BOOK EXCERPT: LITERARY STALKER BY ROGER KEEN

This week are highlighting the work of the author Roger Keen, starting with an excerpt from his novel Literary Stalker , followed buy and interview with Roger tomorrow and culminating with my review of his book on Thursday.  

 
Intro:
 
Lesser horror writer Nick Chatterton is obsessed with superstar horror writer Hugh Canford-Eversleigh and has been stalking him for over a year. The big horror get-together Medusacon is Nick’s opportunity to take things further…so he hopes.
 
Excerpt:
 
Medusacon 2006 was held at a big swish hotel in London’s Docklands, with commanding views of the Thames, Canary Wharf and the pristine Docklands Light Railway providing a cool backdrop to the proceedings. All the ‘usual suspect’ horror, fantasy and sci-fi writers were present, including Stan, Darren, Crimpy, Otto and Darius, together with more illustrious scribes and the Guests of Honour. Film critic and writer Kim Newman attended, in Victorian Gothic mode as usual, with his long flowing hair and full moustache, silk waistcoat and cravat. Horror veteran Brian Lumley enlivened the atmosphere, looking awesome in a white suit and shirt with silver collar tips, and a leather bolo tie and ornate aiguillette around his neck. And horror newcomer Joe Hill floated around enigmatically, with his jet black hair and equally jet black full beard, having recently come out as the son of Stephen King. I liked the look of him, but of course he was married and straight. And besides I was after bigger fish, as the Guests of Honour were Neil Gaiman and the man himself: Hugh Canford-Eversleigh.
 
At the Friday night initial gathering I watched Hugh circulating and pumping hands in the red-carpeted main bar space. His chestnut hair had grown out and was a little curly at the edges, in need of a cut, which made him appear more boyish. He wore an open waistcoat over a loose shirt and close-fitting jeans, showing off his ass and legs majestically and giving him the air of a tights-clad duellist. If only I could have injected him with some memory-wiping drug and then re-programmed him to be as I wished – but that was impossible. Instead I could just ogle and savour, which contented me for the while, and when he happened to pass my way and we made eye contact, I said ‘Hi Hugh’ in the most natural casual non-invasive way ever. ‘Hello…’ he replied under his breath, moving on without a break of stride, his face falling like a building under the wrecking ball.
 
I was expecting this and I didn’t let it faze me, quite the opposite in fact. The rules here were different to those of the general outside world, where Hugh could walk away and keep walking, jump in a cab or shut the door on me in some other way. We were within the bubble of the convention, circumscribed by the walls of the hotel and the commitments that bound Hugh to the event, and to his larger career. He was limited in the distance he could put between himself and me, and he would have to manage the situation accordingly. Because I knew this, and knew he knew I knew it, I was prepared to cut him a bit of slack and go easy and not be an annoying stalker. In a sense I had ‘collected’ him temporarily, and I wanted to rub along well in these circumstances – and perhaps even overcome earlier bad impressions I might have created.
 
That was the theory at any rate, but of course in practice it always works out differently. Like a bad gambler I had to keep doubling up the stake in an attempt to cover earlier losses, and after Hugh kept cutting me dead when I tried to contribute towards shared chats, I got that old urge to ‘have it out’ and put everything to rights. Fuelled by alcohol late on the Friday, I circled and waited to pounce. When I spied Hugh walking on his own, I sprang out from behind a pillar and blocked his path in a no-nonsense manner.
 
‘Hugh…why are you avoiding talking to me? Lets just be normal – two writers at a convention.’
 
He gave me a deadpan stare, like a gunslinger in a western. ‘Normal? That is a word you know the meaning of, is it?’
 
‘Ha, ha. Very funny! Is that one of Wilde’s or one of Shaw’s? How about you let me get you a drink and we’ll sit down and have a proper chat?’
 
‘How about a solution of cyanide – and have one for yourself?’
 
‘Oh very good! I like it!’
 
At that moment Neil Gaiman strode past and Hugh quickly latched on to him, turning his back on me, putting an arm around Neil’s shoulder and walking away. Nonetheless I felt pleased that I’d got a reaction out of Hugh. I’d burrowed my way under his skin sufficiently for him to be critically aware of me, no doubt thinking about me a lot of the time. I was a feature in his life and he couldn’t easily make me go away. In several letters and greetings cards I’d made my amorous position clear, and I’d tried to engage on a literary level with the ongoing stalker story – which was at this moment having its next chapter written. I knew he’d continue fighting our love, and I knew his denial was very strong, but I remained undaunted.
 
He must be feeling the love too on some level, I reasoned, it seemed a logical impossibility that he wasn’t. Every rebuff registered as a disguised expression of desire – he was doing the opposite of what he actually wanted. In fact it didn’t really matter what Hugh did or didn’t do, I applied a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose rationale to it all. The fortress of my obsession was impregnable…or so I thought. One particular element that had buttressed it up to this moment was the idea that Hugh couldn’t countenance being unfaithful to Melody or facing up to his bisexual side, which together constituted an enormous barrier to be overcome. But as Medusacon wore on into the Saturday, I discovered I was being naïve – certainly in regard to the former aspect of this trait.
 
*          *          *          *          *
 
There are certain people, often beautiful people, who naturally stand out in a crowd, making you register their presence, sometimes peripherally or subliminally when you are occupied with other things. Hugh was such a person, naturally, and another who caught my attention for the first time at Medusacon was Gretchen Mulhoney – who would become a watershed figure in the trajectory of my obsession. Tall, gauntly thin, with heavy make-up on her angular features and big curly copper hair, she was given to extravagant gesticulations and made for a kinetic focus of hand-waving and elbow-pointing, accompanied by animated facial expressiveness. I found myself studying her frequently, and I asked who she was, finding out about the tetralogy of fantasy novels she’d then published.
 
I must have been slow on the uptake because it took me until the Saturday to deduce that the reason I was often in Gretchen’s vicinity was because I was shadowing Hugh and she was working the same circles – more regularly than by pure chance. By Saturday, when Hugh was mercilessly cutting me dead, he and Gretchen were talking more effusively and at greater length, sometimes in one-to-one situations. At a mid-morning panel on the future of the horror novel, I saw them sitting side by side in the audience. And later in the afternoon when Hugh was interviewed on stage in his main appearance as a Guest of Honour, I couldn’t help but notice the eye contact and smiles he exchanged with Gretchen, sitting in the audience front row, and it took me right back to our first meeting in Blackwells and the attention he’d given me then and had now transferred elsewhere.
 
Watching them flirt so sweetly, I became engulfed with jealousy and instantly felt the fabric of my starry-eyed delusions about Hugh begin to tear. The bitch was trying to pick him up and he was clearly game! So infidelity was not a barrier, it was just me he didn’t want. The simple fact that I was of the wrong gender didn’t press at this point – in order to keep the flame of hope burning, I had convinced myself that Hugh was bisexual. I had no other choice! The pieces had to be made to fit together, by force if necessary – but witnessing Gretchen and Hugh paired up had caused the whole jigsaw to fall apart in disarray.
 
As the false picture I’d created broke down still further, I saw that my mind had two distinct modes. The first was the rational one, which having computed the information told me that my quest to have Hugh was hopeless. And the second was the obsessive one, which suppressed the former and thundered on regardless like a train with no brakes, making up its own rules and pushing aside anything contrary to its wishes. Now I had achieved clarity and it was unbearable. The obsessive runaway train had switched points and could only go in one direction.
 
I’d been angry with Hugh and his recalcitrant attitude many times before, but I’d always managed to beat it down and return to looking on the bright side. Now rage erupted as never before and I felt myself twitching as I visualised beating him, kicking him and eventually pummelling him to death with a variety of weapons as I explained in detail what a total bastard he was. My equilibrium had been rent asunder and I was no longer in the groove of the convention happenings and just wanted to go home. Even my mates, such as Stan and Darius, remarked that I seemed downcast and out of the flow.
 
Later on the Saturday night, when Neil Gaiman gave a talk and a reading from his story collection, Fragile Things, Hugh and Gretchen were sitting together again in the audience front row, cosily close to one another, and once I spied them surreptitiously holding hands. He would fuck her tonight, no doubt in his suite in the penthouse upstairs, whilst a clueless Melody minded the kids back at the Chelsea home. Following Neil’s reading, everyone converged on the launch party for some fat fantasy novel whose title I’ve forgotten, and I got stuck into the punch that was on offer, and it tasted good and strong. Hugh, still with Gretchen, flashed me a victory smile from across the other side of the tightly-packed throng. I sensed he was challenging me in a What are you going to do about it? manner.
 
I’d been drinking beer steadily all day and after the punch and another couple of pints I was well loaded and had reached that couldn’t-give-a-damn stage. Sauntering around the bar space, I saw Hugh and Gretchen talking with Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman in a lovely animated grouping, these talented successful people interacting so wondrously, as they do. Hugh was now wearing a silk waistcoat and black leather trousers, and was seemingly having a waistcoat-comparing session with Kim. I passed right next to them and waved my index finger in a naughty naughty rebuke towards the couple.
 
‘Hugh!’ I exclaimed. ‘If only Melody could see you now!’ And I smacked my lips in mock disapproval, shaking my head.
 
Hugh, Gretchen, Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman stopped talking, and with a synchronised shared expression they looked at me as though I had a live lobster crawling out of my mouth. Then they turned away, huddled together and recommenced their conversation, making a point of acting as if I didn’t exist.