Tuesday, March 22, 2011








The name's Max - Max Lanigan, crime reporter for The Exton Examiner. I've worked in other places - New York, Las Vegas, Seattle, Chicago - and I have seen my share of weirdness, brother. I've seen my share and your share and his share.

I thought I was leaving all that behind when I came to Exton. It's a quiet, peaceful kind of place - the kind of place where I thought I could coast along until retirement and then sit out on my porch and watch the seasons change and never have to deal with weirdness again.

Boy, was I wrong.

But I've learned something from all those big cities. Most people aren't interested in the truth, not when it interferes with their pretty little illusions. They don't want to go beneath the surface - sometimes literally - because what's down there is the stuff of nightmares.

So I've quit bucking the system; I don't fight City Hall anymore. I don't bash my head against brick walls, I don't tilt at windmills and I emphatically DO NOT hunt monsters. Period.

These notes are just for me, for those times when doubt creeps in and I start to wonder if I imagined it all - to remind me that there really are things that go bump in the night.

Come along for the ride if you dare.


Tuesday, June 15, 12:42 am. It was hot and muggy in Exton and Janet Russo was perspiring freely as she stood at a corner in one of the more colorful sections of town. She could feel the humidity reach clammy fingers beneath the skimpy outfit she wore. She prayed, not for the first time tonight, for a man to come pick her up and take her to a cheap motel - preferably one with a working air conditioner. That she would have to fuck a stranger for it didn't matter at all; it was who she was, what she did and any little-girl dreams of Prince Charming and happily-ever-after were long since dead. The minutes stretched into hours until the heat and sweating and itching were all but intolerable and she would have killed for a shower.

And then there he was - tall and lean, like Eastwood in his prime; not overly handsome, no, but he wouldn't stop any clocks, either - and he was coming toward her.

What he told her is of course a matter of conjecture, but it was enough to get her to abandon her corner and follow him into the shadows of a nearby alley.

A moment later, that alley became an abattoir, and Janet Russo became a statistic.

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