The Siege
IE
GE
Originally Published as Moon Walker
By
Rick Hautala
A Macabre Ink Production
Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright 2013 by
The Estate of Rick Hautala
Partial cover image courtesy of:
fairiegoodmother.deviantart.com
Cover design by: David Dodd
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
U
nder his own name, Rick Hautala wrote close to thirty novels, including the million-copy best seller
Night Stone
, as well as
Winter Wake
,
The Mountain King
, and
Little Brothers
. He published three short story collections:
Bedbugs
,
Occasional Demons
, and
Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala
. He had over sixty short stories published in a variety of national and international anthologies and magazines.
Writing as A. J. Matthews, his novels include the bestsellers
The White Room
,
Looking Glass
,
Follow
,
and
Unbroken
.
His recent and forthcoming books include
Indian Summer
, a new "Little Brothers" novella, as well as two novels,
Chills
and
Waiting
. He recently sold
The Star Road
, a science fiction novel co-written with Matthew Costello, to Brendan Deneen at Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's.
With Mark Steensland, he wrote several short films, including the multiple award-winning
Peekers
, based on the short story by Kealan Patrick Burke;
The Ugly File
, based on the short story by Ed Gorman; and
Lovecraft's Pillow
, inspired by a suggestion from Stephen King.
Born and raised in Rockport, Massachusetts, Rick was a graduate of the University of Maine in Orono with a Master of Arts in English Literature. He lived in southern Maine and is survived by his wife, author Holly Newstein.
In 2012, he was awarded the
Lifetime Achievement Award
from the Horror Writers Association.
For more information, check out his website
www.rickhautala.com
.
Book List
Novels and Novellas
Beyond the Shroud
Cold River
Cold Whisper
Dark Silence
Dead Voices
Follow
Four Octobers
Ghost Light
Impulse
Little Brothers
Looking Glass
Moon Death
Moonbog
Moonwalker
Night Stone
Reunion
Shades of Night
The Mountain King
The White Room
The Wildman
Twilight Time
Unbroken
Winter Wake
The Body of Evidence Series
(co-written with Christopher Golden)
Brain Trust
Burning Bones
Last Breath
Skin Deep
Throat Culture
Story Collections
Bedbugs
Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala
Occasional Demons
Untcigahunk: The Complete Little Brothers
To Jesse—for adding new light to
my
li
fe…
every day.
Introduction by Matthew Costello
Chapter Two: “The Secret Place”
Chapter Three: “Some Unanswered Questions”
Chapter Four: “A Visit to the Home”
Chapter Seven: “Back to the Home”
Chapter Ten: “Wait Until Dark”
Chapter Eleven: “A Narrow Escape”
Chapter Twelve: “Endings and Partings”
Other Rick Hautala eBooks Available from Crossroad Press
Love and thanks will always go to the boys first. What they had to put up with to get this one done would make a horror novel of its own. When… oh, when will it get easier?
The Buddhists say, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I want to thank three teachers I have had for “appearing” when I needed exactly what they had to offer:
Frederick Ives, my junior high school social studies teacher, who by giving me a copy of
Tarzan of the Apes
one day, turned me into a compulsive reader… something every writer must first be!
Judy Hakola, an English professor at the University of Maine, Orono, who inspired—and continues to inspire—an appreciation of the variety of literature, both “great” and “popular.”
Burton Haden, Department Chair at the University of Maine, Orono, who introduced me to the works of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, and all the doors those books can open.
For this particular book, I also owe a big THANK YOU to Charles Waugh, who got the whole thing started with a casually tossed off “What if…?” It was one of his best yet!
Also, a special thank you to Leslie Geibman. A good editor will always make the author dig the story out of the story, and once again, Leslie asked the right questions and pushed hard on all the soft spots and bruises in my original outline. She was the spark; I was the tinder… all I had to do was burn!
W
hat scares you now?
Now – hang on a second. Think on that question, what I'm getting at. Basically, I’m asking you to think about when you were a kid, a teen – younger than you are now.
What sort of things frightened you, what kind of stories spoke to that fear, and let you almost – in the strange and wonderful way of horror – let you play with it?
Alright. So there you are. Perhaps in a world of mummies shuffling along, or a classic vampire observing all the vampire rules. Maybe surrounded by shape changers and body possessors…and all the odd and evil (and fun!) things that the human imagination can summon.
For some, maybe ghosts?
The dead somehow lingering, sticking around?
What a concept.
As if…
Good. So then, what scares you now?
This
moment. Your fears of real things, your worries about loved ones, all the things that could happen, have happened. Those things that – maybe for some of you – have pushed the grotesqueries of monsters and myth off to the side, where they begin to fade away, like beloved memories of past events.
There is “then.” There is “now.”
And yet which of us wouldn't like to once again experience those moments of being happily scared, flipping pages, lost to the tale, the events, the very flipping of those pages a roller coaster, one of life’s sweetest treats?
That is…what you have here.
You might call this book, Rick Hautala’s
The Siege
, an artifact. Something from decades ago, a time when he and others began playing with those delicious frights, hoping to give other people the ride we all loved so much.
I think…that’s why we became writers. I know it was with Rick. Inspired by everyone from Serling to Bradbury, Frank Herbert to good old Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rick lived and breathed storytelling.
Not a religious man, but if he had a religion, it was writing and storytelling.
And unlike many of us (I'm imagining here) Rick didn't let those works merely seep into the past. They actually
didn't
become artifacts, because he would tinker and edit works that had been published, novels that had done their turn on the racks, and then slumbered, awaiting the eBook revolution.
He'd play with them, using skills he developed to sharpen the story, make the vision more intense, and even – as in the book you now have – change the title with its sharpened focus.
For Rick, the distance between fears then and now,
writer
then and now, was a distance to close. For me, to see that process, to talk with him about it, was always something pretty remarkable. We were different that way. For him, any Hautala story could be re-opened and examined under the light of his current view and talent as writer.
And yes, you probably know that this tale of zombies, circa 1989, predates the zombie-infused world we now live in. It is classic Rick, with character paramount, and you sense that his characters are as real to him as anybody he’d meet on a summer’s walk through his town.
Maybe – more real.
And the zombies, they’re different here – though I’ll let you discover that. For some, this book will be new. Readers will find themselves experiencing what horror was back – as we say – in the day. And yet it is something that in true zombie fashion continues to live.
Undead.
Maybe as all writing should be.
And my hope, for the writer as well.
But for now, feel the decades, feel the fear – and most importantly, turn the lights down and
enjoy
The Siege
.
Matthew Costello
November 8, 2013