Hacks

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The Invitation

Mr. James Eldridge,

I am pleased to invite you to attend this year’s Hacks Club, a private retreat for authors and editors whose work I admire. The Hacks meet every year at my invitation for a one week, all expense paid getaway beginning August 20.

I’ve chosen you as a potential Hack on the strength of your novel, “Burn.” I own a copy of the limited edition, leather-bound hardcover, and found it an enjoyable read as well as a great investment.

Most of this year’s chosen Hacks are first timers, like yourself. I typically invite only one Hack for a second year, a Veteran Hack to help potential attendees decide if Hacks is worth their time. Veteran Hacks are chosen because I’ve found them to be the most interesting of the previous year’s Hacks. This year’s Veteran Hack (I am positive you know him) is back for his third year.

As your host, I will pay all your traveling expenses and arrange for your boarding and food. You will spend a week in seclusion, in the company of some of the finest writers and editors working today.

I ask only three things of you in return. One; bring a pen. I will have copies of your books for you to sign and inscribe. Two; be prepared to share stories and personal experiences, both in and out of the book biz. Three; have a good time. Above all else, I want my Hacks to enjoy their time with each other, and with me, your host.

You’ll find contact information in the enclosed card. Please RSVP.

Looking forward to your response,

Susan Bonkowski, collector and fan.

PS. I realize that this is short notice, but one of my Hacks met with ill fortune and is unable to attend. I hope you’ll be available to take his place.

The letter arrived by UPS. Jim signed for the envelope, then closed the door against the August heat and took it back to his study, puzzled and a little concerned. The way things were going for him lately, an unexpected return receipt letter could only mean bad news. Usually the UPS man came either with contributor copies of his own books, or contracts. The thin envelope didn’t have any books in it, and he wasn’t expecting any contracts.

He felt a sudden, cold panic. Maybe it was a contract cancellation, and he was about to become an orphaned author. But no, things were nothing but peachy with his publishers at the moment. He was meeting deadlines, turning in revisions on time, and sales were good. Not mind blowing, but good nonetheless.

He flipped the envelope over and studied the address label. A PO Box in Washington State, a town called Asotin. In lieu of a name, a single word. Hacks.

Jim dropped down into the chair in front of his desk and tore the UPS envelope open. Inside, a smaller envelope, cream colored, with his name printed in calligraphy.

A minute later, when he’d read the letter twice, he shook his head and felt inside the cream envelope, pulling out a small, folded card. Black, with his name in gold. He opened it and found a series of numbers and dots.

What the hell?

Beneath that:

Username: Jim Eldridge.

Password: Hacks6.

Then he understood. The numbers were a server address, the path to a website, but one without a domain name. Whoever this Susan Bonkowski was, she didn’t want anyone finding this site by accident, or through a Google search.

“So, I’m a hack now,” he said. A second-string hack at that, he added silently, then crumpled the letter, envelope, and card into an angry ball before tossing them into the trash can beside his desk.

He didn’t have time for this s**t. There was work to do. If he wanted to stay in his editor’s good graces, he needed to get busy.

But Jim didn’t get his flow back. The damn UPS man had broken his train of thought, and the letter in the waste basket had snagged his interest, against his will. After twenty minutes, mostly spent deleting new lines of dialog that didn’t quite ring true, he saved the document and closed Word.

He opened his Internet Explorer, brought up Google, typed up a search for Hacks Club and found a group of kayakers. Their motto, We Paddle For Pleasure, made him smile. Might have been an S&M club, if not for the picture of a kayak rocketing over whitewater.

Next in line were a German Goth-s*x website and pages of links to Xbox and PlayStation cheat code sites. He gave up on the third page of Google links, considered for a moment, and surfed to the Horror Writers Association website. He wasn’t a member, he’d quit the organization three years back, but he knew a few dozen writers and industry pros who did belong to HWA, and one of his friends, a trustee no less, had loaned Jim his login information to the message board so he could keep track of the book business gossip.

Who did he know who had met with ill fortune lately?

He surfed the message threads for another ten minutes and gave up. The closest he found was an update on Dallas Grant, whose health had been failing for some time now. Nothing recent about that.

What next?

Jim tapped his fingers near his keyboard, resisting the urge to go out for a smoke. He wanted one badly, but he wanted to satisfy his curiosity even more, so he could be done with it and get back to work. He compromised by sliding the window closest to him up and lighting up where he sat. Shelly would throw a s**t fit if she caught him, but…

He shoved the thought away. He’d managed to put most of a day behind him without thinking of her. Why ruin a good thing?

If Hacks was an ongoing event, there would surely be something about it somewhere on one of the message boards where procrastinating writers gossiped and goaded each other into flame wars.

He started over with a general search on the Horror Writers Association message board, and found nothing. Next he tried the Shocklines.com board. There were more fans and collectors there than writers, so he didn’t expect to find anything there. He didn’t. Next, and even more of a long shot, Jim thought, was a charming little place called Message Board of the Damned. Though the normal topic for discussion was horror in print and film, you were just as likely to find anything from political rants, porn spam, to threads dedicated to new and interesting combinations of cuss words.

Jim had never posted there, just lurked and read the threads, but he knew a lot of writers who frequented it.

He did a general search, and to his surprise, found a short thread in the archives from two months back.

Hacks Club Conspiracy, was the header.

The post originator was one Richard Pedroos, known affectionately to the board members as Dickey Pee. He had been banished from the board a few weeks prior for posting the home address of another writer, then threatening to blow his balls off with a shotgun.

Dickey Pee, a self-described Maestro of Dark Fiction, composed the post in his customary style.

I’ve hearded tails of a socalled Hacks Club, which is the Illuminati of horror fiction and controls are which is published or denied. If anyone hear knows of these Hacks and how I can reach them I would deal with these conspirators, who unfairly blackball me because I am conservative and anti-faggot.

Stop being a bunch of pussys and lets do something about this Hacks conspiracy.

Richard Pedroos.

The board moderator replied first.

Dickey Pee, if you don’t cut out the homophobic rants, I will ban you from this board. As for your Hacks conspiracy, never heard of them.

The second response came from a writer Jim knew. He worked as a mechanic by day, and was wildly popular with small press collectors and fans. He hadn’t crossed over to the mass market yet, and was always quick to admit he probably never would. They would want him to compromise his style, he said, and he’d give up writing all together before he did that.

Jeff Campbell, known by and referred to simply as Camp by his friends and fans, would probably remain a mechanic with that attitude, Jim thought. He respected Camp though, and there was no denying that the man was a phenomenal writer.

Camp had posted:

You’re a nut-job, and should be sterilized before you reproduce. Later! Camp.

Jim smiled and scrolled down through a dozen off-topic retorts before he found another relevant post.

I’ve heard of the Hacks Club, but don’t know if any of the stories about them are true. Seems to be more urban legend than fact. I heard that Hacks was started about 30 years ago by Elmore Leonard, and that Stephen King, Peter Straub, Brian Keene, Ira Levin, Richard Laymon, Edward Lee, and F. Paul Wilson have all been members at one time or another.

I’ve also heard that careers have been made and shattered at meetings of The Hacks Club, but I don’t think they are the reason you can’t get published, Dickey Pee. You just suck.

The unexpected slamming of the apartment’s front door startled Jim. He peeked out the window, saw Shelly’s car parked behind the neighbor’s at the curb. He checked the clock above his bookshelf and was stunned to see it was a quarter past five in the afternoon. He’d been surfing for almost two hours.

He snuffed his cigarette on the windowsill – his fourth he saw from the dead, crumpled butts lined up on the brick jamb – before sliding the window closed. He’d been chain-smoking without realizing it. He’d barely made it back to his chair before Shelly swept into the room.

In his head, Jim heard the words hi, honey, I’m home.

Yeah, right, he thought.

She stood over him, her spiked heels adding another 5 inches to her already impressive six feet. She looked like an sss in a miniskirt. Her blond hair was wrapped in a bun too tight to have ridden her head through the hot, humid day. She must have rewrapped it before coming home. The heady, expensive perfume she’d doused herself with before leaving for work that morning now had a hint of Brute cologne mixed with it.

Things like this no longer surprised Jim, but they still pissed him off. She could at least keep up the front and try to hide it until the divorce went through, or she’d managed to find a new place.

She gave a false cough and waved a hand in front of her face. “Are you so f*****g lazy you can’t lift your ass out of that seat to go outside for your cigarettes?”

Jim’s smile felt more like a grimace. “Is that a rhetorical question, or do you expect an answer?”

“Bastard!”

“b***h!”

Shelly turned on her spike heels and stalked out, slamming his office study behind her.

Fuck it, Jim thought, and reached into the waste basket. He plucked out the balled-up letter, then the card, and smoothed them out on his desk.

The entrance page to Susan Bonkowski’s website was a no frills affair. White background, no text, no graphics. The page header was blank.

“s**t,” Jim said, and slammed his computer mouse on the desktop. All this energy focused on what amounted to a blank webpage.

Then a gray pop-up prompt appeared, asking for a username and password. Jim provided them, glancing at the wrinkled black card for conformation before clicking Submit.

An image faded in over the white background, a large cabin, flanked on each side by three smaller cabins. A wall of evergreens stood behind them, and the extreme left, what looked like an abrupt drop into some monumental canyon. Mountains.

The photo was old, grainy, black and white.

A large sign, white letters painted on a large, flat wedge of wood said The Blue Mountains - The Devil’s Tail Lodge.

Below the picture, You are invited to this year’s meeting of The Hacks Club. Time: August 20-28. Place: The Blue Mountains of Washington State. Below that, a brief history of The Devil’s Tail Lodge.

Jim didn’t take the time to read it. On the upper right corner of the webpage was a list of names, and next to each name, icons that read offline in red letters, or online in green. Jim’s name was at the bottom of the list, with a green online icon next to it. The other names, he saw Jeff Campbell’s name among them and grinned, were listed as offline, except for the top two.

Jim read the second from the top and laughed out loud. Ryan Stahl, Chief Editor and owner of Delirium Books. Delirium had published Jim’s last five novels in limited collector editions before they went to mass market. It was the Delirium edition of Burn that Susan Bonkowski had mentioned in his invitation letter.

Susan Bonkowski’s name was at the top of the list.

The three of them, collector, editor, and Hack, were all logged in. With as much amusement now as curiosity, Jim clicked the chat button below the names.