by
It’s the summer of 1971, and all ten-year-old Janina Starcevich wants to do is spend the seemingly endless warm days riding her bicycle, climbing trees, and catching frogs in the pond in her back yard. But when a young drifter named Justin Lazarus walks into the hardware store owned by her next-door neighbor, Kathy Christian, a series of events are set in motion that will change them all forever.
Justin is a melding of opposites—charming but odd, friendly but frightening, seemingly ordinary but at the same time deeply strange. Kathy compares him to an optical illusion before you’ve figured it out. Something’s wrong, but it’s impossible to say exactly what.
The events of that sweltering summer turn the little village of Guildford, New York upside down.
So why, twenty-five years later, can Janina—now happily married, with three children of her own—barely remember what happened?
A chance mention at work starts her on an obsessive quest to reconstruct how the tragedy in 1971 unfolded, and to try to figure out what had been her role in it. The more she uncovers, the more puzzling and disturbing it becomes—an enigma that has lain buried for two and a half decades, centering around one single question:
Who was Justin Lazarus?
Publisher: Motina Books
Cover Artists:
Genres:
Tropes: Aliens Among Us, Hunted, Interstellar Travel, Person in Distress
Word Count: 68,474
Setting: small town in upstate New York, U.S.A.
Languages Available: English
Tropes: Aliens Among Us, Hunted, Interstellar Travel, Person in Distress
Word Count: 68,474
Setting: small town in upstate New York, U.S.A.
Languages Available: English
Across the street, a young man with sandy hair was looking at Janina with an oddly piercing gaze. She knew he wasn’t a villager, and yet he looked familiar. It took her a moment to realize that he was the young man who had come into the hardware store two weeks earlier asking for work. He was the one who had interrupted her conversation with Kathy Christian. It struck Janina as odd that he would be here. He didn’t belong. This wasn’t his parade. She thought this without any rancor. It wasn’t that she disliked him or people from elsewhere in general. It simply struck her as strange that someone from another place would even want to be at the village parade.
READ MOREYet there he was, not only looking at her but staring at her, boring holes into her skull with his eyes. And then she noticed that he was pointing down at her feet. He was mouthing some words—they couldn’t be heard over the clamor, of course, but she still somehow knew what he was saying. It was as if all of the other hundreds of voices had been pushed aside.
Down. Look down. Down on the ground.
She frowned at him, and shook her head. He continued to stare at her and point. She stared back, her perplexity deepening to a cold flutter of fear. She didn’t want to look down. What would be down there?
It only took a moment for her curiosity to overwhelm her. She gave in and looked down. There was nothing there but a squashed cigarette package, a gum wrapper, and... was that it? Sitting on the curb was a piece of hard candy thrown by one of the boys on the fire engine. How could the man have seen that from all the way across the street? Even if he had, why would he care? Nevertheless, she leaned over to pick up the candy, as the fifth and last antique fire truck passed her by.
With no warning at all, there was a crack like the report of a rifle, followed by a sharp ping from somewhere right above Janina’s head. Janina gave a little shriek and jumped up. The rear passenger-side tire of the last antique fire engines had blown out. The truck sat on one flat tire, and already its passengers were climbing out to survey the damage.
Maddy grabbed Janina roughly. Janina started to object but then turned and looked up at her. Maddy’s broad face was pinched with fear, and this was so unexpected that she simply stared at her in silence. “My baby, are you all right?” Maddy said thickly.
“Yes, I’m fine, why....” She turned to look at her father for some sort of explanation as to why her mother was acting so strangely and saw that he too was white in the face. Then, he stepped into the street and picked up a small black object from the pavement. He walked back and held it out to his wife.
“Oh, my dear God,” she said.
Sitting in the callused palm of Leonard’s hand was the metal nozzle from the tube of the blown-out tire.
Leonard looked at the dull gray metal of the stop sign pole that his daughter had been standing in front of. There, right at the level of Janina’s head, was a bright silver dent. And suddenly, Janina understood.
She turned to look back at the young man across the street, her mind rolling with a hundred conflicting emotions, but he was already gone.
COLLAPSE
