This book is for Shirley Sonderegger, who helps me mind
my business, and for her husband, Peter.
I’m indebted to the late Richard Bachman for his help
and inspiration. This novel could not have been written
‘Cut him,’ Machine said. ‘Cut him while I stand here and watch. I want to see the blood flow. Don’t make me tell you twice.’
People’s lives — their real lives, as opposed to their simple physical existences — begin at different times. The real life of Thad Beaumont a young boy who was born and raised in the Ridgeway section of Bergenfield, New Jersey, began in 1960. Two things happened to him that year. The first shaped his life; the second almost ended it. That was the year Thad Beaumont was eleven.
In January he submitted a short story to a writing contest sponsored by American Teen magazine. In June, he received a letter from the magazine’s editors telling him that he had been awarded an Honorable Mention in the contest’s Fiction category. The letter went on to say that the judges would have awarded him Second Prize had his application not revealed that he was still two years away from becoming a bona fide “American Teen.” Still, the editors said, his story,
“Outside Marty’s House”, was an extraordinarily mature work, and he was to be congratulated.
