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    My Father's Mask
    My Father's Mask
    My Father's Mask
    Ebook42 pages40 minutes

    My Father's Mask

    By Joe Hill

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    About this ebook

    From the New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Horns comes this e-short story—from Joe Hill’s award-winning collection 20th Century Ghosts.

    Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945. . . .

    Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town. . . .

    Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing. . . .

    John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead. . . .

     

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateFeb 3, 2009
    ISBN9780061844379
    Author

    Joe Hill

    Joe Hill is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Fireman, NOS4A2, Horns, and Heart-Shaped Box; Strange Weather, a collection of novellas; and the acclaimed story collections Full Throttle and 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the Eisner Award–winning writer of a seven-volume comic book series, Locke & Key. Much of his work has been adapted for film and TV, including NOS4A2 (AMC), Locke & Key (Netflix), In the Tall Grass (Netflix), and The Black Phone (Blumhouse).

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    4/5

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    • 3/5
      The main idea has been overworked. There are many typewriter stories out there. :(

    Book preview

    My Father's Mask - Joe Hill

    My Father’s Mask

    A Story from the Collection

    20th Century Ghosts

    Joe Hill

    To Leanora:

    WE ARE MY FAVORITE STORY

    Contents

    Begin Reading My Father’s Mask

    Acknowledgments

    About the Author

    Other Books by Joe Hill

    Credits

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    MY FATHER’S MASK

    On the drive to Big Cat Lake, we played a game. It was my mother’s idea. It was dusk by the time we reached the state highway, and when there was no light left in the sky, except for a splash of cold, pale brilliance in the west, she told me they were looking for me.

    They’re playing-card people, she said. Queens and kings. They’re so flat they can slip themselves under doors. They’ll be coming from the other direction, from the lake. Searching for us. Trying to head us off. Get out of sight whenever someone comes the other way. We can’t protect you from them—not on the road. Quick, get down. Here comes one of them now.

    I stretched out across the backseat and watched the headlights of an approaching car race across the ceiling. Whether I was playing along or just stretching out to get comfortable, I wasn’t sure. I was in a funk. I had been hoping for a sleepover at my friend Luke Redhill’s, Ping-Pong and late-night TV with Luke (and Luke’s leggy older sister Jane, and her lush-haired friend Melinda), but had come home from school to find suitcases in the driveway and my father loading the car. That was the first I heard we were spending the night at my grandfather’s cabin on Big Cat Lake. I couldn’t be angry at my parents for not letting me in on their plans in advance, because they probably hadn’t made plans in advance. It was very likely they had decided to go up to Big Cat Lake over lunch. My parents didn’t have plans. They had impulses and a thirteen-year-old son and they saw no reason to ever let the latter upset the former.

    Why can’t you protect me? I asked.

    My mother said, Because there are some things a mother’s love and a father’s courage can’t keep you safe from. Besides, who could fight them? You know about playing-card people. How they all go around with little golden hatchets and little silver swords. Have you ever noticed how well armed most good hands of poker are?

    No accident the first card game everyone learns is War, my father said, driving with one wrist slung across the wheel. They’re all variations on the same plot. Metaphorical kings fighting over the world’s limited supplies of wenches and money.

    My mother regarded me seriously over the back of her seat, her eyes luminous in the dark.

    We’re in trouble, Jack, she said. We’re in terrible trouble.

    Okay, I said.

    "It’s been building for a while. We kept it from you at first, because we didn’t want to scare you. But you have to know.

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