Sometimes grief sneaks up on you and hunts you down.
Sometimes it walks right up and punches you.
Holes in the Somewhere
by Richard R. Brown
Genre: Speculative Fiction, Horror Stories
Holes In The Somewhere is a collection of short works, anchored by a personal memoir of the author’s own experience with grief and loss after the passing of his father from cancer, by speculative fiction author Richard R. Brown.
A single mother encounters insanity in the worst possible person; an estranged parent loses his reunited family to a mysterious bathroom wall; a group of strangers come together to fight a fungal pandemic; college students prepare for the extinction of the Sun… these are a few of the challenges faced by the desperate characters in Holes In The Somewhere. The choices they make, the dilemmas they wrestle with, all have very supernatural consequences, but are felt with very human emotions.
These stories will tug at strings your heart thought were too well-hidden for anyone to know about, and cause the mind to probe the gray areas between wrong and right. Between normal and paranormal. Behind what’s real and only to the side of what’s unreal. A perfect mix of quick, unsettling reads, and longer, heart-wrenching escapes.
What readers are saying:
“The debut is speculative fiction in form: weird, unsettling, occasionally cosmic. But it reads less like a genre exercise than like grief that has been given permission to take unusual shapes.” – Justine Castellon, Author/Reviewer
“I guarantee there is a ‘gotcha’ story in there for just about anybody, and if you don’t find at least one that bothers you just as you’re about to fall asleep, you’re made of sterner stuff than I am.” – Kenneth Crist, editor-in-chief, Black Petals Magazine
“These stories are weird and creepy and heart-wrenching in all the best ways. If you enjoy fiction that makes you question everything and wrecks you emotionally, this is for you!” – Valerie S., 5 star Amazon Review
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Excerpt from ‘A Hole In The Somewhere’, a story in ‘Holes In The Somewhere’
When he hung up, he saw the answer to his problem of Tony’s dead body. He picked Tony up and wrestled him into the wall where the blurred patch was. Pieces seemed to fall off into the wall, but that just made Tony easier to handle. He just had time to change into a clean shirt and slide the gun back under the couch before there came a soft knock on his door.
Jack wiped sweat from his forehead and opened the door. Before him stood the same little girl who held his hand twenty years ago and asked him, “Why, Daddy?” about absolutely everything. Only now she had green eyes when she used to have brown eyes.
“Mommy says you’re my grandpa,” she said to him now. “Why is your door all bubbly and brown, Grandpa?”
Jack looked up and past his granddaughter at Mary, who was smiling anxiously at both of them.
“Hi, Daddy,” was all she said. It was enough.
Jack burst into tears, picked his granddaughter up in his left arm, and trotted down the steps to embrace his daughter with his right arm. They hugged for several moments before a muffled, “Why are you crying, Grandpa?” came from his shoulder.
Jack laughed, and put her down on the ground again. “I’m crying because I’m so happy to meet you!” he said.
“Oh. My name’s Emily, but you can call me Emmy. Why do you live by the train tracks, Grandpa?”
“Actually, Dad, I’m curious, too. This address came up as ‘Condemned.’ How is it that you live here?”
Jack led them inside and told them his story, forcing himself to be honest about his decisions and his reasons. Recent events disappeared from his awareness as the last twenty years enveloped him. He told them about his depression and anger from the divorce, and how losing everything seduced him into giving up everything. He hadn’t wanted to try to replace what he had lost because that would be admitting that he had lost it to begin with. After a few minutes, Emmy wanted to explore, so Jack gave a tour while he talked. It only took a minute.
In the bathroom, Mary shot him an alarmed look when she saw the cracked mirror. “Oh! It was like that when I found this place. I got a new one last month. I just forgot about hanging it up.”
“Let’s do it now, Daddy. I don’t like that crack, for some reason. It creeps me out.”
They hung the new mirror while Jack entertained them with stories from his train-hopping days. Mary leaned the cracked mirror against the wall below the new one, stood up, and proclaimed, “Much better!”
Jack and Mary returned to the main room. Mary told Jack about her short, failed marriage to Emmy’s father, her job at CyberSolutions, and her academic career. “Where is Emmy?” Jack wondered aloud.
“She was fascinated by that old mirror, so I leaned it against the wall so she could look at it.”
Jack felt a moment of unease at this, but had no ready explanation for it, so he let it go. “Are you hungry, kiddo?” he asked Mary. “I’m sure Emmy probably is. Want to go to lunch?”
“Sure, but I’m pay-“Mary was interrupted by a tremendous whipcrack coming from the bathroom.
The gun!, Jack thought, and leapt to his feet as Mary called out, “Emmy? Emmy!” They both ran into the bathroom, only to find it empty. There was nothing to hide behind, but Mary made a close search of every corner, anyway, all the while calling her daughter’s name, “Emmy! Emmeeee!”
Richard R. Brown is a legally-blind author of speculative fiction, horror, and thrillers. He writes from experience, having lived through paranormal events, alien attacks, and cosmic horrors — at least, in his mind and in the books he listens to. He and his Guide Dog live in the Pacific Northwest. Richard is between Guide Dogs at the moment as Edison retired last summer. Edison was at Richard’s side through every story in his book. Richard has no such guidance for his current novel, but will likely have one for editing help.
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Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in Holes in the Somewhere?
Holes In The Somewhere has fourteen different stories, so there are a lot of different characters I could talk about, but I’m going to narrow it down to my two favorites. In ‘The Final Butterfly’, Candace Cavanaugh is a beautiful trophy wife to an abusive husband. We first meet her as she is waiting for him outside of a hospital exam room. She already believes that she’s at fault for his knee injury (she isn’t), she has fading shiners around her eyes, and she’s thinking about what kind of torment her husband is going to put her through because of this injury. She’s timid, nervous, overly apologetic. Over the next two weeks (and 5 years), she finds incredible courage, self-reliance, and the strength to make sacrifices. She might reappear in future stories.
Another character I really enjoyed has no name yet. At least, not one that we know. He’s the narrator of ‘Sunday Morning’. He learns of an indirect death threat against him from a note that falls out of his neighbor’s newspaper. He’s the only one who knows about the threat. The thing is, someone else will die if he doesn’t. As he decides what to do, he reflects on his past and we learn that he’s been a really lousy person, husband, and father. The end of the story doesn’t promise a redemption arc of any kind… but he has almost four hours to make a different choice. I’m almost certain I’ll write about more of his life.
If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead?
I’ve always imagined Brie Larson playing Candace in a film adaptation of ‘The Final Butterfly’. I think I’d like to see John Lithgow play the narrator from ‘Sunday Morning’. If he’s not available, I think Morgan Freeman would also be amazing in that role.
Did you learn anything during the writing of your recent book?
Writing ‘Holes In The Somewhere’, or more precisely, after writing it, I’ve learned to pay more attention to the writing itself. You’d think a blind person who pays more attention to his other senses would automatically think to use more sensory experiences in their writing, but no. I still have to force myself to think about what a character hears, or how a room smells, or what the texture of the decayed skeletal hand feels like as it grips your collarbone. I’m still learning more and more about the mechanics of the prose every day.
Do you have a favorite scene from the audiobook? What makes it special?
Let’s talk about the audiobook! The audio edition is a little more than halfway done! So far, I have two favorite scenes that I’d love to tell you about. The scene in ‘The Final Butterfly’ when Candace’s husband catches up to her more than three hours away from their home and has her alone in a deserted restaurant is pretty intense. I ended up not really liking him after that scene. You know…on a personal level.
The other scene is the whole short story, ‘Cemetery Road’. Narrated by Peace Nile, the audio version is ten times better than what I wrote. I was lucky to find her for that story and for ‘Larger Prey’.
For all the great narrators to work with like Peace, there are just as many difficult and downright fraudulent ones, too. I worked with one who tried to hold the recordings hostage until I paid. They also tried to claim that the banking information was wrong AFTER the payment had already gone through, and threatened to report me to Audible if I didn’t pay again to another account. My advice to writers hiring…well, anyone: Keep every scrap of communication and conduct all communication in writing or electronically. Protect yourselves.
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This sounds like a good collection. I like the excerpt.