Trying to help them both escape the pain by slipping into another world.

  She was twelve, sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed set up in the living room, reading aloud until her voice cracked. Now her mom found the slightest touch painful, so Bridget could no longer lie next to her. Her mom lay flat on her back, arms and legs so skinny they were barely bumps under the blankets. But her swollen belly was the size of a basketball, filled with fluid her failing liver could no longer process. By now, Bridget was on her fifth time through the books. As she read, she kept checking her mom’s yellow-tinged face for the faintest smile of pleasure. Listening for a sigh when a character died. There were no surprises left in the book, no shocks, yet the plots still touched them both.

  Those last few weeks of her mom’s life, Bridget read to her every free moment. Even when her mom seemed asleep or possibly unconscious, she didn’t stop. She was spinning a rope of words, trying to keep her mother anchored to her. An hour after she finished rereading Court of Sorrows, the last book then available in the series, her mother slipped from life to death.

  Ajay’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “But wasn’t your mom right? I mean, aren’t the books pretty violent? The one episode of the TV show I watched, someone got tortured and another person’s head was chopped off.” She noticed he didn’t mention the scene set in the brothel.

  Ajay was right, but also wrong. In the world of Swords and Shadows, people died all the time. But they died for a reason. They didn’t die because of something stupid and random like cancer. Although there was no family history, just to be sure, the doctors had tested Bridget’s mom for the breast cancer gene, but she didn’t have it. While that was good for Bridget, it also meant there was no explanation for her mom’s cancer. It had just happened.

  In the books, though, not only did death serve a purpose, but it was also portrayed as noble, or at the very least, dramatic. Characters didn’t slip away after dwindling for months.

  The familiar tightness in her chest made it hard to swallow her bite of taco. “I’m sure a lot went over my head. But the books weren’t any scarier than my real life. I ended up reading all of them to my mom.”

  Bridget had spent hours curled up in bed next to her. She kept her eyes on the page and not on her mother’s gaunt face, the bald head she was sometimes too weak to hold up.

  “Those books gave us something in common that was better than our real, awful lives. She died right before the last one came out.” Giving up on her tacos, Bridget pushed the tray away.

  Ajay’s mouth twisted. “How old were you?”

  “Twelve. The only signing Bob did was at Powell’s. I waited in line for seven hours to make sure I could get in.”

  “Seven hours?”

  Bridget shrugged. She would have spent the night if she’d had to. Her plan had been to have Haldon sign his latest book and then go to her mom’s grave and read it aloud. “It was worth it. But something happened when he was taking questions.”

  Ajay leaned forward. “What?”

  And then Bridget told Ajay the story she’d never shared with anyone except her dad.

  BOB

  Buffalo

  Bob’s stomach rumbled. He took stock of the food, all far too healthy. When was the last time he’d eaten a piece of fruit? He couldn’t remember. Maybe back when Lilly had been around to urge him on with a smile.

  When he first hired Joanne to manage the household, she’d tried in vain to change his habits. He liked crunchy things, fried things, spicy things, and most especially anything salty.

  Making the best of his limited choices, Bob now used his teeth to tear open the plastic wrapping on the cheddar cheese. He bit off a corner.

  For years, people had been hounding him for Eyes of the Forest. They claimed they wanted the end. The answers. They demanded mysteries be unraveled, secrets revealed, King Tristan’s killer unmasked.

  At least that was what they said they wanted, he thought as he chewed.

  What they really wanted was a cliffhanger they could obsess over for months. Or a tiny clue the astute could endlessly tweet and Instagram about—or whatever people did these days.

  He wasn’t a trained monkey who could dance on command, Bob thought, biting off a second cheese corner. He was R. M. Haldon. The author even people who weren’t readers now recognized, thanks both to the TV shows and the entertainment media that covered anything popular,
even books. His uniform of black T-shirt, stonewashed jeans, and white Nikes made him easily recognizable, but the clincher was the violet silk scarf around his neck. Bob wore it winter and summer, indoors and out. On the rare occasions he washed it, he felt more naked than he did in the shower.

  He knew he could always just not wear the scarf, but it was his last tie to Lilly. But thanks to it, Bob could barely walk a block without being stopped and asked for a selfie. Some people didn’t even ask, just wrapped their arm around his shoulder or waist, held out their phones, and clicked. All without saying a thing.

  Fans said they loved him, but they only loved him for what he could give them. Kobe beef cattle supposedly received daily massages and troughs filled with beer. Classical music was even piped into their stalls.

  But they were still destined for slaughter.

  Bob couldn’t even go out to dinner by himself without someone tweeting or YouTubing about the stains on his shirt or how much he was stuffing his face. So much for being “fans.”

  The word fan was short for fanatic. And it wasn’t a new phenomenon. Back in 1844, there’d been mass frenzy at Franz Liszt’s concerts, with audience members fighting over the composer’s gloves or broken piano strings.

  Bob had become public property. It was why he’d hired Joanne. She could grocery shop and run errands and be invisible. That way he didn’t have to worry about unflattering photos, tirades about how he wasn’t writing fast enough, or the occasional woman (or even man) who thought Bob was sending secret messages of love via his prose.

  Every year, he’d become more of a concept than a person. Gained a little more weight. Felt a little more alone. And every year, the number of people who had known him prior to his fame dwindled.

  As time passed, Bob’s characters became more real to him. But it was one-sided. They couldn’t ask about his day. They couldn’t talk to him about politics or the playoffs. They didn’t care if he was sick. These days, the closest thing Bob had to a friend was Bridget. And he corresponded with her via email.

  Nobody much cared what happened to Bob as long as R. M. Haldon produced another book. He needed to finish Eyes of the Forest. Everyone agreed on that.

  Even Bob.

  Only he couldn’t.

  People didn’t believe in writer’s block. But it was real. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to write. He didn’t know how to anymore. Every time he thought about shutting down the world he’d created, he froze.

  Despite everything he tried, the characters just lay flat on the page. They didn’t get up and walk around anymore, doing surprising things. The ones he’d thought he would kill now seemed too precious to die.

  Day after day, he would sit at his computer, determined to write. Instead, he would have a stare-down with the blank screen. On a good day, he might write a few lines, but then minutes later, he would delete them all. Once he’d printed out a few paragraphs, put them aside for a week, and then read them aloud. He’d hoped that would make new words come.

  It didn’t.

  He’d tried taking a walk, taking a bath, taking a nap. Tried outlining, but that was even worse than writing. After reading about an author who wrote with a cap pulled over his eyes, Bob attempted it. But at some point his fingers wandered off the home keys, so it was gibberish. He’d tried letting it rest, and he’d tried forcing it. He’d tried writing after a few beers. He’d tried telling himself he could mail-order his favorite chocolate once he finished a chapter. He’d even downloaded a program that showed you images of spiders if you didn’t write fast enough but rewarded you with a picture of a kitten for every hundred words you did write.

  All he’d seen was spiders.

  Eyes of the Forest was going to take as long as it was going to take, Bob thought now as he bit off another hunk of cheese. Everyone was just going to have to deal with that. Including Derrick.

  Still chewing, he lay back down, pulled the covers over his head, and fell asleep.

  * * *

  He woke to someone prodding him. Bob rolled over. It was Derrick. Tall. Skinny. Bad skin. That ridiculous wannabe mustache faint on his upper lip.

  “Derrick.” Relief loosened his tight muscles.

  “Hello, Bob.” The kid’s face was expressionless. He took everything too seriously. Like actually hitting Bob with the butt of the gun, the gun that Bob realized now was obviously fake.

  Fun was fun. What had seemed like a good idea after quite a few Bud Lights was now, in the cold winter light of this snowed-in cabin, ridiculous.

  “Buffalo.” As soon as the word left his lips, Bob relaxed.

  But Derrick didn’t reach into his pocket and produce the key to the shackles. He just looked at the threatening note, still on top of the typewriter. Then he turned back to stare at Bob, his expression unreadable.

  “Buffalo,” Bob repeated.

  It was the safe word they had agreed upon. Chosen because it wasn’t a word Bob or Derrick normally said. It wasn’t a word anyone normally said. So there was no chance of accidentally using it in conversation. Now its meaning was plain.

  It was time to end the charade.

  DERRICK

  Dangerous Combat Infraction

  Derrick stared down at the foolish old man on the bed, the one who’d just said, “Buffalo,” as if it mattered. Derrick’s note was still propped on the typewriter, undisturbed. The cheese was the only thing that had been touched. It looked like a giant rat had been gnawing at it.

  All day, he’d been impatient for school to end. Watching Bridget get in trouble for listening to the audio of King of Swords, he’d felt a secret thrill thinking about how soon he would be reading words even she had yet to see. The drive out to the cabin had felt agonizingly slow.

  And all that anticipation had been for nothing. His hand tightened on the wand of the stun gun his mom had insisted they get, even though he had no intention of using it. “Why aren’t you writing?” he demanded.

  Bob pushed himself upright. “Why do you think? Because I probably have a concussion from getting hit in the head.” He glared at Derrick. “That definitely wasn’t in the plan.”

  Didn’t Bob get that the plan was just a starting point? It was just like in Mysts of Cascadia, the LARP Derrick been playing with his dad a couple of times a month since he was eight years old.

  In a LARP, the players and the audience were the same thing. While a plot committee came up with the overarching storylines, it was the player characters, or PCs, who decided how it all actually worked out. PCs had absolute freedom to run headlong into fights, or stay in their cabin all day and talk with other PCs, or anything in between.

  “I’m afraid I had to improvise.” Hitting Bob with the butt of the heavy plastic gun would have gotten Derrick booted from Cascadia for two “dangerous combat infractions.” First, he’d used a weapon (in this case an airsoft gun) that hadn’t been safety checked, and second, he’d deliberately struck an illegal area—Bob’s head. Anyone who’d met Derrick LARPing, when he played Rickard, the noble leader of the peasant rebellion, would have been shocked by his behavior.

  But what was happening now wasn’t a game with endless arcane rules. It was real life. And Derrick might just like it better.

  “There’s a divot in my head.” Bob’s eyes shone wetly. “I’m probably lucky I woke up at all.”

  It was clear he’d spent all day lying around having a pity party. Derrick didn’t have the patience for it. Not when they had gone to such lengths to help. “I left you a warning. You need to finish Eyes of the Forest.”

  Bob made an obvious effort to change his tone. “Yes, I do,” he said brightly, as if to a child. “You’re absolutely right. But I’ve had all day to give this setup some thought. And this idea, as good as it was originally, isn’t actually going to work. So I’m telling you again, Derrick.” After a meaningful pause, Bob looked him straight in the eye. “Buffalo.”

  Derrick didn’t move.

  “I’ve changed my mind.” Bob waved his hand. “It�
��s not that I don’t appreciate how you set all this up and even added the treadmill, but the book will get written when the time is right. I can’t force it. So I need you to remove the shackles and then take me back home. Of course, you two can keep the ten thousand dollars. I’ll even reimburse you for the treadmill. Keep it, sell it, or return it to the store. It doesn’t matter.”

  As if any of that mattered. “You need to finish the series.” Derrick had been waiting for years, and he couldn’t wait anymore. Wouldn’t.

  “But I’ve realized this won’t work.” Bob offered him a strained smile.

  “I’m not doing this for the money. I did it so I could finally read Eyes of the Forest. I’m your biggest fan.”

  Bob sighed. “Don’t you get it? That’s what everyone says. Literally thousands of people have told me they’re my biggest fan.”

  Anger shot through Derrick. He reflexively raised the stun gun, squeezing the trigger. The air filled with the crackle of electricity. Bob cowered.

  He cowered.

  Bob was afraid of him. Of Derrick. If only people in Cascadia could see their favorite author now.

  R. M. Haldon, the guy whose characters would rather die than bow down. And not just die in some simple manner, like by the clean stroke of a headsman’s axe, but who would still keep their secrets even if it meant being drawn and quartered. Who would willingly sacrifice themselves for principle. In the Swords and Shadows books, men and women cursed their killers with their last breath. A few even managed to come back from the dead (a tad worse for wear) to wreak revenge.

  But as Derrick looked down at the creator of those majestic characters, he realized Bob was really no better than anyone else. The people in grocery stores or Starbucks, the kids Derrick went to school with. Those people wouldn’t die for a noble cause. They wouldn’t even look up from their phones. It was why Derrick would rather read or LARP. To believe, just for a moment, that things were different.