The damn phone was ringing again. Holden's head was pounding as he stumbled through the cabin, more interested in making the ringer shut up than whoever might be on the line. It was an old-fashioned landline with a shrill bell that pierced his hangover like a red-hot needle. This cabin was in the middle of nowhere, the perfect place to get away from it all and put words to paper on the manuscript he was contracted for. Cell service in nowhere, rural Vermont was spotty at best, so the old handset with yellowed plastic and peeling sticker advertising "long distance low rates" was his only lifeline. Holden knocked over a half empty bottle of bourbon on the way to the coffee table where the infernal device sat in its cradle. He grabbed the receiver and slouched against the wall, wincing against the light streaming in through the kitchen window over the sink.
He croaked a sleepy "hello," sounding more like a frog than a writer. Instead of the voice of his agent, Veronica, who was a dangerously cute number in her late twenties and had been hounding him to finish this manuscript since before Christmas, or his wife who would burn the better part of the afternoon filling him in on every little thing he was missing back home (what the kids were doing in school, how his cousin was doing after hip surgery, what her sister said to her mother, or which of her friends were fucking their dentist), a gruff male voice came through. "Holden Caldwell?"
Holden tried not to groan, saying "Yes, this is he," like he was trying to dodge a DUI ticket. There was something oddly familiar about whoever was calling. He'd heard this voice before, but couldn't quite place it with his head pounding.
"I don't have a lot of time, Mister Caldwell, so I won't take up too much of yours. You've got to change the ending." The man had an Appalachian accent, nasally and twangy with hard consonants and soft vowels. His tone was clipped and serious, firm but with a hint of desperation.
Holden blinked, staring down at the puddle of booze spreading across the hardwood floor and seeping into the rug. "Excuse me?" Holden pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes tight. The room started spinning when he did.
"I'm not a begging man, Mister Caldwell. You would know that better than anyone. You'll also know that I'm at the end of my rope and have to take matters into my own hands. It's up to you. Everything can be set right. No one has to get hurt if you just change the ending."
"Who is this? What's this about? Money? Is that it?"
"I already told you, Mister Caldwell, the story is the thing. You know that. I'm looking after me and mine and I'll have to do what's necessary. That ending you've got thunk up has got to come out differently or there'll be… consequences. That's all there is to it." Holden opened his eyes and stared dumbly at the receiver, hearing a click followed by a dial tone. What the hell had that been?
The draft of the story that lived for the moment only on his laptop and in his mind was another genre piece that he'd let himself be boxed into. The plot centered on a small town falling victim to some kind of supernatural force. It wasn't exactly original, but the devil was in the details and he thought he had woven together enough tight character moments to make it worth sending off for Veronica and the publishing vultures to pick apart. The ending wasn't written down, yet, but it was a violent one. The lead was going to make it through all right, but by the skin of his teeth. The same couldn't be said for an incidental character he'd put in the scene because someone had to die in a spectacularly bad way to make the scene work right. Plotting was a funny thing. He'd known he'd needed somebody to exist so he could write their gory demise and then worked backwards turning them from some throwaway into a proper character. He'd given them a family, even if they only existed in a single sentence, a loyal dog, and, of course, a name: Elias Cobb. Being important enough to have a name in a story had a kind of magic to it. It meant you were less disposable, but also had a juicer target painted on your back if it was a scary story like the one he was writing because the audience would care a little more when it came your time to die.
Holden rubbed his bleary eyes when the connection struck him. Cobb. The reason the voice sounded like something he knew was because he had made it up. His mind had assigned it to Cobb as he'd plinked away at the keyboard, making him come to life a little more word by word. "You're losing it, buddy," Holden said to himself aloud. Fictional characters couldn't file a complaint about the story they found themselves in. And not only because of the tautology that they weren't real. The plot sometimes was like a living thing. It made demands of the author and forced things to happen because there was no other way out.
He entertained the thought for a moment that this wasn't a mental break or some bullshit brought on by his hangover. Suppose Cobb had managed to peek ahead at where the story was going. Holden wouldn't be happy either in his shoes.