Burning The Middle Ground
L. Andrew Cooper
BURNING THE MIDDLE GROUND is a dark fantasy about small-town America that transforms readers' fears about the country's direction into a haunting tale of religious conspiracy and supernatural mind control. A character-driven sensibility like Stephen King's and a flair for the bizarre like Bentley Little's deliver as much appeal for dedicated fans of fantasy and horror as for mainstream readers looking for an exciting ride.
Brian McCullough comes home from school and discovers that his ten-year-old sister Fran has murdered their parents. Five year later, a journalist, Ronald Glassner, finds Brian living in the same house in the same small town of Kenning, Georgia. Planning a book on the McCullough Tragedy, Ronald stumbles into a struggle between Kenning's First Church, run by the mysterious Reverend Michael Cox, and the New Church, run by the rebellious Jeanne Harper. At the same time, Kenning's pets go berserk, and dead bodies, with the eyes and tongues removed from their heads, begin to appear.
***EXCERPT***
The
thunder and lightning
had ceased, and
now the only sounds
were oscillations of downpour and quiet. Jeanne lay in bed. Her body
hummed with exhaustion. When her eyelids sank, giving in to comfort, she pulled
them open, refocusing on the sounds of
weather and pushing
herself to think.
Winston Beecher and his friend Ronald
had seemed more interested in her take on the morning’s events than the
sheriff. When Winston dropped her off in front of her house, he told her that
she could call him on his private cell phone if she needed anything. He said, “For official police
business, of course, you call 911 or the
station number, but if you just want somebody who’s got a, you know, open mind,
you call me up on this number.” He handed her a
scrap of paper with the number on it. “You hang on to that.”
The scrap of paper sat on the
nightstand next to the cordless telephone. If she used it, her involvement in
this – and she was sure there was a “this” – would deepen. Maybe it would be
okay if she learned nothing more about the dead body, okay if she avoided
the implications of
that word, “ritual,”
which her mind
had attached to the dead body’s mutilations. Maybe there was a logical explanation
for what had happened to her. Maybe she had left Jake Warren’s office, taken a walk in the
cemetery, tripped on something, and hit
her head. Of
course, she didn’t
have any bruises on her head, and
she never took walks in cemeteries, but somehow, things might come together and
make some sort of non- sinister sense, and then she would….
Jeanne fell asleep.
She woke up gasping, arms flailing,
desperate for the air that her
dream of drowning
had denied her.
Sitting up, she
found herself in her own bed, safe and away from the mud and water she
had woken to this morning. She planted a hand in the center of her chest and
monitored her heart rate’s decline. Closing her eyes, she forbade tears.
Her eyes reopened. Bright green
numbers on her alarm clock broke through darkness with the numbers 8:19. Her
ears searched for sounds of rain and
found a quiet disturbed only by the faint rumble of an engine. To be audible,
the car had to be close, either in front of her house or in her driveway, a
visitor. Twilight glowed around her bedroom window. She reached over and switched on the lamp by the
phone. Hoping she’d have time to change before she heard
the doorbell, she
rolled out of
bed, crossed to the
window, and peeked through the blinds. She saw a blue sedan by the curb near
her mailbox. Dark windows kept her from seeing the vehicle’s occupants.
She left the window for the closet
and turned on the bedroom’s overhead light. Slacks and a plain, comfortable
shirt would have to suffice for whatever visitor was coming. The sound of a car
door slamming encouraged her to hurry through buttons and head for the stairs.
She turned on the hall light as she
left her bedroom, and even though she could see well enough without it, she
turned on the light in the stairwell,
too. Halfway down the steps, she paused. Two tall, narrow windows, covered with
translucent white drapes, flanked her front door. One of the draped rectangles framed a shadowy
shape. Someone was standing by the door.
She waited, expecting the bell to ring. It didn’t.
Her bare foot hovered over the next
step. The shadow-shape in the window didn’t move. It was large enough to be a
person, but it was indistinct. Whoever had been in the car had had plenty of
time to reach the door. Why didn’t the bell ring?
Jeanne thought of the phone on her
nightstand, the scrap of paper with Winston’s number. For all she knew, Winston
could be the person at the door, the person who would, at any moment, ring
the bell. Or
maybe the shadow-shape
in the window
wasn’t a person at all, just some
trick of light, and maybe the person parked in front of her house was going to
a neighbor’s, so of course the doorbell
wouldn’t ring, and maybe…
Maybe she should just go down the
stairs, turn on the porch light, and see for herself. The hovering foot met carpet,
and she descended another step and another, watching the shadow-shape and
bracing herself with each movement for the jarring sound of the doorbell.
At the bottom of the steps, she stood directly across from the
window-framed shadow-shape. It was still indistinct, distorted by the white
drape. If she pushed the drape to one
side, she might reveal nothing, or she could reveal a narrow man, someone tall
enough to make the shape, someone facing her through the window instead of
standing at the door.
Annoyed with herself, she crossed
the foyer and flipped two more light
switches. Bright bulbs filled the foyer and the front porch with yellow light.
Verifying that she had, in fact, fastened the bolt on the door, she reached for
the drape and pushed.
No one.
The porch light helped her see that
the dark blue sedan was still on the
street. She recognized it: she had noticed it in the parking lot of First
Church last time she was there. She didn’t know
for sure, but it was reasonable to think the car was Jake Warren’s. Jake
Warren wouldn’t have parked in front of her house to go visit one of her
neighbors. He was here for her.
Calling 911 to say that she
suspected the car parked near her house might belong to someone who might have
a desire to hurt her would be
ridiculous, but she
was nevertheless certain
of danger, and she did have someone to call. She stepped toward the
stairs.
The lights went out. No glow lit
the top of the stairs: the lamp in the bedroom was out, too. She froze in place
and took a deep breath. The door behind her was a way out – a way toward the
blue sedan, toward whatever figure had
made the shadow- shape in her window.
For now, the door was locked, and Jake Warren or whoever had been standing at the door was probably
still outside.
The stairs were another option. If
the power had gone out, even the bedroom clock would be dark, and she’d have no
way to read the scrap of paper with Winston’s number. If she moved carefully,
she could find her way to the kitchen, to the flashlight she kept in the drawer
by the sink. She started moving, feeling along the wall.
After a few steps, she turned back.
Her long, pointed umbrella, the one with the duck-shaped handle, was in a stand
by the door, easy to find in the dark. She could carry it like a sword,
ready for defense.
With one
hand gripping the
umbrella and another
moving along the wall, she made her way to the kitchen, found the edge
of the counter, and used it to guide her toward the sink. When her fingers touched
cold metal, they
moved down and
felt for the drawer handle. A floorboard creaked
behind her.
She spun, umbrella out, swinging.
Her weapon connected with something,
and she heard
a crash. The
vase she kept
on the kitchen’s center island
fell to the floor. She heard the glass shatter but couldn’t see where it was.
She pulled the umbrella closer to her body, ready to swing again. “If you
come any closer,” she said to the
darkness, “I will hurt you.”
No
response. She waited
to hear the
creaking of another floorboard, any sign of movement other than her own.
Nothing came. She was standing barefoot in the darkness on a kitchen floor now
covered with shattered glass. She may or may not have been alone.
She bowed her head, said a silent
prayer, and reached behind her, toward the drawer handle. Pulling it open by
degrees, she listened for movement in front of her. She held the umbrella
ready. The drawer squeaked, and she
stopped herself from swinging at the darkness again.
Sensing that the drawer should be
wide enough, she let her hand dip in and feel for the cylindrical plastic
flashlight. She found it, wrapped her
fingers around it, and held her
thumb on the switch. She paused, collecting herself. In a single movement, she
withdrew the flashlight, turned it on, aimed it in front of her, and jabbed out
with the umbrella, hoping to take her blinded opponent by surprise.
The space before her was
unoccupied. Fallen flowers lay on the floor,
untrodden amidst sparkling particles of glass. She allowed herself to
blink. Maybe she was being silly. Maybe the car wasn’t Jake Warren’s,
and maybe this
was a normal
blackout, and maybe…
Something knocked her back against
the edge of the sink, and in her
surprise, both hands opened, dropping the flashlight and umbrella. The
flashlight landed with a crack and went out. Before she could steady her footing, another blow hit from the side and knocked
her down. Disoriented in the dark, she didn’t know where she had fallen. She
didn’t feel glass beneath her, but depending on where she was, any move might
have pierced skin.
She had no reason not to scream:
“HELP ME!!!”
“And why would I do that?” Jake
Warren’s voice answered. “Deacon Warren.” She didn’t know how he had gotten in,
but that didn’t matter.
“Yes,” he said. “Good guess.
Perhaps you’re wondering what I’m doing here?”
L. Andrew Cooper thinks the smartest people like horror, fantasy, and sci-fi. Early in life, he couldn’t handle the scary stuff–he’d sneak and watch horror films and then keep his parents up all night with his nightmares. In the third grade, he finally convinced his parents to let him read grownup horror novels: he started with Stephen King’s Firestarter, and by grade five, he was doing book reports on The Stand.
When his parents weren’t being kept up late by his nightmares, they worried that his fascination with horror fiction would keep him from experiencing more respectable culture. That all changed when he transitioned from his public high school in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia to uber-respectable Harvard University, where he studied English Literature. From there, he went on to get a Ph.D. in English from Princeton, turning his longstanding engagement with horror into a dissertation. The dissertation became the basis for his first book, Gothic Realities (2010). More recently, his obsession with horror movies turned into a book about one of his favorite directors, Dario Argento (2012). He also co-edited the textbook Monsters (2012), an attempt to infect others with the idea that scary things are worth people’s serious attention.
After living in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California, Andrew now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where he teaches at the University of Louisville and chairs the board of the Louisville Film Society, the city’s premiere movie-buff institution. _Burning the Middle Ground_ is his debut novel.
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