20/20 Vision

It is interesting the way that horror writers look at things. They have the gift to be able to take even the most ordinary items that we see every day at twist it into something dark and foreboding, to go from the normal to the paranormal. Things like a car (twice actually), a dog, a prom, and a light bulb. What’s that you say? A light bulb? I have never heard of such a tale as this. Well dear reader, then you have not read 20/20 Vision by Nile J. Limbaugh, and let me tell you, you are missing out on a treat.

When Ramsay Paxton, the new owner of a old house moves in, he discovers a hidden pantry that had been built over. Once he breaks his way through the walls, he finds an old style light bulb in the old style rotary on/off switch, still in good shape. When he turns on the light, instead of an empty pantry that had been unused in years, he sees fully stocked shelves, with the room appearing just as it did when it was in use. Eventually, he takes the bulb around to other outlets in the house, and sees what each room looked liked in the past, the idea being to restore the house to it’s former grandeur. However, what he finds is far more that just wallpaper patterns and carpet colors, he starts seeing former occupants and their guests-he finds out that there was a murder committed there many years prior and that the wrong man had been convicted. The killer not only escaped justice, but also bears more than a passing resemblance to a man in the local town. But it couldn’t be the same man-that would mean he hasn’t aged a day in decades. That is just not possible, or is it?

Author Nile Limbaugh has written a tightly woven tapestry of past colliding with present, yet never does the story bog down in tedium or repetitiousness. His characters live and exist in three dimensions (well four if you count time as a dimension). The neatest thing is that there are no flashbacks, he is watching the past as NOW, as if he is just looking through a window. There are subplots in not only the past story, but the current tale as well, but they only help to propel the story to it’s enthralling conclusion, neither confusing or conflicting to the reader. And that is the sign of a author that tells his tale well.

I don’t want to give too much of the story away, this is the type that needs to be experienced for yourself. Just let me close by saying that as Stephen King has me never looking at cars and St. Bernards the same way again, so has Mr. Limbaugh created the same thrill with turning on a light. And while I may not wish to ever meet a killer car or a rabid dog, I wouldn’t mind a light bulb like the one here. As long as I didn’t see a murder when I turned it on that is.