The Devil of Echo Lake

The

Devil

Of

Echo lake

By

Douglas Wynne

JournalStone

San Francisco

Copyright ©2012 by Douglas Wynne

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

JournalStone books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

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www.journalstone.com

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN:  978-1-936564-53-8  (sc)

ISBN:  978-1-936564-59-0 (hc)

ISBN:  978-1-936564-60-6 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number:  2012941729

Printed in the United States of America

JournalStone rev. date: October 19, 2012

Cover Design and Artwork: Jeff Miller

Edited By:  Dr. Michael R. Collings

Endorsements

“Ancient gods, haunted forests, the Devil, and Rock & Roll. What more do you need for a great story?
The Devil of Echo Lake
is a beautifully crafted book that puts a unique spin on the classic tale of Robert Johnson and the crossroads. In the first few pages, Douglas Wynne grabs hold and never lets go. You can’t miss with this fantastic debut.”

— Brett J. Talley, author of Bram Stoker Award™ finalist
That Which Should Not Be
and
The Void
.

“The Devil of Echo Lake
delves into the oh-so-thin interface between reality and the supernatural. Douglas Wynne handles complex issues deftly in this novel. His characters, real and otherwise, ring true. His writing is strong and appropriate to his subjects—temptation, acceptance, realization, and ultimately redemption.”

— Dr. Michael R. Collings, Author of
The Slab, The House Beyond the Hill,
and other tales of wonder and fear.

“Doug delivers the quiet, atmospheric horror that pervades the story with the deft touch of an experienced writer.  I may not have heard of Douglas Wynne before I started reading
The Devil of Echo Lake
, but now that I have finished this excellent debut novel, I can honestly say that I’ll be looking for more of his work in the future.”

— Joseph Nassise, bestselling author of the
Templar Chronicles
and the
Great Undead War series
.

"This book sings a dark, dark song—it's got a grim rhythm that even rock-and-roll has forgotten. If you're standing at the crossroads and you don't know where to go, take the road that leads you to this book."

 — Chuck Wendig, Author
of Blackbirds
and
Mockingbird
.

Acknowledgements

I’m very grateful to my early readers for their insightful critiques throughout the drafting process: Jeff Miller, Phil O’Flaherty, Chuck Killorin, Melissa Corliss-DeLorenzo, Sue Little, Jen Salt, Glyn Forster, Stacia Decker, and Jill Sweeney-Bosa. Thanks also to Carol Kutz for making a lifelong reader out of me in the sixth grade, to my grandmother—to whom this book is dedicated—for typing up my first horror stories without batting an eye, to my parents for always supporting my creative endeavors, to Jeff for rocking the cover, to the gnomes who pluck weeds in the story garden at AQ Connect, to Christopher C. Payne and his team at JournalStone for being allies and angels just when I most needed them, to Brett J. Talley for helping me to see the forest for the trees, and most of all to my amazing wife Jen for believing.

For Barbara Whitehouse

1927 - 2012

I'll be looking at the moon, b
ut I'll be seeing you.

Part I

Big in Japan

One

“In the middle of the journey of life, I came to myself in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost.”

Dante

Billy Moon didn’t know exactly when he had sold his soul. There had been no pact penned in blood, no dusty crossroads. Maybe it happened that night on the bridge, the night he met Trevor Rail. Maybe his soul was tucked away in one of those paragraphs of legalese he had skimmed over hungrily in his mid-twenties—his eternal spirit leveraged against mechanical royalties and recoupable advances in a five-point font.
I sold my soul,
he thought, and it fit. Like a perfect chorus summing up the verses of his life, it rhymed with the rest of him.

*  *  *

On the last day of the
Lunatic
tour, Billy received a harmless-looking fax that felt like a death sentence. It was from his manager, Danielle Del Vecchio. She had left Japan two days earlier, confident that the final show at the Tokyo Bay NK Hall would go off without a hitch. Billy took the envelope from the bellhop and mumbled, “Domo.” He’d given up trying to tip them, but it still felt weird not to. As the suite door glided shut, he collapsed into a stuffed leather chair. He shook the page free of the envelope, which he tried to fling across the room like a Frisbee, although it disappointed him by flying like a bat.

Billy,

Trevor just called to inform us that he has you booked at Echo Lake Studios in upstate NY for the next 2 months. I know it’s short notice, but Gravitas doesn’t mind paying for you to write in the studio this time. It’s a residential studio out in the woods, so you’ll be free of distractions. We’ll fly to NY on 10/30. You’re doing the MTV Halloween show on 10/31, and then I’ll have a limo take you up to the studio on 11/2. Would have just called, but now you have your schedule in writing so you won’t forget. Break a leg tonight!

xoxo

Danielle

Billy let the page flutter to the floor. He took a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table and lit up. The afternoon sun warmed his face and hurt his eyes. He could see his reflection on the dull gray surface of the TV screen: tangled, unwashed hair, black kimono, belly hanging over the waistband of his underwear. He didn’t like the image so he exhaled, banishing it with a breath of smoke.

Why couldn’t she call him on the phone like she had every other day for the past ten months? So he’d have it in writing? No, she had to
fax
to tell him he’d be spending the next two months hunting songs for the third album in the woods with Trevor Rail because she knew he was having reservations about Rail. It was just like Danielle to drop the bomb from a safe distance.
Just
got a phone call from Trevor, my ass. But then, if honesty was to be the word of the day, he had to admit that “reservations” was an understatement. What he felt about Rail was more like pure, undiluted dread.

He hadn’t talked to her about that in any depth, but if he had, she would have just told him to stop smoking so much pot because it was making him paranoid. And she’d probably be right. Still, could she blame him for being paranoid when he had to divine his fate from some fax while everyone with the decision-making power in his life was on the other side of the world?

Billy looked at the heavy oak door and remembered where he was. Someone was knocking, and he wasn’t sure how long they’d been at it. The knocking started up again, but now it was deeper.  Someone had switched to pounding on the door with the side of a fist.

“Billy, you better be getting laid 'cause if you’re passed out drunk, I’m gonna have to beat your ass.”

Flint.

Billy opened the door. The pressure that had been building in his head over the fax dissipated at the sight of Flint’s mischievous grin—missing tooth, scruffy dimpled cheek, and all.

The guitarist scanned him from top to bottom and back again, from behind a pair of sunglasses that looked like welders’ goggles. It was a wonder he could see anything at all through them, but he must have because he said, “Christ, Billy, don’t you even dress yourself when Danielle’s not around? Come on, we gotta be at sound check in half an hour. Don’t want to blow it on the last night, do we?”

Billy gave a half-hearted smile. “No. After all, we’re finally big in Japan.”

On the way to the limo with Flint, Billy was called over to the front desk by the concierge who had a small package waiting for him, delivered by a local shop. Billy unwrapped it in the back of the car, finding under the brown paper a dragon-themed red and gold silk brocade box with silver clasps.

“Sexy,” Flint said beside him, looking at what lay on the gold silk lining.

“A knife,” Billy said, stating the obvious.

“Not just a knife, bro. That’s an authentic Japanese
tanto
.”

Billy picked it up gingerly and turned it over in his hands. The handle was scarlet silk wrapped in a diamond pattern over some black textured material. The silver end-cap on the hilt was engraved with a cherry blossom. Three more flowers in mother-of-pearl adorned the black-lacquered wooden sheath. It was stunning, exuding a graceful, evil beauty.

“What’s a
tanto?
” he asked, staring at it.

“That’s one of the three blades a samurai would carry. My old roommate was way into this shit. Samurai movies every other night. Dude had some replicas too, but nothing like this. That’s real stingray skin on the handle.”

Billy drew the blade from the sheath and examined it—nine inches of tapered steel that looked sharper than anything he had ever handled in his life.

“
Whoa
, dude. Put it away before we hit a bump. That thing is sick. Who’s it from?”

There was a small envelope in the box. It contained the knife’s registration with the Japanese Ministry of Education and a second card with a sword-smith’s insignia and a typed message:

Dear Billy,

A small token to celebrate your recent success on the Japanese charts. Please bring it with you to our sessions. I think it would be brilliant to get some photos of you with it for the cover art. Looking forward to working together again.

Yours,

Trevor

“It’s from Trevor. He wants pictures of me with it.”

“Cool.”

“Samurai blade, huh? I thought they carried big swords.”

“They had three different blades for different jobs. The katana would be for the battlefield—that’s
the long one. Then there was a medium size one for close combat, a waki-something-or-other, I forget. And this one here for ritual suicide if they were captured or disgraced.”

Billy laughed without humor. “I’ve barely even written anything for the next album, and he already knows he wants me posing with a Japanese suicide knife in the artwork.”

“See that’s what makes ol’ Third Rail a marketing genius. He’s already thinking about how to bridge your new Asian audience with your crazy goth chicks, who like to cut themselves. The crafty fucker.” 

*  *  *

They closed the show that night with “I Like to Watch,” a techno-metal song
Rolling Stone
had called, “a scathing high-decibel diatribe against the vampiristic nature of the news media.” Billy staggered out of a foggy wash of blue lasers as he struck the final chord on his blood-red Les Paul, then slammed his fist down on top of his amplifier, making the spring reverb inside it rattle and shudder in what became a series of explosions echoing throughout the hall. Only when the sound had almost faded did the applause swell up and break over the stage. Exhausted and bathed in sweat, Billy was once again impressed by how intently Japanese audiences listened. In America there was always some drunk guy yelling during a quiet section, but that never happened here.