Authors: Thomas Olde Heuvelt

HEX (51 page)

BOOK: HEX

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And he wished it would go away. Oh, God, pleaseâif only he could make it go away. What awaited him there was not his son, and what he felt was not love, but a fathomless abyss that was opening beneath him and was much, much deeper than love.

The knock came again.

A slow, loud thudâonly one.

He saw the shadow of knuckles resting on the windowpane.

Steve Grant picked up the needle and the catgut, and as the thing at the door kept knocking and knocking, he started on his eyes, hoping the loneliness of the eternal darkness would offer him a bit of comfort from the cold.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sorry for thatâI got a bit carried away.

When I think about the people that scared me when I was younger, I have to start with my babysitter. Her name was Margot, and each time she watched me and my sister, she used to tell us a bedtime story. I was seven years old when Margot told us the story of Roald Dahl's
The Witches
in a detailed episodic style, like the TV series you watch on Netflix today. After each cliff-hanger she turned off the lights, and there I was, lying paralyzed underneath the covers, bulging eyes staring into the dark, watching her words come to life in my mind's eye.

It must have been around the same time that my uncle Manus took me out for a hike in the woods and told me about the fairy rings we ran into on the trail. You
had
to walk past them with your eyes closed if you wanted to live to tell the tale.

That same yearâ1990âthe film adaptation of Roald Dahl's book played in Dutch cinemas, starring Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch. Bless my innocent pre-CGI heartÂ â¦ but, damn, that movie is scary for a seven-year-old.

I found out the hard way.

Each night for the next six months, I screamed for my mom, seeing witches in every shadow on the landing outside my bedroom door. By day, I was terrified to walk the streets by myselfÂ â¦ let alone cross the woods near my home. There could be witches anywhere. Every woman was a suspect. The book and movie had left me severely traumatized. The witches in Roald Dahl's tale wear gloves to hide their hideous claws, so you can imagine how slowly winter passed that year.

And each time I came across a fairy ring, I walked past it with my eyes closed.

Later I stopped believing in witches, so I did it as a balancing exercise.

Like most people, all great writers die at some point, but I bet if Roald Dahl could have been around to read what he did to me, he would have leaned back in his chair with a wide, contented grin on his face. He was the kind of writer who secretly rejoiced in traumatizing innocent little childrenÂ â¦ and their parents, for that matter.

Let me tell you a secret: I turned out the same way. When
HEX
first came out in the Netherlands, I started getting hundreds of messages from readers whose nightmares had been haunted by Katherine and who had to leave the lights on at night. Ah, that silly grin on my face! It's still there. And now this book is in your hands, wherever in the world you are. If you're one of the readers who this story managed to scare, drop me a note on Facebook or Twitter. I'd love to grin some more.

So thank you, Roald Dahl. Thank you, Margot and Manus. Thank you for my traumatized childhood. Without you, this book couldn't have been written.

The book you've just finished is different from the original novel
HEX
, which appeared in the Netherlands and Belgium in 2013. That book was set in a small Dutch village and ended on a rather different note. As an author, you rarely get the chance to rewrite a book
after
its publication. But when my agents sold the English language rights to publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, I was suddenly presented with the opportunity to make the original book work in a wholly new environment, with a fresh backstory.

Don't get me wrong: it's not that I didn't like the Dutch setting. I loved the Dutch setting, and I loved the utter
Dutchness
of the book. Not in the sense that the witch smoked pot or stood behind some Amsterdam red-framed window; I'm talking about the secular nature of small-town Dutch communities and the down-to-earthness of its people. If a sane person sees a disfigured seventeenth-century witch appear in a corner of the living room, he runs for his life. If a Dutch person sees a disfigured seventeenth-century witch appear in a corner of the living room, he hangs a dishcloth over her face, sits on the couch, and reads the paper. And maybe sacrifices a peacock.

But when I see a creative challenge, I take it. And what fun it would be! I had a book that I loved, featuring characters whom I loved, and here I had the opportunity to relive it all without having to face the horrors of a
sequel
. Instead, I could create an enhanced versionâa
HEX 2.0
, if you willâwith new rich and layered details, culturally specific legends and superstitions, all without losing touch with the Dutch elements of the original. Katherine Van Wyler came to the new land on one of Peter Stuyvesant's early ships. The rural town of Beek became the Dutch trapper's colony of New Beeck, later renamed Black Spring. The Dutch characters became Americans, but with the down-to-earth quality of the Dutch. The dishcloth stayed. So did the peacock. And the public flogging of minors, a common and fun tradition we celebrate annually in many a small town all over the Netherlands.

The upshot of being Dutchâthis is a clichÃ© about us, but it's trueâis that I speak several languages. English almost as fluently as Dutch. That allowed me to not only read but also edit Nancy Forest-Flier's fantastic translation of the book and find my own voice in English. Working on the book in a language that's not my mother tongue gave me strong new insights into the plot, the most important of which was about the ending. It had to go. It felt off. There was a much scarier and better way I could end this tale.

So that's what you've just read. The last several chapters, from the moment things pretty much start going downhill for Black Spring, are all new. I wrote them in English, and I had a blast while I was at it. In my opinion, it's become a better book.

Of course, I hear you wondering: how did the Dutch version end?

I'm not gonna tell.

Bribe a Dutch personâmaybe they will.

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Nancy, who is a truly remarkable translator, and a pleasure to work with. The importance of translators can never be stressed enough, as they create the opportunity for people around the world to discover new worlds and wonders in words. Nancy is terrific. And so is Liz Gorinsky, who edited this book. Even when Nancy and I thought we had tackled all the culturally specific issues that arise when you relocate a novel, Liz discovered so many interesting anomalies. Liz, you made this an even better book, and I learned a lot from you. So thank you.

Others on Team
HEX
are Oliver Johnson (the wonderful UK editor, and a wonderful guy), Rod Downey, Vincent Docherty, Jacques Post, Maarten Basjes, and all the fine people at Tor Books in the United States, Hodder & Stoughton in the United Kingdom, and Luitingh-Sijthoff in the Netherlands. A special thanks goes out to Ann VanderMeer, who, apart from being a fantastic and kindhearted person, boosts the careers of so many young writers. Ann, I cannot thank you enough for what you've done for me. The same goes for Sally Harding, the most classy and witty literary agent I could wish for. Together with Ron Eckel, Sally has done the near-impossible for any writer that comes from a small, faraway country. Sally and Ron: you rock and you know it.

Anja, your help with practical issues has been invaluable. You hand me a pen before I even know I need to sign a book, and you have eyes where I do not. Wes, you're still the creative brain behind so many clever finds, and so often come up with the perfect solution when I'm stuck. You're also my best buddy in life. The Grant family: sorry for slaughtering your dog. My own family:
sorry for slaughtering-
I love you. Francine: you especially. And David, thanks for standing tall beside me. Always you.

Now.

All that I said about the new setting doesn't make Black Spring any less real. You've just come from there, right? And when you were there, you experienced some pretty dark times. I can't say it ended too well for the town.

If you're in New York some day, you can take a car and drive up north along the Hudson. It's a beautiful ride. Cross the Bear Mountain Bridge and take 9W past Highland Falls and into the realm of the Black Rock Forest. The officials at West Point have sealed off everything to the left and right of route 293, where the town of Black Spring used to be. You can see it for yourself, although the fences and barracks are not particularly interesting. At some point, someone will come and tell you to go awayâthe kind of someone you are inclined to take orders from.

Instead, I'd suggest you go for a hike in the woods up north. It's rugged land, but there are a few trails, and most lead somewhere. Listen to the silence. It might be a little eerie, out there on your own, but I assure you the sound you heard was only the wind in the trees. No birds. No beasties.

None whatsoever.

If you come across a fairy ring, make sure to walk past it with your eyes closed.

But don't keep them shut for too long.

You never know what you might bump into.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THOMAS OLDE HEUVELT
is a Dutch author of five novels and many stories of the fantastic. He has won the Hugo Award and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for his short fiction. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

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