Ed Williams has had enough. He's lost his wife, his IT job and his ability to sleep. He knows he must drive south to learn why his mind is quaking with the hum of a hundred voices. He does not know that he's the latest inheritor of the souls of Civil War cavalrymen ambushed en route to a fort in New Mexico and which were freed from the cursed earth by a road repair gang. Nor does Ed know that the closer he gets to Tucumcari, New Mexico, the more energy the mummified remains of the cavalrymen will receive as their lost spirits demand the bodies rise up to kill... And kill... And kill...
Some nightmares can take over lives...others just take lives'Souls...', my first novel, took fourteen months to write itself in its first incarnation and several more ran their course before the final version got to rear its head. It's been termed 'new age horror', a badge about which I'd wondered at length until I was able to stand back and see everything.
Set in a quiet, dusty New Mexican town some years ago, the story involves much mythology and relies heavily upon historical/quasi-historical input and nightmare sequences. Heavy stuff. I learned very early on how vital the former element was to put most of the bones on the skeleton of the story's putrefied carcass. The other part I found would contribute heavily to forging one of the most pained characters I've ever had to care for in a story.
It's a long, weaving tale about demonic possession, haunting and the indestructibility of anger. The ideas that first came to me were enough to scare virtually the whole story out of (or into?) me for use on the very first draft. Everything thereafter just seemed to grow right out of this unholy soil.
My characters were old friends from old nightmares of mine. Their world was to become the biggest nightmare that I'd have to endure working in. Looking back now, I still regard the villains - enraged, homicidal hundred-and-twenty-something-year-old army riders - as the most terrifying that anyone could put on the chasing end of a pursuit situation. There's just no way that you can even hope to plead with something whose eyes have shrivelled into hard jelly pinheads or who hates you to the core just for being alive. All you can do is run and hope you won't feel the flash of steel on your back or those cold, sandpapery, desiccated fingers curling around your throat.
'Souls...' operates on a particularly nasty character chemistry. If my people were chemicals, I believe there's a very good chance that they would detonate when interacting with one another. I discovered a great deal about human minds before and as I wrote, particularly about the psychology of people in crisis. The crisis in 'Souls...' becomes quite cancerous as the tale unwinds and the apocalyptic body count (though regrettable in a few cases) is essential, never gratuitous.
I had many surprises while working on 'Souls of the Southern Stars'. Most of them came from the ever-increasing feeling that every word written was flowing directly from my nightmare-scorched subconscious. Of the ones left over, I found that these would frequently spill over into the territory of being 'shocks'. Knowing what I know now about the shocks that came to me while writing 'Souls...' gives me an eerie kind of satisfaction.
Notice that I said 'satisfaction' there and not 'peace'........
I hope you enjoy this first harvest of my nightmare fruit.
