Big Week Ahead
There are three big events this week.
First, of course, is the season premier of ‘Lost,’ which is Tuesday night. All you Lost fans out there already know that, and I’m sure each of us is fully prepared to take whatever measures are necessary to place ourselves in front of a TV by 8:00 PM CST Tuesday. The President even rescheduled his State of the Union address because he’s seen that unreasoning light in the eyes of us Lost fans. Pre-empt our show?
I don’t think so.
I know things about this episode, by the way. I know whether the bomb went off. I know what happened next.
But I’m not telling.
Next, of course, is my very first book signing and reading, which is at Off Square Books in Oxford on Tuesday. It starts at 5:00 PM, but of course I’ll be there for a good long while signing copies of ‘Hold the Dark’ and scarfing down finger sandwiches.
It’s the reading part of the evening that’s beginning to make me very nervous.
Signing is no big deal. You sit there. You sign books. If people want, you scribble down something witty. People mill around and chat and scarf the aforementioned finger sandwiches and a good time is had by all.
But reading – that’s another story.
My plan is to read just the prologue from ‘Hold the Dark.’ It’s not a very long passage. I’ve been reading it aloud to the dogs this weekend; it takes me about 4 and a half minutes. The dogs do not applaud, but then they never do.
I just hope I can get through those four and a half minutes without any major blunders. Public speaking is not my best skill. I’ve done it before, at work, but this is different, somehow.
Still, it’s part of the business. So I’ll take a stab at it. If you’re there Tuesday evening and you see me freeze up, yell ‘Look, over there, at that amazing thing!’ Maybe that will give me time to find my place and my nerve again.
That‘s the Off Square Books signing.
On Thursday, I have yet another signing, this time a noon one at the Barnes & Noble on the Ole Miss campus (in the Union). No reading, jut a signing. Although I may dance, if anyone asks. I do a pretty mean ‘Dance of the Middle Aged Man,’ complete with the brief period of unconsciousness at the end.
I hope many of you can make one of these signings. Kester, you and Jane are excused, since you live in England and that’s a pretty hard drive just to get a book.
I’ll close this out with a bit of the prologue I’ll be reading, just for those who can’t make it. Just pretend I’m reading it out loud, and that my voice is shaking, and that I’m covered in sweat, and you’ll probably get a good flavor for the event (minus the finger sandwiches).
Enjoy!
Prologue to ‘Hold the Dark’
Rain fell like an ocean upended. A frigid ice-rimed polar ocean, full of ghostly white whales and blue-veined icebergs; I pulled my raincoat tight at my neck and put my chin down on my chest and offered up a pair of unkind words to the cold gushing sky.
Beyond my narrow trash-strewn alley, out on Regent Street, nothing moved. Or, more precisely, if it moved I couldn’t see it through the whipping sheets of rain. The lone pair of streetlamps had been extinguished by the storm an hour ago, and I’d been reduced to watching the three candlelit street-side windows of Innigot’s Alehouse to see if anyone walked in front of them.
No one had. The halfdead, the Curfew and the Watch combined can’t clear Rannit’s streets after dark, most nights. But let a spring storm blow in from the south and sprout a few tornados and suddenly everyone stays tucked in bed and indoors ’til sunrise.
“Nobody out here but ogres and Markhats,” I muttered.
Thunder grumbled distant reply. I pulled my hat down lower against the spray and the splash, jammed my hands deep in my pockets and pondered just going home. The man I was looking for could stroll past wearing a clown-suit and banging a drum, and I might see him, and I might not. All you’re doing is getting wet, said a snide little voice in my head. Getting wet for nothing. Darla Tomas, she of the soft brown eyes and jet black hair and the quick easy smile, is laid out on a slab at the crematorium, dead or worse than dead. Martha Hoobin is still missing. And the best you can do, said the voice, is hide in this alley and drip with rain.
In my right-hand raincoat pocket, the huldra stirred, brushed my fingertips. I yanked my hand away, pulled it out of my pocket entirely when the huldra jerked as if to follow. At that moment, a shape darted past the first of Innigot’s three windows. A single shadow, one hand holding down its hat, tall but hunkered down against the gale.
I froze. Sheets of rain twisted.
The shadow crossed in front of the second window. I started counting. Innigot’s door was between the second and third windows. If the silhouette passed before the third window, I’d merely seen a vampire or a lunatic or any other of a dozen unsavory types, heading for trouble out in the rain. But, if someone went into Innigot’s…
There, in the dark, a door-sized slice of weak yellow light appeared, widened, vanished.
“Got you,” I said. I watched the street for a moment longer. No one moved. No shadow crossed Innigot’s third window. No other shadows followed in his wake. My mystery man had taken the bait, braved the storm and made his entrance.
I stepped out of my hiding place against the alley wall. Rain beat down on me so hard the spray went in my mouth, and I tasted Rannit’s sky—sooty, bitter and foul. I spit it out, shut my mouth and started walking.
At the end of the alley, I stopped, reached into my right-hand raincoat pocket, and found the wax-sealed terrapin shell Mama called a huldra. It was warm in my hand, and it quivered, as if it were packed tight with angry hornets. Crumpled below it was Mama’s hex. I pulled the hex out, took it in both hands and ripped the paper in half.
The paper screamed a tiny scream as it tore.
Now Mama knew I’d found our tall thin man. I had promised Mama Hog I’d wait. I’d promised her I would tear the hex and watch Innigot’s and wait for the lads from the Narrows. There’d be fifty or more of them, all armed, all ready to back me up when I faced down the man who’d killed Darla, taken Martha, taken who knew how many others. Fifty strong, silent Hoobins and Olafs and Benks and Rowheins. A vengeful, furious army, well fit for the night’s dark work.
I’d promised Mama I would wait. I’d promised Darla I would keep her safe.
Promises. Such fragile things.
I dropped Mama’s spent hex, let the whimpering scraps wash away spinning into a flooded rushing gutter.
I reached again into my pocket and closed my bare hand tight about the huldra and marched out into the empty street. The huldra shook, went hot in my hand. Mama had warned me never, ever to touch the thing with bare skin.
I gripped the huldra tighter, heard mad laughter in the sky.
“Martha Hoobin,” I said. “It’s time to come home.”