Besides, he really needed coffee.

  The brew hissed and burbled atop the stove and while waiting for it to finish, Tyler found his thoughts being drawn inexorably back to his manuscript. This was some of his best work ever, there was no doubt about it. It rivaled the quality of his first few books, published so long ago to near-universal acclaim. And the unbelievable part—beyond the fact that he was writing again, which in itself seemed a minor miracle—was that the book just kept improving. The plot had been done a million times—zombies rising from mouldering centuries-old graves to accost the terrified citizens of an isolated town—but Tyler had a plot twist up his sleeve: The zombies were the good guys, fighting to save the unwitting humans from a killer biological virus.

  Tyler had written enough books to know when something was good, just as he had plenty of recent experience in writing complete crap. And this was good. Really good.

  He needed to get back to work. It was almost a physical sensation, an itching in his brain that would not go away until it had been scratched. It was the feeling a junkie might get when he began to fear slipping into withdrawal. He needed that high, and he needed it now.

  The coffee bubbled up into the clear glass top of the ancient coffeepot. It looked like it might be done, and Tyler realized he didn’t care enough to wait any longer. The book had to be written; it was calling him. He poured the steaming brew into the biggest mug he could scrounge and headed back upstairs to his office, where for once it appeared the cardboard boxes had not been touched.

  He reviewed the last couple of pages he had written, the work he completed after talking to Debra a few hours ago. He had absolutely no recollection of writing them but was amazed at the quality of the work. And then he began typing, continuing the story where he had left off. At first his fingers moved slowly, hesitantly, then they picked up steam and soon Tyler Beckman was typing madly, pounding the keys like a virtuoso pianist, once again disappearing down the rabbit hole, lost in his work.

  Tyler reached for the coffee mug, putting it to his lips and then nearly spitting it out in surprise and disgust. The coffee was stone cold. What the hell? He had brewed the stuff just minutes ago; how could it possibly have cooled in that amount of time? He glanced at his watch and froze, the coffee mug in his right hand suspended unmoving over his laptop while his brain attempted with no measurable success to process the information it was receiving.

  It was almost noon.

  7

  The Twilight Tavern had been in existence for as long as Tyler Beckman could recall. Some of his earliest memories were of driving down Main Street, headed to the Darkness Diner for Sunday breakfast, seated on his father’s lap in the family’s Honda Civic, manhandling the steering wheel for all he was worth in brazen defiance of all motor vehicle laws in the State of New Hampshire or anywhere else.

  Every one of those Sunday morning excursions—Tyler figured he couldn’t have been more than four years old at the time—took them right past the Twilight’s front entrance, worn and decrepit-looking even then. He remembered asking his dad once why they never stopped at that restaurant to eat and his father had laughed like the question was the funniest thing he had ever heard. “People don’t go there to eat,” his father had said. “They go there to drink.”

  Tyler had answered, “Well, I’m thirsty,” and at that his dad had laughed so hard he had to pull the car to the side of the road.

  Now Tyler walked through the very same entrance and saw most of the very same small crowd of people sitting in most of the very same seats they had occupied two nights ago when he was there with Brett. He thought back to all those years ago when he had driven past the Twilight with his family, a tiny child propped on his father’s lap, driving a tiny car, and wondered absurdly whether any of these people had been in here then.

  Hazy cigarette smoke drifted in layers throughout the dark room. Smoking was illegal in bars and restaurants in New Hampshire, but you’d never know it judging by the interior of the Twilight. Tyler took in the bar, looking for Debra, wondering how much she had changed since the day he bolted so long ago.

  He picked her out immediately. She was seated at a tiny round table in the back corner of the open room, sipping a drink, her steady gaze locked onto him. A cigarette dangled easily between her fingers, surprising Tyler. Debra had been vehemently anti-smoking when they dated, claiming it was a disgusting habit that did nothing but shorten your life and ruin your looks. He had no idea whether her life was being shortened, but it was clear the cigarettes had done nothing to lessen her natural beauty.

  Debra Gilbert was still striking. Tall and willowy, looking like the cross-country runner she had once been, her glossy black hair shone with a natural radiance that was apparent even through the cigarette pollution to which she was contributing. He waved, feeling stupid, and walked over to join her, knowing every eye in the place was tracking his progress. “I was hoping to beat you here,” he said, “so I could pull your seat out for you like a gentleman.”

  “Yeah? You’re way too late for that.” She breathed smoke out delicately and Tyler watched it curl up and away. Her comment could be taken in more than one context and he knew instantly he had made a mistake by coming. He hadn’t returned to Darkness Falls to meet up with old friends or to rekindle some stupid high school romance that was better left in the past. He had returned for one reason only—to exorcise demons that simply would not die no matter how hard he tried to ignore them. Only in doing that, Tyler knew, would he get his writing career back on track.

  “I—I’m sorry,” he mumbled, knowing he was repeating almost word for word what Debra had said to him on the phone last night. “I don’t think this is such a good idea.” He felt the pull of his manuscript calling from miles away and wanted nothing more than to be shuttered away in his second floor office in the home of his family’s killer, working in that strange trance-like state on the book that would bring back everything he had lost.

  Debra nodded. It seemed as though she had been anticipating his words. Her response came quickly. “You drove all the way down here, how about just one drink?”

  “I suppose.”

  Debra chuckled as Tyler pulled out a battered chair and sat heavily. The same young waitress he had tipped so generously two nights ago practically sprinted to take his order. “I’ll have a beer,” he said, “and please bring another of what my friend is drinking.”

  “On tap we have—”

  “—Doesn’t matter; anything’s fine. I’m not picky.”

  The woman turned toward the bar and Debra took a sip of her drink. “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”

  “No small talk, huh?”

  “It’s been eighteen years, Tyler. The time for small talk is long past, don’t you think?”

  “Fair enough,” Tyler said. “I didn’t tell you I was leaving because I knew I would never have had the willpower to go through with it if I tried to explain what I was doing to you. It was cowardly, I know.”

  “I would have gone with you if you had asked. We could have made a life together.”

  “Oh, Deb. I was a mess; I could barely function. You must remember what it was like after the murders. I could barely string two sentences together, I was so fucked up.”

  “That’s exactly the point, Tyler. I could have cared for you. That’s what people do for the ones they love.”

  “This is going to sound heartless Deb, and that’s not my intention, but I didn’t want to be cared for. I wanted to disappear; to find a tumbledown efficiency apartment in Manhattan and write. Just write. After my family was butchered it was all I could think about. It was the only thing I’ve ever been good at.”

  “You know, for a long time I hated you. I didn’t understand how you could treat someone you supposedly loved the way you treated me.”

  The waitress returned with his beer and Tyler nodded his thanks, waiting for her to turn her attention to another table before answering. He raised the mug to his lips and took a sip that ended up being a gulp, feeling slightly less miserable with the beer splashing down in his belly. “Yeah, well, that makes two of us,” he said. “For a long time I hated myself. I wished it had been me. Why couldn’t I have been home alone when Stowe came busting in with that fucking scythe? Why couldn’t he have taken the thing to me, sliced off my body parts instead of my mom’s and dad’s and…and Sam’s?”

  Debra watched him without speaking, her eyes reddening, the tears in them matching the ones in his. “She was just—”

  “—Fourteen. She was just fourteen, Deb, just a kid. She didn’t deserve what she got, she didn’t deserve to be chopped up like a fucking piece of hamburger by that fucking butcher, she didn’t deserve that. Nobody deserves that.”

  “Neither did you, Ty. You’re right; no one deserves that, and wishing yourself into her place isn’t healthy.”

  He laughed. It came out loud and brittle, nearly hysterical, and a few of the regulars raised themselves from their torpor long enough to shoot disapproving glances his way. “It isn’t feasible, either; if it was, I would have disappeared long ago. The fact is, Debra, I wasn’t good for you back then—”

  “—you could have let me make that decision—”

  “—and as badly as you were hurt by my sudden departure, you would have been hurt worse if I had stayed.” The tears he had somehow managed to keep from overflowing finally broke through the dam, streaming down his face as he hung his head and sobbed. He knew he was probably seconds away from being tossed out of one of the biggest dumps he had ever set foot inside—that would represent a new low he hadn’t thought possible—but just couldn’t bring himself to care.

  He felt a weight in his lap and Debra was there. She twisted around and took his head in her small hands and pulled it to her chest, her heart beating wildly as she hugged him, her warmth intoxicating, her body smelling exactly the same as it had eighteen years before. He hugged her back and then they were kissing, bodies pressed together, his hands roaming over the body he had once known so well, seconds from performing a frenzied sex show for the drunken bums who had seemingly spent most of their lives inside this stinking, broken-down bar in this stinking, broken-down town.

  A brisk tap on his shoulder reminded Tyler they were not alone. He reluctantly pulled his lips from Debra’s and turned his head to see the bartender, dingy off-white rag thrown over his shoulder, scowl creasing his leathery face. He might have been forty or seventy; it was impossible to tell. One thing Tyler could tell, though, was that the guy was pissed. “You think you’re in your fucking bedroom?” he demanded. “This is my place and if you can’t control yourselves, then you can get the fuck out.”

  Tyler weighed his potential responses. There weren’t many good ones. Before he could decide on one, though, Debra came out of his lap like a shot. She raised herself onto her tiptoes and got in the bartender’s face. She looked like an angry baseball player arguing with an umpire. “What the hell is your problem? This man has been through more than you could possibly imagine. He’s in pain.”

  “I know exactly who he is and what he’s been through, and I’m here to tell you he’s gonna be in a lot more pain if you two don’t stop acting like a couple of sex-starved teenagers. Now get off your horny asses and get the fuck out of my establishment, before I throw you out physically.”

  Debra’s face flushed bright red and Tyler knew things could get ugly quickly. His old girlfriend, normally quiet and reserved, had had one hell of a temper when they were kids and it was obvious that particular personality trait had not mellowed in the intervening years. He stood quickly, raising his hands in a calming gesture and positioning himself between the two, then reached into his pocket and fished out a twenty. He tossed on the table and grabbed Debra’s hand. “No problem,” he said softly. “We’ll be on our way. We’re very sorry.”

  “You’re going to be sorry,” Debra hissed, still clearly itching to take a shot at the bartender, who probably outweighed her by eighty pounds or more. Tyler pulled and prodded, coaxing her reluctantly toward the front door. The bartender watched, a satisfied smirk replacing the previous look of anger on his pudgy face.

  They burst through the door and into the night. It was warm for May but a light drizzle fell steadily. “Fucking asshole,” Deb mumbled.

  Tyler squeezed her hand. “Wanna finish our drinks at my place?” He wondered if she knew he was renting Rufus Stowe’s old house. If she had gotten his cell number from Brett it seemed unlikely his old high school buddy would not also have passed along that juicy tidbit, and he figured there was a decent chance she would turn him down due to the sheer creepiness of that fact alone.

  So he was surprised when she said, “Sounds great. Should I follow you in my car?”

  “No, I want you to ride with me. I’ll bring you back in the morning to pick it up.”

  “The morning? So I’ll be spending the night? Aren’t you taking a little bit for granted there, loverboy?”

  Tyler could feel his face flushing and was thankful for the piss-poor lighting the Twilight’s asshole owner provided in the parking lot for his customers. “Uh…yeah well, I just figured, you know, given what just happened back there…you’re right, I’m sorry for the implication.”

  Debra burst out laughing, the sound instantly taking Tyler Beckman back twenty years. “I’m just playing with ya,” she said. The wet gravel crunched under their feet as they walked toward Tyler’s car. “I’d love to spend the night if you want to have me. You remember how I said I hated you for a long time back there in the bar?”

  “I remember. That’s not the sort of thing I’m likely to forget, certainly not in fifteen minutes, and again, I’m so sorry for treating you—”

  Deb placed one finger on his lips and shushed him. She leaned up and whispered in his ear, her body pressed against his. “I did hate you after you left, Tyler. But I never stopped loving you; never. Not for one…fucking…second.”

  8

  A slash of brightness slanted like a knife-blade into the darkness of the master bedroom. Tyler had left the light on in the bathroom in the event Deb needed to get up while he was sleeping. She hadn’t seemed creeped out about spending the night in Rufus Stowe’s old home, but he knew things could seem much different in the inky blackness of an unfamiliar house at three AM. He’d been there.

  Beside him, Debra snored softly, sleeping on her left side in the fetal position, her bare ass just touching his hip. The sex had been frenzied; almost animalistic, and he smiled as he thought how right the Twilight’s owner/bartender had been when he called them a couple of sex-starved teenagers.

  But now, while he knew he should be exhausted after no more than a couple hours of fitful sleep in the chair at his computer last night, followed by a day of writing and a night of drinking and sex, Tyler felt completely the opposite. He was reinvigorated; feeling energetic rather than tired. And he could sense his manuscript calling out to him, the siren song of fiction drawing him in like it had done in the old days, when he was capable—hell, more than capable; compelled, really—of composing thousands of words in a single day.

  He pushed the covers aside and slid out of bed. Debra stretched, mumbling something softly that Tyler could not make out, and he waited to see if she had awoken but she remained asleep. He padded silently out of the bedroom and down the hallway to his office. His early years as a writer had been like this, too. Rising from a deep sleep at all hours, gripped by the compulsion to write, certain that if he did not continue the momentum he had established he would lose it.

  And it had worked, better than he had ever dreamed. From that crappy one-room basement efficiency apartment in Manhattan, Tyler pounded out his first manuscript in just a few months, cleaned it up, polished it and began searching for an agent, aware of the long odds he faced but undeterred by them. All he had ever wanted to do was write and he was doing it; so it didn’t even occur to him that he might not beat those odds.

  He smiled now, sitting in the gloom at his laptop. That stupid kid had had no idea how lucky he was, nor had he a clue how easily things could veer off-track. When you’re barely into your twenties, things that become plainly evident later on seem shrouded in mystery. Things like misplaced priorities, lack of self-control, and the harsh realities of a life lived in the glare of the celebrity spotlight.

  Tyler felt the familiar pang of regret wash over him. Then he bent down and began tapping the keys on his laptop. Within minutes he was gone, lost in his fictional world of horror.

  * * *

  The force of the fall jarred Tyler awake. The side of his head bounced off the hardwood floor and his vision blurred and then cleared. For a moment utter confusion reigned and then Ty realized that for the second night in a row he must have fallen asleep while writing. Yesterday he had somehow remained in his chair; this morning he hadn’t been so lucky.

  His eyes felt grainy, like they had been rubbed vigorously with medium grade sandpaper, and a throbbing headache at the base of his skull reminded him he really needed to begin keeping a more regular schedule. Bones aching, Tyler stood and yawned, stopping in mid-stretch to stare in bewilderment at his clothes, which were filthy. Dried mud fell to the floor in chunks off his jeans and hiking boots, joining what appeared to be dozens of tiny glittering shards of broken glass scattered all over the room.

  What the hell?

  Tyler slumped back down in his office chair, perplexed. Without a clue what else to do, he began to review his activities of the previous night. He had met Debra for a drink and taken her back here…Holy shit, Debra! He had come in here to write hours ago and left Debra sleeping in his bed. Was she still here? Was she all right?

  He ran down the hallway and careened into his room and there she was, still asleep on her side, the blankets pulled partially away from her naked body. Tyler shook his head, even more confused now. He had been wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt when he sat down to write; he was sure of it. He certainly hadn’t pulled on a pair of jeans and hiking boots after sleeping with Deb.

 

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