Novellas
The Number 6
Next ("The Cages")
Shoreline Drive
Photophobia
Precipitation Likely, Chance of Sun (“The Might and the Will”)
A Better Place (“The Calling”)
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The Number 6
A Novella
Excerpt D
Harlan drove non-stop into the darkness with only one thought in his head except the money glowing in the sack behind him. The shapes rising up and falling away in the gloom just beyond the reach of the headlights seemed alien and haunting. Silos rose out of the earth like huge nightmarish mushrooms. Rolls of wheat lay like great knuckles of flesh in the fields, fallen from the sky. Grain elevators loomed like dark towers on which to perch dragons. The Number Six sailed through the dark, splitting the air like a forty-one and a half foot long silver bullet unable to stop or slow down or change direction. Harlan had made his decision and as he crouched in the front of the bullet, he ground his teeth, determined to hold firm. And all the way he heard the voice of Christopher Dupree: you’re a good soul Harlan Buck…you’re a good soul Harlan Buck…you’re a good soul Harlan Buck.
The long silver bullet finally came to a rest on Winslow Street next to the rose bushes that framed the gardens outside of St. Mary’s Methodist Church. Candles burned beneath a statue of polished white stone in the courtyard, dwarfed by enormous pin oaks on all sides. The candles flickered their tiny lights, heaving monstrous shadows in all directions and coaxing the smooth stone into a ghostly dance.
Harlan cut the engine and sat for a moment in the dark, steeling himself against any last minute change of mind. When the thoughts came, as he knew they would, he blocked them out by mindless action. He yanked the key out of the ignition, grabbed the sack off the seat and hopped down and out of the Number Six, walking clumsily up the block and around the corner to the Sheriff’s Office.