Tom Piccirilli - Meeting the Black

By Tom Piccirilli

Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

Copyright 2012 / Tom Piccirilli

Cover image courtesy of:

http://wyldraven.deviantart.com

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Tom Piccirilli is the author of over twenty novels including SHADOW SEASON, THE COLD SPOT, THE COLDEST MILE, and A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN. He's won two International Thriller Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards, as well as having been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, the Macavity , and Le Grand Prix de L'imagination .

Book List:

NOVELS:

A Choir of Ill Children

A Lower Deep: A Self Novel

Coffin Blues

Cold Comforts

Dark Father

Grave Men

Headstone City

Hexes

Nightjack

November Mourns

Shadow Season

Shards

Sorrow's Crown A Felicity Grove Mystery

The Cold Spot

The Coldest Mile

The Dead Letters

The Dead Past A Felicity Grove Mystery

The Deceased

The Fever Kill

The Last Kind Words

The Midnight Road

The Night Class

NOVELLAS:

All You Despise

Cast in Dark Waters (with Ed Gorman)

Clown in the Moonlight

Frayed

Fuckin' Lie Down Already

Loss

Short Ride to Nowhere

The Last Deep Breath

The Nobody

The Walls of the Castle

Thrust

You'd Better Watch Out

COLLECTIONS:

Futile Efforts

Pentacle A Self Collection

Tales From the Crossroad, Vol 1

UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOKS:

All You Despise Narrated by Brett Barry

Loss Narrated by Chris Patton

Nightjack Narrated by Chet Williamson

The Fever Kill Narrated by Scott Slocum

www.tompiccirilli.com

www.thecoldspot.blogspot.com

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For my amazing wife, Michelle, my brother and sister-in-law Bill & Ginny Piccirilli , Shannon Piccirilli -Wells, my cousin Jan Bartone , Toni Suiter , Anna Wietzell , Melissa, Christopher, Branden , Nicki , Jon, Adam Findey , Angie, Barb, David N. Wilson, David Dodd, Neil Gaiman , Brian Keene, Geoff Cooper, Mike Oliveri , Mike Hyeck , John Urbancik , David Jae Smith, Kate Miciak , Randall Klein, Matt Schwartz, Ed Gorman Dean Koontz, everyone who reached out and reached in, everyone who gave so much as a nickel to the fundraiser, everyone who took the time to drop a caring note on Facebook , Twitter, who emailed, phoned, carded, loved. Youre all righteous and you all saved my ass.

8/29/12

N oir truth.

What I know: Ive got a tumor in my head thats halfway between the size of a golf-ball and a tennis-ball, according ot the neurosurgeon. I like him. His name is Lars. How can you not like an Eastern European brain surgeon named Lars? He doesnt smile much, which is probably a good thing. The nurses say hes brilliant and soft-spoken. Hes stolid, a little staid. He speaks with a clipped accent, and he takes his time looking at you. He swung his hand out when we met. Hes kind of a lurchy dude, tall, broad, looks like he should be in a German expressionistic film, his chin muscles are tight. His eyes a touch remote. Hes not a warm dude, but do you need your doctor to perform brain surgery with tears in his eyes? Lets say no.

What I see: shadows, shapes, blurs, after-images, burning roadside in the rain glares. My mother died hallucinating that her room was full of angels with burning copper penny wings. Maybe they werent hallucinations. I see them too. These blazing, flaring lights. At first I thought it was due to the diabetes. I went to the endocrinologist. I went to the ophthalmologist. He said he saw something behind my eyes. Maybe blood. Maybe cataracts. Maybe something scarier?

He sent me on to the Retinal Specialist.

What I felt: nauseous, fatigued, vertigo. Serious vertigo, like Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo . Spinning, twirling, got to put your hands out to hold onto the furniture vertigo. People falling off the roof vertigo.

The Retinal Specialist said he was sending me on to the hospital for an MRI. He made a point of stating that he wouldnt look at the MRI. He didnt look at MRIs. The neurologist would look at them.

Okay, chief , said me.

Where Ive been. In the hospital. Wedged into an MRI. It shows the radiology people something bad. The nurses voice comes over the little speaker in there and she keeps me in the loop. This scan will last for five minutes, Thomas. Try to keep very still. Except I cant keep still. Im not fidgety but Im breathing heavily. I can feel my chest expanding and my arms pressing on the sides of the machine, and Im a little twitchy. The machine bangs like its full of starving babies that want out.

What I know: Things arent right. Im not myself. Im often in a fog lately. I cant see, I cant think clearly, I havent been writing much. And there it is. When everything else runs out on me, I can always count on the writing. Its always there. And now, its slipping through my fingers too. Jesus, not that, take the rest of it, but not that. What am I if I cant write? Im not me. Im not the person Im supposed to be.

What I hear: a deep throb in the back of my brothers throat as he says, Love you, brother. Hes not the warmest man in the world and Ive made him suffer for that in the writing, and I shouldnt have, but you put it down the way you can. Im often angry. Hes taken a beating. But now hes scared, and Christ, that scares me. He was always stone, he was always the jock, the rock, the guy who didnt tremble. Now hes worried. About me.

What Im thinking about: all of that and more. My dead old man, who died when I was seven. Hes always been gone. Hes always been the invisible pit whose presence has haunted me. His death to cancer made me noir. His death to cancer made me horror. It made me fear. It made me put words down. It put the hole in me that still isnt filled. Is that a wasted life? Shouldnt I be a whole person by now? Im forty-seven. Older than he was when he went down.

Where Im going: On Monday, in for surgery to have the tumor removed. As much of it as they can remove. The doc tells me he doesnt shave heads. He will use staples to close the sutures. He says it will take five hours to tug out this aggressively growing mass. Theres still a slight chance its not cancerous. That it is benign. Just your average everyday aggressively growing mass of tennis-ball sized blackness waiting to eat up the rest of my brain, I suppose. I think of it like a lost nightmare. It started in my subconscious and couldnt find its way out. Maybe its this, this essay, this story, my story, the last bit of my story waiting to be told. Maybe it just wants to be born like all the other books. Maybe its my fault. I shouldve helped it out more. Then it wouldnt have turned on me.

What else Im thinking about: Humphrey Bogart. I read a biography on Bogie once that spoke of how he was an iconic, heroic performer, not just because of the figure of courage and strength he cut on film but because of how he faced his own death, when he was so frail and weak that Bacall had to single-handedly lower him downstairs in a dumbwaiter to visit with his friends. No matter what happens to me, Ill never be slim enough for Michelle to carry me single-handedly anywhere. She was losing her breath pushing my fat ass around the hospital in a wheelchair.