Chapter 1

Freedom

Author's Note

Before we head up the mountain...

I am sitting here at my computer, thinking about what to say in this note to you. I guess we could start with what people always ask: Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

I think—and maybe you think so, too—that as a writer of horror stories, I must be odd. Who knows? Maybe I am. Maybe you are, too. I mean, you’re reading this book.

I honestly don't know where all my ideas come from. They hit me at the oddest times—sometimes while I’m sitting on the toilet, riding to work, or out walking my dog, Happy. Often, after a story arrives, I’ll start seeing specific scenes while out on a walk. But where do they actually start? Usually with a simple question: What if this happened?

What I can tell you is where my love of story began.

I remember being in first grade at Marion Elementary, listening to Mrs. Harky read Bunnicula to the class. I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world—a vampire bunny. A year later, at a different school in Asheville during the year my parents divorced, I found a book about the Bermuda Triangle. I was completely enthralled by the idea that a place existed that could just gobble up planes, ships, and people.

Not long after the divorce, my father was driving drunk and hit a grandfather standing on the side of the road watching his son and grandson drive a tractor. My dad panicked and left the scene. Thank the Lord, the man survived, but my dad went to jail.

My father loved reading, especially horror, and I knew he was a big fan of Stephen King. When I was in fourth grade at Cliffside Elementary—I can't remember my teacher's real name, only that all us kids called her Ms. Combat Boots—I found a battered paperback copy of King's The Stand at a flea market. My mom let me spend seventy-five cents of my own money for it. I remember holding that book and feeling like I was holding a direct connection to the father I missed so terribly. That book held such mystery. I’d heard my dad and uncles talk about King telling stories of unspeakable horror, and I couldn't wait to read those pages to share something with him.

I begged my teacher to let me read The Stand for a book report. She decided that even though it was far beyond my suggested reading level, if I promised to look up words I didn't know, I could use it for all my book reports that entire year.

I started reading the next morning. It was October, and I was right there in the pitch-black Lincoln Tunnel with Larry and Rita, trying to escape a quarantine-locked Manhattan. Outside, the autumn wind was rattling a plastic skeleton Halloween decoration hanging on the door of our double-wide trailer. The book had me so terrified I genuinely believed that skeleton was going to reach out, grab me, and hold me until I died of fright if I tried to leave for the bus stop. I finally mustered the courage to go—mostly because I was more afraid that if my mom saw how scared I was, she wouldn't let me finish the book.

We ended up moving again, but I finished The Stand. I fell in love with the pure magic living inside those words.

A few years later, we landed in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. I was in the eighth grade when I heard Edgar Allan Poe for the first time. My English teacher read The Tell-Tale Heart aloud to the class. I sat bolt upright, listening wide-eyed. It was the greatest thing I’d heard since The Stand, and I instantly thought, I want to write things like this. When she finished, she assigned us to rewrite the story from another character's perspective. I wrote mine at a feverish pace. A few days later, she told the whole class how great my draft was. It was the very first piece of writing encouragement I ever received. I wish I could remember her name—thank you, whoever you were.

My mother was working at a factory back then, and when they hosted a talent contest, we entered my version of The Tell-Tale Heart. I won first place. After that, I carried notebook after notebook everywhere I went, filling them with stories. I devoured everything King wrote, read all the Poe I could get my hands on, and learned to love Lovecraft.

By that time, I had lived through a few of my own horror stories—some of which made their way into Craggy. I’ve got an idea brewing about two brothers that might tell even more.

Now that you know where my love for storytelling comes from, I can tell you where a few of these stories were born.

Carrington came from sitting at a table in a mill break room with the real Mitchell and Chief. I thought: What if a grieving father saw the ghost of his daughter on a drink machine, and every single day she got a little closer to the front?

For Craggy, I was riding to work with the real Jimmy Joe and Tommy, heading up into the mountains toward the very same mill my mother had worked at years before. We drove straight into a blinding snowfall, and I wondered: What if a crew of electricians on their way to a job got completely lost in the Western North Carolina mountains?

And for Bug, an old childhood dread resurfaced. One of my mom's ex-boyfriends used to tell a story about a guy he knew who sat down on a toilet and got bitten on the nether region by a black widow. For years, I couldn't sit down without inspecting the seat first.

I can tell you, like Robbie Ashby in Carrington, I think I have a storage room in my mind. My stories show up there in boxes sealed with tape. The name of the story is written on the box in black sharpie scribble. Over time the tape glue ages and the box will open enough to give me a peek. Over time more story trickles out, and at some point the glue completely gives out and the box opens and the story demands to be told.

I hope this gives you a little peek into the madness. More than anything, I hope you feel the same magic in the words ahead of you that I felt sitting in that double-wide trailer all those years ago.

See you down the road,

— Adair Ashby

Freedom.

That was what running was for Seth Lowdermilk.

Every morning, before the rest of the world woke, he laced up his running shoes and disappeared down whatever back road stretched beyond the motel parking lot. Out there, with nothing but the sound of his own footsteps, the world finally loosened its grip.

The crew was family—chosen family—but even family could wear on a man. Ten-hour shifts inside boiling textile mills. Motel rooms. Every meal together. Endless miles crammed into the same van. His morning run reset everything before another day began.

Sure, the guys gave him shit about it, but they all gave each other shit about everything. It was just what brothers did.

They gave Jimmy Joe shit about the awful-smelling brown cigarettes he smoked. Seth hated all cigarette smoke, but Jimmy Joe's smelled like raw sewage and mold.

He was a sweaty shadow on the white line of the road.

His sneakers made a rhythmic thud against the asphalt as the worries melted away.

The road stretched out ahead of him, a mess of switchbacks framed by elderberry bushes and honeysuckle vines. The sweet scent of honeysuckle drifted through the morning gloom, a welcome change from Jimmy Joe's cigarettes.

The best runs were the ones that Seth couldn't even remember. The first mile was always the hardest. His body demanded to know why he was out of a warm bed before sunrise. Seth was in his mid-thirties, and years of construction work had left him running on tired muscles and aching joints. But once that first mile was behind him and his body warmed, the protests faded to whispers. Then it was just one step after another.

Seth saw the sign for the motel, the neon red light shining NO VACANCY. He was about half a mile away. He adjusted the faded braided bracelet on his wrist, the keepsake from the first race he'd ever run with his sister. He smiled when he pictured his sister, Emily, tying it around his wrist.

Seth eased his pace for a few breaths before reaching down to find one more gear. He liked to end each run with an all-out sprint.

He leaned forward and exploded into his sprint. The world sped past in a blur of shadow and predawn oranges.

The clouds opened in a cool drizzle that felt absolutely heavenly on Seth's overheated skin as he slowed to a jog and then to a walk as he entered the parking lot of the Stage Coach Motor Inn. He heard the rumbling death rattle of the motel's ancient ice machine, clinging stubbornly to life.

Seth was taller than average and rail-thin. He ran shirtless in running shorts, a headband stretched over his bald head, and neon shoes with reflective toes and heels.

He glanced at his watch.

6:08 a.m.

Seth bent over, resting his sweaty forearms on his knees as part of his morning cool-down. When his breathing had slowed to a normal pace, he untied the laces of his running shoes, and slipped them off. He peeled off his wet socks. When he stood back, he saw Fabian Smith, his roommate, standing beneath the awning outside their open motel room door in only his boxers and flip flops. He lit one of his sweet-smelling cigarillos.

Fabian took a drag and smiled as he exhaled a peach-scented cloud of smoke.

"Man, you are like a fucking ninja or something, Sethy. I never heard you slip out this morning."

"That's me, Seth the ninja."

"I worry about you out there running on the side of the road. One of these days some drunk coming home to sleep one off is gonna kill you dead."

Seth held his runners up and pointed at the reflective strip on the heel.

"Like a drunk mother-fucker is gonna see that shit. Those morning runs will be the death of you." Fabian coughed deeply and more smoke curled out.

"No, Fabe, but those will be the death of you." Seth nodded at the cigarillo between Fabian's fingers.

"Well, hell, we all gotta die, I guess. Call me crazy but I would rather it be to sweetness than knocked in some ditch at five in the morning."

They both laughed.

"You already had a shower, Fabes?"

"Yeah, shit. Gonna grab some of that weak-ass burnt coffee from the office. Sounds like one hell of a trip to this next job." and Fabian left the doorway in a cloud of fruity smoke.

"Yo, Lowdermilk." The voice was from behind Seth. He knew who it was before he turned around. Only Tommy Childers called the crew by last name, a relic from his time in the Navy.

Seth turned around. Tommy stood just outside the open motel room door already dressed for work in his company t-shirt, sleeves removed, revealing his ridiculously hairy shoulders. Sometimes the guys called him Bigfoot or Sasquatch. Tommy played along, often muttering things like, Me bigfoot. Me like you.

He wore grease-stained jeans with holes in the knees and a pair of old sneakers for traveling. Had this been a workday, he'd have worn his trusty steel-toed work boots. His thinning hair disappeared beneath a ball cap. In one hand he held a honey bun, his breakfast. In the other was an unopened bottle of water.

Tommy pitched the plastic bottle of water to Seth. "Better hydrate, buddy, you sweat like a whore in church."

Seth caught the bottle with one hand.

"Thanks."

Tommy gave a lazy wave without turning around, then disappeared back into the room.

Seth went inside to grab a shower and get ready for the rest of the day.

If Seth Lowdermilk had known that was the last time he'd ever run just for the joy of it, he might have stretched it out another mile.

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