Pines

She wipes her eyes with both hands.

“It smells wonderful,” Ethan says.

“I’m cooking spaghetti.”

“I love your spaghetti.”

“I know.” Her voice breaking.

“They told you I was coming?”

She nods. “You’re really here, Ethan?”

“Yes.”

“To stay this time?”

“I will never leave you again.”

“We’ve waited so long.” She has to keep wiping her face. “Ben, go stir the sauce, please.”

The boy hurries off to the kitchen.

“Would it be all right if I came inside?” Ethan asks.

“We lost you in Seattle. Then we lost you here. I can’t take it. He can’t take it.”

“Theresa, look at me.” She looks at him. “I will never leave you again.”

He worries she’s going to ask what happened. Why he isn’t dead. It’s a question he’s been dreading and preparing for all day.

But it doesn’t come.

Instead, she pushes open the door.

He has feared seeing a hardness in her face, feared it more than anything, but under the glow of the porch light, there is no bitterness here. Some broke

Mainly love.

She pulls him across the threshold into their home.

The screen door slams shut.

Inside the house, a boy is crying.

A man failing to hold back tears of his own.

Three people entangled in a fierce embrace with no letting go in sight.

And outside, at the exact moment the streetlamps cut on, a noise begins somewhere in the hedges that grow along the porch, repeating at perfect intervals, as steady as a metronome.

It is the sound of a cricket chirping.

AFTERWORD

by Blake Crouch

On April 8, 1990, the pilot episode of Mark Frost and David Lynch’s iconic television series Twin Peaks aired on ABC, and for a moment, the mystery of Who Killed Laura Palmer? held America transfixed. I was twelve at the time, and I will never forget the feeling that took hold of me as I watched this quirky show about a creepy town with damn fine coffee and brilliant cherry pie, where nothing was as it seemed.

Twin Peaks was ultimately canceled, the brilliant director and actors went on to do other things, but the undeniable magic present in those early episodes still haunts me two decades later. Shows like Northern Exposure, Picket Fences, The X-Files, and Lost occasionally veered into that eerily beautiful creepiness that defined Twin Peaks, but for the most part, for this fan at least, nothing else has ever come close.

They say all art—whether books, music, or visual—is a reaction to other art, and I believe that to be true. As good as Twin Peaks was, the nature of the show, in particular how abruptly and prematurely it ended, left me massively unsatisfied. Shortly after the show was cancelled, I was so heartbroken I even tried to write its mythical third season, not for anyone but myself, just so I could continue the experience.

That effort failed, as did numerous other attempts as I matured, both as a person and a writer, to recapture the feeling my twelve-year-old self had experienced back in 1990.

Pines is the culmination of my efforts, now spa

Pines would never have come about, and I may never have become a writer, if my parents hadn’t let me stay up late on Thursday nights, that spring of 1990, to watch a show the likes of which we will never see again.

So thanks, Mom and Dad. Thanks, Mr. Lynch and Mr. Frost. And, of course, the inimitable Agent Dale Cooper.

Pines is not Twin Peaks, not by a long shot, but it wouldn’t be here without it.

I hope you enjoyed my show.

Blake Crouch

Durango, Colorado

August 2012

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

EPILOGUE

AFTERWORD