“Wait! I have something for you.” The ex-guard held a battered pack out to him. Falstaff took it—it was heavy. He rested it gently on the table, loosened the top flap. It was the head of one of the bots. He felt himself recoil, but he didn’t let it go. He imagined how awful it would be if it slipped out and landed on the floor.
“I don’t know which one it was. I know I should, but I just don’t. It got pretty well blasted—the ID is heavily scarred over. I was going to trade it, figured I could get a great deal for it, but I just couldn’t. I hope you’ll take it, maybe you can wake it up somehow.”
Falstaff shook his head. “I don’t—”
“Please. We shouldn’t forget what happened there. Maybe some of that information, well, you should have this, you should keep it safe.”
Falstaff looked down. The girl was gazing into the bag. She reached into her pocket and pulled out half a burrito and put it into the man’s hand.
“Why, thank you,” the ex-guard said to the girl, then to Falstaff, “What is she doing? What does she want?”
“I think she wants the head, actually. She wants to trade you for it.”
“Surely you can’t—”
“If you’ll throw in the battery pack we’ll take both of them off your hands. For the burrito. Or rather, the half of the burrito.”
“But what would she do with it?”
“She’ll love it—that’s one of the things she does. And she’s curious, and very bright. I’ll help her—we’ll see what we can do, what we can salvage. I want to do that. I’d love to do that.”
Falstaff helped her carry it home.
“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
Author’s Note: A-7713, the serial number of the “Danielbot,” was the number tattooed at Auschwitz-Birkenau on the arm of Elie Wiesel in his Night, one of the most important documents written about the Holocaust.
Loxley Fiddleback can see the dead,but the problem is... the dead can see her.
Ghosts have always been cruel to Loxley Fiddleback, especially the spirit of her only friend, alive only hours before. Loxley isn’t equipped to solve a murder: she lives near the bottom of a cutthroat, strip-mined metropolis known as “The Hole,” suffers from crippling anxiety and doesn’t cotton to strangers. Worse still, she’s haunted.
She inherited her ability to see spirits from the women of her family, but the dead see her, too. Ghosts are drawn to her like a bright fire, and their lightest touch leaves her with painful wounds.
Loxley swears to take blood for blood and find her friend’s killer. In doing so, she uncovers a conspiracy that rises all the way to the top of The Hole. As her enemies grow wise to her existence, she becomes the quarry, hunted by a brutal enforcer named Hiram McClintock. In sore need of confederates, Loxley must descend into the strangest depths of the city in order to have the revenge she seeks and, ultimately, her own salvation.
www.solarisbooks.com
A dark Southern Gothic vision of ghosts, witchcraft, secret powers, snake-handling, kudzu, Melungeons, and the Great Depression.
Michael Gibson has returned to the quiet home of his forebears and now takes care of his grandmother Sadie – old and sickly, but with an important story to tell about growing up poor and Melungeon (a mixed race group of mysterious origins) in the 1930s, while bedeviled by a snake-handling uncle and empathic powers she barely understands.
In a field not far from the Gibson family home lies an iron-bound crate within a small shack buried four feet deep under Kudzu vine. Michael somehow understands that hidden inside that crate is potentially his own death, his grandmother’s death, and perhaps the deaths of everyone in the valley if he does not come to understand her story well enough.
WINNER OF THE 2015 BRAM STOKER AWARD
‘Richard’s strange encounters unfold episodically, building to a revelatory climax that Tem engineers perfectly.’
Publisher’s Weekly on Deadfall Hotel
‘His words take root, growing like kudzu in every crack and crevice, smothering your senses with suspense and tension. Best book I have read all year.’
Michael Knost, Bram Stoker award-winning author
www.solarisbooks.com
THIS IS THE HOTEL WHERE OUR NIGHTMARES GO...
It’s where horrors come to be themselves, and the dead pause to rest between worlds. Recently widowed and unemployed, Richard Carter finds a new job, and a new life for him and his daughter Serena, as manager of the mysterious Deadfall Hotel. Jacob Ascher, the caretaker, is there to show Richard the ropes, and to tell him the many rules and traditions, but from the beginning, their new world haunts and transforms them.
It’s a terrible place. As the seasons pass, the supernatural and the sublime become a part of life, as routine as a morning cup of coffee, but it’s not safe, by any means. Deadfall Hotel is where Richard and Serena will rebuild the life that was taken from them... if it doesn’t kill them first.
‘Tem’s Deadfall Hotel makes The Shining’s Overlook Hotel look like Butlins. Eerie, disturbing and yet strangely touching, you’ll check in but may never check out.’
Christopher Fowler, bestselling author of the Bryant and May Mysteries and Hell Train
‘Rasnic Tem is at the height of his powers with this effort.’
Fearnet.com
‘Truly brilliant.’
Denver Post
‘Steve Rasnic Tem is a school of writing unto himself.’
Joe R. Lansdale
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