I was searching my mother’s bookshelves for a particular ancient paperback. Her books are mostly romance or romance-adjacent, so the cover reveals led to reminiscing about the eras of fabulous painted covers and boring floral covers that didn’t even give us fabulous painted stepbacks.
One anomaly, however, prompted a very different reaction.
Obviously, there was no way I could skip further investigation of what the cover promises is Rosemary’s Baby meets Cats: The Movie.
Before I get into this, I want to make it clear I grew up reading Eighties horror. I scored a hardback of Cujo in a yard sale haul when my age was still in the single digits. I had an older brother who was allowed to check horror out from the library, and I devoured all those books before they went back. I had a young, cool English teacher who loaned me horror from her personal collection. I periodically revisit my favorites now, so the prose style prevalent in Eighties horror isn’t a violent shock to my modern sensibilities. I have experience, and nothing in the following literary analysis can be blamed on “product of its time.”
The Good
The rape on the second page isn’t graphically depicted. This is likely because the author is incapable of graphically depicting anything, but we take the wins where we find ’em.
That concludes this section.
The Bad
We’d be here for years if I stopped to nitpick every minuscule thing, but indulge me for 30 seconds.
The woman died giving birth, as it was planned.
Two lines later:
She had delivered twins; as it was planned.
Had the copy editor already checked out by the third page? “Comma, semicolon, who cares? Not like anybody will know the difference in 40 years.”
“I’ll na’ hav’ no more of that talk in this house, woman. The royal messengers hav’ said that nonsense is to cease.”
Are people out there pronouncing the “e” in “have” so that it’s possible to contract it? I’ve read some “Scots dialect” where they drop the “v,” but even those writers spare you the apostrophe.
Copy editing hat off now, before it overheats and sets my hair afire. Or afir’, as it were, apparently.
Quick headcount of women in the first 5 pages: One raped and impregnated, died in childbirth and tossed in the river to be eaten by crocodiles. One enlisted to nurse the twins, killed after two months and tossed in the river to be eaten by crocodiles. One threatened with a beating if she doesn’t put dinner on the table stat. I choose to believe this is like me writing a swear within the first 2 pages of every book: Don’t whine about this tendency later. You were warned at the beginning!
A nurse at an orphanage in 1915 critiques the fashion of an orphan who shows up on the stoop as “out of style twenty-five years ago.” Orphans these days are so gauche. Show some self-respect and wear trendier rags, damn you!
All that is in a multipart prologue. Now we’re on to the story proper.
I hoped the distant, omniscient POV of those expository passages would stay there and we would now move closer to the characters embroiled in the plot. Alas. I don’t expect to be plugged in for a full vicarious experience in Eighties fiction (the ongoing trend toward “deep” POV developed later), and I was prepared for head-hopping (being treated to the perspective of any character whose perspective is convenient, regardless of their importance to the scene, which many authors I won’t read still do to this day). Low as my expectations were, they were too high.
The characters are stick figures. They get a name and a role. Thoughts are confined to “his son was a young man; junior at the university,” “a tone to his voice both brother and sister knew only too well,” and “the son and daughter knew the father would not tell them what it was.” They have no interior.
They also don’t have much exterior. They aren’t physically described at all (which my aphantasia doesn’t mind but my history of being yelled at by every editor to add more description does). In 4.5 pages, 4 characters wink 3 times, grin/smile 6 times, and laugh/chuckle 6 times. The Father has a newspaper, but no one else is given a prop. In fact, I assumed they were at the dinner table because The Mother says “we just finished supper,” but on closer inspection, there is absolutely nothing in the text to indicate what room they’re in. Whatever room it is, in their own home, no one has anything to do. They’re just sitting around staring at The Father while he reads his paper, the patriarch’s dutiful audience.
The scene (which takes place in 1985) begins with The Son asking The Father, “What were you doing in 1965?” Three pages of wink/grin/laugh and empty familial dialogue transpire before he repeats that question. The answer:
“In ’65, son, I was with the FBI. Five years later I got shot and put out to pasture. I came back home to Ruger County and joined the Sheriff’s Department. Then I ran for sheriff. To my surprise, I won. The rest is history.”
Exceed the scope of the question much? There’s a character in the Austin Powers movies named Basil Exposition, and I’m convinced The Father is secretly he.
“No way, Mother,” the just-turned-seventeen year old said. “This is getting good in here.”
“Yukk!” the mother said.
These people have names. But because we’re not in anyone’s POV, they’re not referred to like a person would think of them. Not by name, not “his wife” or “her mom.” Rather than write, when the character was first introduced, Carrie, just turned seventeen, grimaced or Carrie, with the long-suffering air of the newly seventeen, grimaced at her father’s attempt at humor, the information gets crammed into a dialogue tag well after the reader has filled in the “daughter” blank on their own. I don’t “picture” things, but her dialogue sounded about 12 to me, so “she’s 17, actually” created conceptual dissonance. The dialogue is so bad across the board that I can’t be sure she was intentionally infantilized, but strong side eye, given the prevailing winds.
Then we get several pages of straightforward exposition about Ruger County, Virginia, fit for a Chamber of Commerce brochure: “a very serene place to live and raise a family.” This local history takes pains to mention, in two different places, a “colossal bore” who “could rot a fence post” and is, of course, a woman.
The next fashionista is a miner/engineer in a dark cave:
The girl’s dress was tattered and torn and filthy. And out of style. Years out of style. It was really no more than rags hanging from her slim body.
Ring, ring, it’s 1965 calling. They want their raggedy ol’ dress back, cave orphan.
If I’m tasked with dating a child’s dress from most of the 20th century, the main distinguishing characteristic has to be the type of fabric because there’s not a wild difference in styles, and checking the tags for fiber content is frankly not my priority when I find a kid in a cave! “Rags” sufficiently communicates “old.” The random fashion expert isn’t less weird the second time.
And, uh, “her slim body”? Not scrawny, starved, or underfed, but “slim”? Aggressive side eye. I’m calling it now: This 9-year-old is going to try “seducing” some poor, innocent man before the end of this book.
He thought he heard laughter, very hollow-sounding, very evil. Demons filled his mind. They were horrible.
Are you viscerally terrified? Yeah, me too.
Hark! We have a physical description of The Father/Basil Exposition/former FBI/sheriff, well after his initial appearance:
Dan Garrett stood up, stretching his lanky frame. Now on the shady side of middle age, the man could still wear the same size jeans he wore in college. He exercised several times a week, but could not do much jogging, since the bullet that knocked him out of the FBI had shattered a knee. After several operations, he limped only when tired. He ran fingers through salt and pepper hair—and rubbed the beard stubble on his face.
She took a cleansing breath and reminded herself these characters have no POV and can’t be blamed for the timing or ham-fisted nature of their descriptions and inexplicable em dashes.
In a decently written book, that bum knee would be foreshadowing. This is page 36 of 412, and I feel confident, based on what I’ve read so far, that knee will never be relevant. If I’m wrong, I’ll own it. Big if, though.
During a 1-page phone call, the caller calls Dan by name 3 times and Dan calls the caller by name 3 times. How many times in 1 minute do you typically address a single person by name? It’s like this guy has never heard other human beings speak in real life and also has never watched TV or movies or read books to get an idea how dialogue is written. Every line of it is excruciating.
He forgets his gun when he leaves the house. Foreshadowing? (Spoiler: He didn’t need it.)
Sheriff Dan Garrett, not known for being a profane man, startled the RN standing nearby when he blurted “But the man looks like a fucking mummy!”
He’s a clean-mouthed man with values! Also spoken aloud in the presence of other people by Sheriff Dan Garrett, who is not known for being a profane man: “Anybody leaks this, and I’ll have his or her ass, roasted and served up.” “Hell, what am I saying?” “Who in the hell are you?” “But Jesus, it’s going to be a goddamned circus around here when the press is informed.” “I don’t give a good goddamn what you like or dislike!” “The hell you don’t!” “You have five seconds to get your goddamned hands off me.” “Well, goddamnit, they’ll let me in.” “Why in the hell did he wait until seven o’clock at night to report it?” “Moore can’t do jack-shit.” “Damnit!” “Goddamn you, don’t tell me what to do in this county. Get your ass out here so I can see you.” “But damnit, why be so hush-hush about it?” “‘Cause I’m damn sure going to lift the lid off this stinking, slimy, wriggling, cover-up can of worms.” “Get your goddamned ass out of my house.” “Of course, I realize that doesn’t mean a damn thing.”
Get used to being told one thing and shown another. If you can’t accept both as true depending which way the wind blows, you must be a COMMUNIST.
Dan is also trying to break the habit of cracking his knuckles. Plot relevant or random self-insert? We’ll see.
Doctor Goodson sat looking at the table top. Doctor Ramsey sat looking at Doctor Goodson. Dan stood over the medical men, looking at both of them.
…
Goodson looked up at the sheriff.
…
He looked startled for a moment.
Don’t mind me, just sitting here trying to imagine getting away with the primary verb on a page being “look.” Repeatedly. The worst romance author published in the Eighties was required to be 20 times better than this.
He began screaming in his unconsciousness.
Either somebody here doesn’t understand “unconsciousness” or the horror that occurs off-page transcends the limitations of insensate flesh. Which could it be?
There is so much barfing. A doctor sees a couple of dead bodies and barfs. A guy with a nasty arm wants to puke about it, twice, and the cop who finds him “felt like tossing his supper.” The insurance investigator “lost his breakfast.” An FBI agent walks into the bushes and vomits on the ground. The Sheriff himself “almost lost what was left of his supper.” One woman “mentally fought her stomach’s urge to rebel.” A group of intrepid gunslingers almost get “sick to their stomachs.” Either this man has no other ideas for expressing “gross” or vomiting is a side effect of contamination by the ancient cursed funk. WHICH COULD IT BE?
“Did you know, my good fellow…”
“My word, you certainly are testy this evening.”
Enter the only distinguishable character! Mike, a wealthy college boy who speaks like an Elizabethan history professor and is studying archaeology against the wishes of his stuffy parents, which is why he so conveniently knows all about little-known ancient Egyptian cat-girl cults, which he proceeds to infodump about.
He knew Mike was only putting the needle to him.
No, Mike’s many talents don’t include being a tattoo artist. That’s just how all college juniors said “needling” in 1985!
Lycanthropy is a form of insanity in which a person imagines himself to be a wolf or other wild beast. The second definition is the assumption of the actual form of a wolf by a human being.
I wish this had been clunky dialogue. One character who’s not known to be prone to profanity asking “What the fuck is lycanthropy?” and a possessor of that information defining it would actually have been an improvement over the author butting in to define lycanthropy like horror readers are unfamiliar with werewolves.
“Then impound it,” Dan said. “And cover it carefully before moving it. I don’t want anybody who isn’t directly connected with this investigation to see that car. Hell, what am I saying? I don’t have to tell you the drill.”
He said, after telling him the drill. Why would you not stop at “car”? Why are you adding an “as you know, Bob” in the one place you’re not telling someone something they clearly must know already?
There, the cat found jeans and underwear and shirts and tennis shoes that would fit its counterpart.
About damn time that girl got some modern fashion! Bonus: Kids are still wearing those things in 2025 with no sign of stopping. She could probably hibernate in a cave for another hundred years and not have to worry about being bullied about her clothes when she emerges!
“Who in the hell are you?” Dan questioned the young woman.
“Mille Smith,” she replied.
“Shit!” Sergeant Langway muttered.
“The Mille Smith?” Quinn asked.
All present, with the exception of the youngest Virginia trooper, knew all about Mille Smith.
The Joan Wilder?
First of all, “Who in the hell are you” is the first line of the scene. There is no other context. That’s just Mr. Sheriff’s greeting to a random woman. Real cordial welcome to this serene community.
Second of all, these dudes in rural Virginia, in 1985, pre-internet, where it’s noted in the text you have to have a satellite dish to get TV from the Big City, know all about this woman because why?
Mille was very pretty, very shapely. She was tanned, with short brown hair and dark eyes. She had won a Pulitzer at the tender age of twenty-two. She had garnered more literary accolades (some of them so far to the left she walked crookedly after receiving them), covering Somoza’s fall in Nicaragua. She naturally had taken a hard line position against Somoza. She had roamed Central America, filing story after story, always subtly taking sides against her own country’s policies.
Ah, of course. If you tell the truth about your own country’s shitty policies, you’re a terrorist.
Mille was a hard-nosed, not always fair, investigative reporter who had many more enemies than she did friends. She could be brash and vulgar and extremely obnoxious. She was also cunning and tough. Like many reporters, she was always highly critical of the police, believing them all stamped from the same mold, regardless of country.
Had she been of age, she surely would have been a revolutionary back in the ’60’s.
No wonder their balls shriveled up into their abdomens. Everybody know The Midnight Society, when Mary Shelley rolls up like “sup fuckers [picking teeth with switchblade]”? That’s how I’m thinking of Mille Smith. (While scrolling through TMS feed looking for Shelley, I found a couple of William W. Johnstone entries! Gobsmacked that this masterpiece is but a small part of a whole career. Per Wikipedia, he “wrote close to two hundred books.” And they’re out there still, like landmines.)
I actually love when authors barf their politics all over the page. (Don’t even try “Haven’t you ever heard of characterization?” We’ve already determined that doesn’t exist in this book. There’s no hiding behind stick figures.) You have a whole novel, hundreds of pages, completely uninterrupted, no pushback whatsoever, to make the case that your ideology is superior to all others. The trick to that, however, is you have to think about both your ideology and others. And if you didn’t think your way into your ideology by examining a range of possibilities and using what you learn to make conscious decisions about the sort of person you want to be, your superiority argument boils down to “Well, you’re a big poopyhead!” It’s so uncomplicated, so pure! So secure and assured, the appearance of an outsider, even a “very pretty, very shapely” one, warrants an anxious-dog response of “WHO IN THE HELL ARE YOU?” from the sheriff. Please, tell me more about the irreproachable, steadfast nobility of law enforcement in your own ideology, which you could portray any way you want and yet thought “snap at random female stranger” was a good look.
“I was traveling through this county,” she said. “On my way to Richmond, before you ask, even though it’s none of your business where I was going.”
The information I volunteered without prompting is none of your business! Good thing we were told she was cunning because her stick figure is incapable of acting like it. Also a good thing we were told she’s a renowned investigative journalist because we might think otherwise based on her aggressive verbal alienation of everyone who might aid any investigation she wishes to pursue. It’s more important to make her a bitch than to strive for any kind of logical consistency.
Nice ass, the youngest trooper thought.
We had to head hop for that!
Sergeant Langway looked confused. Hell! He was confused.
Pardon the mess. My face just melted off.
In the first scene, the family had some conflict over subject-verb number agreement with was/were, as you do, and it’s been wrong so many times in the text, I’m now convinced that was added later as a “fuck you, stet everything” to the copy editor.
“But God help us all if that Mille Smith female gets wind of us holding back information.”
FEEEEMAAALE! I think I know where on the internet to find the people who idolize this guy.
“That woman has lawsuits against half the cops in the world.”
sup fuckers [picking teeth with switchblade]
Then he witnessed that terrible sight while lost inside Eden Mountain. Well, not exactly terrible. But it did scare him.
Well, it didn’t exactly scare him. But it did unsettle him. Well, it didn’t exactly unsettle him. But it made his nose itch. Well… Not everyone knows this, but if you write something you don’t mean, you can take it out and replace it with what you do mean, and no one who reads the published copy ever has to see you contradicting yourself.
He did not notice the rear window slightly ajar.
…
He ran across the small room and dove head-first out a window.
Out the slightly ajar window, flattening himself midflight to fit through the gap, or out a different, closed window, through the glass?
“That damn nosy libber is still in town, Dan,” Chuck reminded his boss.
“I know,” Dan said, sudden feeling tired. “Can’t be helped. It’s still a free country.” He thought about that for a moment. “Even for left-wingers like her.”
Sadly, because it’s still a free country in 1985, despite our best efforts, the cops can’t exterminate people who look too closely at what we’re up to. But fingers crossed we’ll get there someday, boys!
They looked in through the windows, seeing the blood on the floor, the overturned chairs, and the shattered rear window.
Great. Through the glass. Now we know. Thank you very much. You’d think that would have been worth mentioning by the guy whose head crashed through it, but you’d be WRONG because stick figures don’t feel pain.
Kenny Allen was the same age as Mille. They had gone through school together, from grade school through college. They shared many things in common; two things above all else: they both hated cops; any type of authority figure brought out the viciousness in them. And they both felt the press was the guardian of everything fine and decent and moral. It didn’t make any difference who they hurt getting a story. Their method of news-gathering was this: everybody had some dirt in their past—let’s find it. It doesn’t make any difference who gets hurt in the process, or whether the dirt has anything to do with the story at hand. Anybody who gets in the way of the press gets kicked in the mouth.
Hey, man, I get it. All those dead hitchhikers in your deep freeze have nothing to do with the murder this press conference is about, and any reporter who brings that up would just be senselessly hurting your family. Why can’t they focus on the story you tell them to focus on?
The kids did as they were told, when they were told to do it. Vonne and Dan had instilled their values in the young people, and stuck with that teaching regardless of what other parents did.
Nobody:
Absolutely Nobody:
Conservative Novelists: THESE IMAGINARY PEOPLE CIVILIZE THEIR OFFSPRING, UNLIKE THOSE URBAN HEATHENS
These dumps seem defensive, like he’s fantasizing about being attacked while he’s sitting in a room alone writing, completely uninterrupted, no pushback whatsoever. The problem with the writing isn’t that the imaginary kids do chores on command; the problem is that their chores are NOT RELEVANT TO THE STORY. Are the children themselves even relevant? The daughter has yet to do anything. The son at least brings home the Edwardian history professor/archaeologist who conveniently knows all about little-known ancient Egyptian cat-girl cults. So much time could have been saved making the convenient archaeology nerd their own kid, but then how would the author have worked in snide comments about his tacky nouveau riche parents? Priorities, people!
Mike told Dan all he could recall about the strange religion and the stories about twins being born, sisters, a human female, and a female cat.
If only there was some way that previous infodump could have occurred here, to the person who actually needs the information, thereby avoiding the yadda yadda summary. Pacing? Tension? Whoa there. You need to step back and focus on what matters here: those obedient kids.
He looked like a large frog. A very ugly frog. He would have looked a great deal better had he done something with his hair, long, fine, and stringy. Kenny was not the type long hair enhances. He looked like an ugly hairy frog. Without warts. And a frog had more scruples.
I know a United States political figure who perseverates just like this!
Quick, somebody hand me some pearls to clutch. The libber first-amendment fanatics are smoking cannabis!
Mille’s brother was killed by a cop, but he deserved it. He was no angel!
Mille could have been and probably would have been a much more respected world-class reporter, for she was brilliant, with a fine mind.
Pulitzer at 22. Literary accolades. But she could have done better. Maybe if she smiled more.
Dan whirled around and caught sight of the most hideous thing he had ever seen, outside of a horror movie. It was… Christ! He couldn’t begin to describe it.
It was a man. He thought. Naked from the waist up. And covered with long hair.
He did begin to describe it. What he couldn’t do was convincingly describe it as “hideous.” In 1985, this could describe a member of any number of hair bands.
Of note, The Sheriff thinks it’s a man, makes no effort to speak to that man, and fires a shotgun at that man. Because he doesn’t care for the way that man looks. Could be a kid in a costume, but there will be time to investigate after blowing his brains out, which will be the corpse’s own fault because he was no angel.
A guy whose intestines are festooning bushes and whose flesh has been chewed from one arm and one leg down to clearly visible bones (which, by necessity, would involve a few severed arteries) and whose abdomen is a gaping hole, a condition he’s been in since before the police arrived and had a leisurely look around and gaped at the monster, is alive enough for a monologue.
“It’s heading for the field!” Dan yelled. “Fire into the field! Open fire!”
Gunfire ripped the night as shotguns and pistols poured lead into the vacant field. But Dan knew the odds of them hitting anything other than air was slim.
It’s a vacant field. Meaning no 6-foot corn stalks that might obscure the ostensible target? Then they ought to be able to see the thing they’re supposed to be shooting at as it moves across the vacant field, and if they see nothing, why are they discharging their weapons? I swear, nobody writes jumpier, more brainless cops than cop lovers, and they think they’re making them look like heroes.
Women’s lib turned Chuck off. Completely. He saw pictures of the famous, or infamous, march in New York City years back. When he saw some of the women waving their bras, he almost swallowed his bridgework.
Ladies, I think we’ve made a terrible mistake. Men who think a woman’s place is barefoot and pregnant won’t be turned on by us.
sup fuckers [BRA WAVING INTENSIFIES]
Regarding the “thing” or “monster”:
“It was about six feet tall,” Dan said. “The trousers were ragged, with a leather belt.”
Gee, who wears trousers and belts, Dan? Whoa there. Don’t go assigning humanity to targets people want to shoot at!
He looked for Mille Smith. Ms. She was not there. Yet.
She never said “That’s MIZ Smith.” So the sick burn here is thinking of her as the sort of female who would not like to advertise her marital status via her courtesy title. That’ll take Chuck right off her list of potential beaus.
Remember the “colossal bore” who could “rot a fence post” in the Ruger County Chamber of Commerce brochure? We finally get to meet her!
“And ladies,” Alice Ramsey said to the monthly gathering of the local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy.
Beyond parody. 10/10. No notes.
Alice walked out of the room, toward the back door. Walking is perhaps the wrong descriptive: gliding would be more like it.
Again, if you write the wrong word, you can just change it! No need to document your indecision for posterity.
My Good Fellow Mike keeps saying the little-known ancient Egyptian cat-girl cult has something to do with “the devil” (who, as we all know, was a huge figure in ancient Egyptian religions), and Omniscient Narrator has made note that the cannibalistic murder cat-girl doesn’t know what she’s doing is wrong. In any other book, I would say this is a setup for Cat-Girl being saved by a prayer circle and adopted by a good family in this serene community. For some mysterious reason, I do not have that much faith in Mr. Johnstone’s followthrough.
Is the ancient Egyptian cat-girl white? We’re told repeatedly she has dark hair and dark eyes, but in the extended prologue, neither the 19th century rural English peasants nor the 19th century American orphanages (who, as we all know, were renowned for their progressive views on race and ethnicity), have any hesitation about taking her in. I guess if your research consists of Elizabeth Taylor playing Cleopatra, it would make perfect sense to you that a little-known ancient Egyptian cat-girl cult would selectively breed whiteness into their cannibalistic murder cat-girls.
Nothing real looked like that! He screamed in terror.
Seems like this guy heard “the scariest monster is the one just out of sight” and seized that philosophy with both hands. However, not exactly being a master of POV, he missed the key concept that the characters are scared of what they never get a good look at and their uncertainty and fear infects the reader. His stick figures are looking right at the thing and simply not conveying that information to readers, and the lack of information is supposed to make readers shit themselves in fear. If your idea of a spooky story is sitting around the campfire at your Daughters of the Confederacy meeting and yarning about Portland being an apocalyptic hellscape, you likely have a lifetime of experience scaring yourself with a dearth of information. When readers pick up a horror novel, however, it is not their job to scare themselves with nothing. If they wanted to do that, the book would be unnecessary. The words written in the book are supposed to stimulate their feelings.
He was unaware of how curiously uncaring he was becoming. Almost as if some new being was taking control of his mind and body.
He was correct.
Oh really? I didn’t catch on the previous 4 times somebody got bitten and transformed into a monster. Thanks for spelling it out, Mr. Author.
“In here!” Alice called. “In the den. Watch out. That… monster just ran out the back door.”
It did indeed.
I’m not going to point out every authorial intrusion because it’s a chronic problem, much like the grammar and punctuation offenses, but these were on the same damn page.
The young city patrolman ran around the side of the house just in time to run headlong into the arms of the wounded, painfilled creature. The maddened once human object put both its hands into the cop’s mouth
Trying to imagine what kind of tentacles these arms would have to be in order for the cop to be in them while the hands are being inserted into his mouth. Must also have paralyzing stingers, since the cop has absolutely no reaction to a monster popping off his head like a Pez dispenser, prior to “flopping in near-death on the ground” post decapitation. Damn, the residents of Ruger County, Virginia, are hardy!
He looked at the blue jean clad rear end of Denise.
“Hey, whore!” he called.
He’s the school administrator. She’s a student. But she’s spoiled, so fair game to be beaten, repeatedly raped, and mutilated. Curiously, the sparse description present to this point in the book is goes on its lunch break just in time for a full page describing the condition Denise is left in.
The Administrator also has a thing for Sheriff’s Wife, so we finally know what purpose she serves in this plot!
“I am not believing this,” Taylor said, reloading swiftly. “I am going to wake up and find it’s all a bad dream. Everytime I fix a peanut butter, pickle, mayonnaise, and onion sandwich, on rye, I get nightmares.”
“Yukk!” Langway said.
“Double yukk!” Chuck said.
Totally natural exchange while gunning down an ancient horror.
“It’s beautiful,” Quinn whispered. “It’s just awe-inspiring.”
The lawmen wondered, at the time, what in the hell the doctor was talking about. But before they could ask, Chuck was back with his camera.
Well, shit. Chuck’s back with his camera, and as we all know, lawmen aren’t allowed to ask questions under those conditions.
“You people might have the authority to keep me out of there”—he pointed toward the dark outline of the terminal—“but when you put your asses on the highway system in this state, they belong to me. And you can read into that any goddamn thing you like.”
Behold an irreproachably, steadfastly noble state trooper acknowledging federal authority to bar him from entering a federal facility but threatening retribution next time they use the highway that is his domain.
It did not come as any surprise to learn the governor had suddenly decided to take a vacation. In St. Croix.
He would be gone for a couple of weeks. At least.
Welp, the government is completely shut down for the foreseeable future, then. If only Virginia had a chain of command so that state business could be conducted in the governor’s absence. But what are ya gonna do?
The doctors tell the press one victim’s weird medical condition was contracted on a trip to South America. As we all know, the United States of America is a disease-free zone and any sickness that pops up has to come from Outside. And not Canada or Sweden, if you know what I mean.
One of the feds sits down and tells The Sheriff everything about the top-secret scheme except names. Sheriff’s Wife is also present for this super duper confidential top secret government biz.
Turning his head, he looked again at the drawings on the wall. He stepped closer and looked hard at one. It was… indescribable in its revulsion. It was not a man, not an animal. It was a thing.
A potato! A catalytic converter! A brick of ramen noodles! Am I getting warmer or colder?
Denise survived her ordeal and was collected by the shady federal agency. Their spokesperson assures plucky local law enforcement that if she doesn’t die, they will mind-wipe her and let her go. If I were the spokesperson for a shady federal agency, I would say “we’re going to dissect and incinerate her” rather than insult their intelligence. But since they seem perfectly happy to accept the existence of the MIB flashy-thingy, my colleagues would rightfully scoff at my technique.
A new dead body is found:
“From the looks of him, he’s a transient. Hitchhiker, probably. Did you go through his pack, Chuck?”
“Yes. Dirty clothes. A paperback book about some sort of transcendental meditation. And three joints.”
Taylor grunted. “A dead dumb hitchhiker. The smart ones stopped carrying grass on them a long time ago.”
The drug possession of this nameless dead transient is not a clue. Mr. Johnstone just wants you to know the corpse was a damn dirty hippy, not an upstanding member of this serene community, so you can maintain your lack of feeling until it’s time for The Perfect Victim.
Decades ago, when Dr. Goodson accompanied his parents on sabbatical in Egypt, a dying Egyptian man infodumped about the little-known ancient Egyptian cat-girl cult, including that Cat-Girl is a carrier of “that which causes dogs to go mad.” So now we’re adding rabies to our lycanthropy and mummy problems.
It was rabies, all right. At least a form of it. But unlike any type he had ever seen.
Foreign rabies!
Dr. Goodson is trapped in secrecy, unable to warn anyone of the danger, because the feds will apprehend and imprison his damn dirty hippy nephew if he blabs. If only his nephew had gone to ‘Nam like a good American boy, the fine people of Ruger County could be saved!
Edwardian professor/archaeologist Mike is sitting alone in his car with an old book from his personal library:
“A child and a cat,” he read aloud. “The girl and the cat are capable of changing forms, one into the other. They must survive on human flesh and blood. The bite is highly infectious, and can produce strange effects on humans, from rapid aging to a rabies-like condition. In times of great stress, the child, always named Anya, after a woman who supposedly mated with Satan, forming the religion, is thought to have the ability to call on Satan or one of his minions. The religion supposedly originated in Egypt but is rumored to be worldwide.”
We know literally all of this already, and even if it was entirely new information, why would he be reading it aloud, alone, in his car? Oh, wait. Is my good fellow Mike doing speech therapy like me? Carry on, then.
“That’s your butt!” Dan popped.
Lou’s smile never wavered. “That’s an interesting choice of words, Sheriff.”
Lou makes a valid point. What an odd moment to reassert that The Sheriff isn’t known for being a profane man.
Next time I’m furious at someone, I’m gonna pop “That’s your butt!” and annihilate them. There’s no recovering from that.
Sheriff’s Daughter finally finds her purpose: hostage so the evil feds can keep her daddy in line. Countdown to Special Agent Dodge saying, “I had nothing to do with this! They’ve gone too far this time!”
Dan sized the man up. They were about the same age, but Lou was a mass of muscle. A big, solid, dark-complexioned man.
What’s that? The man threatening The Sheriff’s precious daughter is dark-complexioned, you say?
“I knew you were a reasonable man, Sheriff. But let me add this one little thing. Don’t screw up and talk to the press. ‘ Cause if you do, I’ll take your daughter and your wife and pass them around to the boys.” He grinned. “And the girls. I might even video tape it and play it back for you.”
The threat was already made. The Sheriff already fell in line. This is 100% the author inflating The White Man’s horror: that a dark-complexioned man will violate the sanctity of his womenfolk—with lesbians, no less!—and create humiliating evidence of the deed that be held over his head forever. Other than the inter-agency pissing contest, no one gave a shit about Denise being raped. But threaten his womenfolk, and suddenly he finds his outrage.
The cats spread out, encircling the building. Some of them moved to the woods’ edge, almost as if they were standing guard.
They were.
Then that’s not “almost as if,” is it? Some of them moved to the woods’ edge, standing guard. See how easy that was?
Anya laughed. It was not the laugh of a young girl. The laughter held the pent-up evil of two thousand years.
Well, young lady, that’s going to make it hard to get adopted in these parts.
“You a praying man, Dan?”
“Not in a long time. You think prayer is the answer to this?”
“Damn sure wouldn’t hurt.”
Pray the rabies away!
We’re halfway through the book and The Sheriff’s bad knee and knuckle cracking have yet to make a reappearance. I’m real excited to see what kind of sorcery it takes to stretch this tissue-thin plot over another 200 pages.
I intended for there to be a Part 2, but past this point, the book got so ridiculous it wasn’t even fun to rip on anymore. Sometimes you can bring value to reading garbage by amusing yourself with running commentary. When your mood shifts to “pissed off,” however, there are better things to do with your time, such as read a competently written book.