Bad Moon Rising

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Welcome to Pine Deep!

Bad Moon Rising is my third novel about the pleasant little town of Pine Deep, Pennsylvania, where a lot of un-pleasant things seem to happen. It can be read as a stand-alone novel or as part of the complete Pine Deep Trilogy. If you want to take the whole ride, start with Ghost Road Blues (which, I’m delighted to say, won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel of 2006 and was also nominated for Novel of the Year, though it was edged out by Stephen King).

That book tells the story of Karl Ruger, a psychotic killer who wrecks his car in Pine Deep while on the run from both the mob and the law. In truth Ruger is drawn to Pine Deep by an even worse killer, Ubel Griswold, one who cut a bloody swath through the town thirty years ago and whose body is buried deep below the swampy mud of Dark Hollow. In Pine Deep, however, the dead don’t always rest easy and Griswold’s particular brand of evil is vast, powerful and ancient.

Griswold was brought down by an itinerant farmworker and sometime blues singer named Oren Morse, or as the kids called him, the Bone Man. The Bone Man recognized Griswold for the monster that he was and risked his life to stop the killer’s reign of evil; but although he killed Griswold the Bone Man was framed for the murders and beaten to death by the town fathers. He, too, rested uneasy in his grave and when Griswold’s power began to reassert itself the Bone Man returned as a ghost to try and stop him. The real problem there was that Griswold understands how to be a supernatural being and the Bone Man, sadly, does not. Alone, unseen, nearly powerless, the Bone Man has been trying to communicate with the living and help them in their fight against Griswold’s growing power.

Ghost Road Blues is also the story of a handful of people in the town whose lives were touched by the slaughter thirty years ago and are tainted again by more recent events. Malcolm Crow’s brother was one of Griswold’s early victims and Crow himself was very nearly killed (saved by a timely appearance by the Bone Man), and he alone understands that something dreadful and unnatural is still at work in his town. His fiancée, Val Guthrie, lost an uncle to Griswold years ago and more recently saw her father gunned down by Ruger.

Dr. Saul Weinstock, the chief medical examiner and Crow’s friend, has begun to suspect that something is seriously wrong in Pine Deep and has begun to compile evidence that points to an impossible and horrifying explanation.

Terry Wolfe, Crow’s oldest friend and the mayor of Pine Deep, lost a sister to Griswold and received terrible wounds himself. Now, as Griswold’s power reawakens, Terry feels his mind begin to fracture: is he going insane or is there some supernatural taint in his blood that is transforming him, night after night, into a monster?

And Mike Sweeney, a fourteen-year-old newsboy, has been caught up in the events as Griswold’s power grows. He is the victim of appalling ongoing physical abuse by his stepfather, Vic Wingate. Vic, unknown to everyone except Ruger, is the slave and right hand of Griswold; and it is Vic who has labored for thirty years to set in motions the events that will launch Griswold’s Red Wave: an attack on the town, and on humanity itself. But Mike is a much more complex person than anyone knows: he has a twisted bloodline that ties him to both the forces of good and evil, and as he struggles to survive the abuse and punishment he begins to undergo a transformation into something else.

Karl Ruger repeatedly attacks Val Guthrie and Crow, and each time—even though he is defeated—he seems stronger. Way too strong, as if death no longer has a hold over him. Even after Crow guns him down for the second time he lies in his morgue drawer, quietly waiting for Griswold to call him forth. Ruger’s companion, the normally mousy Boyd, has also been transformed by Griswold’s power, though, unlike Ruger, Boyd no longer possesses any traces of humanity. He becomes a shambling and murderous hulk.

In the second book, Dead Man’s Song, as Dr. Weinstock continues his investigation Crow decides to confront his demons by laying the entire story out to news reporter Willard Fowler Newton. He tells Newton about the massacre thirty years ago and then takes him on an adventure: a trip down into Dark Hollow, where Griswold’s abandoned house waits among the shadows. The two men are foiled in their attempts to penetrate the house and are ultimately driven off by a bristling wave of cockroaches—tens of thousands of them. They flee Dark Hollow in terrified defeat.

Throughout the entire Pine Deep story there is another tale, that of Tow-Truck Eddie, a brute of a man who believes that the voice in his head is that of God ordering him to track down the Antichrist. God tells him that Mike Sweeney is the Beast and Eddie tries over and over again to murder the boy. The voice he hears, though, is that of Ubel Griswold. Only the ghostly Bone Man—and Mike’s own developing powers—save the boy from slaughter.

Meanwhile death has come again to Val’s family. Her brother is savagely attacked by the now-monstrous Boyd, and after a bloody battle in which Val’s friends and family are torn apart, Val manages to kill the monster. It’s a very near thing.

The second book ends with the battle at Guthrie Farm.

Bad Moon Rising is the tale of the Red Wave and how ordinary people try and take a stand against an impossibly powerful and very dark enemy. Crow, Val, Mike, Dr. Weinstock, Newton and a handful of others are pitted against a true army of darkness. On Halloween night a very bad moon indeed will rise over Pine Deep.

There’s another note at the end of this book, so I’ll see you on the other side.

—JM