Lost Boys

by Orson Scott Card Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki

Overview

From the bestselling storyteller Orson Scott Card comes a gripping story of terror within a small town.

Step Fletcher, his pregnant wife DeAnne, and their three children move to Steuben, North Carolina, with high hopes. But Step's new job with a software company turns out to be a snake pit, and eight-year-old Stevie's school is worse, an unending parade of misery and disaster. As Stevie retreats into himself, focusing more and more on a mysterious computer game and a growing troop of imaginary friends, the Fletchers' concern turns to terror. There is something eerie about his loyal, invisible new playmates: each shares the name of a child who has recently vanished from the sleepy Southern town. And as evil strikes out from the most trusted corners, it's suddenly clear that Stevie is next on the list.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

First mainstream outing—a family drama with a touch of the supernatural—from the leading fantasist (the Alvin Maker series) and sf writer (The Memory of Earth, p. 81). Devout Mormon Step Fletcher, designer of a successful computer game called Hacker Snack, moves with his family to Steuben, North Carolina, to take up a new job. To Step's dismay, he is urged to accept a contract signing away his rights; he also discovers that his sole function will be to write manuals. Step and his wife DeAnne, now seven months pregnant, are given a warm welcome by their church—but eldest son Stevie (8) experiences difficulties at school and becomes withdrawn. At church, DeAnne fends off the meddlesome, self-proclaimed visionary Sister LeSueur, while Step has problems with Lee, who thinks he's God and wants to baptize Stevie; Step also meets a whiz programmer who calls himself Saladin Gallowglass (despite his talents, Glass turns out to be a child molester); and through it all, the house the Fletchers rent is subject to periodic horrid invasions of insects. Frustrated and exasperated, Step quits his job, intending instead to upgrade Hacker Snack for a new PC range. Meanwhile, Steuben is haunted by the disappearance of a number of young boys; the police suspect a serial killer but have no clues. Then DeAnne gives birth to a boy, Zap (who suffers from cerebral palsy); more boys disappear from Steuben; and, frighteningly, their names coincide with those of Stevie's invisible playmates. Even more confusingly, the computer games that Stevie has become absorbed in seem to run without disks or software. Finally, at Christmas, the matters of Stevie, the lost boys, and the invasions of insects cometogether in a wrenching conclusion. Once again, Card writes superbly about children, and here he adds a persuasive and heartwarming picture of a loving couple working hard to solve their problems. Affecting, genuine, poignant, uplifting: a limpid, beautifully orchestrated new venture from an author already accomplished in other fields.

FEB/MAR 05 - AudioFile

Step Fletcher takes a job with a small software company, which means moving his family to North Carolina. The adjustment isn’t easy for Step, and it’s increasingly difficult for 8-year old Stevie, who can’t understand his teacher’s Southern drawl and becomes the object of her scorn. Stefan Rudnicki finds a voice for each of the main characters, capturing the personalities of the children as well as the adults. He uses accents judiciously to reinforce the differences between Step’s family and the people in the town they’re trying to make their home. As Stevie’s world of imaginary friends continues to expand, his parents realize that it is keeping pace with the list of boys missing from the town. Rudnicki draws on the intensity of the characters’ emotions, adding a compelling edge to the suspense. J.E.M. 2005 Audie Award Finalist © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169907360
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	08/01/2004
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

This is the car they drove from Vigor, Indiana, to Steuben, North Carolina: a silvery-gray Renault 18i deluxe wagon, an '81 model with about forty thousand miles on it, twenty-five thousand of which they had put on it themselves. The paint was just beginning to get tiny rust-colored pockmarks in it, but the wiring had blown about fifteen fuses and they'd had to put three new drive axles in it because it was designed so that when a ball bearing wore out you had to replace the whole assembly. It couldn't climb a hill at fifty-five, but it could seat two adults in the leather bucket seats and three kids across the back. Step Fletcher was driving, had been driving since they finally got away from the house well after noon. Empty house. He was still hearingechoes all the way to Indianapolis. Somewhere along the way he must have passed the moving van, but he didn't notice it or didn't recognize it or maybe the driver had pulled into a McDonald's somewhere or a gas station as they drove on by.

The others all fell asleep soon after they crossed the Ohio River. After Step had talked so much about flatboats and Indian wars, the kids were disappointed in it. It was the bridge that impressed them. And then they fell asleep. DeAnne stayed awake a little longer, but then she squeezed his hand and nestled down into the pillow she had jammed into the corner between the seat back and the window.

Just how it always goes, thought Step. She stays awake the whole time I'm wide awake and then, just as I get sleepy and maybe need to have her spell me for a while at the wheel, she goes to sleep.

Hepushed the tape the rest of the way into the player. It was the sweet junky sound of "The E Street Shuffle." He hadn't listened to that in a while. DeAnne must have had it playing while she ran the last-minute errands in Vigor. Step had played that album on their second date. It was kind of a test. DeAnne was so serious about religion, he had to know if she could put up with his slightly wild taste in music. A lot of Mormon girls would have missed the sexual innuendos entirely, of course, but DeAnne was probably smarter than Step was, and so she not only noticed the bit about girls promising to unsnap their jeans and the fairies in a real bitch fight, she also got the part about hooking onto the midnight train, but she didn't get upset, she just laughed, and he knew it was going to be OK, she was religious but not a prig and that meant that he wouldn't have to pretend to be perfect in order to be with her. Ten years ago, 1973. Now they had three kids in the back of the Renault 18i wagon, probably the worst car ever sold in America, and they were heading for Steuben, North Carolina, where Step had a job.

A good job. Thirty thousand a year, which wasn't bad for a brand new history Ph.D. in a recession year. Exceptthat he wasn't teaching history, he wasn't writing history, the job was putting together manuals for a computer software company. Not even programming — he couldn't even get hired for that, even though Hacker Snack was the best-selling game for the Atari back in '81. For a while there it had looked like his career was made as a game designer. They had so much money they figured they could afford for him to go back to school and finish his doctorate. Then the recession came, and the lousy Commodore 64 was killing the Atari in the stores, and suddenly his game was out of print and nobody wanted him except as a manual writer.

So Springsteen played along to his semi-depressed mood as Step wound the car up into the mountains, the sun setting in the west as the road angled them mostly east into the darkness. I should be happy, he told himself. I got the degree, I got a good job, and nothing says I can't do another game in my spare time, even if I have to do it on the stupid 64. It could be worse. I could have got a job programming Apples.

Despite what he said to encourage himself, the words still tasted like failure in his mouth. Thirty-two years old, three kids, and I'm on the downhill slope. Used to work for myself, and now I have to work for somebody else. Just like my dad with his sign company that went bust. At least he had the scar on his back from the operation that took out a vertebra. Me, I got no visible wounds. I was riding high one day, and then the next day we found out that our royalties would be only $7,000 instead of $40,000 like the last time, and we scrambled around looking for work and we've got debts coming out of our ears and I'm going to be just as broke as my folks for the rest of my life and it's my own damned fault. Wage slave like my dad.

Just so I don't have the shame of my wife having to take some lousy swingshift job like Mom did. Fine if she wants to get a job, that's fine, but not if she has to.

Yet he knew even as he thought of it that that was what would happen next — they wouldn't be able to sell the house in Vigor and she'd have to get a job just to keep up the payments on it. We were fools to buy a house, but we thought it would be a good investment.

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