Title Page

Dedication

For Ryan King, the daydreamer. I love you.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Introduction: Who’s Your Daddy?

Throttle (with Stephen King)

Dark Carousel

Wolverton Station

By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain

Faun

Late Returns

All I Care About Is You

Thumbprint

The Devil on the Staircase

Twittering from the Circus of the Dead

Mums

In the Tall Grass (with Stephen King)

You Are Released

Story Notes and Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Joe Hill

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

Who’s Your Daddy?

WE HAD A NEW MONSTER every night.

I had this book I loved, Bring On the Bad Guys. It was a big, chunky paperback collection of comic-book stories, and as you might guess from the title, it wasn’t much concerned with heroes. It was instead an anthology of tales about the worst of the worst, vile psychopaths with names like The Abomination and faces to match.

My dad had to read that book to me every night. He didn’t have a choice. It was one of these Scheherazade-type deals. If he didn’t read to me, I wouldn’t stay in bed. I’d slip out from under my Empire Strikes Back quilt and roam the house in my Spider-Man Underoos, soggy thumb in my mouth and my filthy comfort blanket tossed over one shoulder. I could roam all night if the mood took me. My father had to keep reading until my eyes were barely open, and even then he could only escape by saying he was going to step out for a smoke and he’d be right back.

(My mother insists I developed childhood insomnia because of trauma. I took a snow shovel to the face at the age of five and spent a night in the hospital. In that era of lava lamps, shag carpets, and smoking on airplanes, parents weren’t allowed to stay overnight with their injured children at the hospital. The story goes that I woke, alone, in the middle of the night and couldn’t find them and tried to escape. Nurses caught me wandering the halls bare-assed and put me in a crib and strapped a net down over the top to keep me in. I screamed until my voice gave out. The story is so wonderfully horrible and gothic, I think we all need to assume it’s true. I only hope the crib was black and rusty and that one of the nurses whispered, “It’s all for you, Damien!”)

I loved the subhumans in Bring On the Bad Guys: demented creatures who shrieked unreasonable demands, raged when they didn’t get their way, ate with their hands, and yearned to bite their enemies. Of course I loved them. I was six. We had a lot in common.