Dead Men Prologue

Hey guys,

Got a favor to ask of you before we continue on with BOOGEYMEN.

I'm editing the text of the first ebook, PETER AND THE VAMPIRES, and I though I maybe should add in a bit to the first story, "Peter And The Dead Men."

The argument for: readers who are new to the story might not stick with the story 17 pages until the bad guy initially shows up. "Dead Men" is a bit slow to get started, what with Peter moving in and all. The new 3 pages are basically like a "teaser" in front of an X-FILES episode, showing you something creepy that will hook you until the main story really gets going.

The argument against: you lose a little more of Peter's uncertainty about whether Dill and GF are crazy, or if there really IS something out there in the garden. Might be a little confusing to the reader to be reading about "a boy" and "an old man" and not get any names until page 5 or 6. (Dill recounts the watermelon story to Peter in their first meeting.)

So, tell me what you think! Do I need the prologue or not? Good idea or not? Why or why not?

Thanks!


CHAPTER 1

There was something out in the garden, he was sure of it.

The boy watched from the roof of his parents’ one-bedroom house, where he sprawled out on the tar paper shingles.

Next door was the crazy old man’s place, a giant mansion straight out of a horror movie. Four stories tall, with beat-up wooden siding, shutters that hung halfway off their hinges, and mismatched windows of all shapes and sizes.

Behind the house was an overgrown hedge of roses that nobody ever trimmed.

And behind that was the garden.

The boy had been fascinated with it ever since his family moved in three years ago. The garden was an overgrown jungle of every type of plant you could imagine – corn, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, even strawberries – and was almost as big as a football field.

The boy had tried once to go over there and ‘borrow’ a watermelon. Five minutes later, as he ran from the field with a shotgun going off behind him, he had learned that the old man was as crazy as everybody said.

But there was something very, very strange going on with the garden.

The old man never planted anything in it, yet every year it bloomed with new life. He never saw the old man go out to pick anything from it, and yet the fruits and vegetables all gradually disappeared over the summer and fall.

And every night, there was something out there moving in it.

The boy had noticed it this past summer, when the plants were still green. At night, the corn stalks would sway and shiver. From the roof, he could watch the path of whatever it was make its way through the greenery.

And now that the plants were brown and dead, he could hear the soft shhhh shhhh shhhh of something moving out there.

Weeks of curiosity had built up in him. He was about to burst.

As much as he feared the old codger with the shotgun, he had to know what was out there.

Tonight was the night he was going to go see what it was.

The boy swung off the roof, into the tree on the side of the house, dropped to the ground, and made his way inside.

His two older sisters were screaming at each other from opposite sides of the bathroom door. (His mother was still at work at the diner, or she would have been yelling at them to shut up.) His older brothers were in the den watching TV. And his dad’s beer-soaked snores drifted out of a bedroom in the back of the house.

The boy crept into the den without being seen and stole his father’s cigarette lighter from the table by the couch. Then he ran outside.

He walked along the wooden fence that divided the two properties. On his family’s side of the rotting rails and posts were acres and acres of forest. The old man’s property extended far beyond the garden, but it was just rolling, moonlit fields as far as the eye could see.

The boy came up even with the garden, though it was still almost a hundred feet away from where he stood. He waited there in the darkness, watching the house for a sign…for any hint of lights in the windows, or a glimpse of the old man.

There was none.

He bolted across the field.

He hesitated at the edge of the garden and looked up at the cornstalks towering overhead. They were so tall…and the shadows between them were so dark…

He balled up his fists and plunged inside.

It was hard going, but he forged on anyway. He had been pushing through the dried-out husks of plants for almost a minute when he heard it up ahead:

shhhh shhhh shhhh.

The boy paused to listen, and strained his eyes to see. Even though the moon was bright in the sky, barely any light penetrated down into the maze of dead stalks.

He pulled out the cigarette lighter, an aluminum Zippo with a flip top, and popped it open. It took him three or four swipes of his thumb on the flint wheel, but he finally got it to light.

He stood there in the gloom, the brown cornstalks around him flickering in the glow of the orange flame.

Something touched his foot.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” the boy screamed.

He dropped the lighter and ran.

There was a crackling sound behind him, and everything began to get brighter. He realized as he hurtled through the dead plants that it was getting warmer, too…

He burst out of the cornstalks and turned around, huffing and puffing.

The entire garden was in flames.

The boy watched, mesmerized, as the fire spread in waves. Vines wilted and stalks blackened and smoke billowed into the air.

POOOM.

The boy flinched and looked around wildly. The sound was like a gunshot, but not as loud.

POOOM.

Bits of wet goop fell from the air and spattered on the boy’s blond buzz-cut. He touched it, grossed out at first. Then he sniffed his fingers, and finally licked.

Watermelon.

The watermelons were exploding.

POOOM! POOOM! POOOM!

This was the coolest thing ever.

“YOU! IDJIT!” thundered a familiar, gravelly, terrifying voice.

The boy almost peed his pants.

Actually, he did pee his pants.

But just a little squirt.

The old man was rushing from his house towards the garden, a scarecrow in a white shirt, grey vest, and tie. His dress clothes stood in stark contrast to his wild, overgrown beard.

In his hands was the shotgun.

The boy screamed and raced for the decaying wooden fence.

Behind him, the watermelons continued to explode.

POOOM! POOOM! POOOM!

The old man watched him go, made sure the little fool was safely in his one-story house, before he turned back to the garden.

Thirty feet away, a skeletal man in a long, black coat stood at the edge of the fire. Atop his head perched a tattered hat. His face was impossible to see, silhouetted as it was by the orange glow behind him.

He raised his arm slowly and pointed one single, accusing finger at the old man.

Then the black figure turned and walked into the fire, disappearing within the rows of swirling flames.


CHAPTER 2

Ten Months Later


Five days after leaving California, Peter Normal was about to see his new home for the first time.

He hated it already.

Peter sat in the front seat of his mom’s beat-up Honda, his forehead pressed to the window, and watched the small town of Duskerville go by. It was so different from what he was used to. A two-lane road that stretched through miles and miles of forest, broken occasionally by a farm or clump of houses. The actual town itself had seven blocks of shops, five stoplights, two grocery stores, and one movie theater. Peter knew this because he had counted them all.

Most of the storefronts looked old, like something out of black and white television shows. Leave It To Beaver or Andy Griffith. Not many people were out. A few men in short-sleeve shirts, a woman in a flowered dress. And a tall, strange man in a black suit and hat, with an ancient face and grizzled beard. Who was also carrying a pitchfork.

Curiously, nobody on the street seemed freaked out by that.

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