High Crime Area: Tales of Darkness and Dread Read online

  The child’s skin was “white”—yet the child’s hair was very dark, kinky-curly. Daddy Love felt a thrill of discovery: was this a mixed-race child?

  Daddy Love had never appropriated a mixed-race child. And Daddy Love was no racist.

  He’d trailed them in the mall. He’d been patient, and not-visible.

  In JCPenney, in Macy’s, in Sears, and in the atrium at the center of the mall. The Easter-bunny enclosure that drew children like moths to flame.

  Daddy Love’s shrewd practiced eye glanced quickly about—in such places, where small children are gathered, laughing, talking shrilly, with (usually) just a single parent nearby, and that parent (usually) the mother, you will often find, indeed Daddy Love invariably found, solitary men of (usually) middle age, standing at a little distance, not too near, not too visibly near, observing.

  Daddy Love wasn’t one of these. Daddy Love was no registered sex offender.

  Trailing the mother and child outside the mall Daddy Love had known that his mission was just, and necessary, and could not be delayed, when he’d seen the mother pause and fumble in her sweater pocket for—a pack of cigarettes! And quickly light up a cigarette, as the child stood innocently by; several quick deep inhalations, as if the toxic smoke were pure oxygen, and the woman desperate for oxygen; then, with a gesture of disdain, casting the cigarette from her, onto a grassless area abutting the walkway, where other careless and selfish smokers had cast their butts.

  A smoker trying to quit. Failing to quit.

  A smoker who was ashamed of her weakness. And maybe it was a weakness the child’s father did not know about.

  It was God-ordained, Daddy Love must take this child as his own.

  Daddy Love hurried to his van. He would trail the mother and the child in the lot. He would not let them out of his sight. He had but a few seconds to make his move—he knew how precisely such a move had to be timed, from previous experiences. The narrow window of opportunity, as it was called, had to be coordinated with a clear field and no witnesses.

  How many times Daddy Love had circled a target, borne in upon a target, but had to withdraw when a random witness appeared on the scene…

  Taking the little boy from the mother was more difficult than Daddy Love had calculated. He’d struck her on the head with a claw hammer—hard; enough to crack her skull, he’d thought. She’d fallen to the pavement like a dead weight and yet, in the next instant, like a comatose boxer struggling to his feet, somehow the woman managed to heave herself up from the ground and stagger after him…

  By this time he had the boy in the van. How small and light the child was, yet how frantically he struggled, like a terrified little animal! He’d shaken, punched, and struck the boy with his fist on the side of the boy’s head, to calm him.

  It was astonishing to Daddy Love, the mother running desperately after the van—that look in her face, and her face streaming blood.

  He’d swerved the van around, to run her down. Bitch, daring to defy Daddy Love!

  Available now

  Acknowledgments

  To the editors of these publications, thank you for originally publishing these stories, several of which have been considerably revised: “The Home at Craigmillnar,” Kenyon Review; “High,” The Marijuana Chronicles, ed. Jonathan Santlofer; “Toad-Baby,” Boulevard; “Demon,” Demon & Other Tales (Necronomicon Press); “Lorelei,” (originally titled “Subway”), The Dark, ed. Ellen Datlow; “The Last Man of Letters,” Playboy; “The Rescuer,” EccoSolo, “High Crime Area,” Boulevard.

  About this Book

  Joyce Carol Oates explores the darkness that dwells in all of us in this collection of eight mesmerising tales.

  A young professor is convinced she’s being followed, but when she confronts her shadow events take an unexpected turn...

  A promising student attempts to save her brother from his descent into madness, but she soon finds out there may be more to his world than to hers...

  An elderly nun is found dead in her care home, but was it old age, or dark secrets that killed her...

  These biting and beautiful stories force us to confront, one by one, the demons within.

  Reviews

  ‘America’s queen of gothic writing taps into our deepest fears with her cool, unsparing eye.’

  The Times

  ‘Incantatory and harshly beautiful.’

  Irish Times

  ‘A writer who always takes your breath away.’

  Mail on Sunday

  ‘If the phrase “woman of letters” existed, Joyce Carol Oates would be, foremost in this country, entitled to it.’

  John Updike

  ‘This writer is a phenomenon’

  Daily Mail

  ‘A writer of extraordinary strengths.’

  Guardian

  ‘Again and again Oates finds new language to describe the immensity of desire. She twists against our assumptions, seeking always the grisly pop of revelation.’

  New York Times

  ‘Novelists such as John Updike, Philip Roth, Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer slug it out for the title of the Great American Novelist. But maybe they’re wrong. Maybe, just maybe, the Great American Novelist is a woman.’

  Herald

  ‘A dangerous writer in the best sense of the word, one who takes risks almost obsessively with energy and relish.’

  New York Times

  ‘Her prose is peerless and her ability to make you think as she re-invents genres is unique. Few writers move so effortlessly from the gothic tale to the psychological thriller to the epic family saga to the lyrical novella. Even fewer authors can so compellingly and entertainingly tell a story.’

  Scotland on Sunday

  ‘Oates’s prose contains a deep felt rawness which hovers between hope, despair, love and hatred.’

  Guardian

  About the Author

  JOYCE CAROL OATES is the author of over seventy works and the winner of a host of prizes, including the National Book Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University

  Contact her via Twitter: @JoyceCarolOates

  Also by this Author

  Daddy Love

  Daddy Love, aka Reverend Chester Cash, has for years abducted, tortured, and raped young boys. His latest victim is Robbie, now renamed ‘Gideon,’ and brainwashed into believing that he is Daddy Love’s real son. Any time the boy resists or rebels he is met with punishment beyond his wildest nightmares.

  As Robbie grows older he begins to realize that the longer he is locked in the shackles of this demon, the greater chance he’ll end up like Daddy Love’s other ‘sons’ who were never heard from again. Somewhere within this tortured boy lies a spark of rebellion... and soon he will see just what lengths he must go to in order to have any chance at survival.

  Daddy Love is available here.

  The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares

  Marissa is an innocent girl, with hair the colour of corn-silk. She does not hold others in strange thrall, as some young women do, she obeys her parents, she does not stay late after school, lingering on her walk through the swaying heads of maize. She is the perfect sacrifice…

  In Joyce Carol Oates’ nightmarish world, teenaged girls are empowered by ritual killing, plastic surgeons perform bloodcurdling operations and birthdays rip families apart. Compulsively readable, told in razor-sharp prose, The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares is the brilliant new offspring of one of America’s most terrifying imaginations.

  The Corn Maiden is available here.

  Evil Eye

  Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prominent writers of her generation. In Evil Eye, Oates offers four dark and compelling tales of love gone horribly wrong.

  The young fourth wife of a prominent intellectual thinks herself happy until the first wife comes to stay...

  A shy teenager meets a dazzling kindred spirit. But the first sparks of young love soon take on a darker shade…

  A spoiled
frat boy decides to murder his parents, only to be floored by the power of his mother’s love…

  A fragile woman reveals deeply buried secrets to her curious lover with devastating consequences…

  All of these stories are about love, just not as we like to think of it.

  Evil Eye is available here.

  A Letter from the Publisher

  We hope you enjoyed this book. We are an independent publisher dedicated to discovering brilliant books, new authors and great storytelling. Please join us at www.headofzeus.com and become part of our community of book-lovers.

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  HeadofZeusBooks

  The story starts here.

  First published in 2014 by Mysterious Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, New York.

  This edition first published in the UK in 2014 by Head of Zeus Ltd.

  Copyright © 2014 by The Ontario Review, Inc.

  Jacket design by Royce M. Becker

  Photograph © Mohamad Itani/Trevillion Images

  Author photograph © Marion Ettlinger

  The moral right of Joyce Carol Oates to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781784081614

  ISBN (TPB): 9781784081621

  ISBN (E): 9781784081607

  Head of Zeus Ltd,

  Clerkenwell House

  45-47 Clerkenwell Green,

  London EC1R 0HT

  www.headofzeus.com