Knock Knock and Delphine Dodd reviewed

"Along with Brendan Connell’s The Architect, I rate Delphine Dodd as the best novella I read in 2012, and Knock Knock as the best book I read in any category."

Thanks to Peter Tennant for posting his Black Static 33 review of Knock Knock and Delphine Dodd at his delightful blog, Trumpetville.

ASTORIA is published today

In the aftermath of a shattering tragedy, Ethel Sanders flees her hometown of Skillute in search of a safe place where she can recuperate. She has discarded friends and family in a desperate bid for a new life, yet something is not right in the hideaway she's chosen. Strange images of the past pursue her, even in her dreams. Are they harbingers of the future, reminders of recent events, or her own, personal demons come to stake their final claim?

"Miskowski further enriches the all-too-real horror movie world of Knock, Knock with Astoria, a novella that is part Hitchcock, part David Lynch, and all Miskowski's distinctive, thoughtfully crafted, slow-burn literary terror." - Molly Tanzer, author of A Pretty Mouth

"S.P. Miskowski has been chronicling the mundane horrors of women’s lives – marriage, motherhood, family, and domesticity – through the lens of the supernatural since the publication of her Shirley Jackson Award nominated novel Knock Knock. Continuing with her related Skillute Cycle of novellas, Miskowski is unafraid to plumb the darkest impulses of the female psyche, and her gift for vivid characterization and naturalistic detail suffuses her fiction with a sense of frightening and devastating reality. In Astoria, a white-knuckle terror trip across the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, the darkness closing in on one woman’s desperate bid to escape the monster she birthed and the life she loathes becomes as palpable as the pages we’re turning; we can bolt the door and turn on the light, but in the end, Miskowski warns us, no matter what we do, our demons are coming for us." - Lynda E. Rucker, Black Static columnist and author of The Moon Will Look Strange

Astoria is available in print and digital editions.

Shirley Jackson Award Finalist: Delphine Dodd

"In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic."

I am happy to announce that Delphine Dodd, first in a series of three novellas related to my novel Knock Knock, is a finalist for a Shirley Jackson Award. It's wonderful news and I couldn't be happier.

Thanks to the jurors, and congratulations to all of the nominees! Here is the complete list.
 

NOVEL

    The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan (ROC)

    The Devil in Silver, Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)

    Edge, Koji Suzuki (Vertical, Inc.)

    Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn (Crown Publishers)

    Immobility, Brian Evenson (Tor)

NOVELLA

    28 Teeth of Rage, Ennis Drake (Omnium Gatherum Media)

    Delphine Dodd, S.P. Miskowski (Omnium Gatherum Media)

    I’m Not Sam, Jack Ketchum and Lucky McKee (Sinister Grin Press/ Cemetery Dance Publications)

    The Indifference Engine, Project Itoh (Haikasoru/VIZ Media LLC)

    “Sky,” Kaaron Warren (Through Splintered Walls, Twelfth Planet Press)

NOVELETTE

    “The Crying Child,” Bruce McAllister (originally “The Bleeding Child,” Cemetery Dance #68)

    “The House on Ashley Avenue,” Ian Rogers (Every House is Haunted, ChiZine Publications)

    “Reeling for the Empire,” Karen Russell (Tin House, Winter 2012)

    “Wild Acre,” Nathan Ballingrud (Visions, Fading Fast, Pendragon Press)

    “The Wish Head,” Jeffrey Ford (Crackpot Palace, William Morrow)

SHORT FICTION

    “Bajazzle,” Margo Lanagan (Cracklescape, Twelfth Planet Press)

    “How We Escaped Our Certain Fate,” Dan Chaon (21st Century Dead, St. Martin’s)

    “Little America,” Dan Chaon (Shadow Show: All New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury, William Morrow)

    “The Magician’s Apprentice,” Tamsyn Muir (Weird Tales #359)

    “A Natural History of Autumn,” Jeffrey Ford (Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July/August 2012)

    “Two Houses,” Kelly Link (Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury, William Morrow)

SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION

    Crackpot Palace, Jeffrey Ford (William Morrow)

    Errantry, Elizabeth Hand (Small Beer Press)

    The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories, Andy Duncan (PS Publishing)

    Remember Why You Fear Me, Robert Shearman (ChiZine Publications)

    The Woman Who Married a Cloud, Jonathan Carroll (Subterranean Press)

    Windeye, Brian Evenson (Coffee House Press)

EDITED ANTHOLOGY

    21st Century Dead, edited by Christopher Golden (St. Martin’s)

    Black Wings II, edited by S. T. Joshi (PS Publishing)

    Exotic Gothic 4:  Postscripts #28/29, edited by Danel Olson (PS Publishing)

    Night Shadows, edited by Greg Herren and J. M.  Redmann (Bold Strokes Books)

    Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury, edited by Sam Weller and Mort Castle (William Morrow)

This year’s awards will be presented on Sunday, July 14th at Readercon 24, in Burlington, Massachusetts.

FREE Kindle Edition of Knock Knock

This is the last FREE day for Knock Knock. Until midnight readers can download the Kindle edition of the novel for free.

"Along with Brendan Connell's The Architect, I rate Delphine Dodd as the best novella I read in 2012, and Knock Knock as the best book I read in any category."
Peter Tennant, Black Static

"Beautifully written and relentlessly suspenseful, it's a great book to curl up with on a cold winter's night. Just be sure to keep the doors locked and all the lights on!"
Lucy Taylor, The Silence Between the Screams

"With her distinct voice, Miskowski takes you deep into the back woods of America, where shadows chase you and people do the unthinkable."
Angel Leigh McCoy, Wily Writers

"...more than a great read; it is a fascinating meditation on the nature of horror. There are supernatural elements to the book, yes, but the setting (an impoverished, ruined logging town) and the main characters (three school girls with hopes and dreams made improbable if not impossible by their realities) are a beautifully rendered commentary on the cyclical nature of real-world human tragedy."
Molly Tanzer, A Pretty Mouth

KNOCK KNOCK Listed by Literary Darkness

Over at Goodreads, Robert Dunbar writes about the book discussion group Literary Darkness:

"LITERARY DARKNESS is a book discussion group on Goodreads with roughly two thousand members, many of them teachers, librarians and writers – passionate readers all. For three years, our knowledgeable and enthusiastic members have been analyzing and appreciating dark literature. This first annual list of notable books is in no way intended as an award, nor is it meant to be exclusive. Many wonderful books are out there, and we hope to read them all. Our goal is to help others discover them as well.

Some books become lights in the eternal darkness. What follows is a list of recommendations and commendations… combined with heartfelt thanks to the many fine writers who keep readers awake at night."

I'm happy to report that one of the books selected by Literary Darkness for their list is my novel Knock Knock. I couldn't be more pleased. Here is the complete list with categories and descriptions:

Fresh Blood:
These are new titles selected by the group for having made a considerable impact during the past year.

THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME by Donald Ray Pollock
THE DROWNING GIRL by Caitlin R. Kiernan
THE FACELESS by Simon Bestwick
THE FLAME ALPHABET by Ben Marcus
GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn
HABIT by Stephen McGeagh
THE HOARD by Alan Ryker
JOHN DIES AT THE END by David Wong
KIN by Kealan Patrick Burke
WESTLAKE SOUL by Rio Youers

Contemporary Titles:
These may be collections of short fiction or literary essays, anthologies or novels. All are from the (more or less) recent past and all are extraordinary.

THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE by Thomas Ligotti
THE HAIR WREATH AND OTHER STORIES by Halli Villegas
KNOCK KNOCK by SP Miskowski
THE LITTLE STRANGER by Sarah Waters
THE MARBLED SWARM by Dennis Cooper
A MATRIX OF ANGELS by Christopher Conlon
OCCULATION by Laird Barron
THE ROAD by Cormac McCarty
THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt
ZOMBIE by Joyce Carol Oates

Vintage Works:
Sometimes calling a book a Classic is like entombing it. Many readers would sooner pry open the lid of a coffin than peer between those musty pages. Often this represents a sort of tragedy. Many of these books seethe with life and emotion… and cry out to be read. These are amoung our favorites.

THE CASTLE by Franz Kafka
THE GOLEM by Gustav Meyrink
GRENDEL by John Gardner
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson
MCTEAGUE by Frank Norris
NARROW ROOMS by James Purdy
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde
THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA by Yukio Mishima
THE STRANGER by Albert Camus
TALES OF MEN AND GHOSTS by Edith Wharton

Buried Treasures
This is a list of titles, some celebrated, some obscure, that in so many ways evoke the finest qualities of literary darkness.

ICE AGE by Iain Rowan
KELLAND by Paul G. Bens, Jr.
THE KING IN YELLOW AND OTHER HORROR STORIES by Robert W. Chambers
LET’S PLAY WHITE by Chesya Burke
SOUTHERN GODS by John Horner Jacobs
STAY AWAKE by Dan Chaon
SUICIDE BLONDE by Darcey Steinke
SUSPICIOUS RIVER by Laura Kasischke
THE WASP FACTORY by Iain Banks
WORSE THAN MYSELF by Adam Golaski

Many thanks to Literary Darkness, Robert Dunbar, and Goodreads! I have a lot of reading to do.

The Next Big Thing: ASTORIA

Molly Tanzer and Lucy Taylor tagged me to answer ten questions about my latest writing project. The self-interview is part of The Next Big Thing, which is tearing around online at the moment. Over the past month I've been tagged by some delightful artists, including David Kempf, Carole Johnstone, and Kate Jonez. To these writers I say: Many thanks, and sorry it took me so long!


1. What is the working title of your book?

Astoria. Most of the book is set in Astoria, Oregon.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

One of the characters in my novel Knock Knock walked away at the end of a chapter, got into a car, and drove away. She was absent from the rest of the novel. After the novel was published I wondered where the character had gone. Did she end up in a city? How did she survive what she had experienced in the novel? From there a new story took shape in my imagination. So I climbed into the car next to this character and took notes.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

I leave it to the reader to decide if the book is psychological or supernatural horror.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Cherry Jones or Julianne Moore would be good as the central character, Ethel.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A grieving mother seeks refuge in a place she loved as a child, but is she safe or is she pursued by a ferocious entity that plagued her hometown for fifty years?

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Knock Knock and the three related novellas, including Astoria, are published by Omnium Gatherum Media.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Not long, but I'm still revising it! Say a prayer for me.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I wouldn't be brassy enough to compare it to these classics, but the book has themes in common with The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House, among others.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The central character haunted me until I gave her a book of her own.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

If you read Knock Knock and these novellas as a set, there should be a kaleidoscopic effect. The characters and ideas, across all four books, ought to create a large, complex, and mysterious world. I hope the experience will be both satisfying and disturbing.

So there you have it. And I am tagging Ennis Drake because he's on fire. Well, his fiction is on fire and you owe it to yourself to read his work.

Delphine Dodd - an excerpt

The crows acted like they owned the place. They didn't lift a wing to fly. They hopped and paced from branch to branch, casting shadows along deeper shadows in the cedars. They cawed to signal one another: Look here, a sight to see! Two of the feathered monsters, black eyes sparkling in the failing light, were bold enough to perch on a mound of earth on the other side of the narrow road, staring at us.

"How come they look at us like that?" Olive asked me.

"Don't be scared," I told her. "We probably woke them up. They're just curious."

I didn't know if this was true. I didn't know what a dozen crows might do on the spur of the moment. But, Olive was only eight, two-and-a-half years younger than me. So I thought I ought to say it. One of the birds, a fat sleek fellow balanced on a maple branch, cocked his head to the side and opened his beak wide but didn't make a sound.

"I'm not scared," said Olive.

Brave girl. Not very clever, but she had a stout heart.

Considering the hour and the amount of travel time, I decided we must be inland just north of the Columbia, and probably shy of the Cowlitz. I had dozed off during the last leg of our journey. When I woke up it was over. We had crossed the river by barge or by bridge, and I'd slept through it. I kicked myself for that. Now I couldn't tell for sure how many miles north of the Columbia we were. But we were certainly in Washington. Night was coming on fast. We would have reached the south side of the river long before nightfall.

What I knew for certain was that we were in a forest and it was after dusk. So we waited uncertain and quiet by the side of the road, ogled by inquisitive crows.

In those days I had long hair, which was black like my mother's and matched my eyes. I wore it in a braid with a blue silk ribbon. My dress was buttoned up close to the chin and I wore my coat for most of the trip. I felt better that way, especially when Mama made me sit next to John Dee while he drove. He had conducted this journey as he usually did, half-drunk and overconfident after a sleepover in a ratty, seaside hotel. But this time, instead of returning south to the rooming house in Eugene, he had driven us to this spot somewhere in the woods north of the Columbia River.

That day Mama had taken the front passenger seat and barely looked at us girls. I wondered why she was so quiet. She had stopped flouncing in her new silk dress and stopped complaining that it wasn't made for travel. She had stopped laughing. Her black bob was tucked smartly under a white scarf, and her lips were painted crimson. The fox stole John Dee had rescued from our landlady rested on Mama's left shoulder wearing a hopeless expression.

For most of the previous day she had sat in back with Olive and pointed out "landmarks of interest." All in the high, cheerful voice she took on whenever she started drinking John Dee's blackberry wine.

We had pursued bumpy, winding roads along the coast because Mama said the trip ought to be "special and scenic." We had stopped to admire the picked-over wreckage of the Peter Iredale, a barque driven ashore a few years earlier and trapped in the sand, her mighty masts hanging to one side, rotting away. As John Dee drove us east and away from the ocean, we had spotted warehouses and canneries where the workers packed salmon and sturgeon. We had seen enormous wooden fish wheels on the river, and John Dee remarked:

"Now there's the smart way to catch a salmon. Only a damn fool would hunt fish with a canoe."

When he said this he reached over and pinched Mama, who pushed his hand away. By then she had helped herself to a good supply of wine and was beginning to wind down and sulk. Olive took the opportunity to start singing an opera she had made up on the spot, until she caught a withering look from John Dee and decided to quiet down.

My sister was lighter than me, lighter in her skin and hair and eyes, but also her voice. She had what people called a musical voice. She was pretty but sort of soft and pudgy. She smiled too much, I thought, even when there was no reason to smile. I used to ask her, sometimes, what she was smiling about, but she would only shake her head and laugh. That made me mad. I still don't know why.

It had been a long trip. Two days of off-and-on drizzle and the usual mechanical trouble. Now my sister and I stood in the darkening border between the woods and the road, holding hands, waiting. Everything could change in a minute. We knew that well enough. Mama might shout out for John Dee to turn around. She might come back to fetch us, and swear that she would never leave again. This had happened twice the year before, in Portland and then Astoria.

The toes of our battered shoes lined up roughly along the edge of moss spreading to meet the muddy road. The night rain cast its sheen across the outer forest, trapping spots of moonlight in puddles. They glowed like paper lanterns between the ferns and cedars.

From the spot where we stood, the dirt road climbed gradually away. Then it snaked to the left and continued uphill. I couldn't see it any more but nearly a quarter of a mile off the automobile rattled its way into the night. The machine was a Tin Lizzie. Mama called it the Contraption. For weeks she had tried to wheedle the promise of a better vehicle out of John Dee. She had her heart set on something called a Crane Simplex, but I figured she would never get one, at least not to keep. John Dee and his friends were lowdown criminals, more talk than cash. Their money came and went like water.

Even after the sound of the Tin Lizzie died away, we waited. Finally Olive spoke.

"Is she coming back?"

"No," I said. Might as well admit the truth and let it bleed out. "Not this time."

Olive didn't cry. She never cried. She looked at me. I knew that if I showed no fear my sister would gladly stare down a rabid wolf. And who knew? There might be wolves in this place. There were plenty of crows. Wherever this place was, strung together out of moss and mud, scattershot with red alder and dogwood. Olive started to shiver so I put my arm around her shoulders.

Earlier that afternoon we had passed a clearing where the rippling light of the river had barely shown through the trees. John Dee had pulled over and stopped to relieve himself on a boulder. I marveled at that man's inability to simply pee on the ground like the other men Mama had known. He would hold out until he spied a tree or a rock or a fence he liked, and then he would announce his intentions and pull over, making a kind of ceremony out of the whole thing.

"Them girls don't know how lucky they are," he said over his shoulder to Mama as soon as he was done, because another part of the ceremony was to make conversation after the fact, while buttoning his trousers.

"That's enough," Mama told him. She sounded drowsy and far away.

"Listen, now," said John Dee. "Did you girls know your granny lives right down the road from a famous site?"

"You want to relieve yourself on that, too?" Mama asked.

John Dee never laughed at Mama's jokes, and this time was no exception. He finished buttoning up with one foot on the running board, and said to Olive:

"If your mama had stayed put she might've married herself a Kanaka and you'd be asleep in a little wigwam tonight, snug as a bug."

Mama had laughed then, a small snort that meant what he'd said was stupid but she didn't have the nerve to tell him outright. She played with the tiny blue silk purse she always wore around her neck. John Dee turned to me and said:

"Better say your prayers every night, little girl."

"Why?" I asked him point blank because I was sleepy and not thinking straight.

"So the river spooks don't get you, when they come creeping through the night. They crawl up from the river like Southern catfish, them Kanakas, crawl out of the water on their elbows, with mud all over their faces."

"There's no Kanaka around here," Mama said. And then she mumbled: "It's not even a Chinook word."

John Dee fixed his eyes upon her. This was the look that said they'd have words later.

Mama had stopped pointing out landmarks after that. Maybe she was too tired, too worn down by these men like John Dee who paid our way for months at a time. But in the years that followed I sometimes liked to think maybe she had a tiny regret, for her daughters, for the place where she was leaving us, even for the life she'd once led there herself.

In the end, all we had to do was turn around. Our grandmother's house stood only a hundred feet away, flanked by fir trees so tall we couldn't see the uppermost branches. The plank house was hoary, its walls weathered to green-blue and speckled with moss. We stared in the window like hungry cats. Inside, a cast iron stove gave off a glow all the way from the kitchen, inviting us away from the road, out of the night air and the spring rain and the calling of crows in the trees.

I hoisted the cloth satchel on my shoulder. The surface was damp. Everything we owned was packed into this small case, including the shortbread Mama had wrapped in a stained, embroidered table napkin she'd stolen from the last hotel.

We didn't have to knock. The front door, fashioned from soft wood and sporting weeds in the crevices, swung open before us. Into its frame stepped a figure unlike anyone I'd ever seen. For a second I imagined that the broad-shouldered woman with blue eyes and dark complexion had also grown from the mottled door.

Her dress was brown and she wore a faded cotton apron over it. The apron was stained with splotches of crimson, indigo, and emerald. Her shoes were slippers made of tanned deer hide. Around her neck she wore a tiny leather sack with a drawstring. On a ribbon she wore a single key made of dull brass. She was wiping blood from her hands with a damp cloth...


Delphine Dodd

Knock Knock

Knock Knock Nominee for Shirley Jackson Award

I'm happy to announce that my novel Knock Knock is a nominee for the 2011 Shirley Jackson Awards.

Congratulations to all of this year's nominees! It's a great list, and I feel honored to be included.

This book was both a challenge and a joy to write. Many thanks to the readers who have taken to heart my twisted tale of girlhood longing, friendship, and horror set in a small town in Washington state.

Note that the novel is available in digital form and in paperback. My publisher is Omnium Gatherum Media. The cover design and illustration were created by artist Russell Dickerson.

Knock Knock

Something evil has come home.

Wicked Wednesday Ebook Giveaway

For the next 24 hours the digital edition of my novel Knock Knock is free. You do not need a Kindle to read the novel. You can download a free Kindle application from Amazon, then order Knock Knock and read it on a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Blackberry.

"Beautifully written and relentlessly suspenseful, it's a great book to curl up with on a cold winter's night. Just be sure to keep the doors locked and all the lights on!" - Lucy Taylor, The Silence Between the Screams

"With her distinct voice, Miskowski takes you deep into the back woods of America, where shadows chase you and people do the unthinkable." - Angel Leigh McCoy, Wily Writers

"Knock Knock is a well-crafted, understated novel that manages to combine the elements of supernatural horror and the stresses of growing up brilliantly. Miskowski’s writing is almost Lovecraftian in the sense that her dark forces are unseen, but nevertheless quite powerful and frightening." - Sean Levin, She Never Slept

At the center of S.P. Miskowski's novel-length fairy tale are three restless girls, best friends stuck in the backwater of Skillute, Washington in the late 1960s. Their neighbors and families are petty or poor or both. They warn the girls not to wander into Skillute's dense forest; something evil lurks there, people say. The girls are not convinced. During a playful oath, they wander too far into the woods. Their mistake unleashes a malignant spirit that terrorizes Skillute for the next fifty years.

If you read Knock Knock consider writing an honest review at Goodreads, LibraryThing or Amazon. Happy Wicked Wednesday!

Audio First Chapter of KNOCK KNOCK

 

Knock Knock - Chapter One (The Girls)

Cover design & illustration by Russell Dickerson.

Happy Valentine's Day - an excerpt

Beverly lied. She told her mother she was going with Marietta and Ethel to see a movie. They did this every so often. Either they walked to the movie theater in Kelso or begged a ride from Aunt Constance and went to the Longview Theater, which was much nicer.

Today Beverly explained that they were planning to have lunch and see The Way We Were, which seemed safe enough to Mrs. Sherman until she heard from a friend that it was pro-Communism. Beverly swore to her mother that they would see Paper Moon instead, and that she wasn't going to see The Exorcist with Constance as a chaperone. She swore on a bible at Mrs. Sherman's insistence and in imitation of her gravely dramatic expression.

Lunch and a movie would be about three hours. That would be enough time, by Beverly's estimation. She didn't know for sure. She had never done this before, snuck off to the woods with a boy she liked.

He was new in town. His name was Oliver, a very odd name for a boy in Skillute. It sounded uppity. That was the first thing Beverly had noticed, right after she noticed Oliver's shaggy brown hair. He had the kind of hair that would make Beverly's father ask, in his bear-like, old-fashioned way, if he was a boy or a girl. Beverly was dreading this pathetic joke so much, she was afraid to invite Oliver to her house. She was also afraid that Oliver would find her home small, overcrowded, and tacky. He would see her mother's collections: a cluster of dolphin-shaped Avon bottles in the bathroom, a pile of ceramic poodles on a shelf in the hall, and the Robert Goulet albums next to the RCA stereo in the living room.

As far as Beverly was concerned Oliver had every right to be uppity. His family came from back east, as far away as New York and New England. That was almost as good as being from Europe. His mother was a Daughter of the American Revolution, a fact that Beverly found impressive. Her mother didn't know what D.A.R. stood for, and her ignorance further convinced Beverly that it must be very high toned. What her mother knew was how much property cost. She estimated at a glance that Oliver's parents occupied the most expensive house in Skillute.

"Rolling in it," Mrs. Sherman had said more than once. "That's what they are. Look at the marble lions next to their front gate. That house looks like a library, or a courthouse!"

Oliver had already completed the books on the current list at school. He seemed bored in class. He would often get a dreamy, faraway look as though he knew a much more interesting place, where he'd like to be.

Beverly's mother said she had been "itching for trouble" for a long time, ever since she turned fourteen. Beverly wasn't sure what that meant. The way she saw things, she was simply on the alert for the unusual. She bought clothes without her mother's advice, and paid Ethel's aunt to alter them for her. Ever since the Christmas when she caught her mother sewing fake Casual Corner labels into her school dresses Beverly had known that the adult world was treacherous and not very bright. Women with children were the biggest liars of all.

She wanted authentic, unique things, or nothing. She was finding that the more outlandish something seemed to the people she knew the more likely it proved to be valuable. Like caviar and fondue. Her father had never heard of fondue. He thought it was a country near Sweden. Beverly found his ignorance shocking, especially since he had served in the Navy during a world war. How could he travel all the way around the world and learn nothing?

This year, to top off the list of things that disgusted Beverly, all the boys in her class were learning to spit. It was their favorite pastime, spitting. She couldn't imagine ever being in love with or married to one of these lumbering, tongue-tied, saliva- and tobacco-spewing boys.

Oliver always nodded and watched her expression closely when she talked. He was the only boy at school who did this. The others grunted and looked past her like they were waiting for someone else to show up. They only looked at her when she walked away.

Beverly longed for a boy to fall in love with her, a boy or a man, someone who wasn't a singer or a character on a TV show. She wondered what it meant to be swept away. She had seen movies where men swept women up in their arms, but that looked made-up.

She couldn't get advice from her friends. They knew nothing about seduction. Ethel still had posters of David Soul and Michael Parks in her bedroom, and she lit candles and looked up at them like a little girl. Marietta was more grownup but in a watchful, silent way that sometimes gave Beverly a chill.

Nowadays Marietta's aunt kept her out of school whenever she felt like it. She used the girl as an assistant but didn't pay her much. The only money Marietta was allowed were tips for providing gullible people with what Delphine Dodd called her intuitions.

Of the three, Beverly decided, Ethel was the lucky one, despite her immaturity. Since her crazy mom and dad had died in a fire that almost killed Ethel too, she had been living with her dad's sister. Constance Burney ran a tailor shop in their home. She was quiet and patient, bland in her views, a teetotaler and a Republican. She never discussed politics or religion with anyone, because she said these subjects were in poor taste. She taught Ethel to sew, a trade she could use anywhere. Aunt Constance was even saving up to send her to the community college for a year of fashion and costume design. After that Ethel could probably get a job in Vancouver or Portland. She could leave Skillute if she wanted to.

Beverly sighed. She had often dreamed of her meddling, messy family going up in smoke. When she was nine years old she had written a solemn story about a nine-year-old who murdered her dull parents and loudmouthed siblings and burned their bodies in the fireplace. The heroine had eaten dainty cucumber sandwiches from a silver tray while the considerable layers of fat crackled and sizzled in the glinting fire.

She practiced a bereaved expression, just in case. She could see the black silk dress and hat she would wear to the funeral, both designed by a famous French woman. Beverly's teacher pronounced the woman's name "Shah-NEL." Beverly's mother mispronounced it "Channel." Beverly had seen the perfect black dress in a magazine next to a monthly column by Mademoiselle Chanel, who was a genius on the subject of what women ought to wear. One rule of thumb was to make sure your hemline wasn't too trendy. It was supposed to match your age. Mademoiselle Chanel said: If a man laughs when he sees a woman climbing out of a car, her skirt is too short.

Oliver held out his hand to help Beverly. They followed the ivy-covered incline and walked for a quarter of a mile until they reached a patch of cedars. The woods here were spotty, strewn with weeds and dead branches, dotted with the brittle spines of devil's club, the shrubs starting to die off.

Only a year earlier one of the big companies had come through and pulled out most of the Doug fir for timber. Now it was nothing like the place Beverly remembered. Only a slim ring of fir and cedar leaned rakishly between busy residential roads and the freeway. She recalled the silence of the place, above all. It wasn't silent here. The traffic sounds were softened but not shut out.

"Here we are," said Beverly, looking forlornly at their destination.

She felt sweaty. She brushed away the perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand. She had once seen an actress on Here Come the Brides do this and she still thought it was a very feminine thing to do. She wished she had worn lace gloves.

"So this is the spot?" Oliver asked, grinning. He stood with his arms crossed and looked around at the forest, then back at Beverly.

"I think so."

"You and your friends used to play here when you were little?"

"Not exactly," said Beverly. "We kind of took an oath."

"Really?" Oliver smiled.

Now it all seemed ridiculous. How many years had it been since she had seen this place? She wasn't sure. It might have been two or three years, but it seemed like more. She remembered the fire, and saying some words they had memorized. She remembered the lipstick and the white shoestring she had stolen from her mother that day, and running from the fire.

"Do your mom and dad have hair like yours?" She asked, anxious to change the subject.

"I guess so," he told her.

"What does that mean? You know what their hair looks like."

"Not really," he said. "I'm adopted, so, you know?"

She had never met anyone who was adopted. Orphaned or abandoned to relatives, yes, but adopted by another family? That was a story she had only seen on TV, along with babies left on doorsteps or deserted and raised by wolves in the wild. She felt an overwhelming pity for Oliver that made her want to kiss him.

"That's so sad," she told him.

"Why?" He asked. "My parents are okay. My dad's rich."

"But your real mother gave you away."

Beverly winced. She hadn't meant to say this so bluntly.

"Please," said Oliver. "She was probably a junkie, or some other type of criminal. We don't talk about it. Anyway, I got lucky, believe me."

Beverly sensed the weekend traffic on the main road flashing beyond the fringe of cedars to her right: A quick, bright light in her peripheral vision.

A memory flooded her senses. She inhaled the fragrance of cedar. Underfoot she now saw the remains of wood shingles. Some of them were smashed to bits. She smelled smoke, turned, and flinched when she saw Oliver.

"Hey!" He said. "Everything okay?"

She stepped closer, placed one hand on his chest and kissed him. He laughed.

"What?" She asked.

"That's, um," he shook his head.

"Yes?"

"Did you know you were standing on one foot when you did that?"

Against all of her will, her face flushed hot pink. She had only kissed mirrors and pillows and a few doors and the back of her hand. She had kissed these objects the way she imagined romantic kisses. Now with a flash of self-loathing she realized her pose was ridiculous.

"I didn't mean it like that," Oliver told her. "It was kind of cute."

She wanted to retch.

"Very cute," he said. "It's all right."

He kissed her. His lips were dry and his breath smelled like grape bubble gum. She was about to tell him that she was joking before, but he kissed her again. This time she felt his tongue, warm and slippery, gliding between her lips. His tongue wiggled against the roof of her mouth.

He put his arms around her and pulled her close. She felt a tingling in her chest and between her legs. It crossed her mind that she might be starting her period, and she blushed again. Before she could decide what to do Oliver pressed against her and gently guided her to the ground. He lay on top of her. His sweat smelled clean like salt water.

She didn't like having her dress bunched up around her hips. Or his wet tongue stuck inside her left ear. She forgot these annoyances when he licked the palm of his hand and reached inside her panties.

"Uh!"

"It's okay," Oliver whispered in her still-wet ear.

It wasn't okay. He was slathering her, down there, with his spit, with the saliva and mucous from his mouth. So this was the part of lovemaking they left out of TV shows, the part no one was allowed to see. Whatever it was, Beverly didn't care for it, but she was too mortified to say anything until she felt Oliver's flesh as he shoved his way inside her. This burned so much that she almost cried out, but she was afraid to scream or cry. She was afraid that if she started screaming Oliver wouldn't stop. Then what could she do? At the same time she was afraid he would laugh at how pathetic and ignorant she was. He would tell everyone at school that she had never even kissed a boy before.

So she clenched her teeth and closed her eyes. She concentrated all of her strength on the darkness behind her eyelids; the quiet darkness where Oliver's grunting didn't nauseate her and the perspiration from his neck didn't swipe across her chin every time he heaved his body against hers.

A few minutes later Beverly sat up. She was sitting on the ground looking up at the trees. Oliver gave her a peck on the cheek. Then he put his hand on top of her head and stroked her hair. He smiled. In the next moment he was trudging away, taking the path they had used to reach this pitiful, balding patch of woods.

She didn't watch him go. She smoothed her dress and took a compact out of her purse. In the mirror she saw that the thin layer of lipstick she had applied that afternoon was smeared on one side.

She was sore and she didn't want to move. Her mother would worry if she didn't come back soon. She had to get home before anyone came looking for her.

She forced herself to stand, then to walk on legs that felt like they had springs instead of bones. She smoothed her hair and her dress again and took a few more steps, watching the ground to avoid stumbling. She saw a stone sticking out of the ground and stooped to pick it up, just to see if it hurt to do so.

Her fingers grasped the stone, which now appeared to be a shell. Only when Beverly held the object closer and turned it over did she realized that it was a jawbone, darkened by fire or paint. Tiny and delicate, it was also unmistakably human, with a crooked row of teeth small enough to belong to a child.

She stood in the dappled light, gazing at the strange memento. Slate in color, it was so smooth and clean it looked as though it had been polished. She gently wrapped the jawbone in a linen handkerchief and placed it inside her purse next to her compact.

Continued...

Free Ebook Today

For the next 24 hours the digital edition of Knock Knock is available for FREE.

"Beautifully written and relentlessly suspenseful, it's a great book to curl up with on a cold winter's night. Just be sure to keep the doors locked and all the lights on!" - Lucy Taylor, The Silence Between the Screams

"With her distinct voice, Miskowski takes you deep into the back woods of America, where shadows chase you and people do the unthinkable." - Angel Leigh McCoy, Wily Writers 

Cover design and illustration by Russell Dickerson.

Knock Knock is Published Today!

I am delighted to announce the publication of my supernatural horror novel Knock Knock by Omnium Gatherum. This is a wonderful day. Help me celebrate by taking a look at the book. Try a sample. If you're looking for a spooky good read on a long winter's night, this might be the novel for you.

Happy holidays!

S.P.

 (Book cover design and illustration by Russell Dickerson.)

She Never Slept reviews KNOCK KNOCK

Today the first extensive review of Knock Knock appeared at She Never Slept. Thanks to SNS and to reviewer Sean Levin for a close read and a generous review.

"Knock Knock is a well-crafted, understated novel that manages to combine the elements of supernatural horror and the stresses of growing up brilliantly. Miskowski’s writing is almost Lovecraftian in the sense that her dark forces are unseen, but nevertheless quite powerful and frightening."

Read on.

Knock Knock: On a Long Winter's Night

My supernatural horror novel Knock Knock began a few years ago on a long and sleepless winter's night. We were visiting family in a small town in Washington State. We stayed with my husband's grandmother Karolee, a woman of infinite wit and practicality. Before we finally stopped gossiping and went to bed, she reminded us not to worry if we heard gunfire in the middle of the night.

"Those boys were shooting, one night, up the road."

"Why?"

"Oh," she said. "The heck if I know. I bet they didn't know why."

Late that night, while Karolee slept in her room at the other end of the house and my husband slept soundly beside me, I had insomnia. I could hear every settling wooden beam, each acquiescent grunt of plumbing, but especially the shrubbery that kept scratching the wall outside.

Beyond the bedroom window lay woods, the quiet road, the ink-black darkness I recalled from childhood visits to my aunts and uncles in rural Georgia. Those tales of rivalries, bodies found in abandoned wells, old friends who decided to murder one another, moonshine-running cousins pursued by demons through the Blue Ridge Mountains. If you drew a curtain indoors at night and looked out, the sky was so black you could see only your reflection in the window.

Alone with my thoughts, I wondered: What of this life in the deep, dark woods, where the male neighbors let off steam with beer and rifles and ammo? Where does a woman fit into this place, and what are her thoughts late at night? This wasn't a foreign world. It was my background and my husband's, one of the things we have in common. I could have married a guy with a pickup truck and a gun rack. Easily. And I wondered what my craving for life outside of that world would drive me to do.

I wrote all night. Characters came into being, and their desires intersected and became the first inkling of plot. Some of the characters were observed and some spoke for themselves, at first. It would take an effort to make them fit into one coherent narrative. Naturally, I observed all of these mechanics after the fact. That night I simply wrote everything that occurred to me.

Some weeks later, back in our Seattle apartment with cats and microbrews and takeout food, we watched a Thai film based on a centuries-old legend: A young bride is left at home by her beloved husband, who is recruited and sent into battle. The bride is inconsolable. She feels desperately lonely, living in a village of strangers with no allies, and she is pregnant. Her yearning is so great that it consumes her.

At last the husband is injured and is sent home. He returns to his wife, who has given birth. They live happily ever after--until their neighbors, who keep avoiding the young bride, tell the husband that his wife and baby are dead, that they died during childbirth, and he must look at his wife from outside their home to see what she really is.

If you like ghost stories, you see the appeal of this disturbing legend. It has served as the basis for dozens of stories and films.

I began incorporating a modern version of the tale into my story of longing and grief. Eventually I allowed it to change shape and meld with other elements of my novel. Yet the tale's illusions and the pernicious spirit that will not let go of what it desires, even in death, informed every aspect of Knock Knock. The book follows several women as they try to invent satisfying adult lives, despite the neglect and violence in their childhood and in the world around them.

For a long time I kept trying to marry this story to an odd fact about the place where my husband grew up. For decades no female children were born there, all the women were old or had married into the families on the all-male road. I did eventually build this into Knock Knock but not to the extent I originally intended.

Many drafts have taken shape and have been built up, pared down, and then reshaped. Many new and creepy ideas have found their way to this town that was, in early drafts, called Baldwin. It is now Skillute, Washington: a dying forest, and home to the discontented women of Knock Knock.

Welcome.

Knock Knock - Chapter One

The Girls

At first the spell was nothing but a game designed by little girls. As far as they knew, it was only of interest to the three of them. They never imagined what they did that afternoon would matter to anyone else.

For most grownups in Skillute, Washington in the late 1960s few events rose in significance above the routine of work, Sunday worship, and the weekend six-pack. The prospect of someday joining this world of quietly unhappy adults made the three girls long for useless adventures.

They were awkward, slender, average height, age eleven to eleven and a half. They came up with the idea to swear an oath against having babies after another girl, whose mother was overdue with twins, whispered a few mortifying details of the pregnancy while they slouched in the darkened back row of their classroom during a hygiene film.

"For two whole weeks Mama hasn't moved off of the couch. Just sits there all day breathing."

The girl affected a ragged intake of breath.

"Grandma brings her ice chips soaked in Budweiser."

"Why?" Ethel asked.

The storyteller was poor, her green-plaid cotton dress threadbare at the collar and cuffs. After each question she grinned before doling out another bit of knowledge, savoring the discomfort of her audience.

"That's to stop the pain when Mama's gums bleed. They get so raw they break open and her mouth fills up with blood. Then she's got to spit into a cup."

"Sick," Beverly whispered.

"All she does is cry and tell Grandma these twin babies are a curse, and if she could she would cut that man from Wenatchee."

The girl wrinkled her nose. She held her hands up in a loose circle around her neck.

"Mama's ankles are this big around. She can't sleep at night, and she can't wear shoes because her feet are all swollen up."

Mrs. Coffey shushed the class from her dim corner at the front of the room, near the chalkboard. A few silhouettes moved restlessly in the flickering light. The girls ducked lower in their seats.

"Her hair kept falling out of her head until she was bald except for one patch on the side."

"Did it grow back?" Beverly asked.

"Yeah," said the girl. "But now there's hair on her stomach, too, like the fur on a dog's belly."

"No!" Ethel said.

The girl nodded: It was true.

"Grandma shaves it off, but it grows back thicker every time."

"I've never heard of that," Beverly said.

"Doctor says it's pretty common," the girl informed them.

Now Ethel and Beverly turned to Marietta, whose aunt was a midwife and a fortune-teller. They waited while Marietta made up her mind to speak.

"Some pregnant women grow hair in places they didn't have it before," she said solemnly. "That's true."

A shiver ran through the group. All turned their attention to the film screen at the front of the room, where a young woman with pigtails was demonstrating the proper way for a lady to wash her hands in a public bathroom.

The conversation had its effect on all three girls. Later that day, during lunch break, Beverly announced:

"I'm not ever going to have fur on my stomach. That's not even human."

She sniffed disdainfully and picked at her bracelet, turning over each miniature charm until all the painted shamrocks faced outward. The bracelet accentuated a single stroke of pink polish dabbed on each of her nails.

"We're doomed," said Ethel.

All three girls looked down at their untouched sandwiches on the cafeteria table: Egg salad, peanut butter with grape jelly, liverwurst. Knowing what they knew about the world and what it held in store for them had ruined their appetite. They could only sigh and stare at the food with jaded smiles. They were considering never eating again.

"I'm telling you both right now: I won't let my ankles get bigger around than my whole neck!" Beverly said. "That's never going to happen. Never."

Her determination inspired the others. They nodded and, just like that, it was decided.

"How can we make sure we won't have babies?" Ethel asked.

Both girls turned once more to Marietta. Her seriousness, her violet eyes and the lank, black hair framing her face gave her a dramatic air that would have prompted teasing if most of her classmates weren't afraid of her.

"We could have an accident," she said.

"What kind of accident?" Ethel asked.

"No," Beverly interrupted. "I'm not doing that. Come on, Marietta, doesn't your aunt know something we can take, or do? Something that doesn't hurt."

"Maybe there's a way," she said. "Sometimes women ask my aunt for a remedy. That's after the fact, though. This is different. I'll have to look it up in the spell book when she's out of the house."

The other two exchanged a sly look. Marietta went on:

"We can swear an oath. If we use the right spell, it might work."

"Might?" Beverly said.

"It's my aunt that's got the healing power."

"Well, that's no good," said Beverly. "She won't help us."

"If we all say the oath and if we use blood, it could work."

"Blood?"

"A spell is the most powerful when it uses the woman's blood," said Marietta.

"She means from your period," Beverly explained to Ethel.

"I know that," said Ethel. She paused and then admitted: "I don't have any."

"I don't either," said Beverly. "And Marietta?"

Marietta shook her head. No. Not yet.

"But that's the point," Beverly said. "We have to take the oath before this thing gets us."

"You're right," said Ethel. "Once we start to bleed, we can have a baby any time. Then we might as well be dead."

They were silent for a moment.

"What can we do?" Ethel asked again.

"Well," Beverly began. "What if we cut our fingers for blood, and say the oath somewhere that's got its own power, a secret place?"

"In the woods?"

"That's all I can think of," said Beverly.

Ethel looked away.

"Don't be a sissy," Beverly told her. "Miss Knocks is just a fairy tale. If the place has any power it's only because people believe it. You don't believe in a fairy tale, do you?"

"No."

"Then it can't hurt you. On the other hand, if you swear an oath and you believe it, maybe it comes true."

"You think so?" Ethel said.

"Why not?" Beverly said. "It's the power of positive thinking."

Marietta considered this and said: "I'll look up the spell as soon as I can."

The kids outside this tiny social circle considered Marietta strange, if not dangerous, and they kept their distance. Her mother was long gone. Nobody could say where. The girl never knew her. Her aunt was Delphine Dodd and they lived in a bungalow near the railroad tracks.

Delphine was old, thin as a spindle, with black eyes that sparkled like obsidian. Her house reeked of weeds and incense.

Local women paid Delphine for potions, herbal remedies, and spells. They also asked her to tell the future. Women found their way to Delphine if their family doctors were too expensive or too likely to say no to what they wanted.

Most of Delphine's remedies were cheap. Sometimes they were unnecessary. The ailments women brought to her door varied, but only a few of them were actually sick. Some of them felt they had married badly and they were too ashamed to go back to their families. Others worried that they were too old or ugly, and would never be loved by anyone. Some of the women married men who beat them or cheated on them. After having a sympathetic older woman dote on them for a few hours with hot tea and incantations and the fragrance of rose-scented candles, most of the heartsick women felt better. Naturally Delphine had a good number of regular clients.

The herbal recipes and charms came to Delphine through a long line of midwives. She had practiced these arts since she was a child, even younger than her niece. She could offer any one of hundreds of spells from longevity to fertility, spiritual cleansing, enhanced memory, and more restful sleep. Each spell was accompanied by an herbal formula.

Readings were a different matter. Delphine didn't charge people money to tell their fortune, she said, because that would be the wrong thing to do. Her clients gave her tokens of appreciation. Her predictions only came true about half the time, yet she had a reputation for being reliable. The women who consulted her tended to believe what came true and forget the rest.

Marietta inspired gossip at school with her stark appearance and because people wondered how much of her aunt's gift she inherited. It was rumored that Delphine used the girl as an assistant in even the most delicate procedures, but no one ever confirmed this by admitting they had consulted the midwife to end a pregnancy. Whether it was true or not, grownups regarded young Marietta with wariness and children were careful not to insult her to her face.

One story at school was that the weird girl with lavender eyes had made a grease fire break out at Jessup's Diner just by staring at the kitchen door. On another occasion she had blinked at a passing lumber truck and its load of maple logs had come tumbling down onto the road.

By fourth grade no one spoke to Marietta except Ethel and Beverly. Being friends with her was the most mysterious part of their lives, the only thrilling and spooky thing they knew aside from Dark Shadows. They swooned at the prospect of anything different, even frightening, if it seemed glamorous. They wanted to be part of something darkly romantic and beautiful. Barring that, something peculiar would do. Marietta and her strange pedigree would do.

Beverly was soft looking and perfectly groomed, but not truly pretty. Her nose was a bit too long and her lips were a bit too thin. She sensed that she would never be naturally feminine, and she was learning to be content with excellent posture and an enviable wardrobe. She spent a lot of time choosing and matching accessories. She coveted nice dresses and trinkets. She was becoming a snob about it. She would soon be mortified to discover that her mother was secretly stitching Casual Corner store labels into her blouses and dresses, each piece of clothing home-sewn according to a McCall's pattern.

Ethel's appearance was only mentioned when she was compared to her mother, and then people sighed and said it was a shame. Too bad, they said, she didn't have her mother's pale blue eyes or honey-colored hair. Too bad she didn't stand up straight. Too bad she dragged her feet when she walked. Too bad her fine-looking mama Shirley was mostly known for the men she drank with, loggers and timber buyers and passing salesmen. She wasn't picky about the men or the booze, and it was commonly assumed that her husband wasn't Ethel's real father.

The second bell rang. A few students loitered in the cafeteria. The girls scooped up their uneaten sandwiches and headed for the double doors. As each passed, she tossed the dreaded lunch into an aluminum trashcan and turned away with a mournful expression.

Marietta was as good as her word. By mid-week she had secured the information they needed.

That Friday after school they crossed the deserted kickball field in single file. They clambered up a wide incline clotted with ground ivy and then hurried on. They had to hike for a quarter of a mile, slightly more uphill and slow going across the darkening floor of the forest.

Finally they reached a stand of old growth where they could no longer see the outer edge of the woods. They couldn't hear the intermittent traffic that led north to the freeway. There wasn't even a thin break in the encircling Douglas fir and red cedar. The bracken was heavy here. They picked their way carefully through nettles and twigs to a small clearing and looked up at the motley ceiling.

All around lay a quiet part of the forest the girls had never seen before. They had only heard of it as the background to fairy tales about Miss Knocks. People said she walked here late at night. Miss Knocks with her long arms reaching up into the trees to pull children down to the ground. Miss Knocks chasing kids out of the woods, scooping them up in a pillowcase and hauling them away into the night. She was part of the folklore everyone in Skillute knew. Part myth, part fireside tale, Miss Knocks kept children wondering and watching shadows, at least until second or third grade.

The girls claimed they were too grownup for these tales. Yet they had chosen this location for its promise of dark magic and secrecy. Now in the shadows of the forest they suddenly felt the restless stirrings of fear. They were too stubborn to say so, but they were anxious to be finished and on their way home.

It was mid-October. The forest was several degrees cooler than the outer world. The girls began buttoning their bulky sweaters by the time they had settled on the exact spot.

"I'm cold," Beverly grumbled. "How long will this take?"

She pulled a white beret out of her sweater pocket, put it on her head and tweaked it to one side.

"Let's get started," Ethel said.

"Did everyone bring a piece of string?" Marietta asked.

They opened change purses and lunchboxes and scrambled in pockets. Finally each girl produced a string.

"Come on, let's say the oath," said Beverly.

"Does your string come from something that belongs to you and only to you?" Marietta asked them.

"Yes," said Ethel.

"It has to belong to you, for the spell to work," said Marietta.

"Of course it's mine," said Beverly. "It's a shoestring from my old sneakers. I don't wear them any more. Does that matter?"

"No," said Marietta. "It can be something old. But why is it so clean and white?"

"I washed it," Beverly said and made a "tsk" sound with her tongue.

"Why?" Ethel asked.

"I'm not taking an oath on a dirty old shoestring."

"What's yours?" Marietta asked Ethel.

"It's a strand of rickrack from one of my dresses. Doesn't fit any more, so I pulled this off the hem."

"Good," said Marietta. "That's good. My string is a silk ribbon."

She held up the black silk for them to see.

"That's pretty," said Beverly. "Are you sure you want to waste that?"

"If the spell works, it isn't wasted."

"Okay. Okay. Can we start? I'm freezing! Can't we hurry up?"

Beverly stamped her feet in place.

"You've got to do this right, or it won't work," Marietta reminded her.

"Probably won't work anyway," Beverly said. "If I have to stand out here in the woods for a while, we have to have a fire. It's too cold. My knees are bumping together!"

They agreed to light a small fire to get them through the ceremony. The sky had darkened steadily. Now it verged on a downpour. But in this patch of the woods the trees had been untouched for more than a century. They bowed in and laced overhead. There wasn't a sliver of pure sky between the branches undulating, entwined above.

Ethel crouched to clear a spot in the dirt. She pushed back fallen leaves, and made a face when she accidentally scooped up a banana slug. She scraped her hand clean on a moss-covered trunk then picked the stray dots of moss from her palm.

"Hurry up," said Beverly. "What should we set on fire?"

Ethel sighed and shook her head. Beverly always had the grand ideas. Then Ethel and Marietta had to figure out how to make them work.

"Well?" Beverly asked. She was wearing a layer of lipstick she had surreptitiously applied after school. That morning she had swiped the tube of Coral Pink from her mother's pocketbook.

"Okay," said Ethel. "Over there's a pile of wood chips."

Ethel had spied a fallen branch lying atop and partly concealing a nest of cedar shingles. She hopped over the broken logs and helped herself to three shingles that seemed intact. She had to shake off dirt and beetles. Then she slapped away a bit of moss stuck along the edge and placed the shingles in a rough triangle in the space she had cleared. She was about to start rubbing sticks together when Beverly reached into her pocketbook and produced a Zippo lighter.

"Where did you get that?" Ethel asked.

"None of your business," said Beverly.

The girls crouched, and Beverly popped the lid on the Zippo. She flicked the thumbwheel and held the flame against the corner of the cedar shingles. Once the flame took to the edges the girls leaned in and blew on the shingles to keep them going. At last the girls stood and gathered around the meager fire.

"Now what?" Beverly asked.

"Now take this pin," said Marietta.

She held a straight pin between two fingers, pinching it carefully to avoid being burned, and barely touched it to the fire. Then she stood and pricked her index finger with it.

Ethel and Beverly winced at the sight of red-black blood forming a liquid pearl on the tip of Marietta's finger. Before they could say anything she ran her finger along the black silk ribbon. After the ribbon absorbed the drop of blood she handed the pin to Beverly, who drew a sharp breath and pricked her own finger, then touched the shoestring with it. Ethel did the same with her piece of rickrack.

"Do as I do," said Marietta.

She took the black ribbon now and tied two knots in it. Then she crouched and dug a fistful of dirt from the ground, placed the ribbon in the hole she had made and covered it with the dirt. Beverly, who was still shivering from the cold, quickly tied a single knot and buried the shoestring.

"How many knots did you make?" Marietta asked her.

"What difference does it make? A knot is a knot, right?"

Ethel considered this. Then she tied four knots in the rickrack and buried it. When she finished the other two were staring at her.

"Might as well be safe," she said.

"Why?" Beverly said. "You think a squirrel might dig up your rickrack and untie it?"

"You shouldn't make fun of the spell," said Marietta.

"You should hurry up," said Beverly. "Say the oath and let's get out of here."

In turn each repeated the oath they had spent most of the week writing:

"On my soul and by the name of Miss Knocks in the heart of these woods, I swear to never let another one such as myself issue forth from the sacred temple of my body."

Each girl, in turn, grinned at this bit. They were a little embarrassed by the word "body" in relation to themselves, but they were also proud of the time they'd spent writing the oath. They had stolen phrases from TV shows and from books at the school library, combining them into a speech that was impressively solemn when spoken on a cold afternoon in the gloomy woods.

"By all that is sacred to me, I will keep this vow until my whole life is over and done."

Ethel was the last of the three to repeat the vow. Despite the density of the canopy overhead one raindrop fell through, cold, plump, and glistening, onto her face as she began. It quivered there, broke, and ran down. She looked up with a grimace. The raindrop coursed the length of her neck and dribbled inside her cotton dress. High in the trees there was a pattering rain, but it would take time to soak through the canopy.

Marietta broke the circle, jumped and turned around. She looked over her shoulder and stared off into the shadows.

"What?" Beverly asked. "What happened?"

"Did you see it?"

"See what?"

The other two stared at Marietta. Beyond the dark layer of leaves, above the branches and debris swaying over them, the blackened clouds moved and thunder rolled in. The clouds seemed to jostle and murmur overhead. Beverly's voice broke through the rumbling sound:

"Fire!"

Several leaves had blown flat against the small arch of cedar shingles and stuck there. Catching the flame and then dislodging, the leaves tumbled across the forest floor, conjuring a thin corridor of smoke as they rolled. The girls stamped their feet at the leaves outside the circle, but it only stirred up more smoke.

"We can't put it out!" Ethel screamed.

A clap of thunder made all of them jump.

"The rain can put it out," Beverly said. "I don't care. Let's go!"

"Rain's not even touching the ground here," Marietta said.

Beverly wasn't listening. She turned away from the other two.

"I'm late for supper! Let's go!" She yelled.

She leapt free of the encircling smoke and darted off through the woods, back the way they had come. Ethel and Marietta went on stamping at the dirt and leaves, burying the shingles with a shallow pile of dirt. They kept scratching their ankles and calves on stray nettles as they worked. The smoke rolled up around them, making it hard to breathe.

Ethel peeled off her sweater and began swatting the ground with it. She took a step following the flames, and another step. Bundling her pitifully charred sweater, she pressed it against a clot of weeds at the base of a cedar and held it there while smoke rolled out underneath. When it seemed that the fire was extinguished she lifted the sweater. Something on the ground caught her attention, and she poked at it with a twig. Then she let out a cry.

Marietta crowded next to her and peered over her shoulder. Both girls gazed down at what was unmistakably a slender, blackened jawbone protruding from the earth in the spot where Ethel had chased the fire. Like tiny hematite chips several crooked, human teeth jutted from the bone. Neither Ethel nor Marietta moved.

Finally Ethel said:

"Who do you think it belonged to?"

Marietta shook her head.

"I don't know," she said. "Could be really old. Maybe there was a cemetery here, or a logging camp. Or it might be a Cowlitz relic."

"Should we take it?" Ethel asked.

Marietta shook her head. She pushed some leaves and dirt over the jawbone and patted them into place.

"No. Whatever was buried here ought to stay put," she said. "Leave it alone."

Ethel hesitated.

"It's a bad sign, Ethel. Leave it alone."

The smoke was rising once more and shifting in the air around them. Smoke shimmied out of the leaves under their feet. Everything seemed to be moving at once. Every scrap of the forest shuddered. More leaves were starting to smolder. A spark shot up from the cedar shingles and Ethel screamed:

"We have to go!"

They ran, with thin fingers of smoke winding upward in the woods behind them. They tore through ferns and shrubs that cut their legs. Back through the fir trees and undergrowth, across the leafy floor grasping at their ankles, down the ivy-covered incline. Marietta slipped and fell on her backside. Ethel scooped her up under both arms and pulled her the rest of the way. They hit the kickball field running.

"I have to go home! My aunt's going to be mad if she finds out!" Marietta shouted.

Then she took off and left Ethel standing on the muddy field. The sky split open, tearing like a sheet, letting the rain down. Ahead of Ethel, across the field, Marietta turned and called to her through the torrent. Ethel couldn't hear the words. She could only see Marietta's mouth gaping.

Ethel looked down at her mud-spattered dress and the charred sweater hanging, sodden and ruined, from her right hand. Marietta shouted again. This time her high, keening voice cut right across the field:

"Don't tell anyone!"

Marietta turned away and Ethel took off running. All the way home she practiced what she would say if her mother questioned her about a fire in the woods:

"Must have been lightning split a tree, but I wasn't there, so I don't know."


(To continue, you can buy the novel in a paperback edition published by Omnium Gatherum. Something evil has come home.)
 

Knock Knock

My supernatural horror novel Knock Knock is now available for Kindle:

With cover design and illustration by Russell Dickerson.

At the center of this novel-length fable are Ethel, Beverly, and Marietta, best friends stuck in the backwater of Skillute, Washington. Their neighbors and families are petty or poor or both; but when these townies warn the girls not to wander into Skillute's dense forest, they mean it. Something evil lurks there. The girls are not convinced. They wander into the woods, and their mistake unleashes a malignant spirit that terrorizes Skillute for the next fifty years.

Something evil has come home.

Knock Knock

The Kindle edition is $3.99. You can read a sample for free, then buy the book if you like it. Guaranteed to cost at least one night of sleep. Happy horrors.