A Gathering of Doorways
The Story
From the back cover…
Sometimes you eat the forest, sometimes the forest eats you.
Gil Anderson learns this for himself when his son Noah wanders off one hot summer day, on Gil’s watch. His wife will never forgive him for this latest transgression — not after what the family has lost already.
The forest is always hungry.
It’s reaching out for Gil, a former office man now gone country on his organic farm, a self-proclaimed fast talker who doesn’t speak quite as speedily as he thinks. It’s coming for Melissa, who’s so burdened with work that she has no time to enjoy the lives they’ve made for themselves on their farm. More than anything, the forest wants Noah, an adventurous five-year-old with a head full of tales about heroes and distant worlds.
And Noah has just stepped inside the dark circle of trees…
Sometimes the forest — and what’s underneath the forest — eats you.
The Reviews (Excerpts)
“A strong and compulsively readable novel about family and friends and the horrors, ordinary and not so ordinary, that beset them. From first page to last, Mike Jasper’s A GATHERING OF DOORWAYS is a cut above.” — Lucius Shepard, author of The Jaguar Hunter and Softspoken
“In his third novel, speculative-fiction rising star Jasper offers a finely nuanced blend of fantasy and horror centering on a salesman turned organic farmer who confronts an unusual terror in the woods surrounding his land… Jasper demonstrates a sure hand in balancing his imaginative rendering of middle-class angst with the familiar supernatural ingredients of a 1980s-era horror novel.” —Carl Hays, Booklist (read the entire review)
“Jasper handles the mundane and surreal aspects of Eighties Horror with confidence and imagination. ‘A Gathering of Doorways’ is classic (Dis)Comfort Reading. When you’re continually pressurized by debt and employers who think they own your life, it’s actually nice to think that there’s something else out there, even if it wants to eat you.” — Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column (read the entire review)
“Jasper uses the quickly-shifting landscape of the Undercity to good effect, giving the story a disorienting, kaleidoscopic feel that keeps the reader off-balance nearly as much as the characters, leading to some genuinely frightening moments in this unpredictable but thoroughly entertaining dark fantasy.” — Matt Staggs, Enter the Octopus (read the entire review)
Opening this novel is like sinking into a hot southern dreamland. A captivating, unpredictable dreamland full of weird occurrences, fascinating characters, and emotions that are all too real. The reality of the Anderson’s life — their current struggles and haunting past — blends and bleeds perfectly into Jasper’s strange paranormal landscape. — Kelly Gay, author of The Better Part of Darkness (read the entire review)
The Book
A Gathering of Doorways came out from Wildside Books in January 2009. Here’s the ISBN: 978-0809573158.
Buy a copy from Amazon.com, or use the links on my Store page for your preferred store.
Also, just for kicks, you can:
- Read an interview related to the book at Fangs, Fur, & Fey
- Check out the photos I took of the rural setting
- Read an excerpt from chapter 1, below
- Read a longer excerpt at FantasyBookSpot
The Excerpt — from Chapter One
You were supposed to be watching him, Gil.
Her words created a backbeat to each step he took, his boots pounding on the sunbaked trail that lead to the forest — the last place he wanted to go. But his son was in there; Gil knew it. His boy, Noah. And he was lost.
Gil kicked at the scarred and dry ground and scrambled over blackened tree roots reaching up to trip him. Each step took him farther from the farm and his family’s home, but closer to Noah. Gil knew where his boy was, knew the name of place. He just had to get there. Noah. He’d already wandered off twice this summer, a typical spacey, curious five-year-old. And Melissa was right — Gil had been responsible. Three times now.
The world turned white as the cruel late-morning sunlight beat on his bare head, the smell of dust and dead vegetation sharp in his nose. Not even an hour ago, Noah had been sitting on Gil’s lap, squirming with impatience as he waited for Gil to continue telling the latest story about Prince One-Eye and his band of Black Hoods. An eternity ago. Now the boy was gone. Lost.
Gil pushed through the trees, ignoring the dull jabs of pain in his bad hip as he walked, grabbing frustrated fistfuls of leaves dried by the sun. He hadn’t been up here on the trails adjacent to the farm in weeks, and the lack of rain had started frying the trees already. Nothing wanted to grow this summer; even the pines looked parched.
Sometimes the forest eats you, Gil thought, sometimes you eat the forest.
Pushing his way through the trees, he let the elastic, dust-covered limbs snap back before realizing that the man walking behind him might catch one in the face. Ray, Gil’s sixty-five-year-old neighbor, was already chuffing air, sounding like he’d been running all-out with a pack of rabid dogs at his heels instead of just walking on the trail for the past fifteen minutes. Ray lifted his bullet-shaped head as he fiddled with the translucent cord that ran from his nose, back up his shoulder, and into the hissing pack of oxygen on his broad back.
Supposed to be watching him, Melissa’s voice reminded him.
Gil winced and picked up the pace. Next to Ray walked his fawn-colored greyhound Bullitt, straining against his leash. Ray had showed up a few seconds after Gil had broken the news about Noah to Melissa, and Gil was still stinging from her response.
Twenty steps outside their farmhouse, knowing where he had to go to find Noah, he detoured around the unexpected appearance of Ray in his gravel driveway. Gil avoided the black leash attached to Ray’s skittish yellow dog and figured that was it, he was free of him and anyone else foolish enough to want to help him. But Ray and Bullitt had decided to follow Gil up here, and he didn’t have the energy to tell them to get lost.
“Forget calling the cops,” Ray said now. He exhaled a crackly breath. “They wouldn’t even… give us the time of day. Not after that… false alarm last month.” Already he was making himself part of this, saying “us” instead of “you.” But with Noah out there somewhere, trying to find his way back home — can’t think about that, can’t think about that — Gil figured he’d take whatever help he could get.
“The cops don’t matter,” he said, all confident voice and no hesitation. Fooling exactly no one.He touched the cell phone in his jeans pocket, wondering, Did I miss a call from Melissa?”Noah can’t be far off, I tell ya. He’s okay, probably just exploring, as usual.”
Melissa’s reaction still baffled him. After he’d realized Noah had slipped off, and he’d done his best attempt at finding him on his own, he found her orchestrating the day’s activities in the kitchen with Julio, Mariana, and Herschel. When he asked her if she’d seen Noah, she rushed toward him with this look of intense — what? Fear? Hatred? — on her face.
“What happened?” Her voice had a dull clang to it. Like a doorframe echoing after the door in it has been slammed. Not waiting for a response, she brushed past him on her way outside. Gil knew she wanted to have their discussion away from the hired help. Melissa hated showing that anything was wrong. Ever.
“You were supposed to be watching him, Gil,” she said over her shoulder as soon as he was outside, crunching over gravel.
“He was just playing outside, on the swings,” he began, moving closer to her only to be pulled up short by fresh pain in his injured hip. “He was right there…”
His words dried up when she showed him her back, once again, and put both hands to her head. He could tell without seeing her face that her eyes were clenched shut, that she’d be claiming another migraine soon. Gil wanted to grab her, turn her around and enfold her in his arms the way he used to. She was too quick to turn away from him lately. What he wanted to do was hold her and feel her heart beating as madly as his own, giving them both the strength to face this together. But he didn’t dare reach for her. Instead, he started walking away from the house, her words stinging like cold sleet thrown by the winter wind.
He swallowed his anger and turned his gaze south, to the overgrown trails leading up to the forest at the edge of their property, just as Ray and his dog arrived.
Continued...
