“Pitch Dark is a propulsive, layered, and brutal read. Sidor reminds you of the terrible violence of which we are capable and the heart that must be called upon to endure. A reader can’t hope for more than to discover a writer possessed of both true talent and true passion. Discover Steven Sidor.”
—Michael Koryta, author of The Cypress House
“Pitch Dark is as relentlessly suspenseful as any crime novel you’ve ever read, but at the same time it’s as scary as the best horror stories. Once you’ve met the walking nightmare who calls himself the Pitch—and his devoted henchmen—you will never forget them (try as you might). A harrowing, nonstop flight into the very heart of darkness, Pitch Dark kept me up half the night— and when I did go to bed, I left the lights on.”
—Robert Masello, author of The Medusa Amulet
“Chicago native and resident Steven Sidor, author of the stellar macabre thrillers Skin River and Bone Factory , has outdone himself with The Mirror's Edge , a supernatural-nuanced, soul-chilling mystery.... Powered by a sublime sense of foreboding and an ominous, phantasmagoric ambiance reminiscent of works by Aleister Crowley and H. P. Lovecraft. . . Comparable novels have been mainstays on national bestseller lists (Scott Smith’s The Ruins and Joe Schreiber’s Chasing the Dead , for example), but The Mirror’s Edge blows them all away in terms of fright factor and overall quality of narrative. Crime fiction and horror fans alike will find The Mirror’s Edge a dark, disturbing gem.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Bone-chilling ... Sidor is a master of the unsettling, and each twist is more grisly and unexpected than the last. Readers won’t
be able to resist staying up all night to finish this haunting tale.” — Publishers Weekly
“Compelling and chilling, The Mirror's Edge delivers everything a reader could want—strong characters, driving narrative, and the edge-of-your-seat suspense. Unconventional and challenging, yet engaging and very human, it is a wonderful novel from a talented writer.”
—David Morrell, author of The Shimmer Bone Factory
“Frank Miller’s Sin City has nothing on Booth City.... This tale is a dark classic by an author with a long career ahead of him.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“Sidor proved in his well-received first novel, Skin River , that he knows a thing or two about deviant human behavior. Now he delivers an equally laudable mystery about two homicide detectives, set in the fictional midwestern town of Booth City, that delves even deeper into the darker reaches of the criminal mind.”
—Publishers Weekly
“It’s a hard-boiled world, presented in a brisk, brutal shorthand as tough as its subject.” — The Providence Journal
“Sidor is a prince of darkness, steeped in the noir tradition and not giving an inch. That said, he is also bountifully talented.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Take note, and you may see a star in the making.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A fast-paced crime debut. The salty prose and clever narration will keep readers hooked.” — Publishers Weekly
“You can’t get creepier than this. Exquisitely plotted, with a well- realized main character.” —Booklist
“Unforgettable, spellbinding, and darkly suspenseful. Sidor must have sold his soul to the devil to write this well.”
—Steve Hamilton, author of Misery Bay
“Dark, harrowing, and unpredictable as a run of dangerous river. Sidor plunges you into chilling waters on page one and barely lets you up for air.” —Gregg Hurwitz, author of They’re Watching
Aiso by Steven Sidor
The Mirror’s Edge Bone Factory Skin River
For my father ; Ronald Sidor, taking the long road . ..
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/pitchdark0000sido
My deepest thanks to Matt Martz and Ann Collette for bringing this book out into the world and for helping me to keep the story tight and the words sharp.
Friends read my early drafts and offered moral support in the fragile stages. I especially want to thank Bob Tuszynski, Steve Neruda, Gary Ffeinz, Brian Padjen, Jamie Howard, and Ross Molho. Solid gold, each one.
Finally, this is a book about family, and mine is exceptional. My parents, Ron and Nancy, made it through a tough year. Hospital waiting rooms be damned. Lisa, Emma, and Quinn are the best part of any day, and of my life.
He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith ...
—Bible (Apocrypha); Ecclesiasticus 13:1
PITCH DARK
The Rhodesian smuggler pawed at the blade sticking out of his back. It was an F-S fighting knife, nickel-plated—a nasty beauty. He was having a time with it. Dancing around and knocking over the furniture. A lamp here, a chair there. He fell on top of the trunk and died. That was one itch he'd never scratch.
Conner kicked him to the floor. He returned the dead man's gun, took the key from his pocket, and opened the trunk.
Well, he hadn't lied after all.
The stone box.
Conner lifted it, and placed it inside the army duffel he'd brought for just that purpose. He repacked his clothes around it and linked the hook closure.
"That wasn't so bad," he said.
The smuggler didn't argue.
"I'll need my knife back."
He did something the dead man couldn't do with two hands, and then he cleaned the blade on the sap's Savile Row suit. He put him in the trunk. Locked it. He'd drop the key down a
storm drain on his walk to the motel. He pulled the window shades and set the furniture upright.
He stuck his arms through the duffel straps and lit a cigarette.
A curious Conner sat on the edge of his motel bed. His newly acquired stone box lay propped on one of its sides. The nature of the shape made it appear a sharp and crooked thing, offending to the eye: a double pyramid. The surface gleamed evilly. He straddled the foreign relic dug up years ago from the desert and carted out on camelback. He wetted his lips. Beneath the object's surface, figures were trapped in strata resembling translucent black ice. He detected Byzantine markings, hieroglyphs, and odd spirals. Layers floated under layers. So much depth it made him dizzy. He traced his finger along six columns of carvings, an alphabet of daggers. What was it Belzoni had said?
"The mind muscle, for years contracted into a knot, expands . . ."
The mad professor sure could spin tales. He had the eyes for it. Wild, dreamy, arrogant bughouse peepers and that % Continental voice of his, all saliva-doused explosives and fricatives. Boy, he could sell it. Meaningless drivel . . . but still.
How many people had died because of this hunk of dry lava?
Conner counted sixteen he'd heard about or witnessed himself.
Another hundred and fifty-four if he added all
hands lost aboard the Kagachi Maru when it sank, inexplicably, in calm nighttime seas a month ago. The stone box had been in the cargo hold; made it out unscathed according to a swordfisherman who scooped it up from an unoccupied life raft six days later.
And who, come to think of it, was also dead.
One seventy-one.
Conner's head hurt.
He was sweating.
He'd been smoking too much since his arrival. The place smelled like a match factory burned down. Conner opened the window and leaned out, hoping for a breeze. He swung his leg up on the sill and dangled his foot over the fire escape. Indian summer is what he guessed it had to be. Funny he hadn't noticed the heat this morning. Leaves flickered their reds and oranges at him. A rank coolness blew off the river. No sun up in the sky.
Sure was hot in his room though.
Steam floated up from the alley. They were frying the chow mein at a Chinese restaurant next door. He wasn't hungry, but could go for a drink. Maybe at that beer joint around the corner. Knock a few back, relax. Beer was the only thing the Krauts did right.
The walls were thin. He had slept just fine, but he could hear them now, voices murmuring below intelligibility but there nonetheless, like a pulsing beat that almost seemed to be coming not from the other rooms on his floor but from under the floor, under his bed it seemed. Under the stone.
A fluttering at the window.
He turned too slowly to see it. But he felt it . . . them . . . wings . . .
Down in the alley, long low shadows darted through the steam.
Dogs?
They were awfully big mutts, if that's what they were. More like wolves.
He shouldn't have taken the stone.
Those voices he'd heard were coming from inside it.
Conner didn't speak demon. Didn't want to learn, either. He sat there transfixed. Waiting, watching . . .
What were these things he'd brought on himself?
They couldn't be real. Yet somehow he knew that wasn't going to matter.
When they got to him, they'd be real enough.
The Winged Ones were back in view. Sleek, quick as spilled ink, and larger than any birds he'd seen before. Swooping over the rooftops. Cutting the dusk into parabolas. Getting closer.
And the wolves?
The wolves were climbing straight up the bricks . . .
(Excerpt from the story “A Chunk of Hell,” by Max Caul, first published in Inter dimensional Magazine s November 1950.)
I’m driving on the dark side of the moon, Vera Coffey thought. She knew precisely where she was: pointed due north in northern Minnesota, at 3:01 a.m., early Christmas Eve morning. A hatch- eting wind whistled as it worked over her red Camaro, trying to find a way inside. Vera felt safe for now. The Berlinetta’s cranky heater was blowing warmth through the vents, lulling her as she rocketed on a cushion of steel-belted rubber and air.
Don’t think about what you’re running from, she told herself. Do that and you’ll be just fine. She almost believed it was true.
Mostly she tried not to think at all.
The hum of the tires was hypnotic. Gray roadside monotony repeated while she tunneled ahead. Night sloped around her headlamps.
The radio didn’t help. After the witching hour, following ten miles of steep and then steeper hills, signals were dropping off. Vera liked classic hard rock. Loud, wildman drums. Power chords. A singer who had some pipes and knew how to use them. Kick-your-ass-and-make-you-like-it music. Her choices were down to four FM stations. Judging from their playlists, the twenty-first century had never arrived. She punched a button. Black Sabbath. “Paranoid.” Finished with my woman ’cause she couldn’t help me with my mind . . . No, not tonight, Ozzy.
Vera turned off the radio.
This particular stretch of road appeared treeless, an experiment in desolation. Even the roadkill disappeared. You had a problem out here, you had it alone. Yet, every so often, a mailbox plastered with reflectors would tip into view. That must be how the scientists did their measurements.
Subject: Vera Lee Coffey
Age: 26
Marital status: Single
Subject has reached mailbox number 1457. She appears oriented to time and place. Exhaustion stage is near complete. Sense of reality likely jeopardized.
Sleep eminent.
How far until the next town? Hadn’t she seen a sign a few miles ago?
Her face was drooping, melting wax. She prodded a fingertip into her cheek. The skin felt as if it would never go back to its original shape. She closed her eyes for a beat. Opened them again.
Nothing changed.
The same shadows encroached on the high beams. The unending tattoo of painted white lines passed on her left like code.
Her eyes closed.
Vera was not going to sleep. She promised. At most she would be taking a minibreather, a second or two of visual rest—that’s all, before aiming once more through the windshield and pressing onward. A second or two . . .
Vera woke.
To the sharp spray of gravel hitting the passenger side, she woke.
She woke as the dashboard bucked. The car fell away. Like rope, the steering wheel turned through her grip. A mile marker spiked up green. Its vertical white numbers edged darkness and weeds. The numbers told her where she was crashing, where they would find her broken body in the morning.
Vera held on as her daddy’s old ’84 threatened to slam off-road.
The front bumper clipped the sign. Popped it over the way a skier
pops flags going downhill. One headlight winked out. The road curved ahead.
The red coupe didn’t.
Vera fought for control. She pulled until her shoulders hurt. The right half of the car dropped a few inches. Full-tilt crunch. Two wheels chewed rocks, two grabbed washboard asphalt. Vibrations kicked the chassis. Strapped in for the duration of the ride, she gritted her teeth as she pulled and pulled.
Bald tires skidded over the pebbly glass blacktop.
She had overcorrected.
180.
360.
Spin-out.
Vera heard herself draw in air, and say, “Shit.”
Fiere was Death.
Death was a snow-packed guardrail and below, a shallow creek layered milky gray with ice. Reeds poked up their hollow stems. An opossum lifted his funneled face from the ditch and blinked at the sudden wall of light.
The moon above vanished as if a hand clutched it.
Vera saw none of those things. Her eyes viewed them. Lens to retina to optic nerve—her brain registered the data collected. Recognition would come later, a memory of landscape reeling across the windshield in black and white.
Vera saw only Death.
Her scuffed cowboy boot pumped the brake. Her daddy taught her that. He bought the “Starship Camaro” in ’84, the year she was born. Daddy didn’t know much about cars, even less about the raising of little motherless girls. In two years, the Berlinetta model would be discontinued. And although he tried his best to look after his daughter until the day he died, his advice was wrong. Antilock brakes don’t need to be pumped.
Vera pressed the pedal up and down.
Up and down.
It shuddered under her toes.
Up, down, up, down.
The interior grew raucous. Frozen brush scraped the undercarriage. Pulverized snow mounds chuffed and blew apart, sending a burst of sparkly crystals drifting up over the hood.
The few remaining tire treads caught a strip of dry pavement. An astonished Vera steered to the middle of the road. She laughed. She didn’t think she was a middle-of-the-road gal. The laughter wasn’t really meant for her.
It was for Death.
After her second close encounter in the last twenty-four hours, she couldn’t hold back the fear. Death had Vera on the run. She knew what to expect now. She had witnessed him up close. Death had shown his face to her in that West Side greystone back in Chicago. Six times over he did it.
Taunted her, saying, Here I am.
His forever grin made her sweat icicles.
Look at me, honey, I’m over here. Here too.
She wouldn’t forget.
Now the reaper looked a helluva lot better in her rearview mirror. Fair’s fair. Vera got her chance to laugh. No fool, she took it.
Safety arrived as fast as danger. Vera fingered the crucifix she wore on a chain around her neck. It had always been an accessory rather than a religious relic. She wasn’t a believer. Silver looked good against her pale skin—that’s all. Well, maybe more. Sometimes if stress ran high, or if threats surrounded her, then touching the cross was a way she calmed herself down, a superstition to ward off evil.
Can you believe in Evil without believing in Good?
On an ice-covered road in the middle of the night, Vera thought so.
She knew something evil was after her.
The car sped forward between the lines. No other cars passed. None followed. This road was well chosen for its loneliness.
Vera rolled her window down. She gulped cold air. She smelled a farm nearby. On her left, she watched barn doors slide open and the glow of a buttery light escaping. Cattle moved inside. A man came forward at a brisk pace. The farmer, it must be, in his red- checkered jacket, a bucket swinging in his—no hand—prosthetic hook. He waved to her.
Then Vera was past.
Fences divided the scenery. Ice buckled in the fields. Burning motor oil and wood smoke scented the wind. She licked her teeth. Her mouth tasted like Elmer’s glue. Her left ear throbbed. Biting air poured into the front seat. Shivering, she cranked up her window. Maxed the heat with her thumb.
Thirteen hours straight through. Taking the blue state and county highways and staying a tick or two under the speed limit. She was nearing the border now but didn’t want to cross it at night. That wouldn’t be smart.
It might be suicidal.
\
Canada was for tomorrow.
Vera judged herself in no shape for scrutiny. She wasn’t prepared to answer questions. She wouldn’t cooperate.
Please open your trunk, miss.
She’d have to say, “No.”
Then what?
Vera needed to get off this godforsaken highway. Her empty thermos clunked under the seat as she rounded each bend in the road. She couldn’t afford to stop at a gas station for more coffee. Out here in Nowheresville, someone would remember her.
They’d say: A stringy little thing, pale, hair like a blackbird mashed to her skull, blue-eyed. Couldn’t keep her fingers out of her mouth.
If someone showed them a picture: That’s her, oh yeah, I’m sure of it. So what’d she do? Must’ve been pretty bad. Did she murder somebody?
Vera Coffey chewed her thumbnail, thinking about motels.