Darkness on the Edge of Town (23 page)

Back in Dez’s shed, the night he told me the truth about all of this, he said something that stuck with me:
“It’s not a circle. It’s a square. It goes all around the town and up into the sky.”

That got me thinking about what was around us,
and above us and, most importantly, what was below us. Deep beneath the town.

When the idea first occurred to me, I wanted to go out to the edge of town, stand next to the darkness, and dig a hole in the ground, just to test my theory. I couldn’t, of course. Not with that mob outside. But even without that field test, I’m sure that I’m right. Here’s the thing—the darkness has to stop at some point. It can’t go all the way through the ground, down to the planet’s core and then out the bottom side of the world. At some point, there has to be an end to it all—an edge to the darkness. If it’s a living being, then it has to have finite dimensions, right?

And if so, then all we have to do is find that edge and skirt around it.

My plan is simple. Russ, Christy, and I are going to sneak into the back alley. T and Anna have posted guards there, but we’re hoping we can kill them before they raise the alarm. There’s a manhole cover near the far end of the alley, right between the Chinese restaurant and the mailbox on the corner. We’re going to get down inside the sewer and navigate the pipes until we reach the edge of town. The main pipe extends far beyond the town limits. It carries our waste water and sewage several miles away to the treatment plant in the next town. It’s a labyrinth, but not like the one Dez talked about. The maze of pipes goes under the highway and out into the hills and forests. The pipes are very deep. Hopefully, the darkness doesn’t reach that far underground.

Hopefully, there’s light at the end of that sewer tunnel.

We can’t be all there is. There has to be someone—something—left out there.

If you found this notebook and you’re reading it, then that means one of two things: Either you’re trapped in Walden, too, or the crisis is over and the darkness has passed. If it’s the first, feel free to follow us. I don’t know where we’re going, but it has to be better than this. That’s probably not the answer you’re looking for, and I’m sorry about that, but it’s all I can offer you. There’s no way to tie this up nice and neat and put a pretty little bow on it. Either we’ll get away, or we won’t. And if you follow along behind, then you’ll find out for yourself.

Anyway…

We’re leaving now. We’re going out into the darkness.

And if it turns out that Christy was right all along, and we
are
already dead, then I guess we’ll go out of the darkness and into the light. And that would be okay, too. I don’t care where the light leads. I’d just like to see it one more time.

Good-bye.

URBAN GOTHIC

“None of his work is more frightening than his latest novel,
Urban Gothic
…This is Keene at his best, and it seems he has only just started.”

—The Horror Review

“…His work is raw, gritty, and often brilliant, and his latest novel,
Urban Gothic,
is no exception.
Urban Gothic
is a tour de force in shock horror. Read it if you dare.”

—
Dark Scribe Magazine

CASTAWAYS

“Relentlessly frightening and viscerally brutal,
Castaways
combines nonstop action with an old school horror abandon that gives readers scarce time to come up for air.”

—
Dark Scribe Magazine

“You’ve got all the things here a horror fan craves: the violence, the mayhem, and the blood and guts. Much like Laymon, Keene provides all kinds of thrills here…But Keene has his own voice, too, one just as good as the late great master, Richard Laymon.”

—SFRevu

GHOST WALK

“Keene returns to creepy LeHorn’s Hollow with enthusiasm and with a formidable chunk of evil in Nodens…Keene demonstrates an authoritative grasp on primal fears and on a rural America cut off from the mainstream.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Keene has easily grown to be my favorite writer, and until he proves that he can no longer write anything good anymore, he most likely will hold that title for a long time.
Ghost Walk
is another one of Keene’s books to add to the pile of greatness.”

—The Horror Review

DARK HOLLOW

“Keene keeps getting better and better. Given how damn good he was to start with…soon, he will become a juggernaut.”

—
The Horror Fiction Review

DEAD SEA

“Delivering enough shudders and gore to satisfy any fan of the genre, Keene proves he’s still a lead player in the zombie horror cavalcade.”

—
Publishers Weekly

GHOUL

“If Brian Keene’s books were music, they would occupy a working class, hard-earned space between Bruce Springsteen, Eminem, and Johnny Cash.”

—John Skipp,
New York Times
bestselling author

THE CONQUEROR WORMS

“Keene delivers [a] wild, gruesome page-turner…the enormity of Keene’s pulp horror imagination, and his success in bringing the reader over the top with him, is both rare and wonderful.”

—
Publishers Weekly

CITY OF THE DEAD

“Brian Keene’s name should be up there with King, Koontz and Barker. He’s without a doubt one of the best horror writers ever.”

—The Horror Review

THE RISING

“…
The Rising
, is a postapocalyptic narrative that revels in its blunt and visceral descriptions of the undead.”

—
The New York Times Book Review

“Hoping for a good night’s sleep? Stay away from
The Rising
. It’ll keep you awake, then fill your dreams with lurching, hungry corpses wanting to eat you.”

—Richard Laymon, author of
Flesh

A LEISURE BOOK®

February 2010

Published by

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
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New York, NY 10016

Copyright © 2010 by Brian Keene

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