Photo credit: http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/File:Dark_parking_lot.jpg
SERVANT is coming!
But you probably knew that already.
On Thursday I spoke with a book formatting person on the phone for an hour and a half. Do you know how long it's been since I talked on the phone that long? About 7 years--I kid you not. I learned lots and lots of stuff during that hour and a half and even found out that said book formatting person is a huge Dean Koontz fan. (If you don't know, my discovery of Dean Koontz's novels completely changed the style and themes of my writing.)
Anyway--to further whet your appetite while we all await SERVANT'S unscheduled release, here's a snippet from Chapter 11, when Bobby Roland waits for Randy Bellison in the dark...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He sat up and stared at the distant
door of the unit Randy had disappeared through. The light still glowed behind
drawn curtains. He hoped everything was okay in there. Randy had told him he’d
be back, but it grew so late that he considered asking if Randy would be
willing to stay there until morning.
But
Bobby wasn’t going to be the guy to interrupt their conversation.
Or
anything else that might be going on in there, for that matter.
Ever
the gentleman, he waited for Randy to emerge.
Seconds
turned into long minutes. It had to be two o’clock by now. Tomorrow he would be
cleaning a church at this time of night. By himself. In a seedy part of town.
Where people cut brake lines on cars and unseen beings tapped on the windows.
As
if on cue, a small object bounced off the windshield and rolled down the hood. Fear
seized his heart for a second before he realized it was only an acorn that had
fallen from one of the tree limbs hanging above the car.
The
night became still once more. He waited.
A
length of time passed. He shifted positions and gazed out the window again. The
apartment lights were still on.
He
sighed.
A
speck of orange light inside the car to his left caught his eye as he went to
lie down again. He squinted. It looked like the burning tip of a cigarette, but
aside from that he couldn’t see anything within the vehicle.
It
would seem Bobby was not the only one waiting for something in the dim parking
lot, and since nobody had entered or exited the other vehicle since Bobby
arrived, the smoker must have lurked behind dark windows for the entire
duration of Bobby’s wait.
Creepy.
He continued to
watch the cigarette. Intuition told him the person smoking it was a man. What
was he doing here? Casing the joint? Waiting for someone to meet him? Or was he
just out here to smoke?
Bobby
held his finger over the automatic lock button, knowing he was probably
overreacting. But he wasn’t in the best shape. Kids in school had made fun of
him, calling him Knobby Bobby and Skinny Ninny and things like that, generally
before he got slammed face first into a locker. If this guy wanted to break
into his car and steal his wallet, Bobby wouldn’t be able to stop him without
getting broken himself.
He
pushed the button. The sound of the locks engaging was as loud as a car
backfiring in the quiet air.
The
cigarette went out.
Bobby
stopped breathing. Two eyes that he couldn’t see were likely staring in his
direction.
“Randy,”
he whispered, “it would be great if you could get out of there so I can leave.”
He
supposed he could leave the car himself and take refuge inside the girlfriend’s
apartment, but it would be rude to barge in on such a scene. The woman had
tried to kill herself. She had to be
messed up on something. Drugs, maybe. Normal, healthy people didn’t want to
die. They wanted to—
The
voice of reason spoke inside his head. Get
out of the car. Now.
Bobby
didn’t need to be told twice. He scrambled across to the passenger seat, made
sure he had his keys and wallet, and dove out the door.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For more SERVANT sneak peeks, check out these posts:
And be sure to visit SERVANT'S board on
Pinterest!
