Limbo's Child Part II - Available NOW - FREE!!

For a limited time I am giving the novel, Limbo's Child (The Dead Things Series) away for FREE.

For the next week both part I and part II will be available as a two part pdf download, after which only part II will be available, but only for one week more. 

After that, the freebies are over, I'm turning off the spigot and then you'll have to go to Amazon Kindle and pay the exorbitant price of 99 cents!  So you see, giving the novel away for free is a supreme humanitarian act.


Download Limbo's Child for free!


Part I is here.

Part II is here.

And remember, you don't have to have a Kindle to read a Kindle formatted book.  You can get the book on your iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, PC or Mac.

Check out the multiple varieties of Kindle Readers HERE.

And if you like the book, please tell everyone that it's available on pdf for the next week.  And if you REALLY like it, tell them it's available on Amazon Kindle for only 99 cents, and if you REALLY, REALLY like it, make sure you write a great review on Amazon.com and tell everyone you know.

Here's the link for the Kindle version.

Chapter Seven: The Accidental Character

First off I want to say a big "THANK YOU!" to the four of you who have already bought the book on Kindle.

I'll have more to say eventually about how important you early adopters really are, but for now, I want to just tell you how much I really appreciate it.   Please, when you're done reading it, put up your reviews on Amazon.com and share the links with all your friends.

Right now it's time to post another chapter.

(Here are the links for the previous excerpts: The New Prologue, Chapter One – which was the old prologue – Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five & Chapter Six.   And remember the entire first half is available FREE in pdf format here, but only for the next week.)

This is Chapter Seven and it's told from the point of view of someone who has become one of my favorite characters: utterly mundane, gamer and comic book geek, 1970's nostalgia hound, the lowly orderly, Tim Riggle.

Tim is the accidental character.  Let me explain what I mean.  This may be a long read, but I think well worth it.  If you'd rather just have the chapter, you can skip down a bunch.

All of the other characters, Nephys, Lucy, Hiero, Lazlo, Amarantha, Hokharty, Graber, Sky & Miles were absolutely intentional and essential to the story.  I had a place for each of them and I needed each of them to do a specific role for the story or it just wouldn't work.  I had the whole plot outlined on about four pages of notebook paper and if you look there today, they are all there.  Even some of the minor characters like Betty and Dr. Rebecca Carfax are there, but there is not one line for Tim Riggle, and yet there he is in the book, at nearly every critical moment, doing important things, making salient observations and funny cracks.   He even turns out to (sorta) save the day by the end.   He was a complete accident, utterly unintentional.  In fact, I kept trying to kill him off, but he just wouldn't stay down.  He is the accidental character.

How did this happen?  How did this non-magical, non-vampire or anything really, non-entity keep forcing his way into my novel?!

Well, it started simply enough in Chapter Four.  In Chapter Four Lazlo Moriro, the current Necromancer in my universe, comes to see the body of Maggie Miller in the morgue of Thomas Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia. 

(FAIR WARINING! If you haven't read the book or Chapter Four yet, I encourage you to do so as the next discussion is rather spoilerish.)

It's an important scene.  It sets up several things.

1. First, It establishes the death of Maggie Miller as a BIG DEAL, the event that sets the whole plot in motion. 
2. Second, the chapter introduces Lazlo as a scary, imposing, powerful, cantankerous & threatening character, who is also losing his grip on reality. 
3. Third, it shows that the universe is not all cake & ice cream and that we are dealing with some pretty serious dark magic.  Lazlo summons up departed spirits to inhabit the bodies of the dead in this scene afterall!  This is the chapter where I raise the stakes for everyone.
4. Finally, it starts the chase.  Every book has to have something at its core that gets the motion going.  This can be a quest, a question or in my case, a chase.  Lucy is the now orphaned daughter of Maggie Miller, and it's pretty clear by Chapter Four she's no ordinary little girl.  Who gets to Lucy first and why they want her is the engine that drives the whole book.

So Chapter Four is very important, but there's a general rule in writing..."Show don't tell."  The first draft of Chapter Four was an endless series of exposition that was dull and uninspiring.  I couldn't just tell people Lazlo was off his nut and a powerful necromancer, or that these goons were scary and imposing, or that Maggie's death was unexpected, or that Lucy was special and was the object of everyone's motivations, I had to show it.  I needed a device to explain all of the four points above.  It needed more tension, it needed...a victim! Thus Tim the orderly was born.

So let's go over my points above once more.

1. Lazlo comes into the morgue to see the body of Maggie Miller.  Now as a matter of practicality, people can't just walk into hospital morgues alone.  There are protocols, they need someone to attend them.  A doctor would have been too important, and not as easily intimidated, so that's why Tim is an lowly orderly with not much in the way of career prospects.
2. Lazlo is a very intimidating figure, borderline insane, but I can't just have him fuming by himself.  It would look silly.  But having Tim freak out while Lazlo stands there glaring at Maggie's body and cursing in Spanish under his breath? Much better.  So Tim became nervous, fidgety and easily spooked, just to show us how scary Lazlo is.   I don't know where I got the name "Tim,"  but I probably chose it because it resonated with "timid" & "timorous" more than anything else.
3. The dead goons that Lazlo summons up, Hokharty and Graber, are two very powerful spirits that inhabit the recently reanimated corpses of two criminals in the morgue.  One is pure evil calculation, the other raw muscle.  Now I could say they they were dreadful and scary, but it's far better to show it.  So I have them chase down the poor orderly, Tim, grab him, drag him back and stuff him into a morgue metal drawer and generally treat him poorly.  So Tim is slight of build, lanky and stringy and can't put up much of a fight, just so we can see how tough and scary the two henchmen are by comparison.
4. Lazlo comes to see Maggie, but he hasn't seen her in many years.  He doesn't even know she had a daughter who might be a necromancer too!  So how does he find this out?  Lazlo is over 300 years old and he doesn't work well with machines.  It would have been incongruous to have Lazlo look it up on a computer screen, and why would he in the first place if he didn't know Lucy even existed? Besides, that would have been boring, so instead, I have Tim let the fact of Lucy's existence accidentally "slip" and thus, the chase begins.  So Tim has loose lips and is a bit of a spaz, saying things he shouldn't, completely out of the blue.  He's a convenient character to hold the idiot ball for the chapter and do the stupid things that need to be done to move the plot forward.

So that was it.  He was a convenient tool. A pawn.  A simple MacGuffin.  That's all.  I fully expected to leave him in the morgue drawer in chapter four and never hear from him ever again.  But then something...happened.

I realized I had left chapter four with a problem.  The henchmen my necromancer just summoned up, Graber and Hokharty, came from the Dark Ages and Ancient Egypt respectively.  Furthermore, there's no evidence Moriro had summoned them up anytime recently, and a lot of things have happened in the last hundred years.  How could they get around without understanding cars? Or cell phones? Or heck, even zippers?  So I needed a dupe, a patsy to help them around for a while.  Then I remembered. 

I had the perfect dupe locked up in the morgue drawer!!

So Tim survived 'til the seventh chapter, as these two corpses chauffeur, driving them to the their destination and helping them navigate the problems of modern life.  Problem solved.  So Tim lives on for a few chapters, but I wasn't worried, because I was certain he would be dead shortly in an appropriately random, gory and ignominious way that would show the seriousness of the situation.  His days were numbered.  He was born to be a red shirt, the comic relief in a horror movie, the (if you'll forgive the usage) African-American scientist in a sci-fi movie. 

Except...it didn't turn out that way.

As time wore on I realized my baddies had a lot of nasty things they had to do.  They had to trap vampires, what would they use as bait?  They needed to kill off some heavies of their own and needed a Renfield who could move in daylight, a chump that they could push around and intimidate into compliance.  It just didn't make much sense to have them constantly wrangling up new victims and new accomplices when they had one already there.  It was also funnier to see these horrors inflicted on the same guy, time and time again, and watch his mental state fray over the book, rather than to see the baddies inflict them one at a time on a bunch of nameless random victims we didn't care about.

So Tim lived on, at first because he was useful.  It makes no sense to have the vampires and dead things lecture on the metaphysics of the afterlife, but as the resident noob, it made perfect sense to have Tim ask.  But eventually, Tim survived because he had evolved into that thing that every story needs: an everyman, someone to play the reader in the story, to speak out loud the questions the reader is thinking.

And so, chapter after chapter, the character that just wouldn't go away, the one I just couldn't kill, became a real character.  And of course, having come into being by accident, it made perfect sense to make his eventual role pivotal, as if his accidental presence in the book, is what gives our heroes the one tool they need to succeed, just when they needed it, almost as if...by accident. 

I won't spoil that just yet though.  Until then, I give you...Tim.

Chapter Seven
Hunting Hunters

Tim Riggle, the orderly, drove down Highway 95 in his cherry, 1974 limited-edition Spirit of America cream-colored Impala with three corpses in the car. One was in the trunk; two were freshly animated and sitting in the car. Graber, the big one, was snoring in the back seat, sucking in wheezing breaths through his nose and gurgling them out through the large, open head wound above his right eye like a blow-hole, sputtering out little flecks of clotted blood on the custom vinyl interior. The thin corpse, Hokharty, was in the front with Tim looking at a road map of Delaware upside down. The other corpse in the trunk was a woman with dark hair. She was, mercifully, not doing anything unusual for a dead person.

“If this girl is in Harrisburg, why exactly are we heading south again?” Tim asked the seemingly perplexed but unflappable Hokharty.

“The girl is west, but the hunters are south. We need help.” Hokharty didn’t look at Tim. “Only hunters can find what we are looking for.”

“And what exactly are we looking for if it isn’t the girl?” Tim asked.

Hokharty just smiled his subtle toothsome smile again. Tim was certain he saw a fang this time.

Tim sighed in frustration and gripped the steering wheel tighter. This wasn’t going to be easy – not that getting out of the hospital was a piece of cake. It was hard to tell exactly what had happened from inside the morgue drawer, but apparently Hokharty had done his “turn into the smoke monster” trick and gone down the hall to the custodial closet. There, he found something to suit him and cover up the stab wound in his chest, but Graber wasn’t so simple. Graber was too big for any of the scrubs there and the wound on his head wasn’t exactly easy to cover up. So, they improvised. Graber was placed on a gurney, covered in a sheet, and Tim and Hokharty pushed him down the corridors. Hokharty had insisted on taking the body of the woman and made Tim wrap it carefully in a sheet and place it on the lower rack of the gurney. Hokharty recited some unknown words over the body while faint wisps of red smoke emanated from his mouth. Tim was afraid she was about rise up too, but thankfully nothing happened, so Tim agreed to push the cart while Hokharty followed. It wasn’t easy. Even without the second body, Graber weighed a ton and it was pretty hard going. Graber seemed to exude a pervasive field of inertia, resisting all forward movement.

Along the way, Hokharty made Tim use one of the “devices,” Hokharty had called it, to find out the information about the deceased Margaret Holveda Miller’s daughter. Lucia Claire Miller was located in an ICU ward in Harrisburg, stable and expected to recover completely. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t authorized to do this, but he knew several nurses’ pass codes because they had asked him to retrieve something for them while they were busy. The whole time Hokharty’s icy hand never left the back of Tim’s neck. Worse than the grip were the things he said.

He queried Tim on everything: his age, his family, his education, his hopes and aspirations. When he told Hokharty his goal was to one day be a Physician’s Assistant, Hokharty remarked, “Why not be the Physician? Why not the greatest Physician who ever lived? Greater than Hippocrates or Galen or Asclepius himself?” More unnerving was the way he said it, as if he could actually make it happen. And then there was the whole “How would you like to live forever?” thing. Tim was glad he hadn’t brought that up again.

Once they had gotten the information about Lucy Miller off the computer, Hokharty made him push Graber down to the staff locker rooms. Tim scoped it out to make sure they were empty, then wheeled Graber in. When Graber got up on his own accord, it spooked Tim all over again, even though he had seen him rise the first time. Tim got changed into his regular clothes. Graber’s hand could open the lockers like a can opener. Eventually, they found clothes for all of them, including some large jeans and a huge sweatshirt for Graber and a leather jacket for Hokharty. Hokharty kept the green scrubs on underneath, however. Neither had any familiarity with zippers, though. Tim had to show Graber how to use it – that had been embarrassing. Once Graber had figured out his pants zipper he kept pulling it up…zip! And down...zip! And up…zip! And down…zip! Over and over again in child-like wonder until Hokharty had told him to knock it off.

Graber finally found a large, knit cap big enough to pull over his wound. He pulled it down so far it practically covered his eyes, but it didn’t seem to hinder him at all. In fact, neither of them seemed to use their eyes at all. Hokharty had an intense, fixed glare that never wavered, and he seemed to be able to see straight through the back of his own head. The one or two times Tim was close to the door when Hokharty had his back to him, Hokharty would calmly advise him against thinking about fleeing without even turning around. Thankfully, Graber picked up the body of the woman and carried it out. Tim thought about warning them about the surveillance cameras, but then they had enough trouble with the zippers, so he decided to let it pass.

When they got out to the parking lot, Tim thought he could just hand off the keys and be done with them, but of course, neither knew how to drive. So here he was, going…somewhere…on I-95…near Chester…looking for something called a “hunter”…with two dead guys.

“Hurgghl-KKHUTT,” Graber woke up with a start and hocked up a blood clot though his wound that landed on the dash. Tim tried desperately not to shudder. Hokharty turned around and said something in some guttural language that Tim couldn’t understand to Graber. Graber just nodded and said nothing, as usual, and pulled the knit cap low over his face again.

“What? What is it?” Tim could see that Hokharty was looking out the windshield into the distance.

“We’re getting close,” Hokharty said barely above a whisper, “I can sense them.”

“Close? To what?!” Hokharty didn’t answer.

“There. We need to go there.” Hokharty pointed towards a cross street.

Tim couldn’t see an exit. “Fine, but I can’t get off here, I’ll have to go to the next exit and turn around.”

Hokharty furrowed his brow in displeasure but didn’t say anything.

Tim got off on the next exit and started to wind his way through the surface streets according to Hokharty’s directions. Hokharty hardly gave him any notice before abruptly pointing “here!” or “there!” Tim had to wrench the steering wheel a few times, and the tires squealed in protest, but he didn’t slow down. He didn’t want to spend any more time with these corpses than he absolutely had to.

Finally, Hokharty said, “Stop!” and Tim slammed on the brakes at the street corner. Hokharty fixed his impassive stare at a small alleyway and smiled that now-familiar half smile that disappeared in an instant. Tim was certain he had seen fangs that time.

“Sooo…now what?” Tim said anxiously.

“We wait. They will come to us.”

“Really?” Tim wasn’t so sure he wanted them to come to him. He had already seen two animated cadavers tonight. He wasn’t sure what kind of things “hunters” were, but he had seen enough for one evening.

“Yes, of course,” Hokharty said as if it were obvious, “It’s getting near dawn, and they will be looking for shelter…but not yet.”

“Why not?” Tim asked, curiosity overcoming fear.

“Because they haven’t caught anything all night.” And then Hokharty turned slowly to face Tim. “They are still hungry.” And with that, Graber began snorting a low laugh in the back seat, but at least the knit cap, already crusted with gore, caught most of the bloody spatter this time.

Tim leaned over the steering wheel to get a better view through the windshield. He looked at the alleyway but saw nothing. As he sat on an abandoned street corner in a ‘74 Impala with two dead guys who couldn’t even manage zippers, let alone cars, he knew just one thing for certain…all his horror comic books, all of his first-person shooter video games, his DVD collection of zombie movies…they had all totally lied to him

FIRST HALF OF THE BOOK - FREE!!

As promised...here is the link...to the first half of the book in pdf format. 

(Geez!  Even in a blog post I overuse the ellipsis!  Anywho...wait...I did it again!! Mrrggmble)

This is the first 300 or so pages of the book, FREE, to you, but only for the next week.  After that I will take it down and put up the last 300 pages, for FREE, but again, only for one week.  Then the links and the pdf format will be gone, but you will still be able to buy the book for the egregious price of 99 cents on Kindle.

(I'm trying to save you that extra buck here people! Hey, I know you need that extra shot of espresso in your latte each morning, so I got yer back.)

This is mostly my way of saying "Thank you" to all those that have been following the blog so far. 

(Actually, it's more my way of saying, "THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!! OMG THANK YOU FOR CARING AND LISTENING SO THAT MY LITTLE 'YAWP' DOESN'T DISAPPEAR INTO THE OBLIVION OF CYBERSPACE!!" buuuut...that might sound a little too desperate.)

So share it with all your friends for the next two weeks, because after that, the spigot is off and they will have to scrounge around the sofa cushions for that extra 99 cents to get the book.

(So far I've abused the ellipsis, the italics for emphasis, the onomatopoeia and the parenthetical comedy aside.  Hmmm.  I think it's time to stop.)

Enjoy people!

Chapter Five: Meet Maggie Miller

Meet Maggie Miller.

Maggie is the mother of Lucy, our second main protagonist that we meet in the new prologue and in chapter two. (Which was the old chapter one before we added the new prologue - I know, it's confusing, trust me.  This post explains everything.)

As always you can find previous chapters, here, here, here & here

This chapter introduces us more to the world of Limbo, and how our protagonist Nephys, really is an odd duck, to say nothing of his companion Hiero.

I hope you enjoy it.

Update:  I originally titled this blog entry as "The Bark of Nephys" - that's a couple of chapters on.  Mistakes like that happen when you decide to change the chapter order at the last moment.  Oops.

Chapter Five
The Marsh of Lost Souls

Nephys thrust the punting pole down into the reedy, black mud and slowly pushed the skiff forward on the stagnant water. Hiero was at the prow like some demented figurehead, scanning the featureless horizon. From where he stood in the stern, Nephys could barely see above the tall reeds. They were well beyond the plains of Limbo now, out into the marshes and dark swamps that surrounded it for miles. Nephys didn’t like going out this far, but fortunately, he still remembered how to navigate his boat through the thick bulrushes like he did when he was alive. There wasn’t much he remembered, but he did remember that. They hadn’t seen many shades though, so he had that to be grateful for.

“Do you see anything yet?”

“Fhank-blatt,” the bagpipe spluttered.

That meant “no.” An imp could sniff out a suffering soul like a bloodhound could sniff out a blood trail – except imps could do it over open water. Suffering was their life bread – they fed on it, and it didn’t take much to set them on the scent…a galling mistake, a frustrating afternoon, an embarrassing memory that suddenly came rushing back, anything really, and an imp would be on you like a tick. Still, the two of them had never been out quite this far or long before, and Nephys was getting nervous. Shades could be as hungry as imps were, though they preferred the taste of sadness and despair.

“Are you sure you sensed something this way?”

Hiero’s whooshing breath went silent for a moment, and then the bagpipe exploded. “Fhank, thaaaarn, thookooool bummm-paaaarhntf!!!” which, as near as Nephys could translate meant, “If you’re so darn anxious to get there, then why don’t you…USE YOUR DEATH SIGHT ALREADY!!”

It was true. Nephys could use the inner sight and all the reeds would become like glass and he could see to the horizon. The bright flame of a newly departed soul would be easy to see, but he had already used the Death Sight once this morning. Each time you used the Sight, it caused your natural eyes to atrophy a little more and he wasn’t quite ready to go blind that much sooner. Turning back had it’s own risks though. He didn’t want an angry, psychotic bagpipe following him around all day.

He was just about to suggest giving up when Hiero bleated out a triumphant, discordant note. Hiero plunged the big butcher knife forward with his spidery arm and nearly threw himself out of the boat in the process. Nephys could see something above the reeds ahead. The water grew shallower and Nephys pushed the boat forward onto a nearby shoal. Hiero was out of the boat and splashing ahead, using the knife like a machete to clear a path, hooting and slashing in anticipation.

“Noisy thing,” muttered Nephys. He’d bring every shade within a furlong down on them. Fortunately, shades were just as scared of imps as everyone else. Nephys secured the boat and stepped off; his feet sunk deep into the black muck. It pulled and sucked at every footstep. Eventually, Nephys managed to find firm ground and pulled himself free, following Hiero’s trumpeting cacophony. The ground here was firmer and drier and the reeds became less thick; with a final push, Nephys pressed on past the rushes into a small, damp clearing. Hiero was nearby, silent, and even Nephys gaped at what he saw.

It was a tree, a large tree, with two large trunks, shaped like a “V.” High up, higher than a person could reach was some awful, huge, twisted hunk of metal and glass squeezed in the scissor grip of the tree, like a poor animal in a trap. The tree was denser and more solid and somehow more real than its surroundings.

Once, there had been trees in Limbo, whole orchards in fact, but now there were none outside of a few twisted, dead trunks near the acropolis of the city. The whole landscape of Limbo had changed over the centuries. The plains progressively got swampier. The center of Limbo was getting lower as well. Like a sandcastle melting in the surf, the whole of Limbo was slowing eroding. Since the orchards of the dead had disappeared long ago, this tree could only have come from one place – it had been dragged from the land of the living.

Such things were not impossible, but they didn’t happen very often. Most souls arrived in Limbo in the usual way, through the gates of Erebus, muttering, disoriented, and bearing the wounds and marks of the method of their parting. They were generally not in the best of sorts, but they knew they were dead and more or less resigned to something like a compliant state. There, the servants of Death processed them, recorded their names and measured their wounds, but it was not the only way to get to the afterlife.

The world of the living lay over the top of the underworld like a tablecloth on a table. In certain places and at certain times it could be very thin. So thin, that if a person’s death was violent enough, traumatic enough, it could tear through and drop them here, in the swamps surrounding Limbo, or further away, in the barren desert wastes that surrounded the Pits of Punishment. When that happened, the dead often dragged something, an echo you could call it, a psychic manifestation of their death, with them. A murder victim could conjure the weapon that had killed him. A person who was long sick on their deathbed would often bring a shadow of that bed with them, but Nephys had never seen someone drag a whole tree after them before. The soul must have been wrenched from life suddenly with a near unfathomable amount of pain and horror, like an arm torn from its socket by a wild beast. No wonder Hiero could smell this thing from so far off.

Nephys scanned the tree and the twisted hunk of metal. He recognized the wheels and suddenly knew what it was. Over thousands of years, the arriving souls had changed their dress and language a great deal, but for most of that time Nephys could tell the world was largely the same place he had left. Every culture had its bakers and blacksmiths, millers, scribes and politicians, housewives, maids, and cobblers. People were people and no matter how strange or foreign, they still had to eat and they still got around by horses and carts, but in the last century that had all changed. Spirits started showing up with strange devices of no discernable purpose. Worse yet were the ones with horrifying wounds with bits of glass and metal embedded in them. Some carried strange wheels still gripped tightly in their hands, while others had the marks of wheels on them, heavy wheels that crushed their bodies as they passed.

In snatches of conversations between these new arrivals he had overheard how men now moved about in strange, fast-moving carts­­ – metal and glass carriages powered by steam and fire without horses. How these conveyances worked was a mystery to Nephys, but it was certainly some sort of evil magic, because they extracted a heavy toll. Never had so many mangled souls entered the Gates of Erebus before. The Children of Limbo referred to them as “death-carts” and were convinced they were a conspiracy on the part of the Great Master to speed up the work. Nephys had never seen a whole one before, but this mangled metal thing stuck in the tree had to be one of them.

“Phlarnk!” Hiero nudged Nephys’ leg, hooted and gestured with his nose trumpet. Nephys could see a woman struggling frantically at the base of the tree. She was desperately trying to climb it to reach the metal carcass of the death cart, but she instead clawed helplessly at the bark, sliding back down to the ground. With each failed attempt, she became more desperate until she collapsed at the base of the tree, sobbing hysterically.

“Fhwooootonk!”

Hiero was right. They had to put an end to this right away. All that crying was bound to attract some shades. There were certainly shades nearby, and Nephys didn’t want to meet up with any way out here. Touching a single shade was like thrusting your hand under ice water for several minutes. If several shades surrounded you, it was like falling into an icy lake, and release only came when you managed to escape or became a shade yourself.

Nephys quickly padded over to the sobbing woman. Hiero splashed alongside him in the puddles like a lame, but excited, dog. When he got closer he could see that she was tall and thin and dark haired, but not young. Middle-aged he guessed. It was hard to tell her age exactly; after a while all of the dead looked the same to Nephys. She was dressed in the strange, tight-fitting pants that so many souls wore now, but they looked uncomfortably binding to him. Nephys stopped just a few feet short of her and didn’t know what to say or do. Hiero looked from Nephys to her and back to Nephys again.

“Haaaarnt!” Hiero hooted exasperatedly. Then he shoved Nephys hard behind the knees until he nearly fell over.

“Stop that!” Nephys muttered hoarsely.

“fhun, fhun, fhun…weeeeeeenarn,” Hiero bleated sulkily. He hated dithering.

“Alright then, fine.” Nephys took a few cautious, small steps forward. Nothing was worse than being less decisive than a demonic wind instrument. Nephys approached carefully and said nervously, “Hello.”

The woman didn’t notice and kept on sobbing. Nephys tried a little louder, this time with some throat clearing as well. Still nothing. Nephys had learned many languages working as a scribe in the record houses of the dead. He tried various greetings in several of these, but still nothing. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t hear him. It was like he wasn’t there at all. This was bad. A soul torn so swiftly and violently from the land of the living was often in such a state of shock, it couldn’t be made to understand the nature of its new reality. Most did not even know they were dead. If she couldn’t be made to see the truth, and quickly, she would be locked forever in a state of denial, forever clawing at the base of the tree, sobbing. That is, until she became a shade, at which point she would wander without a thought at all, clinging only to the memory of the terrible sadness that had consumed her.

Persons who fell so far from the Gates of Erebus were rarely recovered. Their numbers were so small that the bureaucrats of Death could hardly be bothered with them. Anyone lost out here would usually become a lost soul, a shade, a mere memory of their former selves, with nothing but hunger to guide them.

Nephys wasn’t sure why Hiero kept dragging him out here to find these hard-luck cases. Perhaps he had become a connoisseur and the vulgar flavors of torture, rage and obscenity of the Pits of Punishment no longer appealed to him. Now he liked the salty wine of sadness and despair. He was an imp after all; it was in his guts – even if he didn’t have any. But none of that explained why he dragged Nephys along on these rescue missions. Nephys went all the same, but mostly out of boredom. Still, of all the scribes and courtiers of Limbo, why choose him to share these adventures? Nephys would have thought to ask him if he wasn’t certain that Hiero would respond with a string of flat, minor key raspberries.

The woman kept sobbing. Nephys felt the slightest trace of wind, and inside it was the touch of frost. The air of Limbo was normally as stagnant as the fetid pond water. The movement of air could mean only one thing. The shades had noticed them, and they were approaching. This was getting serious. Nephys was frozen in thought and deliberation, not knowing what to do – that is until Hiero snorted out a “BAARNT” and stabbed him in the back of his calf with the point of his butcher knife.

“YEAARRRGH!!!” Nephys screamed. He reached down and grabbed the calf in a moment of agony and looked as the gash Hiero had made quickly disappeared. Nephys glared at Hiero, who only blithely rolled his glassy eyes in indifference. The afterlife was full of bitter and cruel ironies. You could hardly feel light or warmth or cold, you couldn’t taste or smell anything but flatness or stagnation, you couldn’t feel your breath, or a heartbeat, and you lost your eyes a little day by day, but a deranged imp with a rusty butcher knife could still stab you and hurt you as real as anything. Then the wound would instantly fade, disappear entirely, so of course, the cursed imp felt no compunction against doing it again. Meanwhile, the wounds you acquired in life remained indelibly, permanent. Hiero had stabbed Nephys a dozen or more times, usually just to get his attention, and not a single wound remained a second afterward, but the large black gash across Nephys’ throat was always there.

However much Nephys disliked Hiero’s tactic, it had worked. The woman had noticed, and stirred herself from her despair. She stopped sobbing and stood up gingerly and spoke weakly. “Is…is someone there? Oh, please…anyone?! Can you hear me?!!”

Nephys stepped a little closer and said, “Yes, yes…we can hear you. I’m here.”

“Where?! Where?!! I can’t see you.” She said, even though she was standing less than two feet from Nephys and looking right at him.

“I’m right here. Are you alright?” Nephys tried to sound reassuring.

She gazed directly at him, her brow furrowing, she was having a hard time seeing him, but then she blinked a time or two and a look of surprise passed over her face as she finally recognized Nephys.

“Oh! Oh, thank God.” She lurched forward at Nephys and grabbed him by the shoulders. Nephys stood awkwardly not knowing what to do. “I’m so glad you’re here…I need help…we were driving…it was night. Some kid ran out into the street and …I don’t know what happened, but we went off the road into the trees. I must have been thrown from the car….” She continued on, disjointedly, occasionally sobbing between breaths, trying to collect her thoughts while Nephys nodded complacently.

This was not good. She may have seen Nephys, thanks to Hiero’s executive decision, but she was still not seeing him. She was still trapped in the delusion that this was the land of the living and that she was still alive. To her, Nephys was just some passerby who had come upon the accident. The newly dead saw what they wanted to see. This was a harder case than either he or Hiero had ever stumbled upon. Once, they had met a man who was convinced the swamp was the Florida everglades, and he wouldn’t leave until he had pulled in that big fish. He said this all the while not noticing the alligator bite-sized piece missing from his middle. When Hiero had stuck his knife through the empty space, the man came right to. Nephys had no idea what else to do in this situation but to play along and try to get her to listen. The hard part was finding a way to enter the woman’s one-sided conversation.

“Look, we are here to help you…” Nephys began awkwardly.

“I was driving when…out of nowhere!...was this boy…what on earth was a boy doing on the highway in the middle of the night?!!” She was rambling.

“I know this will be hard, but you need to listen to me,” Nephys tried to implore the lady, but she just continued her ranting; she was in shock.

“I must have been thrown from the car, but I can’t find her anywhere, so she must be up there still.”

“Look, I know this is hard, but…wait…her?” Nephys asked carefully.

“Yes, HER! My daughter. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!!” the woman screamed frantically, and just then a chill wind blew through Nephys. Shades were coming.

“I’ve looked all around, but I can’t find her! She must still be in the car!”

No wonder the woman was still in a state of denial; she was searching for her daughter and was still attached to the thought that she might be alive.

“Fhween,” Hiero hooted impatiently. Nephys glanced either way and then closed his eyes. In his Death Sight he could see dozens of shades slowly approaching, though still a few hundred yards off. He looked up to the strange vehicle, which was now like glass to his sight, but no soul flame was in the metal wreck. He opened his eyes again. Even from this short use they were dimmer.

“Your daughter isn’t in the…the thing up there…Now I know this must be hard, but we can’t wait, we must go…”

“What? What do you mean? Have you seen her?”

“Well no…” Nephys began, but the woman wouldn’t let him finish.

“Then how can you be certain she isn’t in the car?!” she said angrily gesturing at the metal thing in the tree.

Nephys had no easy answer for her. Trying to explain the Death Sight to her in her condition would be worse than useless.

“Look,” Nephys said exasperated, “if I can prove that your daughter isn’t in that…car…then will you go with us?”

She looked at him oddly, but was silent. Her eyes seemed to alight on the gash on his neck, but she closed her eyes and shook off whatever recognition had touched her.

“Yes,” she said tentatively, “I’ll go…but please hurry.”

Nephys nodded once at her and then turned to Hiero and raised his eyebrows at him while he tilted his head towards the tree.

“Fwhooont,” Hiero completely deflated, the pipes on his back laid down nearly flat.

“Don’t give me that!! I’m not the one that dragged us out here!! I can’t get up that tree and we need to get out of here and…”

“FHWEEM!” Hiero cut him off and was already thrashing ahead to the tree. Using the butcher knife like a pick, he clawed up to the wreck with remarkable speed. The woman moved aside as he passed and stared at him as if he had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. As Hiero stabbed at the glass and metal, she narrowed her eyes at him uncertain of what she was looking at. Whether she thought he was a trained monkey, or a rescue dog, or a hunchback dwarf, Nephys couldn’t tell, but she was so desperate to find her daughter she didn’t care.

Hiero began wrenching doors and parts off the wreck, raining them down below with little regard to who was underneath them. Nephys reached forward and pulled the woman out of the way. With great dispatch, Hiero passed through the whole vehicle, finally emerging from the gaping hole where the door had been and gave a short, flat hoot.

“Nothing there,” Nephys said, turning to face the woman, “Now we really need to be going.”

Nephys had turned to go and Hiero had already dropped to the damp ground beside him with a splash when the woman spoke.

“No,” she said in a whisper.

Nephys turned around. Hiero just wheezed impatiently.

“What?” Nephys said, “but you just said…”

“I DON’T CARE…what I said,” she replied resolutely. She had suddenly become far less hysterical and seemed almost calm. “I’m…I’m not leaving here without my daughter. She has to be around here somewhere. I’ll look over here while you look…”

Just then a cold breeze made Nephys shudder. They were running out of time. This had to stop. Nephys strode over to her and grabbed her by the shoulders, took a breath and blurted it out.

“Look, I know this is hard to understand, but I have some very tough news for you.”

She gazed at him and her momentary resolve began to slip. She looked down at him with moist eyes as if she were about to cry again. “You mean…” her voice trembled, “she didn’t make it?”

Nephys sighed. There was no easy way to say this.

“No,” Nephys said, “she did make it. You didn’t.”

A brief happy moment of relief that passed over her face was replaced by confusion.

“Look at me, and tell me what you see,” Nephys said forcefully.

She looked at Nephys and shook her head, looked away, but then cautiously looked back. Her eyes looked over his face – his strange eyes, his odd robes and some recognition flickered across her face. Then her eyes saw the black gash on his throat and the look turned to disgust. She closed her eyes quickly, shrugged off Nephys’ grip and stepped backward.

“No…” she spoke it softly, then louder, “NO!”

She was close now. She had, at least for a moment, acknowledged the possibility, but forced it away. She had seen something. Now Hiero stepped forward to seal the deal. He slowly stab-dragged his way to her feet, looked up at her and blew out a single, horrid, cacophonous note. Her eyes followed over his body with growing disgust and horror. At last, her mind could not find any last minute rationalization (Monkey? Pig? Mutant duck?) that could explain the hideous imp in front of her. The final realization hit her…she was dead…and then she screamed…for nearly twenty minutes.

My Own Worst Enemy. (The New Prologue)

When it comes to writing, I am my own worst enemy.

Let me tell you a truth.  I want this book to be successful.  Not just because I have no other real financial prospects at the moment, but because I want the affirmation of other people who love the book as much as I do.

I know the quote by Samuel Johnson, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." BTW, but it's bunk.  Writers ARE blockheads. People don't write for money, though money is appreciated.  We write for fun.

When I started this project, it was really just a way of filling my evenings up with something more than just idle web-surfing.  I had been rattling an idea around for two years and finally decided to put it to paper...er...word processor.  Now I have written a lot in the past, but I have never written a large work of fiction before.  A short story or two perhaps in HS or college, but nothing like this.  I really had no idea WHAT I was going to do with it.  It was just fun.  Soon I was staying up late every night just to keep going.  When I had 200 pages and I was nowhere near the middle act, I began to think I had something.

A month went by and my wife really desperately wanted to know what it was I was doing staying up until two in the morning.  So I started reading her chapters as they came.  Her response stunned me.

She loved them, and became my first fan.  "You have to publish this book!" She said. 

That was March people.  That really wasn't all that long ago, but it was my wife's intervention that started me on the current path to e-publishing. 

Now I am a not normally a writer of fiction.  The non-fiction market is a totally different ballgame, but  both of us know several writers of fiction personally, including a few published authors, some successful, some not.  We all knew that the road from authorship to publication in fiction, and in particular the young adult market, was a very long road indeed, usually years. 

First is the agent, then the editing, then the submissions (and endless rejections) before you finally find a sympathetic ear somewhere, and more editing and then proofing.  Even then if they take the manuscript, chances are it will be buried somewhere on the mid-list section with no marketing.  Worse, they might market it to the wrong people. If your book has vampires, it will instantly be sold to the Twilight crowd, even if your vampires have nothing to do with Twilight.   If it doesn't hit all the right popular buzz words or trends of the moment (and how could it if it was written years before?) it might never get a shot at an audience.

I just wasn't willing to do that.  I do have a day job, I teach, and I have a family, so I wasn't prepared to sacrifice a huge chunk of my life for a several year prospect, with little hope of ever breaking through.   Good books do rise to the top, once they get past the gatekeepers, but that's the tricky part.  My wife was convinced the book would be a success,  but I wasn't convinced I would ever get the chance.  So we decided to go it alone and publish it ourselves online and sell it for very little.

I got the help of friends to edit it, make the illustrations and cover art and then we set some goals.

Principle writing would be done by summer, editing by September, proofing by October, when the book would be published.

I'm amazed we've hit those goals and yet the book still doesn't feel rushed or sloppy to me or to any of my readers.  The book is ready and yet, I can't quite let it go.

We have entered what my wife calls "hand-slapping" stage.  That's the stage where you can't help picking at it, like a scab, and yet nothing - usually - will be improved by continued picking.  Hence, you have to slap the hand to keep it from picking at it.

But I am still doing this mostly for fun.   I write compulsively now.  I write to entertain myself, but I hope it will entertain others as well.  If I come across an entertaining idea, off I go, and burn ten hours writing some minor side plot when I should be concentrating on editing.

So when my wife found out this last weekend that I had written an ALL-NEW prologue to the book, she was about done with me.

I'm sorry, I can't help it.  Let me explain.  We have a friend who had a pet fish.  This fish had been through so much and yet survived, they had begun calling it "unkillable."  It suddenly struck me that this would be a great introduction to Lucy, her mom and the power they share.  So I wrote it up.  "Fred the Unkillable."

Changing anything at this late date makes my wife impatient...to put it mildly.  But then we read it and the worst possible thing that could happen happened.  She loved it.

Now I want it make clear that my wife is not an easy woman to impress.  Graduating with a PhD, only merited a 5 on a scale from 1 to 10 for example.

I had first thought that I would include this as an extra on the website, another "Secret Prologue," so when she told me I HAD to include this as the new official prologue, you can imagine my surprise.

So just to make sure we weren't delusional, we passed it by the other two readers who've read the whole thing.  They loved it too.  Furthermore, they all agreed, it had to be the new prologue.

Changing one chapter isn't as easy as it sounds.  It means everything has to be reevaluated in light of the new information.  The old prologue, which was dramatic and tense, now becomes chapter 1.  As the new prologue reveals certain pieces of information sooner than the rest of the book, I had to rewrite some of those scenes too.

So here we are, two days from the publication date and I've undertaken another major edit.  Talk about crazy.  My wife and a couple of readers have agreed to review and proof this new major edit, ASAP, tonight and tomorrow, so it can still be available for you, the reader, on Saturday, as planned.

It's nice to have friends that believe in it as much as you do.  More so even.  It has thrown the whole thing into a frenzy, but I think you'll see the book is better for it.

But my wife has EXPRESSLY forbidden me from doing anything else.

Here then (in not completely finished form) is the new Prologue.  It's just five pages long.  FRED, THE UNKILLABLE.  I hope you enjoy it.

Prologue
Fred the Unkillable

“MOMMY!!”

Maggie Miller tore down the hallway.  There were angry voices and pouty voices and upset voices, but she knew her six-year old daughter Lucy well enough to recognize a “horrified” voice when she heard it.
            She came into her little girl’s room expecting to see a monstrous spider or something far, far worse.  That was why it was such a surprise when she stopped at the doorway and all she saw was her daughter Lucy sitting on her bed holding a fishbowl in her lap, crying.  Maggie looked at the fishbowl.  The beautiful purple and red tropical fish inside it was belly up.
            “Oh honey…” Maggie said coming into the room.
            “Fred’s not moving.”  Lucy whimpered.
            Maggie sat down on the bed beside her daughter and put her arms around her shoulders and gave them a little squeeze.  Then she laid her head on top of her daughter’s.  Maggie stroked her little girl’s sandy hair while she sobbed, but she didn’t say anything.  Sometimes these things just needed to be cried out.  After a long while, it was Lucy who started speaking.

“It’s not fair.”  Lucy suddenly said, angry.  “I didn’t overfeed him or let him get too hot or too cold or anything! I did everything right!”
            Maggie just sighed through her nose. This was going to be a hard one.
            “Honey…” Maggie paused. “Honey, fish don’t live forever.”
            Lucy began sobbing again.  Maggie stroked her arm.  Maggie hated this part of being a parent.  She loved her daughter very much, but it was so hard being the grown-up, having to be tough all the time.  So she just held her daughter and tried to punctuate the tears with the best parental advice she could muster.  She never knew if this did any good or not.  She wasn’t even certain if she believed it herself.  So much of what people said about death was so trite as to be meaningless, but she just felt as if she had to say something, so she soldiered on.

She started with, “Fred lived a good long life for a fish and it was just his time.”
            The sobbing petered out to some light whimpering.  Maggie rubbed her girl’s back and decided to go on.            

“The best we can do is to remember the good times.”

A few more snuffles.  Lucy was nearly cried out now.  Just a few more minutes and it would be over.
            “Bad things happen. We just have to be strong and move on.”

After a few minutes more, Lucy had almost stopped crying completely and was just sniffing back tears and a runny nose now.  Maggie hugged her daughter again, gave her an extra squeeze and then leaned back and looked into her daughter’s eyes.  They were big and green and moist, but they weren’t tearing anymore.  She was almost there.  She decided to say one last thing to try and comfort her.

“Sometimes these things happen and they just don’t make any sense and we just have to accept that.”
            Lucy looked back at her mom with wide eyes and spoke. “Like dad?”

Maggie took in a breath but it never came back out. Her eyes darted nervously around the room at first and then between the fishbowl and her daughter’s equally glassy eyes.  She remembered now the circumstances of when and why they had bought the fish.  Her husband was dead.  Her daughter was sad.  She wanted a pet, but Maggie had insisted on a simple pet, a safe pet.  Something she wouldn’t have to worry about Lucy ever touching.  It was in the months, no…weeks! after her husband had taken his…after her husband had passed away.  How long ago was it?  A little over two years now?  Two years and three months, but how many days?  She didn’t know exactly.  Not without counting it up in her head.  How could she not know?!  She had thought about his death every minute of every hour of every day the first year, but this year, the next year, it had gotten easier.  Had she thought of him today?  Yesterday?  This week?!  She didn’t know when she had thought about him last.  It was a week at least.  She felt guilty, ashamed, alone and hurt and it all suddenly dawned on her.  Here she was parroting back all the trite things her friends and coworkers at the library had said to her back then.  No wonder her daughter was so upset.  It wasn’t just the fish, it was her dad dying all over again, and here she was telling her it didn’t matter, suck it up, move on, grow up, get over it.

Maggie’s heart was suddenly in her throat.  Her face went stiff and hot.  She tried to turn away but couldn’t.  A sob erupted from her mouth.  It was more of a gulp of air really.  She tried to hold the next one back but couldn’t.  She slapped her hands over her mouth, but it didn’t matter.   They sobs just kept coming.  Soon the crying was racking her whole body with great heaving sobs.
            “Mommy!”  Lucy buried her head into her mother’s chest and threw her arms around her mom to try and comfort her, but with both arms around her mother’s middle, she didn’t have a hand free to hold onto the fishbowl.  It slipped off her lap.
            “L-Lucy!”  Maggie yelled through sobs.
            The fishbowl crashed to the hard oak floor, shattering into dozens of sharp pieces, sending glass and water and colorful gravel everywhere.
            “Mom!” Lucy cried.
            “It’s ok honey, it’s ok.”  Maggie reassured her daughter.  “We’ll just clean it up.”  Maggie was instantly glad the fishbowl had shattered.  Somehow the shock of the breaking glass had brought her back around.  There was something to do now, something to clean up and something to distract both of them.  Maggie pulled herself together and the two of them got down on their knees and started picking up the pieces.
            Not a minute into the cleanup, Lucy yelled out.

“Ouch!”
            Maggie looked up.  Her daughter was looking at her finger while a single trail of scarlet dripped from the fingertip.  “Just great.” Maggie thought.  Lucy had cut her finger on the glass.  Already Lucy’s lip was trembling and in a moment the whole thing would start up again.  Maggie couldn’t be certain she wasn’t about to start up again herself.  Just when the waterworks were about to get going, Lucy looked down to the ground, stunned.  The lip had stopped trembling.
            “Mom look!”
            Maggie looked down.  Fred was twitching.  A few seconds on, and the fish was practically flopping around in a small puddle of water caught in one of the larger fragments of fishbowl.  A drop of Lucy’s blood was slowly dissipating in the tiny puddle too.  In an instant her daughter went from despair to elation.

“MOM!! FRED’S ALIVE!!”

But Maggie went from distress to near abject horror.  She went rigid.
            “Don’t touch it Lucy.”

Lucy just looked at her in disbelief.  “But MOM we have to save him!”
            “DON’T TOUCH IT!!”  Maggie screamed.
            Lucy looked back at her mom scared.  Why was she so angry?

“But mom…” Lucy went on.
            “Um…ok, honey, hold still, don’t move! I don’t want you to get cut again.” Maggie had to shake herself to bring herself back to the moment.  What to do?!

“But MOM!!”
            “HOLD ON LUCY!! I’ll be right back!!”

Maggie got up and ran to the kitchen.  She found a large mason jar and filled it with water and ran back to the room.  She paused, looking disbelieving at the flopping fish.
            “Mom!” Lucy implored.
            “Right,” Maggie set about her task.  She scooped up the fish and plopped it into the Mason jar.  Fred swam around the smaller confines of the jar contentedly.  Lucy began jumping up and down holding out both hands for her chance to hold her fish once again.  Maggie reluctantly handed over the Mason jar.
            Lucy was beside herself with relief. 
            “I can’t believe it!!  FRED’S OK!!”  She gazed into the Mason jar with wonder.  Maggie stared too.  She hugged her mother around her middle, but Maggie Miller didn’t hug her daughter back.  Instead she just stood there, hand on mouth, staring at the fish.  After a while Maggie gingerly pried the jar and miraculous fish from her daughter’s hands.
            “What?” Lucy protested.
            “Honey, Fred’s ok, and I still need to clean up all this glass. Ok?  Now just go out into the kitchen and bring me the dustpan, broom and some rags. Ok?”
            “But…”
            “Honey, please don’t argue.”

Lucy reluctantly went.  After she came back with the cleaning supplies, Maggie sent her to the front room to wait.  Lucy didn’t want to go, but Maggie insisted because Lucy didn’t have shoes on, and there was still a lot of glass.  Lucy didn’t want to be parted from the resurrected pet so soon, but she was so happy to have Fred back, she didn’t complain too much.
            Maggie swept up the gravel and glass and mopped up all the water, but she never took her eyes off of Fred swimming in the jar on Lucy’s dresser.  When she was all done, Maggie went over to the fish and narrowed her eyes at it and tapped on the glass once or twice.  It looked just like a normal fish.
            Maggie leaned back and put her hands in her back pockets.
            “Well, at least we’ll save on fish food.” She muttered to herself before leaving and shutting the bedroom door.  “Thank goodness you weren’t a kitten!”
            From that point on, Lucy and the fish were inseparable.  In the years to come, the fish survived many more accidental hardships, including a couple more dropped fish bowls, being accidently placed under a heat lamp and even an unexpected freeze when left outside. It didn’t help that Lucy insisted on taking the fish everywhere: show and tell, vacation, camp.  It had survived so many mishaps that Lucy began calling it “Fred, the Unkillable.”  When she got older however, and she learned that fish simply don’t live for that long, she began to suspect that her mother was secretly replacing her original fish with identical fish all along.  On a couple of occasions, she even found bags from the pet store lying around the house with receipts for new fish in them.  Lucy hid the incriminating evidence when she found it and tried not to let on that she knew.  Lucy never said anything about it to her mom even when she turned thirteen.  She just figured it made her mom happy to keep up the pretense.  It must have been a way for her mother to hold onto the innocence of her childhood just a little while longer.

But those receipts were for fish Maggie Miller secretly gave away to neighbors, coworkers and the children of friends.  Maggie gave away enough fish over the years people began to think she had an odd fascination for them, but Maggie Miller didn’t care for fish at all.  She only needed the bags and the receipts.  She left them around the house for her daughter to find every time Fred “miraculously” survived another calamity.  The truth was, Fred really was “Fred the Unkillable” and Maggie was prepared to do anything to keep her daughter from finding out the truth.  She just wished her daughter wasn’t so accident-prone.  Those fish were expensive.