Frostwalker

By Brandon Luffman

There’s something in the woods behind Jake Marsden’s house – and someone wants him to find it. A strange dream shatters his sleep, night after night, and a compulsion to find the dark presence in the forest wars with his logical and ordered nature. What’s a geek to do?

When his small hometown of Wynn, North Carolina falls under an ancient curse, Jake will find himself in a battle against creatures worse than any he’s faced in a game. Playing for keeps, it will be geek versus god in the fight to stop an evil force bent on destroying everything he holds dear.

The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth – If They Live Long Enough.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brandon Luffman
• Release date: May 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301678211

Brandon Luffman

Born in Statesboro, Georgia in 1976, Brandon Luffman was raised in rural North Carolina from the time he was old enough to walk. In the sixth grade he discovered "The Chronicles Of Narnia". Soon after that, he was on to Stephen King and Arthur C. Clarke. At the same time, he was making his first forays into writing fiction. After creating a series of short fantasy pieces for a class assignment that were received with praise, he was hooked on writing fiction for the entertainment of others. Now Brandon writes supernatural horror as well as fantasy, science fiction, and other genres. His short fiction is available online in various formats. Brandon still lives on the family farm in northwestern North Carolina with his wife and family. Taking inspiration from his homeland, he brings southern sensibilities and a modern flair to these classic genre themes. His first novel, "Frostwalker", was released in May of 2013.

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Frostwalker

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013, Brandon Luffman

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, without permission of the author. A great many hours of work have been expended in the writing and preparation of this book. Please respect the author's copyright.

This book is a work of fiction. All events, persons, places, or other identifiers in this work are fictitious. Any similarities to real world entities or events are fictionalized. Any names, trademarks, or similar indicia are not an endorsement of or by such entities as may be commonly identified by those names in the real world. No trademark or ownership is implied, claimed, or intended by the author. Any similarity to real world people, places or entities is coincidental.

To contact the author, please visit his website at:

http://brandonrluffman.wordpress.com/contact/

This book is also available in paperback format.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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 recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people, in no particular order:

My wife, for her support of my writing, and her willingness to read any drivel I happen to stick in front of her, and then have the honesty to tell me it really is drivel.

Thank you to Evelyn Mathis Jones, my teacher through the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, for showing me that reading was something you could do for enjoyment, and then showing me the greater thrill of writing for the entertainment of others.

Big thanks to Pauline Nolet (http://www.paulinenolet.com) and Rebecca Hamilton (http://www.beccahamiltonbooks.com), for their editing and proofreading efforts. Without their help, this book could never have been what it has become. I suggest that any author looking to self-publish seek them out online and engage them for your own work. You simply must have an editor, and these two are among the best!

Thanks to Greg Collins (http://www.akira-x.com) for the fantastic cover art! He worked closely with me to create exactly what I envisioned and it turned out beautifully!

Thanks to Rudy Krall for his invaluable assistance in formatting my work for publication. His technical expertise has been a true salvation.

Thank you to all of my beta readers who have slogged through various drafts of Frostwalker, from its early days as a NaNoWriMo first draft back in 2009, all the way through early 2013. There are too many to list individually, but know that I thank you all and couldn't have done it without you.

Thanks to N. Caldwell for pointing out that what happens in movies when people get shot is not what happens in real life, and other technical issues.

Thanks to Clinton Bruck for his incredibly in-depth proofreading notes and what is perhaps the best compliment any proofreader can give: Fuck your book. I got caught up reading and lost where I last saw something that needed a correction.

Finally, I'd like to thank you for giving this book a shot. In today's busy world, reading time is often a precious commodity. I am honored to have you invest yours with me.

For Mom, who waited 37 years for this book.

I love you. There, I said it!

It was a cold night, but not so cold as to be unbearable. Late fall nights in North Carolina are mild, even here in the low mountains of the northwestern part of the state, and with his jacket and constant movement, Jake Marsden remained warm.

His lungs pulled the cold air in steady breaths, and his nose and cheeks were red with the chill, but he was unaware of these. Jake took constant, even strides and progressed through the darkened field. His footsteps on the fallen leaves slipped from time to time, but he did not fall. A cloudless sky sparkled above the rural darkness, but he did not see it.

Jake was thinking of the Light. It was out there, in the woods somewhere, and he meant to find it. This is becoming unhealthy, he thought, but quickly dismissed the idea. He’d made this trip many times, and while he was unnerved by recent events, nothing truly dangerous had happened. That’s not why it’s unhealthy—it’s obsessive behavior, part of his mind nagged.

It was obsessive, he had to admit, but he put such thoughts aside. He’d been dreaming of the Light for weeks now, and he knew it was out there, waiting for him and no one else.

When the dreams first began, they were like most any other dream he’d had: disjointed, unfocused and rarely remembered upon waking. Soon, he realized that he’d been having the same dream night after night, and the dream was becoming more and more clear.

After a week, he’d pieced together enough to have an idea of what it was. It was a glow in the woods and someone or something calling to him. He never heard the words, and the glow was sometimes green, sometimes orange, sometimes something he couldn’t name, but the dream was always the same: The Light, and the imperative that he must come to it.

A recurring dream isn’t unusual, of course, but Jake was gripped by this one like no other. Within three weeks, he was sure of two things: first, that the dream was more than a simple nocturnal flight of fancy—it was too vivid, too right for that. The other realization was that he knew those woods.

The woods were on a fairly open bit of land his father had given him. Henry Marsden had been a cattle farmer who dabbled in tobacco, soybeans and a number of other crops. He’d been successful, but beef prices fell and land prices rose. It was time to retire anyway, and farming wasn’t the life it once was. Over the years, Jake’s father had accumulated a good-sized farm, mostly pasture and fields, but also a few tobacco curing barns and other assorted outbuildings and equipment. These were sold at auction, fetching enough to see Henry and his wife Eliza through their retirement and a move to Florida, cliché though it might be.

While Jake had his own apartment in town, and had been quite happy there, Jake intervened at the last minute and asked his father to save a small plot for him. He wasn’t sure why at the time, but owning land is never a bad idea. Henry was happy to oblige his only son and gifted Jake with a dozen acres and the home place that had stood on it for some thirty years.

Moving in, Jake had found himself at a loss. There was so much room in the house—space he didn’t remember from his childhood or visits as an adult. His parents’ home had been lived in, and it represented the collected possessions of over sixty years of two people’s lives. Now, divested of their belongings—the knick-knacks, his mother’s doll collection, his father’s books—the house echoed like a tomb.

That was a year ago, and after a week of sleepless nights, the old place finally began to feel like home again. Now, a year later, Jake didn’t even feel at home in his own body.

What he was doing now was the reason why. For the past two weeks, he’d found himself awake in the middle of the night. Sometimes it was two in the morning, other times it was after four. Every time, it was after the same dream, and he felt that he had to find the Light.

At first, it was simple curiosity. Once he became aware of his familiarity with the woods in his dream, he wanted to see them, but he brushed such fanciful thoughts away and went back to sleep. However, it soon became something more. It was a yearning—an itch in his mind that demanded he go to those woods and find the Light.

So it was that, by the end of the fourth week of the dreaming, as he’d come to call it, he found himself dressing in the dark beside his bed. After slipping on his clothes from the previous day and tying on the hiking boots that normally never traversed more difficult terrain than the stairs to his second-floor office in town, Jake would head downstairs. From there, he’d cross the kitchen to the back door.

Once, he’d stopped to consider taking a flashlight, but some instinct told him not to. Maybe the Light would be too faint to see in the glare of artificial light. Perhaps whoever called to him would be frightened away. For whatever reason, he traveled by the light of the moon and stars alone.

Nightly, Jake would step out the back door, cross the screened-in porch, and head down the steps to his back yard. The fence, now gone, had still left its mark across the yard like a shadow. Much of the original pasture, purchased at auction in 1973, was his back yard. It was mowed and manicured as well as any large country yard could be. Still, that line remained, like a ghost. The outbuildings were gone or converted, the equipment long since removed, but that fence line still proclaimed that this was farmland, cattle present or not.

In the first nights, the dew quickly covered his shoes and soaked the cuffs of his jeans. As the nights progressed, the dew became frost, and the grass was covered in the fallen leaves of the maples that dotted his yard.

Crossing the fence line, Jake found himself in the old pasture. The land opened up, and the smooth grass, mowed weekly by Billy Henshaw down the road, was a gently sloping sea of gray in the moonlight. In the gray light, the pasture looked to Jake like a tarpaulin, stretched taut, but large enough to bow down into a shallow bowl by its sheer size.

Across the old pasture, perhaps a quarter mile distant, the tree line waited. These weren’t the woods from his dream, but that copse lay within the same forest. Jake walked the pasture, looking ahead rather than watching his footing. He was sure of his steps the way a horse is, his eyes locked on the trees ahead.

Each night, it had been the same. For two weeks, since that night in late November when he’d first given in to the need to see the Light, he had walked the old pasture, and each night he’d met the same end. He would mount the rise, approaching the tree line. As he neared, the shadow of the forest made an inky blackness of the grass ahead. The demarcation of the trees’ shadow was as clear to his dark-adapted eyes as a line of yellow police tape around a crime scene.

Jake would approach that line, the terminator between starlit pasture and forest-shadowed blackness, and his step would falter. Each night his stride was confident, almost joyous, in his acquiescence of the urge to find the Light. However, at this point, reaching the shadows of the forest, he was always stopped. The chill air would become frigid to him. It was almost like waking up all over again, though he’d done just that only minutes before.

On the fifth night, Jake had pushed himself. He had stood staring at the shadowed line, the rounded tops of the trees, full of dead and dying leaves, etched in shadow on the smooth grass. Why stop here? Why stop now? he asked himself. His voice seemed too loud in the darkness, the clatter of leaves in the trees the only sound other than his breathing.

He stood at that line, unsure why he had stopped, unsure why he was so frustrated by it, making the decision to cross it—and cross it he did. It had taken him five minutes to work up the courage to do so. Why he was so fearful, he couldn’t say. He’d walked this pasture and in those very trees a hundred times as a child and as a teen, helping his father mend the fence or chase stray cattle that had wandered through a broken strand of barbed wire. Now, he couldn’t even walk to the trees, couldn’t enter their very shadow.

Jake had balled his hands into fists, clenched his eyes shut, and stepped over the line of shadows. The instant he crossed into that blackness, he had been gripped by terror. His knees had felt like water, and his bowels had clenched. Panicked, Jake had dove back into the moonlit grass. Crawling on his knees, soaked with sweat and dew, he had retched, and the remains of his dinner lay steaming on the grass before him.

But he had been relieved, so relieved, to be in the light again, however faint it might be. He didn’t know why or how, but crossing into those shadows had brought an indefinable terror that he couldn’t explain and never wanted to face again.

Since that fifth night, Jake hadn’t tested the shadows again. However, the shadows had receded. Now, in the middle of December, the trees had shed most of their leaves. The shadows had changed. No more were they the rounded shapes of trees in full leaf. They were now scabrous lines like claw marks of some massive beast that had ripped at the earth. They were still dark, still filled with that inky blackness, but their new form was gapped and skeletal, and pathways between the shadow trunks approached the tree line itself.

Jake no more wanted to enter the shadows in their new form than he had in their earlier shape. Yet, when his steps began to fail and he found himself stopped at the edge of darkness, he would probe deep between the shadows and very nearly into the woods themselves.

The woods he didn’t fear, but the darkness between the trees was hard for him to look at. When he stood there in the dim light, he would peer into the darkness. He found himself looking away, almost without thought, his eye settling on some brown and frost-shriveled weed or a fallen tree limb nearby.

Tonight, as before, Jake turned for home. The spell was broken, and whatever called him from the Light no longer drew him. He was cold and tired. The weeks of lost sleep were taking a toll.

Jake’s office was a small affair. The building containing it was only two floors but was in a town where the tallest building had only three. The main drag of Wynn was a single street, bookended with a gas station on either end. A small grocery store and a few government offices made up most of the town, with small businesses scattered throughout.

In his building, half a dozen small business owners tried to make a go of it, including Jake himself. He didn’t know any of them well, but they would exchange greetings if they met in the stairwell or share a good-natured wave if they passed in the parking lot.

Mostly, Jake used his office as a firewall. He loved his job, which was building and maintaining websites. He was a one-man operation, although there was his part-time receptionist, Nancy Bledsoe, to take calls for the first half of the day, four days a week. Yet, loving his job was problematic because he could just as easily do his job at home—and sometimes did—but he had quickly learned that dedication to your business and having no life at all are two dangerously similar traits.

For the first two months, he’d worked from home, but he soon found that he was doing nothing but work. In the third month, he rented the office he was unlocking the door to now. It was small, but cozy. The dark brick walls were close, only a dozen or so feet between them, but the office ran back a fair distance, and a wall of frosted glass separated the front room from his own in the back.

Entering the office, he hung his coat on the rack by the door and stopped by Nancy’s desk to check for any late-night messages. The machine showed a bright red 0, as usual. Fishing in his wallet, Jake took out some cash. On a sticky note, he jotted down the morning’s breakfast order, a ritual he and Nancy had shared since her first week on the job. This time, he needed something to keep him going. His late-night wanderings were beginning to wear on him. A double espresso should do it, he thought. Leaving the note and the cash on Nancy’s desk, he took his briefcase and went into his back office.

Inside the room was his desk, his bookshelf, and a small floor lamp that he used when he broke his own rules and worked late. Websites sometimes fail, and in this age of 24-hour online shopping, uptime is king. Sometimes the midnight oil is all that will do.

There wasn’t a window, but Jake had always found fluorescent lighting to his liking. Perhaps he’d always been destined to be a computer geek and desk jockey. It was something he loved doing, and just the environment of an office and a computer made him feel at home. Still, man does not live by bytes alone. On the opposing walls, left and right, hung two large posters, tastefully framed. On one, Albert Einstein was pictured, his tongue protruding and a look of surprised playfulness dancing in his eyes. On the other, Shakespeare gazed down on the room, looking slightly mischievous and more than a little aloof. Aside from being two of Jake’s favorite historical figures, he had found the posters a great way to break the ice when interviewing a new potential client.

The last fixture in the room, enclosed in an air-conditioned cabinet that spanned the back wall, was the server rack. Quietly humming away inside the chilled space were the computers that were home to over a hundred websites and one of each of their backups. At home, a similar cabinet served as an off-site backup. In the case of a catastrophic failure at the main location, little or no data would be lost, and the ever-looming evil of downtime would be minimized.

Jake crossed his office, switched on his computer, and placed his briefcase on the smooth glass surface of his desk. The large, spacious desktop gave him room for the three monitors connected to his PC. Taking his seat, he opened the briefcase and froze when he saw what lay inside.

Jake blinked, and his first thought was that sleep deprivation had finally brought on some sort of hallucination. One side of the briefcase was a pouch of nylon netting topped with elastic. The sort of pocket meant for a small netbook computer or even something quaint like an actual paper notebook. This pocket was in the upper portion of the briefcase when it was opened.

Usually empty, the nylon net bulged outward around the yellowed crown of a skull. The skull, apparently from some small animal, was crazed with small fractures. The dull, yellow color was marred in places with the red clay mud it had been taken from, the orange streaks spangled with tiny flecks of mica, like glitter.

There was a faint smell of decay, and a torn piece of a leaf, brown and splotched, was stuck to the brow over one eye socket. The creature had once possessed a longish snout, and bits of cartilage curled within the bony upper jaw. Several of the teeth were gone, and more had fallen loose and were scattered around the briefcase. They seemed alien beside the neatly ordered pens and pencils and other gear that the case held.

Jake’s office door swung open, and Nancy’s cheerful voice called, Good morning, boss, what’s new today?

Slamming shut the briefcase, Jake panicked as he grasped for some explanation. After a moment’s silence, Nancy looked at him askance. You okay, Jake?

Y-yeah, I’m fine. Just… You just startled me, that’s all.

Sorry, just wanted to say mornin’ to ya. Nancy smiled, and then a look of concern clouded her face. Have you been sleepin’ okay? You look tired.

No, I’m fine, really, Nan. You don’t have to worry. Just a little insomnia. I’ll be okay. Jake smiled and felt like a liar, but Nancy seemed to accept his weak explanation. Still, he couldn’t deny the dark circles beneath his eyes that had become a fixture of his face in recent weeks. I’ve got to start sleeping, he thought.

Okay, I’m out for the coffee run. Need anything else while I’m out?

Jake shook his head and smiled again. This time he actually felt it. No, I’m fine. Just the usual sausage biscuit and the coffee. I put a note on your desk.

Got it! See ya in a few. Nancy stepped out of the office and closed the door behind her.

Jake exhaled, not realizing he’d been nearly gasping. His hands shook, and he placed them on the cool glass of the desk in front of him. He closed his eyes and worked to control his breathing. Get a hold of yourself! It’s just a damned possum skull. You probably stumbled over it while wandering the pasture half asleep last night.

As he regained his composure, he slowly lifted the lid of the briefcase again. The skull was still there, still real. What the hell is it doing in there? Why would I even pick this thing up? Jake was frightened. He’d been uneasy since his nightly walks had started. They always had a dreamlike quality, but he knew he was awake. The next morning, he remembered them clearly.

But Jake didn’t remember the skull. I must have put it in there. Who else could have? But why, and when? He searched his memory, trying to find any time when he could have found the skull and, for whatever reason, placed it in his briefcase. He drew a blank.

As he sat at his desk, searching for an explanation, an email arrived in his inbox. Time for work, he said aloud. Latching the briefcase tight, he set it against the wall away from his desk. Turning to his keyboard, Jake began the day’s work.

Butchie was a good dog. He knew this because the man who was his alpha had told him so. This morning the man had let him out, and because he was a good dog, Butchie decided it was a good day for exploring. The air was cold and crisp, but exciting scents were everywhere. Crossing the fields beside the house, he followed one trail after another. Soon, he found himself in the edge of the forest.

Looking back, Butchie could see the pasture down the hill. The cows were placidly grazing on what grass remained. They were boring, so he turned back to the forest and headed further in. Presently, he was following what he thought must be a deer. It was a wild scent, whisper thin on the ground and widely spaced. Soon, the trail was crossed by something else—a rabbit, perhaps?

Reviews for Frostwalker

[tammydewhirst · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Luffman presents the reader with an elaborate story that was overall a beautifully written piece. One of my favorite scenes involved Butchie. Butchie was a dog that is wandering the woods. He knows he’s a good dog because his alpha tells him that he is. Butchie’s internal dialogue reminded me of a non-fiction book I read and reviewed not long ago regarding working dogs. His story-line felt very authentic.In contrast the internal dialogue of the other characters felt forced for the most part. I know that some readers will find Jake’s internal dialogue as it relates to Nancy endearing. I found his internal dialogue a little precious for a man his age. Danger and a sense of urgency forge quick connections and their relationship is believable without the sense of a scene overacted.In contrast, Jake’s relationship with his best friend Eric seemed very natural. I worked hard not to hate Eric for using the word “Awesomesauce” and in the end they were regular guys. Eric’s relationship with his long-term girlfriend is very smoothly written. They are a natural team for what they will next face.While it takes a long time for Luffman to get to the action, he wisely builds tension while the main characters go Christmas shopping, eat takeout food and experience obsessive dreams. Luffman does creepy very well. When we finally get an answer to what happened to the missing hunter the scene is so horrifying that I want to go back and read it over and over. Poor Rhonda. For all the brilliance imbued in the story-line, the ending was too pat. The ending made sense and came together but was somewhat disappointing in light of what the main text led a reader to expect. I would highly recommend this book to those readers who like paranormal stories. If you don’t like zombies, don’t think of this as a zombie novel. “Frostwalker” is a more original animal. Horrifyingly beautiful. If you live in a wooded area, as I do, you might want to leave the lights on for this one.