Alone by Brian Keene Read Free Book Online Page B

it?”
    “Maybe it’s here to help us. To guide us somehow.”
    “How can you know for sure?”
    Maria shrugged. “I don’t. But I feel things. In the last few minutes, ever since waking up after I died—I feel things that are true. Things I didn’t know before.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “I’m not sure I do, either. But I feel them anyway. I bet you can, too.”
    “All I felt was scared. There were no universal truths revealed to me. All this time, all that I’ve felt is alone.”
    “Maybe you weren’t ready yet. After all, you didn’t know what you were until now.”
    “I still don’t! How can I be dead? How can—”
    Dan was interrupted by a knock at the door. Unlike the rest of the sounds, the knock was deep and loud. Two more followed, each one powerful and insistent.
    “Oh God,” Dan moaned. “It’s the shadow. I know it is.”  
    “It’s okay,” Maria said. “You don’t have to be afraid of it. Stop for a moment and think about it. Let yourself feel.”
    Dan took a deep breath and did as she asked. He was surprised to discover that Maria was right. That sense of foreboding that had come over him every time the shadow drew near was now gone. Instead, he felt a strange sense of comfort and peace.
    “What do we do now?” he whispered.
    Maria stood up and smiling, took his hand. “Let’s open the door.”
    They did, and the figure was there to greet them. It made a sweeping gesture with one large hand, indicating the direction they should go. Maria stepped forward eagerly. After a moment’s hesitation, Dan followed. The shadow walked between them, and when it took their hands in its own, Dan was no longer afraid.
    Around them, the mists dissipated and the gray turned to light. The skies above burned with dark shades of orange and red and yellow, and the light grew brighter, illuminating them.  
    “Where are we going?” Dan asked. “Where is it taking us?”
    “To the next place.”
    “And where is that?”
    Maria smiled. “Let’s find out together, Mr. Miller.”
    Dan shielded his eyes with his free hand as the dazzling light consumed them, enfolding them in its radiance.
    And then, he was no longer alone.

 
     
     
    AFTERWORD

    Spoiler Warning: If you are one of those people who skip to the end of the book before you read the story, stop now. The following anecdote contains major spoilers and will ruin your enjoyment of this novella.
    Seriously. Stop reading. Go back to the beginning of the book.
    I mean it. Get the hell out of here.
    Okay, are they gone?
    Good. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Alone.
    Alone has been sitting inside my head for over a decade now. The idea came from a conversation I had with noted critic and genre scholar Jack Haringa many years ago at some long-forgotten horror convention. We were discussing Fredric Brown’s infamous short story, “Knock”. If you’re not familiar with the tale, “Knock” was quite famous in its time for being the shortest science fiction story ever written. The original version went like this:
    The last man on earth sat in his room. There was a knock at the door.
    That’s it. Two sentences. Short and sweet, and packing one hell of a punch. But then, at the urging of his peers, Brown continued the story, elaborating on those first two sentences. He further developed the plot and the character. The last man turned out to be named Walter Phelan, and the entity knocking on his door was an alien known as Zan, who had killed off everyone else on Earth and wanted to put Walter in a cosmic zoo (along with the planet’s last woman, Grace).
    I told Jack that I thought the story would have worked better had the author just stuck to those first two sentences, because I thought the whole alien zoo thing was silly. I thought it was silly because I’d seen it done in the Marvel and DC comics of my youth, and I was young enough, stupid enough, and conceited enough not to understand that those Marvel and DC comics were riffing on Brown,