All night sheetlightning quaked sourceless to the west beyond the midnight thunderheads, making a bluish day of the distant desert, the mountains on the sudden skyline stark and black and livid like a land of some other order out there whose true geology was not stone but fear.

“Suttree stood among the screaming leaves and called the lightning down. It crac…”

“Years later he'd stood in the charred ruins of a library where blackened books …”

“The black shape of it running from dark to dark. Then a distant low rumble. Not…”

“I think sometimes people would rather have a bad answer about things than no an…”