Travelog in the voice of Earl Tangs, ex-superintendent of Woody Knot trailer park, current operator of The Queen’s Tour.
This city. Man. Can’t even quite call it that, can you? We’re what, 220,000 souls? Not quite big enough to be a city, too big to count as a town. So what? Not a real city. Nah, I’ve been to real cities, and this ain’t it.
My name is Earl Tangs. I’m sixty-two, but who’s counting? I used to run the trailer park on down Thorold Stone Road. Woody Knot. Nice place or it was before all that bad stuff went down. The stuff that made the papers. And I mean all the papers. People in Shanghai waking up, flipping on the news, seeing all that shit blowing up in my own sleepy burg. They probably shit a brick! Lord knows I did.
Where did this particular shitstorm happen? You already know, but I’ll tell you again. Right here in St. Catharines, Ontario. There are worse places on earth, I guess. The scenery’s nice, I’ll grant that much. Once you get out of the prefab suburbs, anyway. You’ve got Lake Ontario to the north, running a glassy-blue to the far shore of Toronto—now there’s a real city. Hoo boy. On a clear night you can make out the CN Tower.
To the south is Niagara Falls, which used to be pretty nice. I mean, centuries ago when it was just the Falls themselves before the discount t-shirt shops and mini putt courses and strip clubs. Now, it’s all jazzed-up and sad, like the Hope diamond set in a dog turd.
To the east and west, it’s all fields. Grapes mainly but apricot and apple and pear and peaches, too. The orchards stretch out to the escarpment—this long, high band of rock that runs parallel to the lowlands—and they’re nice, too. If you get out there, walk a few miles, you can almost convince yourself that everything still remains untouched by the hand of man.
Anyway. That’s probably not what you’re interested in. You probably want to know about that madman Rudyard Crate. And what he did to those poor girls.
I knew them, y’know. Margaret and Charity. Yes, I did. They grew up in Woody Knot. I’d haul out the hose and attach the sprinkler on hot summer days, so the two of ‘em could go dashing through the spray and cool the heat out of their blood.
Gone now. Both of them.
Does this city have its ghosts? Oh, you could say so. All places do. The longer a place is occupied by humans—we backstabbing, nasty, secretive bunch—the more that place gets … befouled. How’s that for a ten-dollar word? You probably didn’t think I knew any.
Anyway. Folks aren’t so much different here than any other place. Every dot on the map’s got its own history. Some of it’s bound to be bad.
If you’re interested, come find me. I operate a tour company now. The Queen’s Tour. I’ll show you all the sights, grim though they may be. Some of it will stand your hair on end, I promise you that much. 150 bucks all-in, with a soda and a ham sandwich included. And all the local myth and lore you can fit under your hat.
You can’t beat that for a good deal, now can you?
A Novel
The national bestselling author of #HorrorBookTok sensation The Troop returns with a heart-pounding novel of terror about a young woman searching for her missing friend and uncovering a shocking truth.
On a sunny morning in June, Margaret Carpenter wakes up to find a new iPhone on her doorstep. She switches it on to find a text from her best friend, Charity Atwater. The problem is, Charity’s been missing for over a month. Most people in town—even the police—think she’s dead.
Margaret and Charity have been lifelong friends. They share everything, know the most intimate details about one another…except for the destructive secret hidden from them both. A secret that will trigger a chain of events ending in tragedy, bloodshed, and death. And now Charity wants Margaret to know her story—the real story. In a narrative that takes place over one feverish day, Margaret follows a series of increasingly disquieting breadcrumbs as she forges deeper into the mystery of her best friend—a person she never truly knew at all…
Horror | Thriller [Simon & Schuster, On Sale: October 29, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781668020975 / eISBN: 9781668020999]
Nick Cutter is a pseudonym for an acclaimed author of novels and short stories. He lives in Toronto, Canada.
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