Before I sat down to write The Shadow Walkers, I was thinking along the lines of traditional horror. The setting, I had already decided, was to be the long-since abandoned property of the Pilgrim State Psychiatric Center in Long Island, a collection of derelict buildings with a lingering and dark history. Opened in 1931, the purpose of the facility was to treat mental patients, including the extensive use of a medical procedure known as a lobotomy in which a sharp implement was inserted up the nasal passage through the nose and part of the patient’s brain was cut out and extracted.
The initial challenge came from the first scene that I imagined. I saw an empty house, a part of a neighborhood development built upon the Center property. The home was that of a typical family: mom, dad and two kids. They disappear without a trace. A concerned neighbor alerts the authorities. The police respond, a basic patrol car, and as there are no overt signs of distress, the cops request the presence of a superior officer, as per departmental procedure. Based on the degree of concern expressed by the neighbor, the officer makes the decision to enter the house. To his surprise, he finds the door not locked and no sign of forced entry. Inside the house, there are no signs of violence, and in fact, everything looks normal.
But herein was the first obstacle: A developer bought a large part of what was left of the Pilgrim State property back in the early 2000s, and though it wasn’t until about 2015, or so, that the sale was approved by the Town, his development plan did not include single-family homes. How could I have families disappearing without an trace from single-family homes that weren’t going to be built?
A little bit of research solved the problem, as long as I was willing to embellish a little. Beneath the dozens upon dozens of buildings that made up the center’s network ran a series of subterranean tunnels. Depending on how much you want to read into it, they were used for maintenance, as aqueducts and even to move patients from one building to the next. I used the idea of them to “connect” the hospital grounds to the surrounding and already existing neighborhood. This led to the development of the scene with Enzo, the construction worker whose crew was developing what is now the property of the west campus of Suffolk Community College and a park operated by the Town of Brentwood. Then as “It,” the at-that-point only partially-conceived creature/monster, grows and becomes stronger, I eventually do get to those single-family homes, particularly the one belonging to the unfortunate Curran family, and then to Tyler Hoek.
Continued…part 2:
The intended first scene of the novel didn’t work itself into the narrative until late in the final draft, chapter eight, in fact. The first take on that scene had two youngsters, the children from that improbable house, coming upon a driver changing a tire. I was thinking the South Spur running alongside Southern State Parkway, somewhere around Carleton Avenue, was the ideal spot. It was to be nighttime, of course, and the two kids imbued with the power of the entity.
But I was faced with multiple questions. Why would the entity need surrogates to do its killing? And once these surrogates did the killing, how would that entity benefit from it? I already said that I didn’t want the traditional monster. I didn’t want a monster at all. I’m not a good vs. evil kind of person, and I don’t believe there is an innate evil, not in beasts and not in people. Sociopaths and psychopaths, yes. Evil, as in the Contrary Man and his sycophants, no.
So, I came up with the quantum angle. The entity, still well into the writing not yet fully-conceived, meaning, I the writer still didn’t know what it was or what it looked like, took sustenance not from flesh but from the burst of energy created when upon dying the living being’s connection to the cosmic consciousness is broken. I know, it sounds a bit much. But it works in the novel.
Of course, I still had to iron out the proximity angle. How would the entity gather in that burst of energy if it was removed physically from the moment of death? That’s why I ultimately abandoned, reconceived and repositioned this scene, and how the idea of the tunnels beneath Pilgrim State started to become a bigger part of the plot. It was down in those tunnels where it, the entity, would lure his surrogates and his victims. How I get them both there, well, that requires reading the novel. Poor Charlie Re.
The quantum angle
Having written Lost on Skinwalker Ranch, I was well-familiar with the concept of portals and alternate planes, as well as with some of the Native American lore about skin walkers. But I also learned of a particular shadow walker referred to as Mr. Marcus. When I sat to write The Shadow Walkers, Mr. Marcus was not more than a passing thought, as was the ranch. But I liked the idea of alternate planes and someone that could move between them at will.
And so was “born” John Beezer, one of the main characters and himself, though neither he nor the reader knows as much as the narrative begins, a shadow walker. I wanted a sort of prologue-like chapter to open the book. I needed a way to bring the entity into our plane, and chose Little Frankie, the thirteen-year-old son of John Beezer’s neighbors, to serve that need. I had decided at this point that the entity had to anchor itself to the “cast-off” self of a living being, but that living being had to be brain-dead, meaning a breathing organism with no consciousness, sort of like a coma or something deeper. Little Frankie was written to fill that role. His was a brief cameo, but a necessary one.
Continued: (part 3)
At this point, the narrative becomes tiered. The shadow walker, Mr. Marcus, and the entity, needed to be tied-in. That was never part of the original impetus for the story. But the concept of different or alternative planes invited Mr. Marcus along. [There’s a whole chapter dedicated to Mr. Marcus and how his extraordinariness (is that a word) came about.]
Shadow walkers have made their way into many stories and movies. But they are rarely explained. My shadow walkers are manipulators of ordinary people, game players, as it were. Bored with near-immortality, the shadow walker gets his entertainment by imposing on the lives of others, those who are mere mortals, putting up obstacles and sitting back and watching as the individual imposed upon reacts.
In The Shadow Walkers, Mr. Marcus accidentally stumbles upon John Beezer, who at the time is seventeen going on eighteen. It is the entity that recognizes John for what he is, and it is in this way that Mr. Marcus comes to John. Admittedly, in the narrative, this string is not as thick or as well-anchored as it might be, but it holds up its part of the weight.
The shadow walker is an alpha being, which is to say a repository of the ideal of what a human being might be, plus every particle of ancestral (DNA) memory passed down from man’s simplest beginnings to what it is that man might evolve into were the conditions to allow, say, a process projected an infinite timeline into the future. (It is an ideal, after all.)
The shadow walker can move between planes because he “interprets” all matter not only in waves but particles. Everything is pixelated; all space is the same space. It is this concept that allows for the plane upon which John confronts the bear-man, meets Aliera and together they have a son, Evan, and a daughter, Adana. It is also this scene, which came about in a fully organic matter, that sets up the sequel and John’s revenge.
Continued: part 4
The base theory for The Shadow Walkers is that all living things are antennae receiving the waves/particles of energy emitted by the ever-expanding universe, much in the same way as do dish antennae, for example, catch TV signals, as do cell phones, and other such technology, do 4G and 5G signals. This reception is consciousness. How each living thing as to its kind interprets these signals is relative to the physical brain and, of course, situational settings. This would explain our differences when it comes to individual people. We each have capabilities and abilities due to our physical differences, which include brain power. In a way, the idea, at least as far as the shadow walker goes, draws on the (somewhat mistaken) belief that we, as humans, use only a small percentage of our brain matter.
This antennae concept is inclusive of the rationalization that we never really die. While our physical bodies clearly do, every one of our thoughts, memories, and experiences, all of which have mass and consist of particles, return to join the flow of energy constantly emitted by the ever-expanding universe, and are, therefore, perpetually a part of the shared consciousness we all interpret. Think of it as ancestral memory or atavistic intelligence. As fantastic as the idea might seem, it does provide us as humans some assurance of an after-life, as it were.
The idea isn’t all that far-fetched. If everything is made up of particles and waves, and that particles behave as waves and waves as particles, depending on the perspective at the moment, and all space is the same space, and all things of matter share the same space, it is not at all irrational to believe that we really never leave. Does it really matter that we are never again we when everyone is really of the same consciousness? It is being that matters, that we are who we are at the moment that we are. It is the comfort of self that gives us present perspective, and it is that comfort that we cherish and wish to hold onto.
What we fear in death is the loss of self.
Part V: The detective story
The Shadow Walkers, at heart, is a horror/paranormal tale. However, the development of Stan Beezer as an essential character gives it, too, that detective story flavor. There is a series of crimes committed, and Mr. Marcus does his best to stitch them together, and thereby pull Stan deeper into the game. It is the danger that Stan faces personally that obligates John to play, too. And that is Mr. Marcus’ aim. The confrontation scene between John Beezer and the entity is a quantum lover’s dream.
The growth of Stan as a character was as organic as that of John, and that of the entity, constantly referred to as “it” in the story–all pardons please, Mr. King. That is to say that none of it was outlined or planned. Stan, as did the others, grew of his own inclination. As his personality developed, so did the scenes into which he steps. By the end of the novel, while he is not the main character, his role is significant and worthy of a continuing part of consequence in the upcoming sequel.
Ultimately, Stan does not solve the crime. His brother John reveals to him all the behind-the-scene details well-known to the reader, and then goes so far as to counsel him on the best way to package those details to keep Tyler Hoek from being charged with man-slaughter and Alicia Curran from learning of her own gruesome behavior.
Hopefully this insight into the development of The Shadow Walkers will serve as an appetizer to those looking for something off-beat and out of the ordinary to read. The novel is available in both ebook and paperback through Amazon. The name on the cover is Erick T. Rhetts. Feel free to solve the anagram. (It is pretty obvious, after all.)
As an Indie writer, I thank you in advance for any interest you might show in my titles.
Baseball and Fiction 