N. D. Hansen-Hill's Weblog

I've been doing too much, which has rather robbed me of time to do much blogging. It's another thing I promised myself I'd do - like writing emails to all the family and friends when you don't really have time - so I don't lose track of everyone.

I read an article yesterday about how driven people are today - how they need to be superpeople, and set themselves almost impossible goals. How they thrive on people's reactions (how did you manage it? or I don't know how you do it!). It's a matter of pride to list the numbers of jobs, organisations, committees you belong to.

How strange we are! Definitely a need to compete with each other. It's not enough to be successful - your success has to put others to shame (LOL!)!

We've probably always done it, too. H. erectus no doubt competed to see who could kill the biggest mammoth, or collect the most tubers.

I've been doing it to me, but I've mostly been competing with me, myself, I, yours truly, and moi. That's because I'm working on 5 books right now - going for a competition finish (I want to enter them all in at the end of July - and I need to have enough on each of them to feel confident I can finish them up by mid August). I'm having fun with it, but it's also a stretch for me. I'm doing 4 SF/fantasy/romantic suspense, and one SF/horror. Enjoying it heaps because I can do the jumpy thing of 1000 words here, 1000 words there, as long as I come close to my

5000 words a day. Only averaging 3000, but that's still not too bad.

As always, I'll leave you with an excerpt...and try to get back to you sooner next

time!

Cheers, and regards,
ND
N. D. Hansen-Hill
EXCERPTS http://ndhansen-hill.50webs.com
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GILDED FOLLY http://www.cerridwenpress.com/productpage.asp?ISBN=1-4199-0409-4
(entry in) THE COMPLETE WRITER'S JOURNAL http://www.redenginepress.com/

The woman dug frantically in the rich soil, the earthy scent making her shiver. There was an underlying sourness to the dampness, which spoke of death...

It's here. It has to be. This was where panicky instinct had led her.

More than intuition...

No. A bad dream. That's all it was. Sleepwalking again. Gritting her teeth, Glys forced herself to withdraw her hands—to fight against impulse. She knelt there, rigid with compulsion, and lifted her eyes to the moon.

It nearly choked her. The light was so cold it chilled to the bone, and gooseflesh rode reckless across her skin. Moonshadows gloomed everywhere, leached from the innocent silhouettes of tree and shrub.

One of those silhouettes was moving. Her breath caught, finishing what that frozen moon had begun. All rational thought fled in the face of need.

Her fingers tore at the soil once more, as she dug like a caged animal. Only one way lay freedom....

The next moment her fingers had closed on it and a wash of cold relief cleared her mind.

Then, for an instant only, she could see pursuit clearly, racing across the slope.

It's a dream...only a dream.

A nightmare.

The difference was, in this one, she could run.

***

Chapter One

"Cynic," Rom muttered absently. Jeremy had dredged him out of the soundest sleep he'd had in weeks. "No...Sadist. Go to hell and let me sleep—" He forced open bleary eyes.

The room was no longer dark. The cheap wooden jamb was illuminated in a soft golden glow.

"Hang on, Jer—" Rom whispered. He set down the phone and climbed silently out of bed. Muscles tense, he tiptoed to the doorway, across the hall, then hesitated just outside the lounge.

The Source.

How theatrical, an inner voice mocked. But it didn't stop his heart from pounding, or his palms from growing wet.

Rom took a deep breath, then peeked around the corner.

The light was coming from beneath his desk. From the goddamn wastebasket.

A joke. Wick.

Jeremy, to get back at me for the cracks about his art...

Rom relaxed a little, a smile quirking the corners of his mouth. Damn, if they hadn't had him going there...

He pulled the wastebasket from beneath the desk. Nestled within the load of paper—ad sheets, bill collectors' demands and gardening magazine lures, that he'd tossed away en masse—the crumpled envelope sat fatly crunched, and brightly luminescent. It was embedded with glowing particles, which shed a glistening radiance to the darkened room.

Glittery.

Like gold...

Rom's hands were shaking, as he reached into the bin.

Don't touch it. Objectively, he knew should keep his distance, but something else was driving him now. His smile faded, and his heart started pounding once more. Again, there was that glimmer of uncertainty, of déja vu; the feeling of something left undone. His skin glowed orange as he clenched the crumpled parchment, and extricated the single sheet of paper—the one he'd casually dismissed without so much as a perusal.

Just one more advertising gimmick...

He sat on the floor and flattened the creases with his palm. The paper felt hot beneath his hand, and as he rubbed it, glittering trails crumbled, flared, and sizzled, with little hissing pops.

What is this stuff?

Beneath his fingers the paper changed, no longer blank. In the centre was a brilliant watermark, elaborately wrought in opalescent shades: blues, magenta, greens, purples. It was a holographic face, three-dimensional and shocking in its realism.

And the eyes were looking, directly at him.

"There is no wisdom in repeated mistakes..." The words echoed hollowly in his memory, and in that moment, all amusement fled. His breath turned to ice, and some of it trickled through his veins, awakening his body to something it had long forgotten. He moved uneasily back into the bedroom, all the while watching the darkened corners. The phrase " repeated mistakes" was throbbing in his head now, keeping time to the drumming of his heart.

Somewhere outside there was a scrabbling at the window glass, an unexpected thud, the crackling of a branch. The skin on his arms tightened, as the hairs lifted—gooseflesh dancing down his limbs.

Run...

The abandoned phone squawked, and Rom could hear Jeremy's shouted "D'chou fall asleep?", but he couldn't answer.

Not now.

Maybe not ever. He pulled on his pants, and slipped into running shoes like a zombie. His eyes were wet with fear, but his mouth was dry as the desert sands. In the background, Jeremy's tinny voice was squawking, issuing harsh "wake up!" commands over the phone. Rom glanced back at it, once, then lifted the receiver with sweaty palms and placed it silently on its cradle.

Silence. It was all important now.

He replaced the letter in its showy envelope, buried it in his T-shirt pocket, and crept swiftly out the door. In the distance, there was a humming whine.

Familiar, like the letter. Something he'd heard before.

His hand pressed the letter to his chest.

"Guard it, with your life..."

His life. It had come to that.

Rom leapt off the porch, stumbled, then broke into a run.

*

The night was crisp and clear—and filled with a thousand voices Rom couldn't recall. Commanding voices he couldn't resist.

Doomed...

It wasn't a thought—it was a heavy weight lodged in his gut—a portent of the inevitable.

An inevitable wrong. Guilt weighed on him, for a deed he'd not yet committed—for the instincts which quickened to unspoken commands. His brain had not yet acknowledged his task, yet already he knew. His mission this night was death.

And if he didn't succeed, the forfeited life would be his own.

Unacceptable. It echoed in his head. Not a moral call—merely the judgement call for failure.

Rom sprinted, racing out of reason, running to meet his destiny. He was only dimly aware of the asphalt beneath his feet now, and totally oblivious to the windows lining the street. He needed to outrun it: the righteous anger smouldering in his chest, the fury clenching his fists.

Unjust...evil. Words he'd acquired over the last ten years, to describe what was swiftly becoming compulsion. If he could drench the hatred in sweat, he might yet be able to out race his malice; to chill this misplaced passion in exhaustion.

He picked up speed. Running in hate, in fear; in mixed, deluded dreams...

...which were driving him mad. Only insanity would run through the dark without reason—outdistancing a threat which owed more to inner turmoil than any outside intervention.

He nearly believed he would make it—until the persistent background hum became a nagging, insistent whine. His skin crawled in anticipated terror.

So many...hundreds, maybe thousands. Rom was panting now, his course erratic, his brain repeatedly filled with jarring flickers of memory: Technicolor images in flashes of light and sound. Bright contrasts to the duotone shades of night and moon. With every vision, he'd lose pace a little, weaving like some madman across the landscape.

Here and now. Now and then.

At this moment, with the demons at his back, he no longer knew what was real. Those scenes—bright moments out of a time he couldn't remember—were intended to save him—to draw rational thought out of panic, and sense out of dread.

As were the warnings, sounding through his brain. "So much easier to use a natural means; to inveigh it with purpose."

To give it a purpose so aligned with its own. "To hide darkness within the shadows."

The shadows clotting his world were mosquitoes: winged bloodsuckers in this part of the country—a harmless nuisance.

Now vested with new resolve, and a tenacity which clouded the moonscape.

The whining tickled his ears.

Vested such, they'd be here to drain him dry.

*

Jeremy threw on a jacket and headed out the door. It wasn't the first time Rom had sleepwalked and it wouldn't be the last. Jeremy had strongly suggested he visit a sleep clinic, to get his sleeping patterns realigned. Rom should've learned by now how to manage his problem.

Only, Rom didn't see his sleepwalking as a problem—or refused to admit it was one. Part of that was Wick's fault. Wick had always downplayed it; joked about it, and acted like it was no big deal. Phil was worse—he treated any suggestion of therapy as a feeble-minded admission of weakness.

Rom, for his part, didn't even want to talk about it. However lightly Wick and Phil might treat the problem, though, it was the reason, Jeremy was sure, that Rom ended up spending most of his nights alone. One exposure to Rom's night-time antics would be enough to put most women off for good. Not too many of them would trust a double personality, or put up with a man who wouldn't recognise them the next day.

It was a weird dichotomy, and Jeremy felt responsible for dredging it up with that phone call tonight. The Rom who emerged after a few moments' sleep was usually wary and suspicious, but also a match for Jeremy's ten years of martial arts training.

The mild-mannered professor playing out a secret identity?

Five minutes later he was at Rom's house. He knocked loudly, then took the key from under the brick and went inside.

"Rom!" Jeremy shouted. No answer. He flicked on the lights and made a quick perusal. No Rom. The only marks of disorder were the wastebasket's contents, scattered under the desk. Given Rom's fanatical neatness, it meant Mr. Sleepwalk was in charge.

Mr. Sleepwalk was a slob.

Again, Jeremy felt a nudge of guilt. Not only had he awakened Rom, but he'd given his brain a focus.

Jeremy tore out the door, his eyes searching the silhouetted hardscape of the quiet, suburban street. There was something wrong...

It was the quiet. There were no lights. No streetlights. Not a single bulb behind the numerous windows. Jeremy reached back inside, and flicked the switch.

Odd. They'd worked a second before...

But now there was nothing. No lights, no power. Only the loud hum of a transformer in the distance.

Jeremy was looking east when a grey cloud passed across the moon. A grey cloud which was moving way too fast.

What the hell?

That hum...it's no transformer.

Across the distance, muffled on the night air, curses and threats rang out.

Jeremy was already in motion by the time the threats rose to howls of pain.

*

They were on him—a whining, malicious horde, dressed in membranous wings with needlelike proboscis. They were on his skin, on his clothes, penetrating the flimsy fabric of his shirt with spearpoint accuracy. Injecting enough anticoagulant to bleed him out. Even now, as he smashed and slapped, he could feel the slippery wash of blood.

A thousand needle pricks, jabbing his skin. Rom stumbled, and nearly fell. Already, he was growing weak. His body was one massive itch as his histamine response went crazy. There was too much anticoagulant being injected into his system. Too much foreign protein being put in, and too much blood being taken out.

He cursed, felt the winged bodies light on his tongue, and spat.

Use your brain. Pyrethrin. Insect repellent. Daisies.

I'm in the park, for crissake! Daisies, and a pond.

Life.

Rom fell, then crawled, toward the white patch in the distance. He hated the stink of daisies.

He spat again, then blew his nose. Little life signs tickling his nasal passages. He choked on a sucked-in breath—thick with runny mucous and wriggling bodies.

I'm drowning...

He dove, headlong, into the daisy patch.

*

His footsteps had an echo. As Jeremy pounded up the road, he could hear the other runner. No one in sight, but there was no mistaking the sound.

He glanced around, but didn't slow his pace. Rom's howls had faded into an ominous silence.

The steps tore past him, but he still couldn't resolve the runner. The tree branches yielded only patchy moonlight, splotchy and confusing. Jeremy's eyes caught traces of frenzied movement, streaks of luminescence clinging to the moonglow just a shade too long. For a moment, Jeremy's already pounding heart quickened its beat. There was an eeriness to the other figure and its determined pace.

It outdistanced him in seconds—slipping past without so much as a panting breath to mark its passage.

No one can move that fast...

He was shaken, as the barely-seen glow shifted and fled in the distance.

What freaked him most, though, was the familiarity. Something in the shape—that ill-lit phosphorescent image, which existed more in sound than sight—had been so damned familiar.

For an instant, he had the impression he recognised it...him.

He'd been almost certain it was Wick.

*

Rom crawled through the daisies, burying his face in the turgid branches. He snatched at flowers with mosquito-bitten hands, crunching the heads and rubbing them over his swollen face. The pastel masses of blooms were crushed and flattened, leaving streaked and bloodied blossoms in his wake.

His breaths were panting rasps, ragged and uneven. His chest was filling, his throat was closing, and he couldn't breathe. Using his elbows and his knees, he squirmed his way along.

The water. If he could just get to the water. He could see it now through squinted eyes—a black wash in the foreground. Gritting his teeth, he lifted his head, and peered at the moon reflected on the surface. The castaway radiance beckoned him forward, and he crawled, his breaths coming in whiny wheezes.

Mosquitoes danced into his vision, feathering his eyelids, tickling his eyebrows, darting in stinging raids to feed on his scalp. In such proximity, it was difficult to put them into perspective. They were garish monsters come to steal his life force away. Dancing devils, gossamer harbingers of death...

He had a defence, but only if he lived long enough to use it. Only if he could reach the reflected moon. It had always been his trigger...before.

Stay the impulse. The warning sang loudly in his ears. It will bring them in. You will no longer be able to hide in your dreams.

Surely, it was too late to hide. What was happening to him tonight had forced him to emerge from the shadows.

Shivering incessantly, Rom pushed himself to his feet. Gagging and choking, he lurched forward, nearly falling on his face. In a stumbling near-run, he took five long, loping strides and leapt, soaring across the dark, watery surface of the pond.

At the same moment he stretched out his hand, aiming desperately for that bright white globe of reflected light.

His fingertips touched, then pierced the surface.

The pseudo moon shattered, into a thousand dancing pieces.

*

Jeremy was winded by the time he reached the park. It was so quiet he didn't know where Rom was. He stopped, listening for sounds of struggle.

Frustrated, he tried to follow the other runner's lead. That phosphorescent image was long gone, but the regular thudding was still a faint tremor through the soil.

The annoying background hum was growing louder, and it was accompanied by a sibilant whine which made his skin crawl. Only one insect made a noise like that: mosquito. What was worse was the vibration. This wasn't one mosquito, or even one thousand. Jeremy had a sudden urge to turn tail and run.

Instead, he buried his hands in his sleeves and his face in his shirt. Then, he forged ahead.

They were on him now. In the overwhelming assault, he barely heard the splash, or the one which followed. All he knew was that the whining persistence of his winged adversaries was giving way to high-pitched squeaks.

Hundreds of them...

Then it was raining. With a cheerless insouciance the skies filled, all without benefit of wind or cloud. This was a pelting rain—haired bodies with leathery wings. They plummeted limply, as though stunned, then abruptly spread wings and took off in devour mode, to consume the insect horde...

Jeremy dropped to his knees, arms shielding his head. Mosquitoes were no longer a concern. He was being pounded by something far larger.

Insectivores, ravenously hungry and navigating by sonar.

He'd been around the world, but he'd never seen anything like this.

It was raining bats.

*

Rom's fingers scrabbled in the mucky sediments, stirring up swirls of mirey mud, to thicken water still choppy from his thrashing. Mud oozed into his mouth, but he couldn't taste it. His tongue was as swollen as his face.

Like the lag from a poorly dubbed film, reality finally registered, as his fingers dug into the goo. I'm on the bottom! Panic shattered his nearly comatose reverie, and he clawed his way to the surface once more, to gasp for breath.

Drowning...

His feet kicked wildly as he fought to stay afloat. It'd been hard to breathe before—now, it was impossible. The urgency was still with him, but there was little to drive it. No strength, no breath...

...no life.

His next breath was water, and he savagely kicked his way to the surface again.

Find the shore. He was lost, in a mini lake. Blind navigation, with safety but a few short lengths away.

Find it. He forced open one puffy eye with the heel of his hand.

And saw the moon. That bright orb was nearly eclipsed by a scavenging horde of swooping bats.

And they were still coming. He realised that, in his panic, he'd made a horrible mistake. As he tilted back his head, to stay afloat, he was barraged—pelted by a dozen falling bodies.

He lost his focus then, and the shore became a distant memory. He lifted one arm, to shield himself from the thudding bodies—the claws, the teeth, the scratchy wings—only to sink beneath the waves. The water was choppy now, asplash and agitated by his own movements—and those of the panicky bats.

To whom he was the one island in a choppy sea. Claws clung to his nose, and bat wings occluded his mouth. The high-pitched, frantic sonar filled his ears. He couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't breathe...

Rom pawed weakly at his face, but there were too many of those small feet.

I did this...

It was his last thought, as he sank beneath the waves.

*

"Bloody hell!" Wick swore softly, dodging the stinging blows of toppling bats.

Chiroptera, but not like any this place had seen before.

"Rom!" he bellowed. He gagged, nearly choked, then spat. Damned mosquitoes.

He'll be in the water. With grim certainty, Wick tore across the grass, slipping and sliding as he went. Writhing bodies squirmed beneath his feet, and he gagged again at the crunching and squishing of fragile forms.

Rom'll be sick...

Rom. Wick picked up speed. In the distance he spied the broken moon, glazing a thousand pieces onto the ruffled water.

At that moment, Rom's head broke the surface, one arm flailing weakly. The next, he was gone.

Wick was in the water before the swirling wash could follow Rom down.

*

Rabies.

Revulsion curled his lips. Jeremy had thought he could tolerate anything, but he'd never seen anything like this before. He didn't know what had brought the bats in, but they were migrating, en masse. If this was some kind of frenzy, brought on by hydrophobia...

He gave an involuntary shudder. Rabies. He choked down foamy saliva, then recalled how some people were allergic to the vaccine.

Don't think about it...

Mosquitoes were still thick on the air, he had no insect spray, and like a dummy, he'd left Rom's flashlight at the house. He was stuck with nothing but a cigarette lighter and his knife.

Damned useless...

There are some situations for which you can never prepare.

He'd have had to be equipped with a flame thrower to counter this kind of assault.

The bright moon didn't help, either. All it did was highlight the bats' tufted ears and flapping wings—the swooping, diving, squeaking, bashing. Jeremy had a confused black-and-white impression of broken skies and shifting soils. The Earth moved beneath his feet, and nothing in the sky stood still. Even the distant moonscape was marred—the swooping bats appearing like black parasites invading his lunar view.

Thwack! Distracted, Jeremy took a blow on the head, and toppled onto all fours. He realised he may have been overly optimistic. Rabies was the least of his concerns. Right now he was in far more danger of being buried by bats.

It may have already happened to Rom. Jeremy weighed the wisdom of crawling forward, and opted for altitude. He'd be no good to anyone lying under a tonne of bat flesh and guano. Once he found Rom, he wanted to be able to run.