The Calling

When eighteen-year-old Christopher Myers’ parents are murdered, something is written on his bedroom door, a mark in his parents’ blood that convinces the police the killer has targeted Christopher as the next victim. To keep him safe, he travels away with his estranged grandmother and uncle to the small town of Bridgton, New York. And it’s in Bridgton that he meets an extraordinary young man who has come with his father to stop an unrelenting evil. Soon Christopher learns of the town’s deep dark secret, and how his parents’ murder was no accident, and how he has been brought to Bridgton by forces beyond his power—forces that just may threaten the destruction of all mankind.
 

“
The Calling
is a powerful, gripping and terrifying novel, the sort that possesses your whole life while you’re reading it; it’ll stalk you through the day, and inform your dreams. Swartwood has delivered a novel that will become a classic.”
 

—
Tim Lebbon

“Robert Swartwood’s
The Calling
is a diabolical rocket sled of a psychological thriller. Told through the vivid, almost druggy point of view of a young man on the edge, tangled in a web of tragedy and surreal horror, Swartwood’s novel gets under the skin and stays there. Highly recommended.”
 

—
Jay Bonansinga

THE CALLING

Robert Swartwood

Contents

THE CALLING

About the Author

Excerpt from SPOOKY NOOK

Excerpt from THE MAN ON THE BENCH

Also by Robert Swartwood

Copyright

THE CALLING

Author’s Note

While many of the places and locations mentioned within this novel are real, the towns of Lanton, Pennsylvania, and Bridgton, New York, and their inhabitants, exist wholly in the author’s imagination, and any resemblance between the people who live there and people who live in the real world is coincidental and unintended.
 

For my parents

Who in the rainbow can show the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but when exactly does the one first blindingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.
 

—Herman Melville,

Billy Budd

Prologue

L
ife isn’t fair.
 

It’s an old adage, a tired cliché, but you know this to be true. You’ve known it all your life, ever since you were a boy.
 

Like when you were forced to eat all your Brussels sprouts before being allowed to leave the dinner table. Or when you twisted your ankle on the first day of middle school practice and couldn’t play soccer for the rest of the season. Or when you asked Lydia Mynell out and she said no and then avoided you for the next two weeks, which you later admitted was a pretty impressive feat in itself as your lockers stood side by side.
 

Life isn’t fair, but who said it would be?
 

Your parents certainly didn’t.
 

Not your father, an intelligent, hardworking man who has been laid off three times from jobs at which he excelled. A college graduate, he now works as an assistant grocery manager at the local Giant, earning much less than he did at all of his previous jobs.
 

Not your mother, a smart, compassionate woman who teaches children with special needs. You were thirteen when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. You were fourteen when she began her treatments, when she lost her hair and over the course of five months went through at least a dozen different wigs.
 

Your parents are a testament to the fact that life isn’t fair, yet they’ve never complained. Even when your father worked at a temp agency to help make sure the bills were paid on time, even when your mother lay in what everyone believed was her deathbed, they never said boo.
 

They always stayed positive, no matter what happened. Always smiling. Always holding hands. Always telling you they loved you.
 

It’s because of them you began to understand it doesn’t matter that life isn’t fair. No matter what it throws at you, how many curveballs, it’s your job, your purpose, to do your best. To never complain. To always put one step in front of the other and keep walking.
 

Then one morning, the day after your high school graduation, you wake to a faint distant buzzing noise. You open your eyes, roll over in bed, and look at your alarm clock. It’s eleven-thirty. The distant buzzing is coming from your parents’ room. You’ve heard it for as long as you can remember, and it’s okay, because soon the buzzing will be turned off.
 

You roll back over, reposition the pillow, and close your eyes.
 

And still the buzzing continues: a repetitive
bwaamp-bwaamp-bwaamp-bwaamp
that has begun to drill into the side of your brain.
 

You sit up, propping your elbow on the bed, and yell for someone to turn it off. You wait a few moments for a reply, maybe even silence, but all that answers you is the buzzing.
 

You yell again, louder this time, and glance back at your own alarm clock. This early morning insanity has been going on now for five minutes. It feels like an hour. Grumbling under your breath, you throw off the sheets and get out of bed.
 

Opening your door, you yell for your father. No answer, so you yell for your mother. No answer still, none except that annoying low
bwaamp-bwaamp-bwaamp-bwaamp
, which is much louder now that you’ve stepped into the hallway. You call out one final time, but when still no answer comes, you start to make your way toward their bedroom.
 

Their door is closed. You knock, once, and call their names. Once again, no answer comes, and for the first time in the couple of minutes you’ve been awake, you begin to worry.
 

Placing your hand on the doorknob, you notice you are shaking.
 

When you open the door the first thing that hits you is the smell. Like a massive fist, it knocks you back just a couple steps, and for a moment you aren’t even aware of what you’re staring at: you aren’t aware of the two bodies on the bed, of all the blood.
 

 
Your stomach tightens. The house begins to spin. Putting your hands to your mouth, you back away. You realize you’ve stopped breathing and in your throat bile is rising, and you look around the hallway, at once feeling frightened and alone.
 

A dream, you tell yourself, this is just a nightmare, and any moment now you will wake up, you will open your eyes to the sound of a distant buzzing coming from your parents’ room—the same very buzzing now crying out inches from their dried blood and cold flesh.
 

Bile is still in your throat, but you’re able to keep it down, you’re able to start breathing again. Lightheaded, disoriented, you turn away and head toward your room, the only thing you still know and trust.
 

And you see it.
 

On your door, you see the thing that will no doubt haunt you for the rest of your life. You see it and you know that this is no dream, that this is no simple nightmare. All this is real, all this is reality, and you are left standing there staring, trembling while your parents’ bodies lie motionless behind you.
 

Only later does the nightmare begin.

Chapter 1

T
he church parking lot was deserted. I parked in the handicapped space closest to the entrance. The trailing police cruiser parked in the handicapped space beside me, and for a moment I expected the officer behind the wheel to shake his head, motion for me to back up and park in a regular spot. But when I looked over at him he had already shut off his car and had this morning’s paper open in front of him.
 

Pastor James Young was waiting for me at the entrance. A man in his early fifties, with light brown eyes and a round, pleasant face, he wore chinos and a red polo shirt and shook my hand the moment I stepped inside.
 

“Christopher,” he said solemnly, “how are you doing?”
 

“Honestly?”
 

He nodded.
 

“Honestly, I’m exhausted.”
 

It was June 6, 2003, and my parents had already been dead for a week.
 

Without a word Pastor James Young led me toward his office. The hallway was long and deserted, its carpet shaded midnight blue with a design of blood red diamonds scattered throughout. Just as we entered the lobby, I glanced up at the support beam in the ceiling and saw a body hanging from a noose.
 

“Christopher?” The pastor was a few paces ahead, looking back at me with a frown. “Is everything all right?”
 

I blinked and the body and the noose were gone. It was just a normal support beam, thick and wooden, its weathered look clashing with the flawless white paint.
 

“Ever wonder the truth?”
 

“It’s just a story,” I said, because I knew it was just a story, some ghost story a kid no doubt made up one day during service because he was bored. But ever since I was young I’d heard the stories, the rumors, the myths of that crossbeam.
 

Staring up at the ceiling, Pastor James Young said, “The way I heard it, when this place was built fifty years ago, a local man came late one night and hung himself there. Supposedly he had done something awful, something he thought was unforgivable, and figured killing himself like that was the only way.”