Joe Hill, son of the legendary Stephen King, has a new novel coming out called NOS4A2 and i09 has just landed an exclusive look at the heavily-anticipated novel. It took me a second, but once I figured out how to pronounce the title I got all sorts of excited. Nosferatu.
This will be Hill’s follow up novel to HORNS which is currently shooting with Daniel Radcliffe as the lead character and Alexandre Aja at the helm. NOS4A2 promises to be as creepy and strange as his other work, so if you’re a fan of Hills, it’s time to get excited because below you’ll find an excerpt from the book.
First, take a look at what the story is about.
Our hero is Victoria McQueen, a seventeen-year-old kid who has come looking for trouble and is about to find some. Vic believes she has found the hideout of a man who has a car that runs on human souls instead of gasoline. This man-known to her only as the Wraith-is impossibly old and has destroyed an unfathomable number of lives. If Vic doesn’t want to be the next person he grinds up and spits out, she’s going to have to watch her step . . .
Below is a small excerpt from the novel and you can read more right HERE.
Vic leaned her bicycle against the wall, to one side of the big garage door, and pressed her face up to the glass. The garage contained an old black car with a small rear window. It was a Rolls-Royce, the kind of car Winston Churchill was always getting out of in photographs and black-and-white newsreels. She could see the license plate: NOS4A2.
That’s it. That’s all you need. The police can track him down with that, Vic thought. You have to go now. You have to run.
But as she was about to step away from the garage, she saw movement through the rear window of the old car. Someone sitting in the backseat shifted slightly, wiggling to find a more comfortable spot. Vic could dimly see the outline of a small head through the foggy glass.
A child. There was a child in the car-a boy, she thought. The kid had a boy’s haircut.
Vic’s heart was by now beating so hard her shoulders shook. He had a child in his car, and if Vic got on her bike and rode away, maybe the law would catch up to the man who owned this old ride, but they would not find the kid with him, because by then he would already be under a foot of dirt somewhere.
Vic didn’t know why the child didn’t scream or let himself out of the car and run. Maybe he was drugged or tied up, Vic couldn’t tell. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t getting out of there unless Vic went in and got him out.
She left her Raleigh where it was and went around the corner of the garage. She expected the side door to be locked, but when she turned the handle it popped open. Quavering, high-pitched, helium-stoked voices spilled out: Alvin and the Chipmunks singing their infernal Christmas song.
Her heart quailed at the thought of going in there. She put one foot over the threshold, tentatively, as if stepping onto the ice of a pond that might not be safely frozen over. The old car, obsidian and sleek, filled almost all the available space in the garage. What little room was left was jammed with clutter: paint cans, rakes, ladders, boxes.
The Rolls had a roomy rear compartment, the back couch done in flesh-toned kidskin. A boy slept upon it. He wore a hooded rawhide jacket with buttons of bone. He had dark hair and a round, fleshy face, his cheeks touched with a rose bloom of health. He looked as if he were dreaming sweet dreams; visions of sugarplums, perhaps. He wasn’t tied up in any way and didn’t look unhappy, and Vic had a thought that made no sense: He’s fine. You should go. He’s probably here with his father and he fell asleep and his father is letting him rest and you should just go away.
Vic flinched from the thought, the way she might’ve flinched from a horsefly. There was something wrong with that thought. It had no business in her head, and she didn’t know how it had gotten there.