Apologies for the delay. It’s been a big few weeks for my primary project, Kronomund. I’ve been reviewing feedback from Beta readers, and will hopefully have the manuscript in my editor’s hands by the week’s end.
Meantime, I am now seeking advance review readers! If you’d like to get a copy of the book for free, you can click the button below to learn more. All I ask in return is that you consider leaving your honest review after reading. Again, specific terms and conditions are laid out more clearly on the review signup page.
Now Back to the Story
There’s No Such Thing as Gideon Gale follows Midwesterner Carl Thorson as he investigates an impossible phenomenon overtaking the airwaves in his small town.
Previously: local Calder Thorsen and KZMT General Manager Robert Tailor tracked down one of the mysterious feature reporter’s prior interview subjects, only to find a man driven to depression, seemingly having lost the very talent that earned him a feature story in the first place. At the bar, the two learn they aren’t the only ones investigating the matter…
A million and one things ran through my head as the stranger approached. I thought about Mallory White’s letters—about how her friend had treated her upon learning she couldn’t see Gale either. White’s friend Doris had been a frail old woman. But this man was an entirely different story. Would he shout for the bar and raise a mob?
Judging by appearances, I doubted he needed one to pose a serious threat. The man towered over both Tailor and myself, easily more than six feet tall, and with a build that suggested he engaged in some form of rigorous physical activity.
I tensed as he slipped a hand into his pocket, and produced… two whiskey shooters?
“Here ya go—something to keep Gale at arm’s length.” The stranger held out the tiny plastic bottles, clearly waiting for Tailor and I to take them. When neither of us moved, the man added: “Or at least the cold, eh?”
The gesture had been so odd, I hadn’t fully parsed what the man said. What did he mean? How could a little alcohol have any impact on the specter from the TV?
In the end, it was Tailor who broke the silence. “You’re not one of them. A viewer, I mean.”
The stranger laughed at that. “Yeah, no. Though if we’re splitting hairs, Gideon Gale doesn’t have any viewers. I expect the two of you already started to work this out, though.” Just like that, so many of my suspicions from the tape were confirmed.
With a tentative hand, I took one of the shooters. “Did you mean anything in particular about these keeping Gale at bay—or is this just your spin on midwestern hospitality?”
Another warm laugh. “Both. But mostly for the practical effects, for sure.”
I frowned. “What other practical effect does alcohol have?” Before the words were all the way out of my mouth, my brain circled back to something Richard had mentioned—something I’d written off as drunken nonsense. “From the hum,” he’d explained, “Drives me crazy, but when I drink, it’s not so bad.”
“Gale works through the sound,” the stranger confirmed. “Mostly comes through the TV. But there’s a sort of background noise too. Gets stronger the closer ya get to town.”
“I’m hard of hearing. Never seen Gale, myself,” Tailor said.
The stranger nodded. “Makes sense why he couldn’t take you outright. Even so, this sound is on a funny frequency. Unless you’re completely deaf, you may not necessarily be safe. Not from all of the effects.”
“And… alcohol fixes that?” Tailor asked, incredulous, as took the remaining bottle.
“For sure,” the stranger said. “Dulls certain sounds. Blurs the background noise together.”
I looked down at the bottle, then back up at the man. Was this some weird attempt at drugging and kidnapping us? It would certainly be a novel tactic. Except… this man knew the truth about Gale, too.
“You’ll forgive me for being a little suspicious of taking drinks from strangers,” I said.
“We’re all strangers at one time or another,” the man said, still upbeat. “You can call me Van.”
I exchanged a look with Tailor, curious whether he thought we really should introduce ourselves. He gave a little nod before turning to Van. “Tailor.”
“Calder,” I said, following suit.
“Pleased to meet you both. As for the bottles: you can drink those, or you can go back inside and grab another round, but you’re not accompanying me until you’re at least a little more liquored up.” Van held up the little device I’d seen him blow into when we first walked up, and realized what it was: a breathalyzer. “And trust me, you’re for sure gonna want to see this.”
I looked to Tailor, then Van, and finally down at the bottle in my hand. I twisted the cap, and felt the seal break—a promising sign, at least, that I wasn’t about to be drugged. Beside me, I heard Tailor crack the plastic seal on his own shooter.
We both drank.
After Van used the breathalyzer to confirm we were sufficiently inebriated, he shepherded us into the back seat of a beat-up 4Runner. Sitting in the front was a stout man with a bushy beard. The dark made it tough to tell, but it looked like he was wearing earplugs.
Odd.
The longer I sat in the car, the more odd things I noticed. The car’s radio, for instance, had been torn out. And a kind of shiny material—maybe foil—had lined the inside of the vehicle.
The front passenger snapped shut, yanking me back to the situation at hand. “Ready then?” Van tapped the driver on the shoulder, and gave a thumbs up. The driver pulled out onto the two lane highway, and headed back toward town.
Our driver kept a glacial pace, clearly wary of wildlife jumping out from the fields along either side of the road. For a few minutes, I simply watched the landscape shift in the shadows of the high beams. Beyond the rough outline of the trees, the silhouette of the KZMT broadcast tower loomed.
“How did you figure it out?” Van asked from the front seat, breaking the silence. “About Gale, I mean.”
For a moment, I let the question hang, hoping Tailor would answer. Then I realized that in the dark of the moving vehicle, he was unable to read lips. Van knew this too, surely. The question was directed at me.
I didn’t want to answer. But somehow the silence was worse, giving my mind the space to wander back to the bar—back to Mysterious Richard, drinking himself into a stupor every night. I thought of Andrew, who was probably doing more or less the same thing right about now; all while the guitar he’d spent months saving up for collected dust.
Perhaps it was the liquor loosening my tongue. Maybe some part of me thought that by finally saying it out loud, I could somehow shove the feeling aside. When the words
“Gale got my brother.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
The car fell silent again.
After an uncomfortable minute slipped by, my curiosity got the better of me. “How’d you get involved, then?”
“Nothing so personal,” Van said with a casual wave. “I was working nearby on assignment, and our instruments picked up odd signal. So, the boss man sent me to check it out.”
“Huh,” I said. “What line of work are you in?”
Van let out a laugh. “Let’s call it research, eh, and leave it at that.”
Research? Some deeper part of my brain didn’t like that explanation—not one bit. You could certainly say Tailor and I had been doing research, as we investigated the Gideon Gale situation. What the hell was Van researching that was more secretive than that?
Before I could spend too much time pondering, the driver pulled off onto a crumbling neighborhood street, homes barely visible beyond wildly overgrown yards. We slowed, then stopped, beside a mailbox that had been completely strangled by vines. I briefly wondered how the mailman could even read the numbers, before my eyes fell on a yellow ribbon of crime scene tape spanning the gravel driveway.
Van stepped out, then circled around to the hatchback. He started rooting around in the trunk for something, though I couldn’t see exactly what.
My pulse quickened. He’d brought us out to some crime scene for what, exactly? Was this a trap? Would Van—assuming that was even his name—simply kill us for learning a little too much about Gideon Gale?
Van unzipped something in the trunk. A body bag?
I turned over my shoulder and met his eyes over the seats. Van smiled, holding up a white bundle in each hand. “The label on these says ‘one size fits most,’ so I expect you two will be just fine.” He tossed the bundles over the seatback.
Tailor unrolled his, holding up what was clearly some kind of garment, for closer inspection. When I did the same, a pair of black rubber gloves fell out, along with a cheap pair of goggles, earplugs, and a disposable facemask.
“A hazmat suit?” I asked.
“Yessir,” Van confirmed. “Can’t be too careful.”
Again, Tailor and I exchanged a skeptical look, until we saw Van pulling on his own protective clothing. He’d gotten his white coveralls up to his waist before realizing we still hadn’t started dressing.
“Well, pitter patter then, eh?”
Van led the way down the drive, pausing to lift the crime scene tape and usher Tailor and I through. We didn’t speak; there was only the quiet crunch of gravel underfoot, and the faint sound of ragged breathing through our masks.
The house waiting for us at the end of the drive was nothing remarkable; just an old bungalow with a rickety carport. The whole thing might’ve been quaint at one point, but the owner clearly hadn’t done anything in the way of maintenance in years—maybe decades. A flickering light fixture hung beside the door, casting odd, irregular shadows.
Through his mask, Tailor let out a muffled, phlegmy, “Eeyuck!” as the beam of his flashlight fell to the edge of the porch. Here, decorative lattice had fallen away, revealing exposed foundation. A patchwork of what looked to be black veins crisscrossed up the concrete, then the walls.
“Termites, maybe?” I asked, thinking of those gross mud tubes they used to get around. But even as I asked, I knew I was wrong. The coloring was too dark; the tubes themselves too large. That’s not to mention the movement—throbbing, undulating and shifting, like the whole house was a contracting cardiac muscle.
Then there was the pattern the tendrils had formed in. Rather than originating in the earth, and climbing toward the nearest piece of wood, these seemed to be growing outward from within the home, with the closest concentrations overlapping near the windows and door. Those windows all seemed to have broken outward, leaving shards of glass on the lawn that twinkled in the shifting light. The front door itself had popped off its hinges, with more of the weird tendrils reaching around the frame like far too many fingers.
For some reason, the sight felt familiar.
I’d seen growth like this before, I realized, while cleaning out my dad’s house. After his long stay in the hospital, his funeral and estate demanded all the attention I had left. By the time we got around to the property, the meat in his fridge had long since gone rancid, and an unsettling sight was waiting for us in the pantry. There, a sack of raw potatoes had been left in the dark, and had begun sending out long, pale sprouts in search of soil.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the same somehow—that inside the house, there was a hungry thing, instinctively reaching out in search of nutrients.
I shuddered.
Van however, seemed completely undeterred. He pulled back the door and slipped inside, stepping carefully over the tendrils undulating on the floor. After a moment’s hesitation, Tailor and I followed.
From the rough outlines of lumpy furniture, I guessed that we had entered into a living room. It felt more like walking into a stagnant fish tank that hadn’t been cleaned in years. Tufts of black gunk drifted on the air like hanging motes of dust, and the muffling effect of the earplugs further added to the underwater feel of the place.
I looked down at my protective suit, which suddenly seemed woefully inadequate.
The room wasn’t actually dark—not completely. The lights glowed weakly beneath the layer of greenish film that seemed to grow outward from the veins.
I briefly wondered whether I was hallucinating. Except I’d broken the seal on that bottle myself. So had Tailor. Besides, everything seemed so horrifyingly, viscerally real.
“How long has this place been abandoned?” I asked, raising my voice so as to be heard through the mask.
“Few days. No more than a week,” Van answered.
I must’ve misheard him. “Days?”
Van nodded.
“Days!?” I asked again.
Again, he nodded.
I took another look around the room, paying closer attention to the details this time, and spotting the little gaps where the strange infection hadn’t grown— a vacant circle on the coffee table, a human-shaped imprint on the sofa…
“Who could live like this?”
“Doris,” Van said.
Doris? Why did that name sound so familiar?
“I believe you might know her as a friend of Mallory White. I know she was in correspondence with Tailor a while back, and the two agreed to pretend they could both see Gale just like everyone else,” Van explained. “White’s dead. The Sheriff thinks Doris killed her. When he saw the state of this place—well…” he trailed off.
“Wait, Mallory is dead?” I asked.
I looked to Tailor for a reaction, only to remember that with all our protective equipment, he could infer nothing about the conversation. I would have to break the news to him later.
I turned back to Van, and gestured to the growths surrounding us. “I’m guessing this is related, then.”
“For sure,” Van nodded. “Check this out.” He followed the largest mass of tendrils toward the back of the boxy tube television. He turned the TV so that I could better see the mess dribbling out of the casing, which had been ruptured by the emergence of the vein-like growths.
With a well-placed blow from the heel of his hand, Van knocked off the broken casing entirely. The smell hit me immediately, even through my mask. It was like curdling milk left out in the sun, mixed with raw sewage. A gooey, tar-like substance dripped from the electrical components, pooling in a dark puddle on the carpet.
Tailor made a disgusted hacking noise, raising a gloved hand to cover his face.
“What the hell is that?” I demanded.
“Gideon Gale,” Van gestured toward the sludge with fanfare, like he was revealing the prize on some primetime gameshow. “Part of him, anyhow.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Sporomyces Signalis,” Van offered, like that cleared it up. When he realized I was no less confused, he elaborated: “Signal Spores. They cluster on transmission towers, and propagate with every broadcast. The offspring—” he slapped the TV again emphatically, “—feed on attention, and send it back to the parent. Seems Gale was eating good in this house.”
“You’re saying Russet Lake is, what—infested with hallucinogenic mold?” I asked, speaking slowly.
Van nodded. “Yep. That’s about the long and short of it.”
“Good grief, Van. We’ve got exposed skin, here. I don’t wanna catch this!”
“Whoa there, dude,” he said, holding up both hands in a calming gesture. “It’s alright. "These spores spread by sound, eh. Besides: these offshoots are inert when the parent isn’t talking.”
“Then, so long as Gale isn’t on the air?”
“Exactly.”
I frowned at the undulating tendrils snaking out from the TV set. If this was inert, I definitely didn’t want to stick around and find out what it did while it was active. In fact, I didn’t want to stick around at all.
“Let’s get out of here. Get some air,” I suggested.
Van nodded, stopping for a moment to touch Tailor’s arm, and point him toward the door. Rather than lead us straight back to the truck, Van brought us to the edge of the yard and into a pop-up tent for what he called acoustic decontamination— basically blasting us with some odd sequence of sounds from a speaker system.
“You can’t be too careful,” Van said as he peeled off his protective suit. “A single spore on a record, or VHS tape can compromise an entire town." Once his mouth was visible, Van quickly repeated the quick version of what he had explained inside the house, including Mallory’s death.
He just shook his head at that. “I warned her… I warned her and they got her anyway.” Tailor took a long, rattling breath, and composed himself. “So where does that leave the rest of us? You said this thing likes to grow on transmission towers. KZMT has one over on Golden Knoll. Don’t suppose a strong bleach-based cleaner will do the trick?”
“No, I suppose not,” Van agreed. “Gale’s offspring might be inert most of the time. But the parent is another story. Laid the beatdown on three of my guys I sent to investigate. It’s something else.”
“Can’t you bring in the big guns?” I asked. “Sounds like you’re pretty well connected. Or at least, your boss is.”
Van shook his head. “No can do; no outgoing audio signals until the Gale situation is resolved. Too much risk of infecting someplace else.” I thought back to the award tapes, and shuddered. Those would have to be dealt with later.
“What about text?” I asked. “Like an email.”
“Violates policy. Kind of work I’m into, we don’t like leaving a paper trail.” Van flashed a wry smile.
“Then, what?”
“Gale isn’t like the other Signal Spores we’ve catalogued, not where it counts. Got something of a personality ya know?”
“And that helps us?” Tailor asked.
“For sure,” Van nodded. “If it can think, and we can talk to it, then I’m thinkin’ we can trick it…”
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