Piper A Light Most Hateful

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80336-421-6
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

When a summer storm sweeps through a sleepy town unleashing a monstrous and otherworldy power that threatens to break reality, Olivia will stop at nothing to find her best friend and get them to safety. Mona Awad's Bunny meets Stranger Things in this mind-bending and terrifying examination of female friendship and the lengths we'll go to protect the ones we love, from the Bram Stoker award winning author of Queen of Teeth Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania. At least she has her best friend, Sunflower. Olivia figures she'll die in Chapel Hill, if not from boredom, then the summer night storm which crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow. If Olivia's going to escape Chapel Hill and someday reconcile with her parents, she'll need to dodge residents enslaved by the storm's otherworldly powers and find Sunflower. But as the night strains friendships and reality itself, Olivia suspects the storm, and its monster, may have its eyes on Sunflower and everything she loves. Including Olivia.

Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth, The Worm and His Kings, Your Mind Is a Terrible Thing, Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy, Benny Rose, the Cannibal King, and The Possession of Natalie Glasgow. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association, with dozens of short stories appearing in various publications. She lives with her wife in Maryland, where their paranormal research is classified. Find her on Twitter via @HaileyPiperSays

Autoren/Hrsg.

Piper, Hailey

Leseproben

1. WHAT MOVIE IS THIS?
The hill screamed at nightfall, the high-pitched panic of a child caught in a bad dream. Its power rattled Olivia Abram’s car windows, her teeth and bones. She pumped the brakes in the middle of the street, and her uneasy sedan paused only a few yards from the curb where the Mason House stood. No sign of anyone shrieking in its windows, on its lawn, around its neighbors. Olivia looked out her driver’s window at the curb, to the nearest standing streetlight, and then eyed her rearview mirror. Behind her, tongues of pavement formed turn-offs and intersections. Every route in Chapel Hill spread from Main Street, either heading south past the Mason House toward the interstate, or north toward the Starry Wood, the business district, sterile suburbs, and Sunset Pass. An older woman in tank top and shorts walked a yellow Labrador, and both she and her dog looked toward Olivia’s maroon Chevy, as though she’d been the one to make the sound. Which at least meant she hadn’t imagined it. She listened for it again, some way to give it a sensible origin, but only crickets sang in the trees ahead. Had it really been a scream? She had heard a noise, glass shattering across Chapel Hill’s sky, no doubting that, but had it been human for certain? Too far away to be the squeal of drive-in speakers gearing up for tonight’s show. Maybe some commotion on Main Street? Or maybe Olivia’s tire had run over twisted metal in the road, but she couldn’t guess why it would make that anguished screech. Another listen would help her figure it out, but the sound didn’t come again. Hills didn’t scream, no matter how lonesome. Olivia couldn’t idle here much longer. She pulled forward on the narrow road and beeped her horn twice, interrupting the night with a noise of her own. It came in two flat squawks. Homes on this side of town stood ancient, almost too old for Chapel Hill, for America, as though they had watched continents divide and stars die. The Mason House was a two-floor house with a split-level breaking the black rooftop between the main area and the risen second floor, where two bedrooms haunted the upstairs. Dark wood formed its skin and organs. Olivia had stepped inside plenty of times, but the house never seemed to welcome her any more than the woman who owned it. Only her daughter offered a kind word. There was no sign of Sunflower. The front door stood unmoving above the stiff porch of grim planks, empty of a petite silhouette or blond locks. As if no one lived here. Olivia craned her head out the driver’s side window. “Sunflower, where did you get?” She only then noticed the driveway, where an aging Volkswagen should have sat beside the white Honda. No Volkswagen meant no Sunflower. And despite the number of bedrooms, only two people lived here. The door at last cracked open, where a bony frame in a white dress emerged. She shut the door hard, her back to the street. Her face was hidden behind gray-streaked dark locks, as if her head were only made of hair across an endless faceless scalp. Olivia tensed to drive off. She wanted to escape before Hazibel Mason could descend the creaking porch steps and snag her in unpleasant conversation. This was supposed to be a pickup-and-drive kind of visit. Nothing to make Olivia late for the Friday night shift. “She isn’t here,” Hazibel said, still not turning around, her tone flat and unfriendly. Keys jangled in her hands. “Isn’t she with you?” “Yes,” Olivia said without a moment’s hesitation. She hit the gas and drove on before Hazibel could ask another question. Better to spread confusion now and concoct the right lies later. Anything to appease Hazibel’s blue-dagger stare. The sedan slid toward Main Street, where the bars, shops, and restaurants thrummed with life, and the sidewalks and streets brimmed with cars and people. If Olivia didn’t know better, she would have assumed Chapel Hill to be fighting its small-town status with small-city aspirations. No such thing. This was a go-nowhere, be-nobody town. Always would be, as long as it stood. So where the hell could Sunflower be? Her boyfriend Roy Addler’s house? The craft shop? Maybe the drive-in, with any luck. Olivia drove a block along Main Street before chasing north and turning onto Ridgemont Road. Her home on Cooper Street beckoned from the west side of Chapel Hill, if only she could waste the evening cozy there instead. But she headed east, passing sterile suburban neighborhoods where slanted rooftops capped timber houses, each looming over nearby lawns and streetlights before disappearing in her rearview. Van Buren Avenue, then Riggs, then Newport all on the right, trees on the left, until Ridgemont Road curved north and sent her driving straight into the Starry Wood. Night painted the trunks, limbs, and needles in a blue-black hue where the town’s light couldn’t reach. Their darkness coated Chapel Hill’s northern edge, guarding town from a steep descent. You could even stare down that gaping drop from Lookout, but that was east of the drive-in, meant for making out, feeling up, and other activities you needed two or more to do, and Olivia drove alone. Starry Wood Lane had no streetlights, hiding the forest beyond beneath a black curtain. Switching off the headlights might have given Olivia a meager glimpse of starlight above, but the outstretched tree limbs obscured much of the sky, forming shadow hands that grabbed at her car in passing. According to one of the astrology books Shelly and Dane kept in the craft shop beneath their apartment where Olivia lived, this August’s new moon and the positions of the northern stars promised her that tonight would be okay. But books and stars could be liars, and maybe the not-scream noise meant to remind her of that. There was no such thing as an okay Friday night shift at the Starry Wood Drive-In. Crossing tree limbs and branches soon thinned from the winding road against the subtle lights ahead. Rows of gravel formed a tight square spreading beneath the enormous drive-in screen, its black speakers rising as sentinels to either side for anyone whose radio might be busted. Booth Bill sat in a lawn chair where Starry Wood Lane deposited cars into the driveway, a gentle giant of a man. He and Olivia waved as she drove past. He would sell tickets until showtime, and then he would man the projector himself, while Olivia juggled the work of two or three people at the concessions counter. The owner would be sorry if either of them quit, but he knew the same as Olivia. No one in this town ever went anywhere, got anywhere, and no one was coming to make this night any easier for either of them. Not even Sunflower, it seemed. She was supposed to hop into Olivia’s car on the way in, that had been the plan—keep Olivia company through the first film of tonight’s double feature. Not to help, but for Olivia to have her best friend against the August heat and nighttime stillness. That would have been enough. Only a couple of cars were parked in the drive-in’s gravely rows, neither of them Sunflower’s Volkswagen. Other cars would come, and there was a chance none of them would bring Sunflower. She might have found better things to do than hang around here. Olivia needed to get her head on straight. She hurried into her red uniform shirt and pulled her dark brown hair into a gentle ponytail. A mounting ache throbbed behind her forehead. She’d have to muscle through it. Pain wouldn’t make the double feature any easier, but regardless of lying books, she wanted to pretend the stars had something nice to say. Tonight’s crowd came rowdy. Too many high school graduates and seniors-to-be soon stuffed the drive-in’s rows, with little intention of watching the movies. August’s retro night—the owner’s idea—gave Chapel Hill’s teenage populace a substitute location for necking rather than piling their cars at the cliffs of Lookout in a mock orgy of flesh and steel. The concessions stand was a sticky countertop, a glass window guarding the candy, not the staff, and a sloping roof jutting from a squat white slab of brick at the drive-in’s edge. Most of the building’s insides offered supply storage, a pantry, and a walk-in fridge. Public restrooms haunted the building’s far end, while the locked door to the employee restroom stood a few feet down from the soda-stained tiles where Olivia juggled her responsibilities at the register, popcorn machine, soda fountain, and everything else the owner stuffed back here to accommodate guests. Rows of cars spit endless customers, approaching with endless requests. Every request for buttered, unbuttered, root beer, clear soda, candy—it all piled on Olivia’s shoulders, everyone scrambling to get their share before the screen lit with tonight’s spectacle. She only caught a break when the first movie rolled. Couples retreated to their cars, and most wouldn’t return from swallowing soda, snacks, and each other’s tongues until the between-movie rush. Only the occasional straggler popped in mid-show. The runtime gave her room to catch her breath, recount the cash in the register, even grab a drink for herself. And to scan the area again for Sunflower Mason. She might have gone wandering anywhere amid the rows of parked cars, now ashine with flickering light....