“You will receive what you are due in correct proportions.”

When they landed on the other side, they both stopped. A snake noticing its prey. Within a moment the sentence wrapped around his body, stifling him from his feet to his head. The only part free was his mouth, which had opened and begun to scream. A terrible, high-pitched scream sprung forth, of desperation and pain; not pain now, but what was to come.

The dream snake-sentence squeezed tighter and tighter, and he gasped for breath, his ribcage crushed by the pressure. Just as sleep claimed him, one final thought seeped into his darkening mind. Was there anywhere in the Twilight Zone where he might plead his case?

18

William made the phone calls, but he wouldn’t know for days, possibly weeks, how well his plan had worked. He figured, the first few would return brilliant results but eventually one of the publisher’s publicists would call around to check what had gone wrong. Then they’d work it out, but the idea of wreaking havoc even for a few days tasted delicious.

The first contact he made was perfect. They’d bought the story, hook, line and sinker. He’d followed up with an email from a fake account which added validity. Those fake accounts were beyond easy to create. To make the emails appear authentic, he only needed to buy a web address of a similar name to a legitimate business. Nobody checked email addresses exactly, if at all.

The publisher had already registered darkdoors.com and darkdoors.net. Darkdoor.net—minus the s—remained available. He bought that and the dot com version.

William then copied the publisher’s logo so, at a glance, his emails would appear official and unquestionable.

He also used fake identification to set up a PayPal account to pay for the websites and the Fiverr business. That was easy too. Everything you needed in the world could be found online. William was good at research and this subterfuge. He jovially considered focusing on writing crime novels. Once this was over he might give it a swing under a pen name. J.K. Rowling had done well with that.

The other unexpected benefit was that this whole exercise proved tremendously cathartic. Each day he awoke with renewed energy and an emotion close to when Suffer Them to Come to Light rode high in the sales’ charts. For a few small moments, life felt good and he believed he might actually win over Orelia Mason.

* * *

He’d done the hard part, now the first stop in confirming whether his plan had worked was the downtown Barnes and Noble, the biggest bookstore in the city. Her current promotional tour was scheduled to begin there with a seven pm presentation. William arrived at six, positioning himself in the coffee shop, inside but situated in a separate area to the selling floor.

Weaving his magic had encouraged his appetite, another thing which had disappeared along with his career over the past year. Tonight though, he wolfed down a sub and large piece of cheesecake like he hadn’t had a meal in months. Two cups of coffee later, he bounced on a euphoric high as he sat close to the window waiting with excitement. From here he could see who came and went into the building.