Home > Author > Chet Williamson
61 " If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.” William James "
― Chet Williamson , A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult
62 " He refused to think about how at the age of forty-eight he could conclude, without any satisfaction at all, that he’d been right his entire life for being a bitterly cynical bastard. "
63 " Leroy was sixteen and the oldest so he thought he was too good to drive. Let baby boys do that, he’d say. "
64 " Although charming when the situation demanded, Brad would never be accused of being happy-go-lucky. He was intelligent, and like most intelligent people, he could be moody, withdrawn, especially when bothered or . . . Thomasine hesitated to say scared. "
65 " A bear was more human than elk or mastodon. Like a human swollen with darkness. So empty of purpose it eats constantly trying to fill itself, that it might be ready for its six-month dreamsleep. A bear ate the kind of things people ate; human garbage was a treat. Then wild apples and horse plums, shadberries, and watercress for dessert. And its front and back paws were different because they’d been used differently. Just like a man’s. Manlike wails and grunts. “Wild-man-of-the-woods,” some of the Indians had called it, what you might imagine a neighbor might become, if left in the woods for generations, deprived of companionship and forced to live in the dark. "
66 " He don’t have no orgies,” he said. “How do you know?” “Nobody’s never had no orgies in Merridale. It’s in the town code. If you have an orgy, you get hit by lightning.” “Bullshit,” said Fred Hibbs. “You ever read the town code? "
67 " The polychloride plastic bubbled hotly, releasing evil tendrils of carbonized waste floating into the air like fibrous black snowflakes from hell. Maybe the crackpot fundamentalists could use that. When you burned the cursed records, black demons fled into the air, momentarily visible, like a spirit relinquishing possession of a Haitian. Like a soul or animus departing a human corpus at death. "
68 " She watched a squirrel watching her. “Yeah, laugh all you want, buckaroo. I need the exercise, and nobody invited you to watch. Whoops!” Cass slid feet first down five feet or so of the rock surface. Pathetic miniature avalanches of chalky rock trickled around her. Fifteen feet away, another squirrel joined the first on the branch of a crooked, dead tree. The soil could not nourish the tree here. But the squirrels could gather there to make bad squirrel jokes and watch the human burlesque. "
69 " Hell, we’re already more compatible than Cory and I ever were.” “You mean she hasn’t tried to stave in your head with an ashtray or cut off your balls with a butcher knife? "
70 " Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule, Nietzsche had said. "
71 " The room was a mess, as always – magazines, newspapers scattered, unpacked boxes, a nest of cat hair on one side chair where their feline slept, furniture, mantle, a few knick-knacks all undusted. "
72 " Catalogs called it a “survival knife.” Survival, in combat, meant knowing how to kill people quickly and silently. "
73 " He looked out at the dark of night seeking rumors of the moon. "
74 " A brittle crackling sounded ahead of them, then a peal of hearty laughter. “Badgers!” scoffed a booming voice with a heavy Spanish accent. “We don’t need no stinking badgers! "
75 " He needed to find someone that needed killing. "
76 " But Mom was the craziest. The gun had really sent her into outer space. After finding it, she’d beaten him with a wooden spoon—so hard that he couldn’t sit down the rest of the day, only lie on his stomach in bed. "
77 " His mother tried to get him back on the straight and narrow, but the sheriff locked him up one night after they found him naked in a cow pasture screaming about mind-taps and government conspiracies "
78 " Joseph and I went shopping for all the things we’re gonna need. You wouldn’t believe some of the weird places we hit: occult bookstores, creepy little shops I never even knew existed. This one place was like a warlock Army surplus store: man, it was crazy! I think it’s the only place I’ve ever seen where you could pick up a pair of wolverine testicles on sale.” They laughed riotously, Allan clutching his head but helpless to stop. “No, seriously! They had all those little balls in jars …” “Shhh. Please. Stop. "
79 " Later, Jim thought of the bus the same way he thought of a Harlem whore. Everything is so easy until you step into that dark hallway, and bang. "
80 " His mother might not believe him, but here in the hospital, why, they would have to believe him. You couldn’t have wolves running around loose in a hospital. No, they wouldn’t allow that. Hospitals had rules, and one of them probably was NO WOLVES. "