Terminal

Edgar has six more months till he’s out. On the wall, he’s got a short-timers’ calendar. Every morning when he wakes up, he marks off the days until his release by putting a big, black X through them.

I started a short-timers’ calendar too. Started it right after I got back from breakfast, in fact, as soon as I heard about John. I haven’t cried yet for my friend, because I think I’ll probably be seeing him soon. It won’t be Jesus coming for me. I think it will be the voices, the voices that John said he heard. The ones that I heard too. The sharp, cruel little voices. I remember Sherm, right after he’d killed Dugan. He was shouting at something to shut up and get out of his head. I think Sherm knew the voices well. I think they’d been whispering to him for a long time before we even met him.

I just crossed off a day on my short-timers’ calendar. I don’t feel good at all. I’m weak, and I’ve started losing weight again. My throat hurts and the headaches are back, along with the nausea. Last night, I got a nosebleed while I slept. My pillow was crusted with dried blood this morning. I have cancer. At a very advanced stage. It’s growing, growing at an alarming rate. It’s terminal.

The court sentenced John to ten to fifteen years in prison. He was eligible for parole in eight years, but he got out much earlier than that. I was sentenced to a term of not less than fifty years and not to exceed my natural life. That’s not much time. Not much time at all. It’s a death sentence.

There’s only one thing left for me to do. In a little while, I am going out to find myself. If I should get here before I return, please hold me until I get back. Please hold me until I get back.

Please— hold me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BRIAN KEENE is the two-time Bram Stoker Award winning author of several novels and short story collections, including The Rising, Fear of Gravity, No Rest For The Wicked, and City of the Dead (the sequel to The Rising). His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, and several of his novels and short stories have been optioned for film. He has also edited several anthologies. He lives somewhere on the border between Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Insanity, where he spends too much time writing, walking his dog, pulling bank jobs, and drinking tequila. He enjoys planning crimes with his readers. Contact him at www.briankeene.com.

Other Books by Brian Keene:

THE RISING

CITY OF THE DEAD

FEAR OF GRAVITY

NO REST FOR THE WICKED

NO REST FOR THE WICKED REDUX

NO REST AT ALL

TALKING SMACK (audio book)

4X4 (with Geoff Cooper, Michael Huyck & Michael Oliveri)

As Editor:

BEST OF HORRORFIND

BEST OF HORRORFIND II

Be sure not to miss

THE HOLLOW

the next exciting novel from

Brian Keene

Coming from Bantam in Summer 2006.

Read on for a special preview . . .

THE HOLLOW

On sale in Summer 2006

It was on the first day of spring that Big Steve and I saw Shelly Carpenter fucking the hairy man. Winter had been a hard one. Two books to write in five months’ time. Not something I recommend doing, if you can help it. There was a lot of pressure involved. The sales of my first novel, Heart of the Labyrinth, caught my critics, my publisher, and even myself by surprise. It did very well— something that a book of its kind isn’t supposed to do, especially a mass-market paperback with no promotional campaign behind it.

So, flush with success, I quit my day job— only to learn that I wouldn’t be getting a royalty check for at least another year. We’d already blown through the advance: mortgage payments, car and truck payments, new living room furniture for my wife, Tara, and a new laptop for me. Plus, I’d spent quite a bit of my own cash traveling to book signings.

If I’d had an agent, maybe he would have explained that to me. Or maybe not. Personally, I’m glad I don’t have an agent. They require fifteen percent of your earnings, and I was broke. I could have gone back to work at the factory, but I figured that if I applied myself to the writing, I’d be making about as much money as I would at the factory anyway, so I decided to follow what I love doing.

Tara still worked, insisting that she pay the bills while I stayed home and wrote, but we couldn’t survive on just one income. Thus— two more books for two different publishers in five months’

time, written just for the advance money, which would see us through the winter. Nice chunk of change, but when you totaled up the hours I was working, the advance for the next two novels came out to about a buck eighty an hour.

But we needed the money.