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    The Broken Sky: The FooL, #1
    The Broken Sky: The FooL, #1
    The Broken Sky: The FooL, #1
    Ebook136 pages1 hour

    The Broken Sky: The FooL, #1

    By Andrew P. Mayer

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    Betsey's life was pure disappointment
    Until an angel tumbled out from a crack in the sky.

    Betsey Weisz dreamed of being a fashion designer in New York, but instead she's a failure: the cashier at a run-down diner off the Jersey Turnpike. When she hoped for a different and better life, she never dreamed that things would take a dramatic and permanent turn for the weird.

    First came the explosion of cosmic lightning over the parking lot. Before she knew it, the blast transformed a geriatric gangster into a spider-monster with a taste for souls - especially Betsey's. Lucky for her, the eight-legged creature didn't come alone.

    Matt Zero, an impossibly handsome stranger with no memory of the past, stepped out of a crack in the sky and right into Betsey's life. While he can't remember where he came from, he knows two things for sure: he's not supposed to be there, and he and Betsey need to fight the beast together.

    Betsey's got no choice but to team up with Matt as she questions what remains of her rapidly-collapsing life. If she survives long enough to learn the truth, she'll find a secret so deep and dark that it's literally out of this world.

    The Broken Sky is the first installment in a paranormal fantasy adventure that's infused with compelling characters, Lovecraftian monsters, mind-blowing twists, and side-splitting humor in a surreal, imaginative world.

    Society of Steam author Andrew P. Mayer's new series is equal parts Doctor Who and China Miéville and it's bound to entertain even the most discerning of paranormal lovers.

    Buy The Lost Dragon and follow the FooL today!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAndrew P. Mayer
    Release dateFeb 17, 2015
    ISBN9781507098400
    The Broken Sky: The FooL, #1

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      Book preview

      The Broken Sky - Andrew P. Mayer

      one

      THE GARDEN STATE

      There once was, is, and always will have been, a place called New Jersey. Its motto, repeated on the license plate of almost every vehicle that ever rode, rides, or will have ridden across the state’s highways, turnpikes, lanes, streets, drives, and roads, is The Garden State. But where those particular gardens (worthy of being mentioned so often) actually were, was a mystery—one that left the people living there in a state of confusion.

      Betsey Weisz had been born in New Jersey and she believed that she had lived in that mysterious state for her entire life. She also believed that she was 23 years old, and that she knew where the true New Jersey gardens were hidden. Only one of these things was true.

      As a child, Betsey had asked her mother where the gardens were. She had been told, in her mother’s typically exasperated tone, that it’s none of your business. And as she grew up, and her innocence and wonder had been replaced by compromise and disappointment, Betsey had realized that not only did her mother not have any idea where the gardens were, no one did. The gardens were a metaphor—they were the place you went to hide your secrets. And since everyone who had ever lived in New Jersey had at least a few secrets to hide, it meant that the garden was everywhere.

      The trick to living happily in the garden state was learning to ignore the secrets that weren’t yours. But no one ever tends to a garden of secrets. People simply plant them and ignore them. Over the centuries, the dark truths, mysteries, and enigmas had flourished into a wild tangle, growing and blooming through the lives of everyone who lived there. Weedy patches of unrealized dreams covered the dunes by the shore; rotting stumps of ancient unmentionable facts stuck out from the rich soil of fancy estates; dried, dead husks of unwanted truths tumbled across the wide-open parking lots; seeds of shame took root in the smashed carcasses of the unfortunate animals that decomposed on the shoulders of the state’s extensive highway system.

      And once you’d seen the garden you couldn’t unsee it. Her mother, much to Betsey’s dismay, had been right—she should have minded her own business.

       Betsey worked just off to the side of one of those secret-littered freeways (route 17, to be exact). The Free-Way diner was one of the places where the people of New Jersey would go to ponder their secrets before burying them deep into the Garden State’s fertile ground. 

      Betsey had spent the slow afternoon behind the checkout stand trying to decide whether she should finally bury her own secret dreams of becoming a fashion designer and accept that the diner washer life. Her contemplation was interrupted by Mr. Ludich, an old man in an ill-fitting pinstripe suit, who wandered toward her. 

      Just like he did every evening, Mr. Ludich handed her a grubby $20 bill. She barely acknowledged the old man with a glance from the corner of her cat-eye glasses as she pulled his change out of the register, dropped it onto a black plastic tray, and slid it toward him across the counter.  

      Thanks, doll, he said to her. He spoke with the kind of authentic Jersey accent that even other Jerseyites made fun of—a deep, gruff pronunciation that was polished like the leather of a well-worn shoe. 

      You’re welcome, Mister Ludich.

      Whatcha lookin’ at? he asked, peering down at the full-color booklet she was flipping through.

      Class list for college. Betsey had an accent as well; there was no doubt about it. At least she could still hear it. Her hope was that she could still lose it one day.

      College, huh? You Chinese kids are pretty good at math, I hear. 

      She looked up at the old man, trying to decide whether she could muster the energy to be offended by his casual racism. I’m Korean not Chinese. Half, anyways. Half Jewish. I’m a natural- born accountant. It was a saying that her brother had come up with after her mother had berated her for her poor grades.

      If you say so, he said, obviously confused by her reply. I don’t know nothing about math. I was never a numbers guy. 

      Betsey flipped to the next page, revealing a perfect group of multicultural students joyfully collaborating over a massive sewing machine. College isn’t going to happen for me. Just another secret for the garden.

      Pretty chick like you don’t need a degree to find a fella. Clearly in the bottom half of his seventies, Mr. Ludich’s body language still showed a hint of the big-deal mobster he was rumored to have been. He moved like someone used to getting his way. Old age may have softened the threat, but it hadn’t stopped him from trying. You just need the right guy to take care of you. 

      Mr. Ludich had eaten dinner at the Free-Way Diner every night for as long as she could remember. And as far as she knew, he had been coming long before that. Every night he drank three glasses of Diet Coke with dinner. Danielle, the best waitress the place had (and Betsey’s best friend at the Free-Way) had nicknamed the old man Diet Mafia, although she had never called him that to his face.

      The old man leaned a little farther over, his cane shaking underneath his hand as he pushed hard against it. And what would you do there anyways? He was old enough that he could try to play it off like he was losing his balance instead of looking down the front of her vintage blouse, but he’d done it often enough that it was pretty clear to Betsey what he was really looking at. "In college, I mean. The way he said the word college," it sounded like a foreign country. 

      Betsey stood up. Better to have the objects of his attention pointing straight at him than to have him staring down at her, trying to broaden the view. Fashion. I used to like making clothes. And I got a guy. 

      Yeah? You make those? he said, pointing in the general direction of her bowling shirt, although his tone suggested that he wasn’t referring to the shirt at all.

      She tried not to look down. It seemed like some version of this interaction happened every night. I altered and fitted it myself.

      "It fits nice." These days, Mr. Ludich ate alone every night, but she could remember occasional visitors back before ... a while ago. Some of the people who had come to see him had seemed nice enough; others hadn’t. Betsey tried not to pay too much attention to things that weren’t her business. 

      Reminds me of the way people used to be back in the day: classy. There was something in the tone of his voice that made it clear that perhaps back in the day was a time when he hadn’t been harmless at all. So how come, with all that talent, you’re stuck here?

      My mom doesn’t think fashion school is real college, so I ended up going nowhere. 

      Listen, doll, take it from a guy with some experience: life doesn’t give you shit. You get what you reach out and grab, and you try and stay classy when you can. And then, most of the time, life tells y0u to go fuck yourself. 

      And you end up a creepy old gangster eating alone in a diner, she thought. Thanks, she said. On the other hand he could afford to tip, and even though he liked to look, he wasn’t grabby. 

      Well, you look real nice. His smile widened, and there was a gleam in his eye that her mother would have said looked like bad news. 

      He grabbed the change off the tray and stuffed a few bills into the tip jar. Three dollars seemed like the going rate for misery these days. Anyway, Betsey half Chinese, I like having you around here. It brightens up the place. Giving her one last ogle, he turned and shuffled toward the doors. His cane made a solid tapping noise against the linoleum.

      She stared down at the picture of the rainbow gang of ethnically mixed wonder students smiling and chatting with each other as they sewed away. All of them looked younger than she was. When had 23 started to seem old? How had the last few years gone by so fast? She could barely remember anything she had done since turning 21. "Betsey half Korean," she mumbled to herself.

      What’s that, doll? Mr. Ludich said, turning back to take one more look at her. 

      Nothing, Mr. Ludich. You have a good night, and we’ll see you tomorrow. Betsey smiled at him and then felt stupid for doing it.

      You’re still young. Things change. 

      Not around here. In fact, it felt like she had pretty much the same conversation with the old man every day.

      Keep it classy and something’ll happen. Something always does. Mr. Ludich winked at her and then turned and pulled at the exit door. It resisted with a moaning, sucking sound, but he managed to pry it open wide enough to slip into the little foyer that buffered the inside of the diner from the full force of the weather outside.

      A few seconds later, the inner door fluttered open a few inches, letting in a puff of moist air that penetrated far enough into the air-conditioned interior that she could feel it at the cashier’s stand. September in Jersey is always weird, she thought. The weather didn’t know what season it wanted to be from one day to

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