As I Die Lying (41 page)

“
So long, old pal,” I said,
but my words died in the snowscape. He might have been the first
serial killer in history who’d never actually killed anyone. But
let him have his delusions.

“
First Dickworm, now Little
Diddler. What the fuck is going on here, Richie?” Loverboy said. He
was flapping like a buzzard in a canary cage, rolling like a fifth
wheel, dangling like an imperfect participle.

“
Ultimately, we are each
responsible for ourselves,” I said. “All of them. That’s one of the
problems with being human and having free will.”

My legs kept moving, plowing toward the
mountaintop that was always just out of sight. I was a ghost
hovering beyond my meat. Now I knew how my Little People felt,
indentured servants to a mass of dust and energy. No wonder they
had always fought so hard for face time. No one likes to share a
house with selfish roommates who air dirty laundry all over the
place.

“
But I thought we were
supposed to be winning.” Loverboy sounded weak. “No fair. This wet
dream is frozen. My meat missile is an icicle.”

“
If you can’t stand the
cold, get out of the refrigerator,” said Mister
Milktoast.

“
Hey, fuck both of you and
the busted condoms you rode in on,” said Loverboy.

“
That’s the way the donut
crumbles, Biscuit Dick,” answered Mister Milktoast.

“
Bookfart set me up. When he
was getting us to join, he didn’t say anything about this part of
the deal. This
dying
part.”

I fell to my knees. My limbs were leaden,
painted with snow, sopped in the gravy of dusk. Night was falling
hard, a true night, with sharp edges and thick skin. White snow,
black night. I wished Bookworm were around to sort out the
symbolism.

“
Get up and go back,”
Loverboy said. “I promise I’ll quit being a wiseass. I’ll stop
calling you Dickwheat and Milkswish and all those other things.
I’ll be good from now on. I’ll even go celibate, just let me
live.”

“
Have we taken it far
enough?” I asked Mister Milktoast.

“
We can’t go back,” Mister
Milktoast said. “We could never be sure about the Insider. It could
be hiding in here, waiting. Maybe for years. When you let something
in your heart, it’s supposed to be forever.”

“
Good things are worth
waiting for,” I said, shackled in the cold cardiac arrest of
deepest winter and one of Beth’s lines that I should have trimmed
from the manuscript before it came to this. I struggled to my
feet.

“
He who laughs last, right,
Richard?” said Mister Milktoast. “Maybe you’re not a shellfish
oyster after all.”

“
Clam up,
Shrimp.”

I reached the final ridge of Widow’s Peak
where the trees were sparse and great gray boulders were strewn
like the toys of petulant chldren. I could almost see the top of
the mountain through the swirling snow.

“
Hey, Fuckwit, turn back!”
Loverboy screeched.

“
Back to what?” I said. “A
house with Beth and Mother in separate beds, where you could
ping-pong back and forth all night, bedsprings squeaking and
Oedipus rexing? Sorry, my lascivious friend, but that’s not my idea
of a bright shining sequel.”

“
Careful, Richard,” said
Mister Milktoast. “Anger and hate might bring the Insider back from
the basement.”

I stopped and stood swaying in the snow, the
breeze whistling its fatal lullaby. The blind beauty of the world
was, I now knew, a precious and brief gift.

“
Hate? No, Mister Milktoast,
I don’t hate. The past doesn’t bother me anymore. Because it’s
almost over.”

Loverboy gave up, twitched and died,
shriveled like a grape dropped into the sun of my love or maybe a
raisin stirred in cinnamon bun batter in some cosmic mixing
bowl.

“
Good riddance,” said Mister
Milktoast.

“
No, Loverboy was part of
us. Maybe not the best part, a part whose size he always
exaggerated, but nobody’s perfect.”

“
Let he who is without
skin—”

“—
cast the first snowball in
hell.” I was game.

“
The proof’s in the
pudding.”

“
And what the hell does that
mean?”

“
I don’t know. I’ve just
always wanted to say it.”

“
Your material sucks now
that you’ve lost Bookworm.” I fought through the knee-deep snow,
carrying the ghosts of everyone I had been. The Bone House was
nearly vacant. I realized I was afraid to be alone.

“
Mister Milktoast, you don’t
suppose...”

“
Yes, Richard?”

“
...that the Coldiron Curse
will live on? Or was that just one of the Insider’s little
illusions? Make the protagonist suffer to ensure he’s
sympathetic?”

“
Who knows, old
friend?”

“
And all the Little
People...even you, and maybe even me...all just made up for the
Insider’s amusement?”

“
Don’t talk yourself crazy,
Richard.”

“
Wouldn’t dream of it. Jung
at heart. I’m going to miss you.”

I stepped into vast whiteness. “Coming?”

“
Whither thou host,” Mister
Milktoast said.

“
Ouch. Must you always have
the final word?” I whispered, but there was no answer, because my
oldest and dearest invisible friend, my imaginary protector, my
inner child, had risen through the Bone House chimney like smoke
from a funeral pyre and joined the sky.

I would never reach the top of the mountain.
My legs were failing and my spirit was drained dry by the Insider.
I was numb to sadness, but I banked a small spark of joy for Beth,
for Mother, for the child that would have half my genetic material
and literary estate. Life was for the living and maybe this curse
would end with me.

I fell for a final time, and the shadows of
sleep rose. But the shadows cast no fear. During this sleep, no
boots would walk.

I knew the rules. You couldn’t tell the story
if you were dead, so something must live on.

A voice came from inside me, from that hot
ball of love that kept expanding and swelling and pushing back the
great dark universe.

“
I am what you have made
me,” a strange voice said, and I hoped the voice was mine and not
the Insider’s.

Then I realized it belonged to neither. We
were skins of a great ethereal onion, and acceptance was surrender
was forgiveness was victory. The door closed and the serpent
swallowed its own tale.

On the peaceful ridge of that frigid
mountain, as the snow covered me like a blanket and oblivion tucked
me in, all was forgiven.

I drifted off, dreaming of light: a painless
light, a cleansing light, a light that had no end.

“
Welcome to the Bone House,
Richard,” said the Voice.

Omniscient narrators. They think they know
everything. Fuck them.

I’m going to sleep.

THE END

###

About the author:

I have written 12 novels,
including
The Red Church, Speed Dating
with the Dead, Disintegration,
and
The Skull Ring
. I didn’t
write this one, but after Richard died, I decided I could steal the
manuscript and no one would be around to know the difference, even
though he writes worse than I do. I also started dating Beth, but
that’s another story.

Other electronic works
include
Burial to Follow
and the story collections
Ashes, The First, Murdermouth, Gateway Drug,
and
Flowers.
I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North
Carolina, where I write for a newspaper, play guitar, raise an
organic garden, and work as a freelance fiction editor.

Come to the Haunted Computer, become a Spooky
Microchip, and help me build my next book. You’ll also find writing
tips, free fiction, and survival tips.

Talk to me
at
mailto:[email protected]
,
“hauntedcomputer” on
Twitter
, or
hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com
. If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends and give
another Nicholson title a try. If you hated it, why not try another
one anyway? What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, and
what
does
kill you
is probably lurking in my next book. Read on for more.

You should read these other thrillers because
you deserve a strange, daring adventure:

THE RED CHURCH

Book I in the Sheriff Littlefield Series

By Scott Nicholson

Stoker Award finalist and alternate selection
of the Mystery Guild

For 13-year-old Ronnie Day, life is full of
problems: Mom and Dad have separated, his brother Tim is a constant
pest, Melanie Ward either loves him or hates him, and Jesus Christ
won't stay in his heart. Plus he has to walk past the red church
every day, where the Bell Monster hides with its wings and claws
and livers for eyes. But the biggest problem is that Archer McFall
is the new preacher at the church, and Mom wants Ronnie to attend
midnight services with her.

Sheriff Frank Littlefield hates the red
church for a different reason. His little brother died in a freak
accident at the church twenty years ago, and now Frank is starting
to see his brother's ghost. And the ghost keeps demanding, "Free
me." People are dying in Whispering Pines, and the murders coincide
with McFall's return.

The Days, the Littlefields, and the McFalls
are descendants of the original families that settled the rural
Appalachian community. Those old families share a secret of
betrayal and guilt, and McFall wants his congregation to prove its
faith. Because he believes he is the Second Son of God, and that
the cleansing of sin must be done in blood.

"Sacrifice is the currency of God," McFall
preaches, and unless Frank and Ronnie stop him, everybody pays.

Learn more about
The Red Church
and the
real Appalachian church that inspired the novel:
http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/redchurch.htm

DRUMMER BOY

Book II in the Sheriff Littlefield Series

By Scott Nicholson

On an Appalachian Mountain ridge, three boys
hear the rattling of a snare drum deep inside a cave known as “The
Jangling Hole,” and the wind carries a whispered name.

An old man who grew up at the foot of the
mountain believes something inside the Hole has been disturbed by a
developer’s bulldozers. Sheriff Frank Littlefield, haunted by his
own past failures, must stand against a public enemy that has no
fear of bullets, bars, or mortal justice. A local reporter believes
the supernatural mysteries are more than just mountain folk
tales.

On the eve of a Civil War reenactment, the
town of Titusville prepares to host a staged battle. The weekend
warriors aren’t aware they will soon be fighting an elusive army. A
troop of Civil War deserters, trapped in the Hole by a long-ago
avalanche, is rising from a long slumber, and the war is far from
over.

And one misfit kid is all that stands between
the town and the cold mouth of hell…

Learn more about
Drummer Boy
and the
Appalachian legend that inspired the novel:
http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/drummerboy.htm

THE SKULL RING

By Scott Nicholson

Julia Stone will remember, even if it kills
her.

With the help of a therapist, Julia is
piecing together childhood memories of the night her father
vanished. When Julia finds a silver ring that bears the name "Judas
Stone," the past comes creeping back. Someone is leaving strange
messages inside her house, even though the door is locked. The
local handyman offers help, but he has his own shadowy past. And
the cop who investigated her father's disappearance has followed
her to the small mountain town of Elkwood.

Now Julia has a head full of memories, but
she doesn't know which are real. Julia's therapist is playing
games. The handyman is trying to save her, in more ways than one.
And a sinister cult is closing in, claiming ownership of Julia's
body and soul . . . .

Learn more about
The Skull Ring
and False
Recovered Memory Syndrome:
http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/skullring.htm

SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD

By Scott Nicholson

A paranormal conference at the most haunted
hotel in the Southern Appalachian mountains . . . a man’s promise
to his late wife that he’d summon her spirit . . . a daughter whose
imagination goes to dark places . . . and demonic evil lurking in
the remote hotel’s basement, just waiting to be awoken.

When Digger Wilson brings his paranormal team
to the White Horse Inn, he is skeptical that his dead wife will
keep her half of the bargain. He doesn’t believe in ghosts. But
when one of the conference guests channels a mysterious presence
and an Ouija board spells out a pet phrase known only to Digger and
his wife, his convictions are challenged. And when people start to
disappear, Digger and his daughter Kendra must face the circle of
demons that view the hotel as their personal playground. Because
soon the inn will be closing for good, angels, can’t be trusted,
and demons don’t like to play alone . . .