Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
What's a lawyer to do when he suspects that his town's new high school teacher is a serial child killer?
For William Dubykky the question brings both practical and supernatural complications. It's 1960 in Hawthorne, a hardscrabble town near a Naval ammunition depot in the high desert of central Nevada. Everybody knows everybody else, it is unwise to stir up trouble, and he has no proof that the auto shop teacher, Matthew Gans, kidnaps, abuses, and murders girls.
But law-court-grade proof isn't what concerns Dubykky. He simply waits, watchful. A special being soon appears in town, human in appearance but created spontaneously with the mission to kill Gans and die in the process. An echo of human evil. Nature's vengeance on monsters.
Dubykky may help but must not directly intervene. That is the requirement of evil. However, should the echo of evil survive, it is Dubykky's duty to end its life.
For five centuries, that has been Dubykky reason to exist. Times are changing, though. So is Dubykky. He discovers what it means to love someone. He even comes to like some of the humans he protects.
Nevertheless, duty is duty. The strange boy who shows up is marked by evil to carry out an execution. However endearing the boy, he must die with the human monster.
Evil will have its due.
Synopsis
Roger Arthur Smith's spectacular debut, Echoes, asks, what happens when your fundamental nature is challenged, not by the many evils without, but by an unexpected awakening within? It's 1960 in Hawthorne, Nevada, a desert town so secluded that the U.S. Navy stores munitions nearby. While the Cold war lumbers on, the town's gossip mills and marriage-eligible bachelors and bachelorettes play a game of cat and mouse, a pastime, that if nothing else, manages to while away the hours. Attorney Will Dubykky keeps a watchful eye over Hawthorne, and it comes as no surprise that his interest is piqued by the sudden appearance of a strange boy. Why is this boy disfigured? Why does he have difficulty speaking? Why can't some people seem to see him? As one of the initiated, Dubykky has an inkling; the boy is evil, an echo sent to rectify the wrongs of an indulgent murderer. The echo's mission? Tempt, trap and eliminate the human monster that spawned it. If all goes according to evil's intent, the echo will die fulfilling its destiny. This fatal sequence has persisted as long as evil itself, but before the dark circle can be closed, riddles must be solved. In a town this small, who is capable of committing a string of heinous crimes undetected? And, when the time comes will this echo, more naive and innocent than any echo Dubykky has ever encountered, fulfill its gruesome destiny? Echoes, is a wildly entertaining, gloriously absorbing exploration of humanity, evil, and the stark environs in which both exist.