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#once again with my 1984 tie ins
biximagyins · 3 years
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The timekeepers clearly don’t exist.
They are Big Brother. They are a symbol.
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vintagesalt · 4 years
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What is a Funnel or Salesfunnel and do I truly need a Funnel for my business
Among the core principles in the digital marketing industry is the sales funnel . While odd sounding in the beginning, this single core principle can take a business from essentially non-existent and unidentified to multi-million-dollar marketing machine with mass saturation, seemingly overnight. In truth, there are proficient professionals who have developed a career around executing this single principle in service. Just imagine a real-world funnel if you're wondering what a sales funnel is. At the top of that funnel, some substance is put in, which filters down towards one limited destination. In sales, something comparable takes place. At the top, lots of visitors arrive who may enter your funnel. However, unlike the real-world funnel, not all who go into the sales funnel will reemerge out from the other end. To better comprehend the idea of a sales funnel and just how you can implement it in your own company, let's look at the following image from Shutterstock. On the left side of the image, you see a magnet. That magnet is drawing in customers, which occurs a variety of methods. From blogging to social networks to paid advertisements and everything in between, how the visitors show up to your site has some impact on the success of your funnel. Stage 1: Awareness When those visitors (we can call them prospects) actually do show up, what's more crucial about the sales funnel is what happens. Through a variety of methods, much of which you've already seen, such as email newsletter signups, ebook downloads, online quizzes and more, those prospects participate in your sales funnel through an luring offer. The goal of your entire sale funnel and platform is to resolve your customer's problem. When you understand the problem, and you develop material to draw them in, then use them a service or product to solve their problem, that's when the genuine magic takes place. Getting to that phase takes work and you have to amass their awareness. As soon as the possibility remains in the proverbial funnel, you  have actually peaked their awareness. That's the first phase of the funnel. However, getting a prospect mindful of you is no easy task. Relying on how they've shown up to your website ( naturally or through a paid ad), those customers may view your funnel differently and your opt-in rates will vary significantly. For instance, when a client finds you naturally through a Google search for example, that implies you have some element of authority. When you have authority, prospects are most likely to get in into your funnel due to the fact that they know that if they discovered you relevantly, that whatever it is that you're offering should be of a terrific value. That's simply the nature of SEO and organic search. Naturally, despite how they participate in your funnel, your goal as a marketer is to move them through the numerous phases that will take them from possibility to purchaser. And as soon as they  know you, you need to build their interest. To do this, you need to develop a relationship with the consumer. You might have enticed them with a terrific deal (lead magnet) to get their email address, but in fact moving them through the funnel is a far greater challenge. The truth? People are wise. They're not just going to purchase anything from anybody unless they feel there's an enormous amount of value to be had there. Thus, your funnel needs to constructed that worth and bake it in through a variety of ways. But most importantly, you need to develop a strong bond with your prospect, which happens by being relatable, truthful and transparent in your e-mail warming series. Stage 2: Interest You acquire the prospects interest through an email series. You begin to relate stories to them that tie into who you are and how you've shown up to this point in your life. Brunson, in his book, Professional Secrets, calls this the Attractive Character. Are you the unwilling hero whose journey occurred practically by error, but you feel like you owe it to yourself and the world to communicate something of terrific worth? Or, are you a leader, an adventurer or an evangelist ? How you position yourself is totally up to you, but your message needs to be consistent throughout your whole "pitch" and it needs to be steeped in the truth. Your backstory, and just how you communicate that through parables, character flaws and polarity, has much to do with simply how well you can "hook" in your potential customers to create a mass motion. Obviously, implementing this isn't simple. You require to first develop your stories, then choose on how you're going to convey those stories and at what drip-rate. Your first email or two may go out on the day they initially signup, then one e-mail per day might go out afterwards. How much of that will be story-based and just how much will be pitches? In a recent discussion I had with Perry Belcher, co-founder of Native Commerce Media, he informed me that you also need to train your prospects to click links. You could have them click on a link of what interests them or connect them to a blog site post or eventually to a product or service that you're selling, but you need to train them to construct a habit of clicking on those links from the very start. Stage 3: Decision The next stage is the decision. Getting prospects to decide isn't easy. The very best way to get them there? Beyond the art of story informing, copywriting and constructing the habit of link-clicking, you need to have lots and lots of consumer evaluations and testimonials. This is among the most effective manner ins which you can get people to do something about it. Naturally, if you're going the paid advertisement path, you could also use Facebook and Google re-targeting to keep that awareness and interest level high. For instance, if you've ever discovered after leaving a particular site, that you start to see their advertisement everywhere, there's a particular factor for that. Specifically if they've already entered your sales funnel , this is a extremely effective way to get them to act. You could show them re-targeting advertisements that have video reviews or reviews by other consumers. If you have media publications that have actually blogged about you, you could take that opportunity to highlight those. It's just an added component of exposure when they see this in your sales funnel and you follow them around with re-targeting. But however you get them to choose to act, turning that switch isn't easy. You require to present them with a fantastic opportunity and usage Robert Cialdini's 6 principles, outlined in his 1984 book, Impact, in one way or another to move them through this stage: Principle of reciprocity-- This is attained by providing great deals of worth, either through whatever it is that you supplied them as a complimentary deal (lead magnet) in the very start, or in an continuous exchange through your emails. Principle of commitment & consistency-- When individuals commit to something, they're much more likely to buy from you. That's why getting them to agree to something like a complimentary + shipping offer or by concurring with something you've stated in some method. This is a powerful principle in sales and if you pay attention to a few of the very best online marketers worldwide, you'll notice that they work fervently to get your dedication to something, even if it's really small in the start. When people like you (i.e. they relate to your stories) they are more likely to acquire something from you, concept of taste--. How well you craft your story and convey that to your potential customers is going to play a huge role in whether they choose to act or not. Principle of authority-- How much authority do your items or services have? Are their respected people in your community that have endorsed it? Scientific studies that are backing it? Are you yourself an authority? All these aspects enter into play in this procedure. Principle of social proof-- Do you have social evidence? Are individuals on social media raving or talking about how fantastic your product and services are? Do you have some other type of social evidence? Best-selling books? Something else? It's importnat that you provide this to potential customers if you do have them. Concept of shortage-- Just how much shortage have you baked into your e-mail series? Again, individuals are wise, but when you apply the principle of scarcity, as in there are only a restricted amount of some deal or time left prior to a discount ends or slots offered for an online class, it entices people to take action. Phase 4: Action The last of the sales funnel is the action that you're intending them to carry out. For the most part this is the purchase. Once again, how well you move them through the different stages is going to set you up with a specific conversion for this action. If 100 people click on your deal and 10 people enter your sales funnel however just purchase people purchase, then you have a 2 percent conversion. Nevertheless, the very best part about this, and the most powerful route that entrepreneurs take to scale their companies, is that if you know that sending out 100 individuals to your site costs you $200, for instance, but you get two individuals to transform at $300 each, then you have a $600 return on $200 invested (300 percent). That's when the entire video game modifications and you can definitely scale your deals when you know that. This how the world's smartest online marketers scale out their organisations. They know the conversion value and they  have actually fine-tuned and improved their sales funnels, so they go after this with a vengeance by just scaling out their offers. If you know that, by investing $1 you're going to get $3 back, you will infinitely invest $1 consistently. Get the point? Nevertheless, getting to this stage is no easy feat. It takes an massive amount of work and effort plus tracking. By implementing sales funnel software, such as the platform developed by Brunson, you can certainly cut down the headache, however there's still lots of work to be done. Copy needs to be composed, tracking pixels need to be set up and e-mail series require to be produced. That's what it takes to prosper. Believe about that the next time you're constructing out a sales funnel. This complex and complex concept in business can literally take you from a complete unidentified to a worldwide powerhouse quickly through the art of scaling out a highly-converting deal. Do not try to take faster ways or carry out hacks, and put in the time if you're aiming to eventually enjoy the advantages and results . What Is BossFunnels All About? Bossfunnels is a wise drag and drop funnel home builder with all the features that clickfunnels, leadpages ETC have! However there's a lot more ... Bossfunnels produces VIRAL funnels, so your customers can construct massive lists and get extreme quantities of traffic. Promoting this exceptionally high quality product you can give your clients something that they will utilize and enjoy for years to come. Here's Are Some Secret Benefits You Might Be Interested In Getting: Done-For-You Funnels In 1-Click. Free Viral Traffic In Seconds Built-In ... No Hosting, Coding Or Design ... 3-Figure A Day Tutorials Included. No Regular monthly Fees ... Enjoy Sales While You Sleep ... Be Your Own Boss ... 180-Day Refund Warranty ... Get or get results Paid $500 ...
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Nightcrawlers
Robert McCammon (1984)
1
“Hard rain coming down,” Cheryl said, and I nodded in agreement.
Through the diner’s plate-glass windows, a dense curtain of rain flapped across the Gulf gas pumps and continued across the parking lot. It hit Big Bob’s with a force that made the glass rattle like uneasy bones. The red neon sign that said BIG BOB’S! DIESEL FUEL! EATS! sat on top of a high steel pole above the diner so the truckers on the interstate could see it. Out in the night, the red-tinted rain thrashed in torrents across my old pickup truck and Cheryl’s baby-blue Volkswagen.
“Well,” I said, “I suppose that storm’ll either wash some folks in off the interstate or we can just about hang it up.” The curtain of rain parted for an instant, and I could see the treetops whipping back and forth in the woods on the other side of Highway 47. Wind whined around the front door like an animal trying to claw its way in. I glanced at the electric clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes before nine. We usually closed up at ten, but tonight—with tornado warnings in the weather forecast—I was tempted to turn the lock a little early. “Tell you what,” I said. “If we’re empty at nine, we skedaddle. ’Kay?”
“No argument here,” she said. She watched the storm for a moment longer, then continued putting newly washed coffee cups, saucers, and plates away on the stainless-steel shelves.
Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip. The diner’s lights flickered, then came back to normal. A shudder of thunder seemed to come right up through my shoes. Late March is the beginning of tornado season in south Alabama, and we’ve had some whoppers spin past here in the last few years. I knew that Alma was at home, and she understood to get into the root cellar right quick if she spotted a twister, like that one we saw in ’82 dancing through the woods about two miles from our farm.
“You got any love-ins planned this weekend, hippie?” I asked Cheryl, mostly to get my mind off the storm and to rib her too.
She was in her late thirties, but I swear that when she grinned she could’ve passed for a kid. “Wouldn’t you like to know, redneck?” she answered; she replied the same way to all my digs at her. Cheryl Lovesong—and I know that couldn’t have been her real name—was a mighty able waitress, and she had hands that were no strangers to hard work. But I didn’t care that she wore her long silvery-blond hair in Indian braids with hippie headbands, or came to work in tie-dyed overalls. She was the best waitress who’d ever worked for me, and she got along with everybody just fine—even us rednecks. That’s what I am, and proud of it: I drink Rebel Yell whiskey straight, and my favorite songs are about good women gone bad and trains on the long track to nowhere. I keep my wife happy. I’ve raised my two boys to pray to God and to salute the flag, and if anybody don’t like it he can go a few rounds with Big Bob Clayton.
Cheryl would come right out and tell you she used to live in San Francisco in the late sixties, and that she went to love-ins and peace marches and all that stuff. When I reminded her it was 1984 and Ronnie Reagan was president, she’d look at me like I was walking cow-flop. I always figured she’d start thinking straight when all that hippie-dust blew out of her head.
Alma said my tail was going to get burnt if I ever took a shine to Cheryl, but I’m a fifty-five-year-old redneck who stopped sowing his wild seed when he met the woman he married, more than thirty years ago.
Lightning crisscrossed the turbulent sky, followed by a boom of thunder. Cheryl said, “Wow! Look at that light show!”
“Light show, my ass,” I muttered. The diner was as solid as the Good Book, so I wasn’t too worried about the storm. But on a wild night like this, stuck out in the countryside like Big Bob’s was, you had a feeling of being a long way off from civilization—though Mobile was only twenty-seven miles south. On a wild night like this, you had a feeling that anything could happen, as quick as a streak of lightning out of the darkness. I picked up a copy of the Mobile Press-Register that the last customer—a trucker on his way to Texas—had left on the counter a half-hour before, and I started plowing through the news, most of it bad: those A-rab countries were still squabbling like Hatfields and McCoys in white robes; two men had robbed a Qwik-Mart in Mobile and been killed by the police in a shoot-out; cops were investigating a massacre at a motel near Daytona Beach; an infant had been stolen from a maternity ward in Birmingham. The only good things on the front page were stories that said the economy was up and that Reagan swore we’d show the Commies who was boss in El Salvador and Lebanon.
The diner shook under a blast of thunder, and I looked up from the paper as a pair of headlights emerged from the rain into my parking lot.
2
The headlights were attached to an Alabama state-trooper car.
“Half-alive, hold the onion, extra brown the buns.” Cheryl was already writing on her pad in expectation of the order. I pushed the paper aside and went to the fridge for the hamburger meat.
When the door opened, a windblown spray of rain swept in and stung like buckshot. “Howdy, folks!” Dennis Wells peeled off his gray rain slicker and hung it on the rack next to the door. Over his Smokey the Bear trooper hat was a protective plastic covering, beaded with raindrops. He took off his hat, exposing the thinning blond hair on his pale scalp, as he approached the counter and sat on his usual stool, right next to the cash register. “Cup of black coffee and a rare—” Cheryl was already sliding the coffee in front of him, and the burger sizzled on the griddle. “Ya’ll are on the ball tonight!” Dennis said; he said the same thing when he came in, which was almost every night. Funny the kind of habits you fall into, without realizing it.
“Kinda wild out there, ain’t it?” I asked as I flipped the burger over.
“Lordy, yes! Wind just about flipped my car over three, four miles down the interstate. Thought I was gonna be eatin’ a little pavement tonight.” Dennis was a husky young man in his early thirties, with thick blond brows over deep-set light brown eyes. He had a wife and three kids, and he was fast to flash a walletful of their pictures. “Don’t reckon I’ll be chasin’ any speeders tonight, but there’ll probably be a load of accidents. Cheryl, you sure look pretty this evenin’.”
“Still the same old me.” Cheryl never wore a speck of makeup, though one day she’d come to work with glitter on her cheeks. She had a place a few miles away, and I guessed she was farming that funny weed up there. “Any trucks moving?”
“Seen a few, but not many. Truckers ain’t fools. Gonna get worse before it gets better, the radio says.” He sipped at his coffee and grimaced. “Lordy, that’s strong enough to jump out of the cup and dance a jig, darlin’!”
I fixed the burger the way Dennis liked it, put it on a platter with some fries, and served it. “Bobby, how’s the wife treatin’ you?” he asked.
“No complaints.”
“Good to hear. I’ll tell you, a fine woman is worth her weight in gold. Hey, Cheryl! How’d you like a handsome young man for a husband?”
Cheryl smiled, knowing what was coming. “The man I’m looking for hasn’t been made yet.”
“Yeah, but you ain’t met Cecil yet, either! He asks me about you every time I see him, and I keep tellin’ him I’m doin’ everything I can to get you two together.” Cecil was Dennis’ brother-in-law and owned a Chevy dealership in Bay Minette. Dennis had been ribbing Cheryl about going on a date with Cecil for the past four months. “You’d like him,” Dennis promised. “He’s got a lot of my qualities.”
“Well, that’s different. In that case, I’m certain I don’t want to meet him.”
Dennis winced. “Oh, you’re a cruel woman! That’s what smokin’ banana peels does to you—turns you mean. Anybody readin’ this rag?” He reached over for the newspaper.
“Waitin’ here just for you,” I said. Thunder rumbled, closer to the diner. The lights flickered briefly once … then again before they returned to normal. Cheryl busied herself by fixing a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched the rain whipping against the windows. When the lightning flashed, I could see the trees swaying so hard they looked about to snap.
Dennis read and ate his hamburger. “Boy,” he said after a few minutes, “the world’s in some shape, huh? Those A-rab pig-stickers are itchin’ for war. Mobile metro boys had a little gunplay last night. Good for them.” He paused and frowned, then tapped the paper with one thick finger. “This I can’t figure.”
“What’s that?”
“Thing in Florida couple of nights ago. Six people killed at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, near Daytona Beach. Motel was set off in the woods. Only a couple of cinder-block houses in the area, and nobody heard any gunshots. Says here one old man saw what he thought was a bright white star falling over the motel, and that was it. Funny, huh?”
“A UFO,” Cheryl offered. “Maybe he saw a UFO.”
“Yeah, and I’m a little green man from Mars,” Dennis scoffed. “I’m serious. This is weird. The motel was so blown full of holes it looked like a war had been going on. Everybody was dead—even a dog and a canary that belonged to the manager. The cars out in front of the rooms were blasted to pieces. The sound of one of them explodin’ was what woke up the people in those houses, I reckon.” He skimmed the story again. “Two bodies were out in the parkin’ lot, one was holed up in a bathroom, one had crawled under a bed, and two had dragged every piece of furniture in the room over to block the door. Didn’t seem to help ’em any, though.”
I grunted. “Guess not.”
“No motive, no witnesses. You better believe those Florida cops are shakin’ the bushes for some kind of dangerous maniac—or maybe more than one, it says here.” He shoved the paper away and patted the service revolver holstered at his hip. “If I ever got hold of him—or them—he’d find out not to mess with a ’Bama trooper.” He glanced quickly over at Cheryl and smiled mischievously. “Probably some crazy hippie who’d been smokin’ his tennis shoes.”
“Don’t knock it,” she said sweetly, “until you’ve tried it.” She looked past him, out the window into the storm. “Car’s pullin’ in, Bobby.”
Headlights glared briefly off the wet windows. It was a station wagon with wood-grained panels on the sides; it veered around the gas pumps and parked next to Dennis’ trooper car. On the front bumper was a personalized license plate that said: Ray & Lindy. The headlights died, and all the doors opened at once. Out of the wagon came a whole family: a man and woman, a little girl and boy about eight or nine. Dennis got up and opened the diner door as they hurried inside from the rain.
All of them had gotten pretty well soaked between the station wagon and the diner, and they wore the dazed expressions of people who’d been on the road a long time. The man wore glasses and had curly gray hair, the woman was slim and dark-haired and pretty. The kids were sleepy-eyed. All of them were well-dressed, the man in a yellow sweater with one of those alligators on the chest. They had vacation tans, and I figured they were tourists heading north from the beach after spring break.
“Come on in and take a seat,” I said.
“Thank you,” the man said. They squeezed into one of the booths near the windows. “We saw your sign from the interstate.”
“Bad night to be on the highway,” Dennis told them. “Tornado warnings are out all over the place.”
“We heard it on the radio,” the woman—Lindy, if the license was right—said. “We’re on our way to Birmingham, and we thought we could drive right through the storm. We should’ve stopped at that Holiday Inn we passed about fifteen miles ago.”
“That would’ve been smart,” Dennis agreed. “No sense in pushin’ your luck.” He returned to his stool.
The new arrivals ordered hamburgers, fries, and Cokes. Cheryl and I went to work. Lightning made the diner’s lights flicker again, and the sound of thunder caused the kids to jump. When the food was ready and Cheryl served them, Dennis said, “Tell you what. You folks finish your dinners and I’ll escort you back to the Holiday Inn. Then you can head out in the morning. How about that?”
“Fine,” Ray said gratefully. “I don’t think we could’ve gotten very much further, anyway.” He turned his attention to his food.
“Well,” Cheryl said quietly, standing beside me, “I don’t guess we get home early, do we?”
“I guess not. Sorry.”
She shrugged. “Goes with the job, right? Anyway, I can think of worse places to be stuck.”
I figured that Alma might be worried about me, so I went over to the pay phone to call her. I dropped a quarter in—and the dial tone sounded like a cat being stepped on. I hung up and tried again. The cat scream continued. “Damn!” I muttered. “Lines must be screwed up.”
“Ought to get yourself a place closer to town, Bobby,” Dennis said. “Never could figure out why you wanted a joint in the sticks. At least you’d get better phone service and good lights if you were nearer to Mo—”
He was interrupted by the sound of wet and shrieking brakes, and he swiveled around on his stool.
I looked up as a car hurtled into the parking lot, the tires swerving, throwing up plumes of water. For a few seconds I thought it was going to keep coming, right through the window into the diner—but then the brakes caught and the car almost grazed the side of my pickup as it jerked to a stop. In the neon’s red glow I could tell it was a beat-up old Ford Fairlane, either gray or a dingy beige. Steam was rising off the crumpled hood. The headlights stayed on for perhaps a minute before they winked off. A figure got out of the car and walked slowly—with a limp—toward the diner.
We watched the figure approach. Dennis’ body looked like a coiled spring ready to be triggered. “We got us a live one, Bobby boy,” he said.
The door opened, and in a stinging gust of wind and rain a man who looked like walking death stepped into my diner.
3
He was so wet he might well have been driving with his windows down. He was a skinny guy, maybe weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, even soaking wet. His unruly dark hair was plastered to his head, and he had gone a week or more without a shave. In his gaunt, pallid face his eyes were startlingly blue; his gaze flicked around the diner, lingered for a few seconds on Dennis. Then he limped on down to the far end of the counter and took a seat. He wiped the rain out of his eyes as Cheryl took a menu to him.
Dennis stared at the man. When he spoke, his voice bristled with authority. “Hey, fella.” The man didn’t look up from the menu. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.”
The man pushed the menu away and pulled a damp packet of Kools out of the breast pocket of his patched Army fatigue jacket. “I can hear you,” he said; his voice was deep and husky, and didn’t go with his less-than-robust physical appearance.
“Drivin’ kinda fast in this weather, don’t you think?”
The man flicked a cigarette lighter a few times before he got a flame, then lit one of his smokes and inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” he replied. “I was. Sorry. I saw the sign, and I was in a hurry to get here. Miss? I’d just like a cup of coffee, please. Hot and real strong, okay?”
Cheryl nodded and turned away from him, almost bumping into me as I strolled down behind the counter to check him out.
“That kind of hurry’ll get you killed,” Dennis cautioned.
“Right. Sorry.” He shivered and pushed the tangled hair back from his forehead with one hand. Up close, I could see deep cracks around his mouth and the corners of his eyes and I figured him to be in his late thirties or early forties. His wrists were as thin as a woman’s; he looked like he hadn’t eaten a good meal for more than a month. He stared at his hands through bloodshot eyes. Probably on drugs, I thought. The fella gave me the creeps. Then he looked at me with those eyes—so pale blue they were almost white—and I felt like I’d been nailed to the floor. “Something wrong?” he asked—not rudely, just curiously.
“Nope.” I shook my head. Cheryl gave him his coffee and then went over to give Ray and Lindy their check.
The man didn’t use either cream or sugar. The coffee was steaming, but he drank half of it down like mother’s milk. “That’s good,” he said. “Keep me awake, won’t it?”
“More than likely.” Over the breast pocket of his jacket was the faint outline of the name that had been sewn there once. I think it was Price, but I could’ve been wrong.
“That’s what I want. To stay awake as long as I can.” He finished the coffee. “Can I have another cup, please?”
I poured it for him. He drank that one down just as fast,” then rubbed his eyes wearily.
“Been on the road a long time, huh?”
Price nodded. “Day and night. I don’t know which is more tired, my mind or my butt.” He lifted his gaze to me again. “Have you got anything else to drink? How about beer?”
“No, sorry. Couldn’t get a liquor license.”
He sighed. “Just as well. It might make me sleepy. But I sure could go for a beer right now. One sip, to clean my mouth out.”
He picked up his coffee cup, and I smiled and started to turn away.
But then he wasn’t holding a cup. He was holding a Budweiser can, and for an instant I could smell the tang of a newly popped beer.
The mirage was there for only maybe two seconds. I blinked, and Price was holding a cup again. “Just as well,” he said, and put it down.
I glanced over at Cheryl, then at Dennis. Neither one was paying attention. Damn! I thought. I’m too young to be losin’ either my eyesight or my senses! “Uh …” I said, or some other stupid noise.
“One more cup?” Price asked. “Then I’d better hit the road again.”
My hand was shaking as I picked it up, but if Price noticed, he didn’t say anything.
“Want anything to eat?” Cheryl asked him. “How about a bowl of beef stew?”
He shook his head. “No, thanks. The sooner I get back on the road, the better it’ll be.”
Suddenly Dennis swiveled toward him, giving him a cold stare that only cops and drill sergeants can muster. “Back on the road?” He snorted. “Fella, you ever been in a tornado before? I’m gonna escort those nice people to the Holiday Inn about fifteen miles back. If you’re smart, that’s where you’ll spend the night too. No use in tryin’ to—”
“No.” Price’s voice was rock-steady. “I’ll be spending the night behind the wheel.”
Dennis’ eyes narrowed. “How come you’re in such a hurry? Not runnin’ from anybody, are you?”
“Nightcrawlers,” Cheryl said.
Price turned toward her like he’d been slapped across the face, and I saw what might’ve been a spark of fear in his eyes.
Cheryl motioned toward the lighter Price had laid on the counter, beside the pack of Kools. It was a beat-up silver Zippo, and inscribed across it was NIGHTCRAWLERS with the symbol of two crossed rifles beneath it. “Sorry,” she said. “I just noticed that, and I wondered what it was.”
Price put the lighter away. “I was in ’Nam,” he told her. “Everybody in my unit got one.”
“Hey.” There was suddenly new respect in Dennis’ voice. “You a vet?”
Price paused so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. In the quiet, I heard the little girl tell her mother that the fries were “ucky.” Price said, “Yes.”
“How about that! Hey, I wanted to go myself, but I got a high number and things were windin’ down about that time anyway. Did you see any action?”
A faint, bitter smile passed over Price’s mouth. “Too much.”
“What? Infantry? Marines? Rangers?”
Price picked up his third cup of coffee, swallowed some, and put it down. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when they opened they were vacant and fixed on nothing. “Nightcrawlers,” he said quietly. “Special unit. Deployed to recon Charlie positions in questionable villages.” He said it like he was reciting from a manual. “We did a lot of crawling through rice paddies and jungles in the dark.”
“Bet you laid a few of them Vietcong out, didn’t you?” Dennis got up and came over to sit a few places away from the man. “Man, I was behind you guys all the way. I wanted you to stay in there and fight it out!”
Price was silent. Thunder echoed over the diner. The lights weakened for a few seconds; when they came back on, they seemed to have lost some of their wattage. The place was dimmer than before. Price’s head slowly turned toward Dennis, with the inexorable motion of a machine. I was thankful I didn’t have to take the full force of Price’s dead blue eyes, and I saw Dennis wince. “I should’ve stayed,” he said. “I should be there right now, buried in the mud of a rice paddy with the eight other men in my patrol.”
“Oh.” Dennis blinked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“I came home,” Price continued calmly, “by stepping on the bodies of my friends. Do you want to know what that’s like, Mr. Trooper?”
“The war’s over,” I told him. “No need to bring it back.” Price smiled grimly, but his gaze remained fixed on Dennis. “Some say it’s over. I say it came back with the men who were there. Like me. Especially like me.” Price paused. The wind howled around the door, and the lightning illuminated for an instant the thrashing woods across the highway. “The mud was up to our knees, Mr. Trooper,” he said. “We were moving across a rice paddy in the dark, being real careful not to step on the bamboo stakes we figured were planted there. Then the first shots started: pop pop pop—like firecrackers going off. One of the Nightcrawlers fired off a flare, and we saw the Cong ringing us. We’d walked right into hell, Mr. Trooper. Somebody shouted, ‘Charlie’s in the light!’ and we started firing, trying to punch a hole through them. But they were everywhere. As soon as one went down, three more took his place. Grenades were going off, and more flares, and people were screaming as they got hit. I took a bullet in the thigh and another through the hand. I lost my rifle, and somebody fell on top of me with half his head missing.”
“Uh … listen,” I said. “You don’t have to—”
“I want to, friend.” He glanced quickly at me, then back to Dennis. I think I cringed when his gaze pierced me. “I want to tell it all. They were fighting and screaming and dying all around me, and I felt the bullets tug at my clothes as they passed through. I know I was screaming too, but what was coming out of my mouth sounded bestial. I ran. The only way I could save my own life was to step on their bodies and drive them down into the mud. I heard some of them choke and blubber as I put my boot on their faces. I knew all those guys like brothers … but at that moment they were only pieces of meat. I ran. A gunship chopper came over the paddy and laid down some fire, and that’s how I got out. Alone.” He bent his face closer toward the other man’s. “And you’d better believe I’m in that rice paddy in ’Nam every time I close my eyes. You’d better believe the men I left back there don’t rest easy. So you keep your opinions about ’Nam and being ‘behind you guys’ to yourself, Mr. Trooper. I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Got it?”
Dennis sat very still. He wasn’t used to being talked to like that, not even from a ’Nam vet, and I saw the shadow of anger pass over his face.
Price’s hands were trembling as he brought a little bottle out of his jeans pocket. He shook two blue-and-orange capsules out onto the counter, took them both with a swallow of coffee, and then recapped the bottle and put it away. The flesh of his face looked almost ashen in the dim light.
“I know you boys had a rough time,” Dennis said, “but that’s no call to show disrespect to the law.”
“The law,” Price repeated. “Yeah. Right. Bullshit.”
“There are women and children present,” I reminded him. “Watch your language.”
Price rose from his seat. He looked like a skeleton with just a little extra skin on the bones. “Mister, I haven’t slept for more than thirty-six hours. My nerves are shot. I don’t mean to cause trouble, but when some fool says he understands, I feel like kicking his teeth down his throat—because no one who wasn’t there can pretend to understand.” He glanced at Ray, Lindy, and the kids. “Sorry, folks. Don’t mean to disturb you. Friend, how much do I owe?” He started digging for his wallet.
Dennis slid slowly from his seat and stood with his hands on his hips. “Hold it.” He used his trooper’s voice again. “If you think I’m lettin’ you walk out of here high on pills and needin’ sleep, you’re crazy. I don’t want to be scrapin’ you off the highway.”
Price paid him no attention. He took a couple of dollars from his wallet and put them on the counter. I didn’t touch them. “Those pills will help keep me awake,” Price said. “Once I get on the road, I’ll be fine.”
“Fella, I wouldn’t let you go if it was high noon and not a cloud in the sky. I sure as hell don’t want to clean up after the accident you’re gonna have. Now, why don’t you come along to the Holiday Inn and—”
Price laughed grimly. “Mr. Trooper, the last place you want me staying is at a motel.” He cocked his head to one side. “I was in a motel in Florida a couple of nights ago, and I think I left my room a little untidy. Step aside and let me pass.”
“A motel in Florida?” Dennis nervously licked his lower lip. “What the hell you talkin’ about?”
“Nightmares and reality, Mr. Trooper. The point where they cross. A couple of nights ago, they crossed at a motel. I wasn’t going to let myself sleep. I was just going to rest for a little while, but I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” A mocking smile played at the edges of his mouth, but his eyes were tortured. “You don’t want me staying at that Holiday Inn, Mr. Trooper. You really don’t. Now, step aside.”
I saw Dennis’ hand settle on the butt of his revolver. His fingers unsnapped the fold of leather that secured the gun in the holster. I stared at him numbly. My God, I thought. What’s goin’ on? My heart had started pounding so hard I was sure everybody could hear it. Ray and Lindy were watching, and Cheryl was backing away behind the counter.
Price and Dennis faced each other for a moment, as the rain whipped against the windows and thunder boomed like shellfire. Then Price sighed, as if resigning himself to something. He said, “I think I want a T-bone steak. Extra rare. How ’bout it?” He looked at me.
“A steak?” My voice was shaking. “We don’t have any T-bone—”
Price’s gaze shifted to the counter right in front of me. I heard a sizzle. The aroma of cooking meat drifted up to me.
“Oh … wow,” Cheryl whispered.
A large T-bone steak lay on the countertop, pink and oozing blood. You could’ve fanned a menu in my face and I would’ve keeled over. Wisps of smoke were rising from the steak.
The steak began to fade, until it was only an outline on the counter. The lines of oozing blood vanished. After the mirage was gone, I could still smell the meat—and that’s how I knew I wasn’t crazy.
Dennis’ mouth hung open. Ray had stood up from the booth to look, and his wife’s face was the color of spoiled milk. The whole world seemed to be balanced on a point of silence—until the wail of the wind jarred me back to my senses.
“I’m getting good at it,” Price said softly. “I’m getting very, very good. Didn’t start happening to me until about a year ago. I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing. What’s in your head comes true—as simple as that. Of course, the images only last for a few seconds—as long as I’m awake, I mean. I’ve found out that those other men were drenched by a chemical spray we called Howdy Doody—because it made you stiffen up and jerk like you were hanging on strings. I got hit with it near Khe Sahn. That shit almost suffocated me. It felt like black tar, and it burned the land down to a paved parking lot.” He stared at Dennis. “You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper. Not with the body count I’ve still got in my head.”
“You … were at … that motel, near Daytona Beach?”
Price closed his eyes. A vein had begun beating at his right temple, royal blue against the pallor of his flesh. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered. “I fell asleep, and I couldn’t wake myself up. I was having the nightmare. The same one. I was locked in it, and I was trying to scream myself awake.” He shuddered, and two tears ran slowly down his cheeks. “Oh,” he said, and flinched as if remembering something horrible. “They … they were coming through the door when I woke up. Tearing the door right off its hinges. I woke up … just as one of them was pointing his rifle at me. And I saw his face. I saw his muddy, misshapen face.” His eyes suddenly jerked open. “I didn’t know they’d come so fast.”
“Who?” I asked him. “Who came so fast?”
“The Nightcrawlers,” Price said, his face devoid of expression, masklike. “Dear God … maybe if I’d stayed asleep a second more. But I ran again, and I left those people dead in that motel.”
“You’re gonna come with me.” Dennis started pulling his gun from the holster. Price’s head snapped toward him. “I don’t know what kinda fool game you’re—”
He stopped, staring at the gun he held.
It wasn’t a gun anymore. It was an oozing mass of hot rubber. Dennis cried out and slung the thing from his hand. The molten mess hit the floor with a pulpy splat.
“I’m leaving now.” Price’s voice was calm. “Thank you for the coffee.” He walked past Dennis, toward the door.
Dennis grasped a bottle of ketchup from the counter. Cheryl cried out, “Don’t!” but it was too late. Dennis was already swinging the bottle. It hit the back of Price’s skull and burst open, spewing ketchup everywhere. Price staggered forward, his knees buckling. When he went down, his skull hit the floor with a noise like a watermelon being dropped. His body began jerking involuntarily.
“Got him!” Dennis shouted triumphantly. “Got that crazy bastard, didn’t I?”
Lindy was holding the little girl in her arms. The boy craned his neck to see. Ray said nervously, “You didn’t kill him, did you?”
“He’s not dead,” I told him. I looked over at the gun; it was solid again. Dennis scooped it up and aimed it at Price, whose body continued to jerk. Just like Howdy Doody, I thought. Then Price stopped moving.
“He’s dead!” Cheryl’s voice was near-frantic. “Oh God, you killed him, Dennis!”
Dennis prodded the body with the toe of his boot, then bent down. “Naw. His eyes are movin’ back and forth behind the lids.” Dennis touched his wrist to check the pulse, then abruptly pulled his own hand away. “Jesus Christ! He’s as cold as a meat locker!” He took Price’s pulse and whistled. “Goin’ like a racehorse at the Derby.”
I touched the place on the counter where the mirage steak had been. My fingers came away slightly greasy, and I could smell the cooked meat on them. At that instant Price twitched. Dennis scuttled away from him like a crab. Price made a gasping, choking noise.
“What’d he say?” Cheryl asked. “He said something!”
“No he didn’t.” Dennis stuck him in the ribs with his pistol. “Come on. Get up.”
“Get him out of here,” I said. “I don’t want him—”
Cheryl shushed me. “Listen. Can you hear that?”
I heard only the roar and crash of the storm.
“Don’t you hear it?” she asked me. Her eyes were getting scared and glassy.
“Yes!” Ray said. “Yes! Listen!”
Then I did hear something, over the noise of the keening wind. It was a distant chuk-chuk-chuk, steadily growing louder and closer. The wind covered the noise for a minute, then it came back: CHUK-CHUK-CHUK, almost overhead.
“It’s a helicopter!” Ray peered through the window. “Somebody’s got a helicopter out there!”
“Ain’t nobody can fly a chopper in a storm!” Dennis told him. The noise of rotors swelled and faded, swelled and faded … and stopped.
On the floor, Price shivered and began to contort into a fetal position. His mouth opened; his face twisted in what appeared to be agony.
Thunder spoke. A red fireball rose up from the woods across the road and hung lazily in the sky for a few seconds before it descended toward the diner. As it fell, the fireball exploded soundlessly into a white, glaring eye of light that almost blinded me.
Price said something in a garbled, panicked voice. His eyes were tightly closed, and he had squeezed up with his arms around his knees.
Dennis rose to his feet; he squinted as the eye of light fell toward the parking lot and winked out in a puddle of water. Another fireball floated up from the woods, and again blossomed into painful glare.
Dennis turned toward me. “I heard him.” His voice was raspy. “He said . . . ‘Charlie’s in the light.’”
As the second flare fell to the ground and illuminated the parking lot, I thought I saw figures crossing the road. They walked stiff-legged, in an eerie cadence. The flare went out.
“Wake him up,” I heard myself whisper. “Dennis … dear God … wake him up.”
4
Dennis stared stupidly at me, and I started to jump across the counter to get to Price myself.
A gout of flame leapt in the parking lot. Sparks marched across the concrete. I shouted, “Get down!” and twisted around to push Cheryl back behind the shelter of the counter.
“What the hell—” Dennis said.
He didn’t finish. There was the metallic thumping of bullets hitting the gas pumps and the cars. I knew if that gas blew we were all dead. My truck shuddered with the impact of slugs, and I saw the whole thing explode as I ducked behind the counter. Then the windows blew inward with a god-awful crash, and the diner was full of flying glass, swirling wind, and sheets of rain. I heard Lindy scream, and both the kids were crying, and I think I was shouting something myself.
The lights had gone out, and the only illumination was the reflection of red neon off the concrete and the glow of the fluorescents over the gas pumps. Bullets whacked into the wall, and crockery shattered as if it had been hit with a hammer. Napkins and sugar packets were flying everywhere.
Cheryl was holding on to me as if her fingers were nails sunk to my bones. Her eyes were wide and dazed, and she kept trying to speak. Her mouth was working, but nothing came out.
There was another explosion as one of the other cars blew. The whole place shook, and I almost puked with fear.
Another hail of bullets hit the wall. They were tracers, and they jumped and ricocheted like white-hot cigarette butts. One of them sang off the edge of a shelf and fell to the floor about three feet away from me. The glowing slug began to fade, like the beer can and the mirage steak. I put my hand out to find it, but all I felt was splinters of glass and crockery. A phantom bullet, I thought. Real enough to cause damage and death—and then gone.
You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper, Price had warned. Not with the body count I’ve got in my head.
The firing stopped. I got free of Cheryl and said, “You stay right here.” Then I looked up over the counter and saw my truck and the station wagon on fire, the flames being whipped by the wind. Rain slapped me across the face as it swept in where the window glass used to be. I saw Price lying still huddled on the floor, with pieces of glass all around him. His hands were clawing the air, and in the flickering red neon his face was contorted, his eyes still closed. The pool of ketchup around his head made him look like his skull had been split open. He was peering into hell, and I averted my eyes before I lost my own mind.
Ray and Lindy and the two children had huddled under the table of their booth. The woman was sobbing brokenly. I looked at Dennis, lying a few feet from Price: he was sprawled on his face, and there were four holes punched through his back. It was not ketchup that ran in rivulets around Dennis’ body. His right arm was outflung, and the fingers twitched around the gun he gripped.
Another flare sailed up from the woods like a Fourth of July sparkler.
When the light brightened, I saw them: at least five figures, maybe more. They were crouched over, coming across the parking lot—but slowly, the speed of nightmares. Their clothes flapped and hung around them, and the flare’s light glanced off their helmets. They were carrying weapons—rifles, I guessed. I couldn’t see their faces, and that was for the best.
On the floor, Price moaned. I heard him say “light … in the light …”
The flare hung right over the diner. And then I knew what was going on. We were in the light. We were all caught in Price’s nightmare, and the Nightcrawlers that Price had left in the mud were fighting the battle again—the same way it had been fought at the Pines Haven Motor Inn. The Nightcrawlers had come back to life, powered by Price’s guilt and whatever that Howdy Doody shit had done to him.
And we were in the light, where Charlie had been out in that rice paddy.
There was a noise like castanets clicking. Dots of fire arced through the broken windows and thudded into the counter. The stools squealed as they were hit and spun. The cash register rang and the drawer popped open, and then the entire register blew apart and bills and coins scattered. I ducked my head, but a wasp of fire—I don’t, know what, a bit of metal or glass maybe—sliced my left cheek open from ear to upper lip. I fell to the floor behind the counter with blood running down my face.
A blast shook the rest of the cups, saucers, plates, and glasses off the shelves. The whole roof buckled inward, throwing loose ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and pieces of metal framework.
We were all going to die. I knew it, right then. Those things were going to destroy us. But I thought of the pistol in Dennis’ hand, and of Price lying near the door. If we were caught in Price’s nightmare and the blow from the ketchup bottle had broken something in his skull, then the only way to stop his dream was to kill him.
I’m no hero. I was about to piss in my pants, but I knew I was the only one who could move. I jumped up and scrambled over the counter, falling beside Dennis and wrenching at that pistol. Even in death, Dennis had a strong grip. Another blast came, along the wall to my right. The heat of it scorched me, and the shock wave skidded me across the floor through glass and rain and blood.
But I had that pistol in my hand.
I heard Ray shout, “Look out!”
In the doorway, silhouetted by flames, was a skeletal thing wearing muddy green rags. It wore a dented-in helmet and carried a corroded, slime-covered rifle. Its face was gaunt and shadowy, the features hidden behind a scum of rice-paddy muck. It began to lift the rifle to fire at me—slowly, slowly …
I got the safety off the pistol and fired twice, without aiming. A spark leapt off the helmet as one of the bullets was deflected, but the figure staggered backward and into the conflagration of the station wagon, where it seemed to melt into ooze before it vanished.
More tracers were coming in. Cheryl’s Volkswagen shuddered, the tires blowing out almost in unison. The state-trooper car was already bullet-riddled and sitting on flats.
Another Nightcrawler, this one without a helmet and with slime covering the skull where the hair had been, rose up beyond the window and fired its rifle. I heard the bullet whine past my ear, and as I took aim I saw its bony finger tightening on the trigger again.
A skillet flew over my head and hit the thing’s shoulder, spoiling its aim. For an instant the skillet stuck in the Nightcrawler’s body, as if the figure itself was made out of mud. I fired once … twice … and saw pieces of matter fly from the thing’s chest. What might’ve been a mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the thing slithered out of sight.
I looked around. Cheryl was standing behind the counter, weaving on her feet, her face white with shock. “Get down!” I shouted, and she ducked for cover.
I crawled to Price, shook him hard. His eyes would not open. “Wake up!” I begged him. “Wake up, damn you!” And then I pressed the barrel of the pistol against Price’s head. Dear God, I didn’t want to kill anybody, but I knew I was going to have to blow the Nightcrawlers right out of his brain. I hesitated—too long.
Something smashed into my left collarbone. I heard the bone snap like a broomstick being broken. The force of the shot slid me back against the counter and jammed me between two bullet-pocked stools. I lost the gun, and there was a roaring in my head that deafened me.
I don’t know how long I was out. My left arm felt like dead meat. All the cars in the lot were burning, and there was a hole in the diner’s roof that a tractor-trailer truck could’ve dropped through. Rain was sweeping into my face, and when I wiped my eyes clear I saw them, standing over Price.
There were eight of them. The two I thought I’d killed were back. They trailed weeds, and their boots and ragged clothes were covered with mud. They stood in silence, staring down at their living comrade.
I was too tired to scream. I couldn’t even whimper. I just watched.
Price’s hands lifted into the air. He reached for the Nightcrawlers, and then his eyes opened. His pupils were dead white, surrounded by scarlet.
“End it,” he whispered. “End it …”
One of the Nightcrawlers aimed its rifle and fired. Price jerked. Another Nightcrawler fired, and then they were all firing point-blank into Price’s body. Price thrashed and clutched at his head, but there was no blood; the phantom bullets weren’t hitting him.
The Nightcrawlers began to ripple and fade. I saw the flames of the burning cars through their bodies. The figures became transparent, floating in vague outlines. Price had awakened too fast at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, I realized; if he had remained asleep, the creatures of his nightmares would’ve ended it there, at that Florida motel. They were killing him in front of me—or he was allowing them to end it, and I think that’s what he must’ve wanted for a long, long time.
He shuddered, his mouth releasing a half-moan, half-sigh.
It sounded almost like relief.
The Nightcrawlers vanished. Price didn’t move anymore.
I saw his face. His eyes were closed, and I think he must’ve found peace at last.
5
A trucker hauling lumber from Mobile to Birmingham saw the burning cars. I don’t even remember what he looked like.
Ray was cut up by glass, but his wife and the kids were okay. Physically, I mean. Mentally, I couldn’t say.
Cheryl went into the hospital for a while. I got a postcard from her with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front. She promised she’d write and let me know how she was doing, but I doubt if I’ll ever hear from her. She was the best waitress I ever had, and I wish her luck.
The police asked me a thousand questions, and I told the story the same way every time. I found out later that no bullets or shrapnel were ever dug out of the walls or the cars or Dennis’ body—just like in the case of that motel massacre. There was no bullet in me, though my collarbone was snapped clean in two.
Price had died of a massive brain hemorrhage. It looked, the police told me, as if it had exploded in his skull.
I closed the diner. Farm life is fine. Alma understands, and we don’t talk about it.
But I never showed the police what I found, and I don’t know exactly why not.
I picked up Price’s wallet in the mess. Behind a picture of a smiling young woman holding a baby there was a folded piece of paper. On that paper were the names of four men.
Beside one name, Price had written “Dangerous.”
I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing, Price had said.
I sit up at night a lot, thinking about that and looking at those names. Those men had gotten a dose of that Howdy Doody shit in a foreign place they hadn’t wanted to be, fighting a war that turned out to be one of those crossroads of nightmare and reality. I’ve changed my mind about ’Nam because I understand now that the worst of the fighting is still going on, in the battlefields of memory.
A Yankee who called himself Tompkins came to my house one May morning and flashed me an ID that said he worked for a veterans’ association. He was very soft-spoken and polite, but he had deep-set eyes that were almost black, and he never blinked. He asked me all about Price, seemed real interested in picking my brain of every detail. I told him the police had the story, and I couldn’t add any more to it. Then I turned the tables and asked him about Howdy Doody. He smiled in a puzzled kind of way and said he’d never heard of any chemical defoliant called that. No such thing, he said. Like I say, he was very polite.
But I know the shape of a gun tucked into a shoulder holster. Tompkins was wearing one under his seersucker coat. I never could find any veterans’ association that knew anything about him, either.
Maybe I should give that list of names to the police. Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll try to find those four men myself, and try to make some sense out of what’s being hidden.
I don’t think Price was evil. No. He was just scared, and who can blame a man for running from his own nightmares? I like to believe that, in the end, Price had the courage to face the Nightcrawlers, and in committing suicide he saved our lives.
The newspapers, of course, never got the real story. They called Price a ’Nam vet who’d gone crazy, killed six people in a Florida motel, and then killed a state trooper in a shoot-out at Big Bob’s diner and gas stop.
But I know where Price is buried. They sell little American flags at the five-and-dime in Mobile. I’m alive, and I can spare the change.
And then I’ve got to find out how much courage I have.
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Ashes 2019: Australia chasing 399 to beat England, fifth Test day four – live! | Sport
11.35am BST11:35
1st over: Australia 3-0 (Harris 0, Warner 2) Broad to start. Warner has taken the first ball in his last couple of innings, but doesn’t today. Harris though gives him the second ball, running a leg bye off the thigh pad. Warner does not look comfortable immediately. Gets beaten outside off, stabs a couple of runs off his pads, then gets beaten again pushing hard at the ball down the line. That was a beautiful bit of bowling, moving away. He survives the first over, though.
11.32am BST11:32
Adrian Armstrong has been busy.
Ian Forth’s reference to Gang Of Four set me wondering whether the post-punkers’ oeuvre might generate a complete Boycott XI. Here goes:
Natural’s Not In It If I Could Keep It For Myself Outside The Trains Don’t Run On Time He’d Send In The Army It Is Not Enough The World At Fault Better Him Than Me [the run-out modus operandi] Do As I Say England’s In My Bones First World Citizen Stranded [those run-outs again]
11.29am BST11:29
Here’s Boris Starling. “Like all Englishmen of a certain age, my instinctive thought when England are defending a substantial lead in the fourth innings can be summed up in two words (Lord’s, Greenidge) and two numbers (1984, 214*). And no, I can’t shake the sinking feeling that Oval, Smith, 2019 and 200ish* is on the cards (224 to overtake Bradman’s record, if my maths is right).”
You’re spot on, Boz.
11.27am BST11:27
“What do you reckon the chances of Warner having an match defining innings and making double figures today?” asks David Kalucy. Given the way he batted in the first innings, not great. He looked completely frazzled.
11.25am BST11:25
Here’s the TMS overseas link for those who want some audio with the chase as well as my sweet, sweet written words.
youtube
11.22am BST11:22
England out for 329, Australia must chase 399 to win
That’s the tally then! A monster for Australia to chase, nearly 400 runs. There have been four winning run chases bigger than this in Test history. So that’s against them, but for them is having Steve Smith and a decent day-four pitch and two days to play. With the time in hand and the good weather, the draw will be impossible. So Australia will bat for a 3-1 lead, and England will bowl to tie the series 2-2 and spoil the party.
11.20am BST11:20
Wicket! Leach c Hazlewood b Lyon 9 (England 329 all out)
Leach couldn’t cope with Broad going past his score, clearly, and wanted to retake the lead. He goes down on one knee and tries to slog-sweep Lyon, but only gets a high top edge that swirls before settling with mid-on.
11.18am BST11:18
95th over: England 329-9 (Leach 9, Broad 12) Cummins to Broad… and he nails him! Broad nails Cummins, I mean! The backaway swat shot connects at the third attempt, and connects well. Broad was waiting for it, camped back like a baseballer, didn’t even think about getting forward. Bat over the shoulder in his backlift, then follows through. Siddle at deep midwicket thinks he’s in the hunt, but it sails over his head for six.
So Cummins bowls short again, and Broad misses. And again, and Broad misses. This is the stupidest bowling I have ever seen. Broad is stepping almost off the cut strip. All Cummins has to do is bowl at the stumps: fast ball, slower ball, whatever. There’s no way Broad is carving the yorker off his middle stump behind point for four.
So what does Cummins do? Bowls short and gets hit for six more. Even straighter over midwicket this time, Siddle running around to no avail. Steve Smith was at long stop for that ball, right behind Tim Paine on the boundary. Then Paine calls Smith up, and Cummins bowls a length ball that goes over middle stump. What.
11.11am BST11:11
94th over: England 317-9 (Leach 9, Broad 0) Leach looks pretty good this morning, dipping his knees and driving to point but not beating the field. He’s not shabby with the blade. Knocks a ball to leg side, then gets a little leading edge behind point, but can’t find a run from the over. Broad will have to face Cummins again.
11.10am BST11:10
93rd over: England 317-9 (Leach 9, Broad 0) Out comes Stuart Broad, who of course made a Test hundred once but rather lost his enthusiasm for batting and is now all the way down at 11. Unsurprisingly he gets three short balls from Cummins, the first of which he blocks, and the latter two he backs away and swipes at and misses. He has his way.
11.07am BST11:07
Wicket! Archer c Paine b Cummins 3 (England 317-9)
Tim Paine gets a review right! Ah, mercy! Ah, blessings! The Oval can do amazing things. The Oval is where Shane Watson overturned an lbw on review in 2013. Now Paine gets one! A glove down the leg side from Archer, just a tiny touch. Umpire says no. Computer says yes. Paine was very confident. That’s the sort of call that a wicketkeeper might know more about than an lbw. Early breakthrough for the Aussies, who will be mighty relieved. Archer doesn’t think he hit it. Like Warner in the first innings, it’s not conclusive on the vision but there’s a tiny spike on the Snickometer.
Updated at 11.08am BST
11.05am BST11:05
92nd over: England 317-8 (Archer 3, Leach 9) Hello all, thanks JP. Well, here we are! Glorious sun again, the classic London autumn. Perhaps the last day of this series, though Surrey will be desperately hoping that their sold-out fifth day goes ahead. Jerusalem over the loudspeakers. Erasmus and Dharmasena to the middle. Huge cheers for Jack Leach and Jofra Archer. Nathan Lyon starting with the ball, and Jack Leach carves him through cover for four!
10.58am BST10:58
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Jonathan Howcroft
Geoff Lemon is whirling his arms over down at fine-leg trying to get my attention so I shall toss him the ball and doff my cap to you all. Hopefully we’ll reconvene tomorrow for something absurd, but if not, thank you for all your contributions throughout the series.
Remember: refresh your pages, redirect your tweets to @GeoffLemonSport and send your emails to [email protected].
10.53am BST10:53
Ok, let’s sharpen the focus with the restart nearing. England win, right? WinViz reckon it’s 87% likely. But we all know Steve Smith’s going to do something preposterous don’t we, one final hit. Are we coming back tomorrow? Or is this it? Our summer dalliance fading with the weak autumn sunshine…
10.43am BST10:43
Derek Stocker must be unique, surely, a Zimbabwe supporter in Bulgaria. Anyway, he’s sent an email. “I am a Zim supporter but rooting for England. I hope today is the day the Teddy Bear does not come to the picnic. No doubt about Warner’s talent and, I do have sympathy for him. I just imagine him going really big today. I hope my vision disappears to where it came from.” It would be remarkable for such a talented player not to have at least one knock in a five-Test series, wouldn’t it? Maybe the bit of needle that’s crept into the contest is what he’s needed?
10.39am BST10:39
The music bug is catching. Ian Forth is the latest to join in with a quite excellent summer mixtape.
“1. Australians in Europe by The Fall. By way of an overture. 2. Midnight in a Perfect World by DJ Shadow. For those tuning in down under. 3. Heart Cooks Brain by Modest Mouse. Slightly misguided bumper sticker tribute to the previous England captain’s strategic capabilities. 4. Monty Got A Raw Deal by REM. For those who think there should have been room for Monty and Swanny in the same side. 5. At Home He’s A Tourist by Gang Of Four. For KP. 6. Why Won’t They Talk To Me by Tame Impala. Also for KP. 7. The First Cut Is The Deepest by PP Arnold. For Joe Root. 8. I Just Get Caught Out by The Go Betweens. For every batsman in this series other than Smith. 9. I’m Stranded by The Saints. For Jos Buttler. 10. I Know It’s Over by The Smiths. For all of us, very soon. (Also for grumpy bowlers who’ve just had their appeal turned down off the last ball). 11. Ashes to Ashes by Bowie. Because it’s never really over, is it?”
I’m only linking to The Fall for now, but there are plenty of bangers in that batting order.
Updated at 10.45am BST
10.32am BST10:32
Ben Stokes has occupied centre stage for most of this summer but when it was time to take his bow at the Oval it arrived in subdued fashion. Ali Martin has more.
When a drowsy Oval crowd offered Stokes the polite applause that a score of 67 might usually merit, a chance to thank the all-rounder for his efforts during this epic home season felt slightly missed.
Stokes, unable to bowl in this Test and thus with just fielding left on the to-do list, has hit a new level as a batsman this year; the responsibility that some feared may be shackling his game before the World Cup has paid out some serious jackpots since.
10.28am BST10:28
Joe Denly’s runs yesterday were good for Joe Denly, but they were also handy for England selector Ed Smith, as Barney Ronay reports.
Of all the new picks during the last 18 months Denly has perhaps been the most thoroughly Smith-flavoured, albeit not for the reasons some have assumed. One former Kent player laughed out loud at the idea Smith might pick his former teammate out of ties of matey loyalty. The response, in essence: if you think that, you obviously don’t know Ed Smith very well – with the suggestion good old Joe from Canterbury is unlikely to figure too prominently in Smith’s list of vital VIP personages to please at all costs.
10.25am BST10:25
David Gaskell has identified the particular grade of salt to pour onto Australian wounds. “We have not had an imperious innings from Stuart Broad for some time. If memory serves me rightly, he did annoy and frustrate the opposition from time to time. Why not today? A handy thirty or so whilst the Boycott maxi- me that is Jack Leach blocks like a factor 50 on the French Riviera.”
10.24am BST10:24
As Emma John writes, it has been an extraordinary summer of cricket.
But for England fans, the best-case scenario of a two-all draw scarcely seemed a reason to put the Moët on ice, not after a summer that had given us so many champagne moments already. We’d been spoiled for storylines and the realisation that the Ashes weren’t coming home – and England could still finish on the pointy end of a 3-1 scoreline – was as deflating as sitting through seven series of your favourite TV show only to discover that Bran Stark had won the Game of Thrones. (Still not over that, no.)
10.19am BST10:19
Gary Naylor (@garynaylor999)
There’s been a lot of ordinary cricket in this Test – minds are tired – but it’s still a good Test @JPHowcroft. My irrefutable proof is that, on the fourth morning, at 9.30, the touts outside were buying tickets.
September 15, 2019
Ah, the cry of “Any tickets, buy or sell” accompanied by the smell of police horse poo and the sight of a man dribbling meat pie down his front. You can’t beat a major sporting event.
10.13am BST10:13
Kim Thonger, I shall miss your morning emails when this series is over. “If ‘It’s Coming Home’ doesn’t describe England fan feelings this weekend, perhaps this does, Dark Black by Kristina Train. I’ve been saving it for my funeral, but do ‘enjoy’ today as an Ashes farewell…
“I remember colors painted in my eyes Green was for the springtime, blue the summer skies And now the skies have darkened, the white clouds turn to grey What a way to break a heart, you took all the colors away Dark black is the color of my life Since you’ve been gone Since you’ve been gone Oh if you come back Make my whole world bright Since you’ve been gone Dark black is the color of my life”
10.10am BST10:10
Want to know the match situation at the click of a mouse/button/screen/trackpad? Well, fear not, because Vic Marks is all you need.
The lead stands at 382 with two fragile wickets remaining. It should be enough for England – if they can get Smith out.
9.49am BST09:49
Preamble
Tumblr media
Jonathan Howcroft
Hello everybody and welcome to live OBO coverage of day four of the fifth Ashes Test from the Oval.
It’s coming home, it’s coming home, it’s coming! What? Speak up a bit. It isn’t!? A shared series means Australia retain the Ashes? Oh well…
The destination of the urn may have already been determined before battle commenced in south London but England turning in their most complete performance of the series so far is a welcome sight nonetheless for the majority of patrons inside a packed Oval. A strong day in the field on Friday was backed up by some refreshingly competent batting on Saturday to guide the hosts into a commanding position. It would take a Stokesian feat of escapology for Australia to wriggle free of their current predicament.
Joe Denly has hogged the morning headlines, and most likely another series at the top of England’s batting order, with his slow-burn series ending in impressive fashion. His obduracy, following on from Sam Curran’s tenacity with the ball, have given England a steelier edge, much to Australia’s dissatisfaction. For the first time during this long old tour of theirs they have looked tetchy, bordering on rattled, and ready for the next Qantas home.
Whether they do so as jubilant series winners or content urn retainers will depend on how they occupy the crease over the next couple of days. We know with Steve Smith anything is possible…
I’m around for the hour leading up to play, after which it’s over to Geoff Lemon. Please keep me company during this prelude, either on Twitter @JPHowcroft or by sending an email to [email protected].
Updated at 9.51am BST
The post Ashes 2019: Australia chasing 399 to beat England, fifth Test day four – live! | Sport appeared first on NEWS - EVENTS - LEGAL.
source https://dangkynhanhieusanpham.com/ashes-2019-australia-chasing-399-to-beat-england-fifth-test-day-four-live-sport/
0 notes
kifkidailan · 4 years
Text
What is a Funnel or Salesfunnel and do I really require a Funnel for my organisation
One of the core concepts in the digital marketing industry is the sales funnel . While odd sounding initially, this single core concept can take a company from virtually non-existent and unidentified to multi-million-dollar marketing machine with mass saturation, apparently overnight. In reality, there are experienced practitioners who have developed a profession around implementing this single idea in service. If you're questioning what a sales funnel is, merely envision a real-world funnel. At the top of that funnel, some compound is gathered, which filters down towards one limited destination. In sales, something similar happens. At the top, lots of visitors arrive who may enter your funnel. Nevertheless, unlike the real-world funnel, not all who get in the sales funnel will reemerge out from the other end. To better understand the idea of a sales funnel and just how you can execute it in your own organisation, let's take a look at the following image from Shutterstock. On the left side of the image, you see a magnet. That magnet is drawing in consumers, which occurs a number of methods. From blogging to social networks to paid ads and everything in between, how the visitors get here to your site has some effect on the success of your funnel. Stage 1: Awareness When those visitors (we can call them prospects) actually do show up, what's more crucial about the sales funnel is what happens. Through a range of methods, numerous of which you  have actually already seen, such as email newsletter signups, ebook downloads, online quizzes and more, those prospects enter into your sales funnel through an luring offer. The goal of your whole sale funnel and platform is to solve your customer's problem. When you understand the problem, and you develop content to draw them in, then provide them a service or product to resolve their issue, that's when the real magic takes place. Getting to that phase takes work and you have to garner their awareness. Once the prospect is in the proverbial funnel, you've peaked their awareness. That's the very first phase of the funnel. Getting a possibility mindful of you is no easy accomplishment. Relying on how they've shown up to your website (organically or through a paid ad), those customers may see your funnel differently and your opt-in rates will vary considerably. When a consumer discovers you naturally through a Google search for example, that suggests you have some element of authority. When you have authority, prospects are more likely to get in into your funnel since they understand that if they found you relevantly, that whatever it is that you're offering must be of a great worth. That's simply the nature of SEO and organic search. Obviously, no matter how they get in into your funnel, your objective as a marketer is to move them through the several stages that will take them from possibility to purchaser. And when they  understand you, you need to construct their interest. To do this, you require to develop a relationship with the client. You may have lured them with a terrific deal (lead magnet) to get their e-mail address, however actually moving them through the funnel is a far greater challenge. The truth? People are wise. They're not merely going to purchase anything from anyone unless they feel there's an enormous quantity of value to be had there. Thus, your funnel requirements to built that worth and bake it in through a variety of ways. Most significantly, you have to produce a strong bond with your prospect, and that happens by being relatable, transparent and sincere in your e-mail warming sequence. Phase 2: Interest You get the potential customers interest through an e-mail sequence. You begin to relate stories to them that tie into who you are and how you  have actually shown up to this point in your life. Brunson, in his book, Expert Tricks, calls this the Attractive Character. Are you the unwilling hero whose journey happened practically by error, but you feel like you owe it to yourself and the world to convey something of fantastic value? Or, are you a leader, an evangelist or an adventurer ? How you place yourself is totally up to you, however your message needs to be consistent throughout your entire "pitch" and it needs to be soaked in the fact. Your backstory, and just how you communicate that through parables, character flaws and polarity, has much to do with just how well you can "hook" in your potential customers to develop a mass movement. Obviously, executing this isn't simple. You require to very first establish your stories, then select how you're going to communicate those stories and at what drip-rate. Your very first e-mail or two may go out on the day they initially signup, then one email per day might go out later on. Just how much of that will be story-based and just how much will be pitches? In a current conversation I had with Perry Belcher, co-founder of Native Commerce Media, he told me that you likewise require to train your prospects to click on links. For example, you might have them click on a link of what interests them or link them to a article or ultimately to a product and services that you're offering, however you need to train them to develop a practice of clicking on those links from the very start. Phase 3: Choice The next stage is the choice. Getting potential customers to decide isn't easy. The very best method to get them there? Beyond the art of story informing, developing the habit and copywriting of link-clicking, you need to have lots and lots of customer evaluations and testimonials. This is among the most powerful manner ins which you can get individuals to take action. Of course, if you're going the paid ad route, you might likewise utilize Facebook and Google re-targeting to keep that awareness and interest level high. For instance, if you've ever seen after leaving a specific site, that you begin to see their advertisement all over, there's a particular factor for that. Specifically if they've currently entered your sales funnel , this is a very effective way to get them to act. For instance, you might reveal them re-targeting advertisements that have video reviews or reviews by other customers. If you have media publications that have actually discussed you, you could take that chance to highlight those. When they see this in your sales funnel and you follow them around with re-targeting, it's just an added component of exposure. Nevertheless you get them to decide to act, turning that switch isn't simple. You require to present them with a excellent chance and usage Robert Cialdini's 6 principles, detailed in his 1984 book, Influence, in one way or another to move them through this phase: Concept of reciprocity-- This is attained by providing lots of value, either through whatever it is that you offered them as a free deal (lead magnet) in the very beginning, or in an continuous exchange through your emails. Principle of dedication & consistency-- When people commit to something, they're even more most likely to acquire from you. That's why getting them to accept something like a totally free + shipping offer or by agreeing with something you've said in some method. This is a effective principle in sales and if you pay attention to a few of the finest online marketers on the planet, you'll observe that they work busily to get your dedication to something, even if it's really little in the start. When individuals like you (i.e. they relate to your stories) they are more most likely to purchase something from you, concept of preference--. How well you craft your story and convey that to your potential customers is going to play a huge function in whether they decide to act or not. Principle of authority-- How much authority do your services or products have? Are their respected individuals in your neighborhood that have backed it? Scientific research studies that are backing it? Are you yourself an authority? All these components come into play in this process. Principle of social evidence-- Do you have social evidence? Are individuals on social networks talking or raving about how fantastic your services or products are? Do you have some other kind of social proof? Best-selling books? Something else? It's importnat that you present this to prospects if you do have them. Principle of deficiency-- How much deficiency have you baked into your email series? Once again, individuals are clever, however when you apply the concept of deficiency, as in there are just a restricted quantity of some deal or time left prior to a discount ends or slots available for an online class, it entices individuals to act. Stage 4: Action The final phase of the sales funnel is the action that you're planning them to perform. This is the purchase. Again, how well you move them through the various phases is going to set you up with a particular conversion for this action. If 100 individuals click on your offer and 10 individuals enter your sales funnel however just buy individuals purchase, then you have a 2 percent conversion. However, the best part about this, and the most effective route that business owners require to scale their organisations, is that if you understand that sending 100 people to your site costs you $200, for example, but you get two people to transform at $300 each, then you have a $600 return on $200 invested (300 percent). When you know that, that's when the entire video game changes and you can considerably scale your deals. This how the world's smartest marketers scale out their businesses. They know the conversion value and they've fine-tuned and refined their sales funnels, so they pursue this with a revenge by merely scaling out their deals. If you know that, by investing $1 you're going to get $3 back, you will definitely invest $1 consistently. Get the point? However, getting to this phase is no simple feat. It takes an huge amount of work and effort plus tracking. By implementing sales funnel software application, such as the platform constructed by Brunson, you can definitely lower the headache, but there's still great deals of work to be done. Copy needs to be written, tracking pixels require to be set up and e-mail sequences require to be developed. That's what it takes to be successful. Think about that the next time you're building out a sales funnel. This complex and elaborate idea in organisation can actually take you from a complete unknown to a international powerhouse rapidly through the art of scaling out a highly-converting deal. Don't attempt to take faster ways or execute hacks, and put in the time if you're aiming to ultimately gain the outcomes and benefits . What Is BossFunnels All About? Bossfunnels is a smart drag and drop funnel home builder with all the features that clickfunnels, leadpages ETC have! But there's even more ... Bossfunnels creates VIRAL funnels, so your clients can build enormous lists and get severe amounts of traffic. Promoting this incredibly high quality item you can give your clients something that they will like and use for years to come. Here's Are Some Secret Benefits You Might Be Interested In Getting: Done-For-You Funnels In 1-Click. Free Viral Traffic In Seconds Built-In ... No Hosting, Coding Or Design ... 3-Figure A Day Tutorials Consisted Of. No Monthly Fees ... Enjoy Sales While You Sleep ... Be Your Own Boss ... 180-Day Cash Back Warranty ... Get Outcomes Or Get Paid $500 ...
youtube
0 notes
moco1569 · 4 years
Text
What is a Funnel or Salesfunnel and do I truly need a Funnel for my organisation
One of the core principles in the digital marketing market is the sales funnel . While odd sounding in the beginning, this single core concept can take a company from unknown and practically non-existent to multi-million-dollar marketing machine with mass saturation, seemingly overnight. There are skilled specialists who have constructed a profession around implementing this single idea in business. If you're questioning what a sales funnel is, simply imagine a real-world funnel. At the top of that funnel, some compound is gathered, which filters down towards one finite location. In sales, something similar takes place. At the top, great deals of visitors arrive who may enter your funnel. However, unlike the real-world funnel, not all who get in the sales funnel will reemerge out from the other end. To much better understand the principle of a sales funnel and just how you can execute it in your own organisation, let's take a look at the following image from Shutterstock. On the left side of the image, you see a magnet. That magnet is attracting consumers, which happens a variety of ways. From blogging to social media to paid ads and everything in between, how the visitors arrive to your website has some effect on the success of your funnel. Stage 1: Awareness When those visitors (we can call them potential customers) actually do arrive, what's more important about the sales funnel is what occurs. Through a variety of means, many of which you  have actually already seen, such as e-mail newsletter signups, ebook downloads, online quizzes and more, those prospects participate in your sales funnel through an attracting deal. The goal of your whole sale funnel and platform is to solve your customer's issue. When you understand the issue, and you construct content to draw them in, then offer them a service or product to fix their issue, that's when the real magic occurs. Nevertheless, getting to that stage takes work and you need to garner their awareness first. When the prospect remains in the proverbial funnel, you've peaked their awareness. That's the very first phase of the funnel. Nevertheless, getting a possibility knowledgeable about you is no easy accomplishment. Relying on how they've arrived to your website ( naturally or through a paid advertisement), those clients may view your funnel differently and your opt-in rates will differ considerably. For example, when a client finds you naturally through a Google look for example, that means you have some component of authority. When you have authority, prospects are more likely to get in into your funnel because they know that if they discovered you relevantly, that whatever it is that you're supplying should be of a fantastic worth. That's just the nature of SEO and organic search. Of course, regardless of how they participate in your funnel, your goal as a marketer is to move them through the numerous phases that will take them from possibility to purchaser. And when they  understand you, you need to construct their interest. To do this, you require to establish a relationship with the consumer. You might have lured them with a terrific deal (lead magnet) to grab their e-mail address, but actually moving them through the funnel is a far higher challenge. The fact? People are smart. They're not just going to purchase anything from anybody unless they feel there's an enormous quantity of value to be had there. Thus, your funnel requirements to built that worth and bake it in through a range of means. However most importantly, you need to produce a strong bond with your possibility, and that happens by being relatable, transparent and truthful in your email warming sequence. Stage 2: Interest You get the potential customers interest through an email sequence. You start to relate stories to them that tie into who you are and how you  have actually arrived to this point in your life. Brunson, in his book, Specialist Tricks, calls this the Appealing Character. Are you the unwilling hero whose journey took place nearly by mistake, however you feel like you owe it to yourself and the world to convey something of fantastic value? Or, are you an evangelist, an adventurer or a leader ? How you place yourself is totally as much as you, but your message must be consistent throughout your whole "pitch" and it requires to be steeped in the reality. Your backstory, and just how you convey that through parables, character defects and polarity, has much to do with just how well you can "hook" in your prospects to create a mass movement. Obviously, executing this isn't simple. You need to very first develop your stories, then select how you're going to communicate those stories and at what drip-rate. For instance, your very first e-mail or 2 might go out on the day they initially signup, then one email daily might head out afterwards. How much of that will be story-based and how much will be pitches? In a current discussion I had with Perry Belcher, co-founder of Native Commerce Media, he informed me that you likewise require to train your potential customers to click on links. For instance, you might have them click a link of what interests them or link them to a blog post or eventually to a product and services that you're offering, but you require to train them to build a practice of clicking on those links from the very start. Stage 3: Choice The next stage is the decision. Getting potential customers to make a choice isn't easy. The very best way to get them there? Beyond the art of story informing, developing the practice and copywriting of link-clicking, you need to have lots and lots of client evaluations and reviews. This is among the most effective manner ins which you can get individuals to act. Obviously, if you're going the paid ad route, you might likewise use Facebook and Google re-targeting to keep that awareness and interest level high. For example, if you've ever noticed after leaving a particular website, that you start to see their advertisement everywhere, there's a specific reason for that. Particularly if they've already entered your sales funnel , this is a extremely effective way to get them to act. You might show them re-targeting ads that have video testimonials or reviews by other clients. If you have media publications that have actually blogged about you, you might take that opportunity to highlight those. It's simply an added element of exposure when they see this in your sales funnel and you follow them around with re-targeting. But nevertheless you get them to choose to act, flipping that switch isn't easy. You require to present them with a excellent chance and usage Robert Cialdini's 6 principles, detailed in his 1984 book, Impact, in one way or another to move them through this stage: Concept of reciprocity-- This is achieved by providing lots of worth, either through whatever it is that you provided them as a totally free offer (lead magnet) in the very start, or in an continuous exchange through your e-mails. Principle of commitment & consistency-- When individuals commit to something, they're even more most likely to buy from you. That's why getting them to agree to something like a complimentary + shipping offer or by agreeing with something you  have actually stated in some method. This is a powerful concept in sales and if you take note of a few of the best marketers worldwide, you'll see that they work busily to get your dedication to something, even if it's extremely little in the start. When individuals like you (i.e. they relate to your stories) they are more most likely to purchase something from you, concept of liking--. How well you craft your story and convey that to your potential customers is going to play a huge function in whether they choose to act or not. Concept of authority-- Just how much authority do your items or services have? Are their highly regarded individuals in your community that have backed it? Scientific research studies that are backing it? Are you yourself an authority? All these elements enter play in this process. Principle of social evidence-- Do you have social evidence? Are people on social media talking or raving about how excellent your services or items are? Do you have some other type of social proof? Best-selling books? Something else? If you do have them, it's importnat that you provide this to potential customers. Concept of scarcity-- How much scarcity have you baked into your email series? Once again, people are clever, however when you apply the principle of deficiency, as in there are only a restricted quantity of some deal or time left prior to a discount ends or slots readily available for an online class, it entices individuals to act. Phase 4: Action The last of the sales funnel is the action that you're meaning them to perform. This is the purchase. Once again, how well you move them through the numerous stages is going to set you up with a particular conversion for this action. If 100 individuals click on your offer and 10 people enter your sales funnel however only buy individuals purchase, then you have a 2 percent conversion. The finest part about this, and the most effective route that entrepreneurs take to scale their organisations, is that if you understand that sending 100 individuals to your website expenses you $200, for example, however you get two people to convert at $300 each, then you have a $600 return on $200 invested (300 percent). When you know that, that's when the entire video game modifications and you can infinitely scale your offers. This how the world's smartest online marketers scale out their businesses. They understand the conversion worth and they've tweaked and perfected their sales funnels, so they pursue this with a revenge by just scaling out their offers. If you know that, by investing $1 you're going to get $3 back, you will considerably invest $1 consistently. Get the point? Getting to this stage is no basic task. It takes an huge amount of work and effort plus tracking. By carrying out sales funnel software application, such as the platform developed by Brunson, you can absolutely lower the headache, however there's still lots of work to be done. Copy requirements to be composed, tracking pixels need to be installed and email series require to be produced. That's what it takes to be successful. Think about that the next time you're developing out a sales funnel. This complex and detailed principle in service can actually take you from a total unknown to a global powerhouse quickly through the art of scaling out a highly-converting offer. Don't try to take shortcuts or implement hacks, and put in the time if you're wanting to eventually gain the outcomes and benefits . So What Is BossFunnels All About? Bossfunnels is a clever drag and drop funnel builder with all the functions that clickfunnels, leadpages ETC have! But there's even more ... Bossfunnels creates VIRAL funnels, so your customers can construct huge lists and get severe quantities of traffic. Promoting this extremely high quality item you can give your clients something that they will love and utilize for several years to come. Here's Are Some Secret Benefits You May Have An Interest In Getting: Done-For-You Funnels In 1-Click. Free Viral Traffic In Seconds Built-In ... No Hosting, Coding Or Design ... 3-Figure A Day Tutorials Consisted Of. No Monthly Fees ... Enjoy Sales While You Sleep ... Be Your Own Employer ... 180-Day Money Back Guarantee ... Get or get outcomes Paid $500 ...
youtube
0 notes
supergna · 4 years
Text
What is a Funnel or Salesfunnel and do I actually require a Funnel for my company
Among the core concepts in the digital marketing industry is the sales funnel . While odd sounding at initially, this single core idea can take a company from unidentified and practically non-existent to multi-million-dollar marketing device with mass saturation, relatively over night. In fact, there are competent professionals who have developed a career around implementing this single principle in business. Just picture a real-world funnel if you're questioning what a sales funnel is. At the top of that funnel, some substance is put in, which filters down towards one finite destination. In sales, something similar happens. At the top, great deals of visitors arrive who may enter your funnel. Nevertheless, unlike the real-world funnel, not all who enter the sales funnel will reemerge out from the other end. To much better comprehend the concept of a sales funnel and simply how you can implement it in your own business, let's take a look at the following image from Shutterstock. On the left side of the image, you see a magnet. That magnet is drawing in consumers, which takes place a number of ways. From blogging to social media to paid ads and whatever in between, how the visitors arrive to your site has some influence on the success of your funnel. Stage 1: Awareness What's more crucial about the sales funnel is what occurs when those visitors (we can call them prospects) really do get here. Through a range of means, a number of which you've currently seen, such as email newsletter signups, ebook downloads, online quizzes and more, those potential customers participate in your sales funnel through an luring offer. The objective of your whole sale funnel and platform is to resolve your consumer's issue. When you know the issue, and you construct content to draw them in, then use them a item or service to fix their problem, that's when the genuine magic happens. Getting to that stage takes work and you have to amass their awareness. As soon as the possibility is in the proverbial funnel, you've peaked their awareness. That's the first phase of the funnel. Getting a possibility mindful of you is no easy accomplishment. Relying on how they  have actually arrived to your site ( naturally or through a paid ad), those customers might view your funnel differently and your opt-in rates will vary significantly. For example, when a customer discovers you organically through a Google look for example, that means you have some aspect of authority. When you have authority, prospects are more likely to enter into your funnel because they understand that if they discovered you relevantly, that whatever it is that you're offering need to be of a excellent worth. That's simply the nature of SEO and natural search. Naturally, regardless of how they participate in your funnel, your goal as a online marketer is to move them through the several stages that will take them from possibility to purchaser. And once they  know you, you need to construct their interest. To do this, you need to develop a relationship with the consumer. You might have enticed them with a great deal (lead magnet) to get their e-mail address, but really moving them through the funnel is a far higher challenge. The truth? Individuals are clever. They're not merely going to purchase anything from anybody unless they feel there's an immense quantity of worth to be had there. Therefore, your funnel requirements to developed that value and bake it in through a range of methods. Most importantly, you have to develop a strong bond with your possibility, and that takes place by being relatable, transparent and truthful in your email warming series. Phase 2: Interest You acquire the potential customers interest through an email series. You begin to relate stories to them that tie into who you are and how you  have actually arrived to this point in your life. Brunson, in his book, Expert Tricks, calls this the Attractive Character. Are you the reluctant hero whose journey happened practically by mistake, however you feel like you owe it to yourself and the world to convey something of fantastic worth? Or, are you an traveler, an evangelist or a leader ? How you place yourself is totally as much as you, however your message needs to correspond throughout your whole "pitch" and it requires to be steeped in the reality. Your backstory, and just how you convey that through parables, character defects and polarity, has much to do with just how well you can "hook" in your potential customers to develop a mass motion. Of course, implementing this isn't simple. You need to first develop your stories, then select how you're going to communicate those stories and at what drip-rate. For example, your very first email or 2 may head out on the day they initially signup, then one e-mail per day might go out afterwards. Just how much of that will be story-based and just how much will be pitches? In a recent discussion I had with Perry Belcher, co-founder of Native Commerce Media, he informed me that you also require to train your potential customers to click links. For example, you might have them click on a link of what interests them or connect them to a post or eventually to a item or service that you're selling, but you require to train them to construct a habit of clicking on those links from the very start. Stage 3: Choice The next stage is the decision. Getting prospects to make a decision isn't simple. The very best way to get them there? Beyond the art of story informing, building the practice and copywriting of link-clicking, you require to have lots and lots of client evaluations and reviews. This is among the most effective manner ins which you can get people to do something about it. Obviously, if you're going the paid ad path, you might likewise use Facebook and Google re-targeting to keep that awareness and interest level high. If you've ever noticed after leaving a specific website, that you start to see their advertisement everywhere, there's a specific reason for that. Especially if they've currently entered your sales funnel , this is a very powerful way to get them to act. You might show them re-targeting advertisements that have video testimonials or reviews by other clients. If you have media publications that have actually blogged about you, you could take that opportunity to highlight those. It's just an included aspect of exposure when they see this in your sales funnel and you follow them around with re-targeting. But however you get them to choose to act, flipping that switch isn't easy. You need to present them with a excellent chance and usage Robert Cialdini's 6 principles, laid out in his 1984 book, Impact, in one method or another to move them through this stage: Principle of reciprocity-- This is accomplished by delivering great deals of worth, either through whatever it is that you offered them as a free offer (lead magnet) in the very start, or in an ongoing exchange through your emails. Concept of dedication & consistency-- When individuals devote to something, they're much more likely to buy from you. That's why getting them to consent to something like a complimentary + shipping deal or by concurring with something you've stated in some method. This is a powerful principle in sales and if you focus on a few of the best online marketers worldwide, you'll see that they work busily to get your dedication to something, even if it's really little in the beginning. When people like you (i.e. they relate to your stories) they are more likely to purchase something from you, concept of taste--. How well you craft your story and convey that to your prospects is going to play a big function in whether they decide to act or not. Concept of authority-- How much authority do your products or services have? Are their reputable people in your neighborhood that have endorsed it? Scientific research studies that are backing it? Are you yourself an authority? All these elements enter into play in this process. Concept of social evidence-- Do you have social evidence? Are people on social networks raving or talking about how terrific your services or products are? Do you have some other kind of social evidence? Best-selling books? Something else? It's importnat that you provide this to potential customers if you do have them. Principle of shortage-- How much shortage have you baked into your e-mail sequence? Once again, people are wise, however when you use the principle of shortage, as in there are only a restricted quantity of some offer or time left prior to a discount ends or slots offered for an online class, it attracts people to act. Stage 4: Action The final stage of the sales funnel is the action that you're planning them to carry out. In many cases this is the purchase. Again, how well you move them through the various phases is going to set you up with a specific conversion for this action. If 100 individuals click on your offer and 10 individuals enter your sales funnel however only acquire people purchase, then you have a 2 percent conversion. The best part about this, and the most powerful route that entrepreneurs take to scale their businesses, is that if you know that sending out 100 individuals to your website expenses you $200, for example, however you get 2 individuals to transform at $300 each, then you have a $600 return on $200 invested (300 percent). When you understand that, that's when the whole game changes and you can infinitely scale your deals. This how the world's most intelligent online marketers scale out their services. They understand the conversion worth and they  have actually modified and perfected their sales funnels, so they pursue this with a vengeance by merely scaling out their deals. If you understand that, by investing $1 you're going to get $3 back, you will considerably invest $1 repeatedly. Get the point? Nevertheless, getting to this phase is no basic accomplishment. It takes an huge amount of work and effort plus tracking. By implementing sales funnel software, such as the platform constructed by Brunson, you can certainly lower the headache, but there's still great deals of work to be done. Copy needs to be written, tracking pixels require to be installed and e-mail sequences require to be developed. That's what it takes to succeed. Consider that the next time you're developing out a sales funnel. This complex and elaborate idea in business can literally take you from a total unknown to a global powerhouse rapidly through the art of scaling out a highly-converting deal. Don't attempt to take faster ways or carry out hacks, and put in the time if you're seeking to eventually enjoy the results and benefits . What Is BossFunnels All About? Bossfunnels is a wise drag and drop funnel builder with all the features that clickfunnels, leadpages ETC have! But there's a lot more ... Bossfunnels develops VIRAL funnels, so your consumers can build enormous lists and get extreme amounts of traffic. Promoting this extremely high quality item you can offer your customers something that they will enjoy and use for years to come. Here's Are Some Secret Advantages You May Be Interested In Getting: Done-For-You Funnels In 1-Click. Free Viral Traffic In Seconds Built-In ... No Hosting, Coding Or Style ... 3-Figure A Day Tutorials Included. No Monthly Charges ... Enjoy Sales While You Sleep ... Be Your Own Boss ... 180-Day Money Back Guarantee ... Get or get results Paid $500 ...
youtube
0 notes
ame-yagi · 4 years
Text
What is a Funnel or Salesfunnel and do I really need a Funnel for my organisation
One of the core ideas in the digital marketing industry is the sales funnel . While odd sounding initially, this single core concept can take a organisation from unidentified and essentially non-existent to multi-million-dollar marketing machine with mass saturation, apparently overnight. There are proficient specialists who have actually constructed a profession around implementing this single idea in company. If you're questioning what a sales funnel is, simply think of a real-world funnel. At the top of that funnel, some substance is put in, which filters down towards one finite location. In sales, something similar takes place. At the top, great deals of visitors arrive who might enter your funnel. However, unlike the real-world funnel, not all who go into the sales funnel will reemerge out from the other end. To much better understand the principle of a sales funnel and simply how you can execute it in your own service, let's take a look at the following image from Shutterstock. On the left side of the image, you see a magnet. That magnet is drawing in customers, which happens a number of ways. From blogging to social networks to paid ads and whatever in between, how the visitors get here to your site has some effect on the success of your funnel. Phase 1: Awareness When those visitors (we can call them prospects) in fact do get here, what's more important about the sales funnel is what occurs. Through a variety of methods, a lot of which you  have actually currently seen, such as email newsletter signups, ebook downloads, online tests and more, those prospects participate in your sales funnel through an enticing offer. The objective of your entire sale funnel and platform is to fix your consumer's issue. When you know the issue, and you develop content to draw them in, then use them a service or product to fix their issue, that's when the real magic takes place. Nevertheless, getting to that phase takes work and you have to amass their awareness first. As soon as the prospect remains in the proverbial funnel, you  have actually peaked their awareness. That's the first phase of the funnel. Getting a possibility aware of you is no easy accomplishment. Depending upon how they've arrived to your website (organically or through a paid ad), those customers may view your funnel in a different way and your opt-in rates will differ considerably. For example, when a consumer discovers you organically through a Google look for example, that suggests you have some aspect of authority. When you have authority, prospects are more likely to participate in your funnel because they know that if they discovered you relevantly, that whatever it is that you're supplying must be of a great value. That's just the nature of SEO and organic search. Obviously, no matter how they get in into your funnel, your objective as a marketer is to move them through the numerous phases that will take them from possibility to buyer. And when they  understand you, you require to develop their interest. To do this, you need to establish a relationship with the client. You might have lured them with a terrific offer (lead magnet) to grab their email address, but in fact moving them through the funnel is a far higher obstacle. The fact? Individuals are smart. They're not just going to buy anything from anybody unless they feel there's an tremendous quantity of worth to be had there. Thus, your funnel requirements to developed that worth and bake it in through a variety of ways. However most significantly, you have to develop a strong bond with your possibility, which occurs by being relatable, truthful and transparent in your e-mail warming sequence. Stage 2: Interest You gain the prospects interest through an e-mail sequence. You begin to relate stories to them that tie into who you are and how you've arrived to this point in your life. Brunson, in his book, Expert Tricks, calls this the Attractive Character. Are you the hesitant hero whose journey happened nearly by error, but you feel like you owe it to yourself and the world to communicate something of excellent value? Or, are you a leader, an adventurer or an evangelist ? How you place yourself is totally as much as you, but your message should be constant throughout your entire "pitch" and it requires to be steeped in the truth. Your backstory, and simply how you communicate that through parables, character defects and polarity, has much to do with simply how well you can "hook" in your prospects to develop a mass movement. Naturally, executing this isn't simple. You need to first develop your stories, then decide on how you're going to communicate those stories and at what drip-rate. For example, your first e-mail or more may head out on the day they initially signup, then one email per day might go out later on. How much of that will be story-based and just how much will be pitches? In a recent discussion I had with Perry Belcher, co-founder of Native Commerce Media, he informed me that you also need to train your potential customers to click links. You might have them click on a link of what interests them or link them to a blog site post or ultimately to a item or service that you're selling, but you need to train them to develop a practice of clicking on those links from the very beginning. Phase 3: Choice The next phase is the choice. Getting potential customers to decide isn't easy. The best way to get them there? Beyond the art of story telling, constructing the habit and copywriting of link-clicking, you need to have lots and great deals of client reviews and reviews. This is one of the most effective manner ins which you can get individuals to act. Of course, if you're going the paid advertisement route, you could likewise utilize Facebook and Google re-targeting to keep that awareness and interest level high. For example, if you've ever observed after leaving a particular website, that you start to see their ad all over, there's a specific reason for that. Particularly if they've currently entered your sales funnel , this is a really powerful method to get them to act. You might reveal them re-targeting advertisements that have video testimonials or evaluations by other clients. You could take that opportunity to highlight those if you have media publications that have written about you. When they see this in your sales funnel and you follow them around with re-targeting, it's just an included element of direct exposure. But nevertheless you get them to choose to act, flipping that switch isn't easy. You require to present them with a terrific chance and usage Robert Cialdini's 6 concepts, outlined in his 1984 book, Impact, in one way or another to move them through this phase: Principle of reciprocity-- This is attained by providing great deals of value, either through whatever it is that you provided them as a free offer (lead magnet) in the very start, or in an continuous exchange through your emails. Concept of dedication & consistency-- When people commit to something, they're much more most likely to buy from you. That's why getting them to concur to something like a complimentary + shipping deal or by agreeing with something you  have actually said in some way. This is a effective principle in sales and if you focus on some of the very best online marketers on the planet, you'll observe that they work fervently to get your commitment to something, even if it's very small in the start. Concept of liking-- When individuals like you (i.e. they connect to your stories) they are most likely to buy something from you. How well you craft your story and communicate that to your prospects is going to play a big role in whether they choose to act or not. Principle of authority-- How much authority do your services or products have? Are their respected people in your neighborhood that have endorsed it? Scientific studies that are backing it? Are you yourself an authority? All these aspects come into play in this procedure. Principle of social evidence-- Do you have social proof? Are people on social media talking or raving about how great your items or services are? Do you have some other kind of social proof? Very popular books? Something else? If you do have them, it's importnat that you present this to prospects. Principle of deficiency-- Just how much shortage have you baked into your email series? Again, individuals are wise, however when you apply the concept of deficiency, as in there are just a minimal amount of some offer or time left before a discount expires or slots readily available for an online class, it lures people to act. Phase 4: Action The last of the sales funnel is the action that you're meaning them to carry out. This is the purchase. Once again, how well you move them through the numerous phases is going to set you up with a particular conversion for this action. For example, if 100 individuals click on your deal and 10 people enter your sales funnel however just acquire individuals purchase, then you have a 2 percent conversion. Nevertheless, the very best part about this, and the most effective route that business owners require to scale their companies, is that if you know that sending 100 individuals to your website costs you $200, for example, however you get two people to convert at $300 each, then you have a $600 return on $200 invested (300 percent). When you know that, that's when the entire game changes and you can considerably scale your offers. This how the world's most intelligent marketers scale out their organisations. They know the conversion worth and they've fine-tuned and perfected their sales funnels, so they pursue this with a revenge by simply scaling out their deals. If you understand that, by investing $1 you're going to get $3 back, you will definitely invest $1 repeatedly. Understand? Getting to this phase is no simple task. It takes an enormous amount of work and effort plus tracking. By implementing sales funnel software application, such as the platform built by Brunson, you can absolutely cut down the headache, however there's still great deals of work to be done. Copy needs to be written, tracking pixels need to be set up and email sequences need to be developed. That's what it takes to prosper. Think about that the next time you're constructing out a sales funnel. This complex and intricate idea in service can literally take you from a total unknown to a global powerhouse rapidly through the art of scaling out a highly-converting offer. Do not attempt to take faster ways or carry out hacks, and put in the time if you're looking to eventually enjoy the benefits and results . What Is BossFunnels All About? Bossfunnels is a clever drag and drop funnel builder with all the functions that clickfunnels, leadpages ETC have! There's even more ... Bossfunnels creates VIRAL produces, so your customers can consumers massive lists and get extreme amounts of traffic. Promoting this exceptionally high quality product you can offer your consumers something that they will utilize and like for several years to come. Here's Are Some Key Advantages You Might Have An Interest In Getting: Done-For-You Funnels In 1-Click. Free Viral Traffic In Seconds Built-In ... No Hosting, Coding Or Design ... 3-Figure A Day Tutorials Consisted Of. No Month-to-month Fees ... Enjoy Sales While You Sleep ... Be Your Own Boss ... 180-Day Money Back Assurance ... Get or get outcomes Paid $500 ...
youtube
0 notes
the-space-paris · 4 years
Text
What is a Funnel or Salesfunnel and do I really need a Funnel for my service
One of the core concepts in the digital marketing industry is the sales funnel . While odd sounding initially, this single core concept can take a organisation from essentially non-existent and unidentified to multi-million-dollar marketing maker with mass saturation, relatively overnight. In truth, there are experienced specialists who have developed a profession around implementing this single concept in company. If you're wondering what a sales funnel is, just think of a real-world funnel. At the top of that funnel, some compound is put in, which filters down towards one finite location. In sales, something similar occurs. At the top, lots of visitors arrive who might enter your funnel. Unlike the real-world funnel, not all who go into the sales funnel will reemerge out from the other end. To better comprehend the concept of a sales funnel and just how you can implement it in your own business, let's look at the following image from Shutterstock. On the left side of the image, you see a magnet. That magnet is attracting consumers, which happens a number of ways. From blogging to social media to paid ads and everything in between, how the visitors arrive to your website has some influence on the success of your funnel. Stage 1: Awareness When those visitors (we can call them prospects) really do arrive, what's more crucial about the sales funnel is what happens. Through a range of methods, numerous of which you  have actually currently seen, such as email newsletter signups, ebook downloads, online tests and more, those prospects enter into your sales funnel through an luring offer. The objective of your entire sale funnel and platform is to resolve your client's issue. When you know the problem, and you construct material to draw them in, then use them a product and services to solve their issue, that's when the genuine magic takes place. Nevertheless, getting to that stage takes work and you need to garner their awareness initially. When the possibility is in the proverbial funnel, you  have actually peaked their awareness. That's the first phase of the funnel. However, getting a prospect aware of you is no simple feat. Relying on how they  have actually shown up to your site ( naturally or through a paid ad), those consumers might see your funnel differently and your opt-in rates will differ considerably. For example, when a consumer discovers you naturally through a Google look for example, that means you have some element of authority. When you have authority, potential customers are more most likely to enter into your funnel due to the fact that they understand that if they found you relevantly, that whatever it is that you're providing should be of a great value. That's just the nature of SEO and natural search. Naturally, regardless of how they participate in your funnel, your goal as a marketer is to move them through the several phases that will take them from possibility to buyer. And as soon as they  understand you, you require to construct their interest. To do this, you need to develop a relationship with the customer. You might have lured them with a fantastic deal (lead magnet) to get their e-mail address, however really moving them through the funnel is a far greater obstacle. The reality? Individuals are clever. They're not just going to purchase anything from anybody unless they feel there's an immense quantity of worth to be had there. Hence, your funnel needs to constructed that value and bake it in through a variety of ways. However most importantly, you have to develop a strong bond with your possibility, and that occurs by being relatable, transparent and truthful in your e-mail warming sequence. Stage 2: Interest You get the potential customers interest through an e-mail sequence. You start to relate stories to them that tie into who you are and how you  have actually shown up to this point in your life. Brunson, in his book, Expert Tricks, calls this the Appealing Character. Are you the reluctant hero whose journey happened almost by error, but you feel like you owe it to yourself and the world to convey something of fantastic value? Or, are you a leader, an traveler or an evangelist ? How you position yourself is completely up to you, however your message needs to correspond throughout your entire "pitch" and it needs to be steeped in the truth. Your backstory, and just how you communicate that through parables, character defects and polarity, has much to do with simply how well you can "hook" in your prospects to create a mass movement. Obviously, implementing this isn't simple. You require to very first establish your stories, then decide on how you're going to communicate those stories and at what drip-rate. For instance, your first e-mail or 2 may head out on the day they initially signup, then one e-mail each day might go out later on. Just how much of that will be story-based and how much will be pitches? In a recent conversation I had with Perry Belcher, co-founder of Native Commerce Media, he informed me that you likewise require to train your potential customers to click on links. For example, you might have them click a link of what interests them or link them to a article or ultimately to a service or product that you're offering, however you require to train them to build a habit of clicking those links from the very start. Phase 3: Decision The next stage is the choice. Getting prospects to make a decision isn't easy. The best way to get them there? Beyond the art of story telling, copywriting and constructing the habit of link-clicking, you need to have lots and lots of client evaluations and reviews. This is among the most effective manner ins which you can get individuals to act. Of course, if you're going the paid ad path, you might likewise use Facebook and Google re-targeting to keep that awareness and interest level high. For instance, if you've ever noticed after leaving a particular site, that you begin to see their advertisement everywhere, there's a particular reason for that. Particularly if they've currently entered your sales funnel , this is a extremely powerful method to get them to act. For instance, you could reveal them re-targeting advertisements that have video reviews or evaluations by other clients. You could take that chance to highlight those if you have media publications that have composed about you. It's merely an added aspect of exposure when they see this in your sales funnel and you follow them around with re-targeting. But however you get them to decide to act, flipping that switch isn't easy. You require to present them with a terrific opportunity and usage Robert Cialdini's 6 concepts, outlined in his 1984 book, Influence, in one way or another to move them through this phase: Concept of reciprocity-- This is accomplished by providing great deals of value, either through whatever it is that you offered them as a complimentary deal (lead magnet) in the very start, or in an continuous exchange through your emails. Principle of dedication & consistency-- When individuals dedicate to something, they're even more likely to buy from you. That's why getting them to consent to something like a totally free + shipping deal or by concurring with something you  have actually said in some method. This is a powerful principle in sales and if you take note of a few of the best online marketers on the planet, you'll observe that they work fervently to get your commitment to something, even if it's very small in the beginning. Principle of preference-- When people like you (i.e. they relate to your stories) they are more most likely to purchase something from you. How well you craft your story and communicate that to your prospects is going to play a big role in whether they choose to act or not. Principle of authority-- Just how much authority do your product and services have? Are their respected people in your neighborhood that have endorsed it? Scientific research studies that are backing it? Are you yourself an authority? All these elements come into play in this procedure. Principle of social evidence-- Do you have social proof? Are people on social networks raving or talking about how excellent your services or products are? Do you have some other type of social proof? Best-selling books? Something else? If you do have them, it's importnat that you provide this to potential customers. Principle of shortage-- How much scarcity have you baked into your e-mail sequence? Once again, individuals are wise, however when you apply the principle of shortage, as in there are only a minimal amount of some offer or time left before a discount expires or slots offered for an online class, it entices individuals to take action. Stage 4: Action The last of the sales funnel is the action that you're meaning them to carry out. This is the purchase. Once again, how well you move them through the different phases is going to set you up with a specific conversion for this action. For example, if 100 people click your deal and 10 people enter your sales funnel but just acquire individuals purchase, then you have a 2 percent conversion. The best part about this, and the most effective route that business owners take to scale their companies, is that if you know that sending out 100 people to your site costs you $200, for example, however you get 2 people to convert at $300 each, then you have a $600 return on $200 invested (300 percent). When you know that, that's when the entire game changes and you can definitely scale your offers. This how the world's most intelligent online marketers scale out their organisations. They understand the conversion worth and they  have actually tweaked and refined their sales funnels, so they pursue this with a revenge by merely scaling out their deals. If you understand that, by investing $1 you're going to get $3 back, you will considerably invest $1 repeatedly. Understand? Getting to this phase is no simple feat. It takes an huge quantity of work and effort plus tracking. By executing sales funnel software, such as the platform constructed by Brunson, you can certainly lower the headache, but there's still lots of work to be done. Copy requirements to be composed, tracking pixels require to be set up and email series need to be developed. That's what it takes to prosper. Think about that the next time you're developing out a sales funnel. This complex and complex principle in business can actually take you from a complete unknown to a international powerhouse quickly through the art of scaling out a highly-converting deal. Don't attempt to take shortcuts or carry out hacks, and put in the time if you're aiming to eventually reap the outcomes and advantages . What Is BossFunnels All About? Bossfunnels is a clever drag and drop funnel builder with all the features that clickfunnels, leadpages ETC have! There's even more ... Bossfunnels creates VIRAL produces, so your customers can consumers massive develop and get extreme amounts severe quantities. Promoting this incredibly high quality product you can offer your consumers something that they will love and utilize for many years to come. Here's Are Some Key Advantages You Might Have An Interest In Getting: Done-For-You Funnels In 1-Click. Free Viral Traffic In Seconds Built-In ... No Hosting, Coding Or Design ... 3-Figure A Day Tutorials Included. No Regular monthly Fees ... Enjoy Sales While You Sleep ... Be Your Own Boss ... 180-Day Money Back Guarantee ... Get Outcomes Or Get Paid $500 ...
youtube
0 notes
retrogayicons · 4 years
Text
What is a Funnel or Salesfunnel and do I really need a Funnel for my organisation
Among the core principles in the digital marketing industry is the sales funnel . While odd sounding in the beginning, this single core idea can take a organisation from unknown and virtually non-existent to multi-million-dollar marketing machine with mass saturation, seemingly over night. In reality, there are experienced practitioners who have developed a career around implementing this single principle in business. If you're wondering what a sales funnel is, merely think of a real-world funnel. At the top of that funnel, some substance is gathered, which filters down towards one finite location. In sales, something similar takes place. At the top, great deals of visitors arrive who might enter your funnel. Nevertheless, unlike the real-world funnel, not all who get in the sales funnel will reemerge out from the other end. To much better understand the principle of a sales funnel and just how you can execute it in your own organisation, let's take a look at the following image from Shutterstock. On the left side of the image, you see a magnet. That magnet is attracting customers, which happens a number of ways. From blogging to social networks to paid advertisements and whatever in between, how the visitors show up to your site has some effect on the success of your funnel. Stage 1: Awareness What's more vital about the sales funnel is what happens when those visitors (we can call them potential customers) really do get here. Through a variety of ways, many of which you've currently seen, such as email newsletter signups, ebook downloads, online tests and more, those prospects enter into your sales funnel through an enticing offer. The objective of your whole sale funnel and platform is to fix your consumer's problem. When you know the problem, and you construct material to draw them in, then provide them a item or service to solve their problem, that's when the genuine magic happens. Getting to that phase takes work and you have to amass their awareness. When the possibility is in the proverbial funnel, you  have actually peaked their awareness. That's the very first phase of the funnel. However, getting a prospect knowledgeable about you is no basic accomplishment. Relying on how they  have actually gotten here to your website ( naturally or through a paid advertisement), those clients may view your funnel differently and your opt-in rates will vary significantly. When a customer discovers you naturally through a Google search for example, that implies you have some aspect of authority. When you have authority, potential customers are more likely to enter into your funnel because they understand that if they found you relevantly, that whatever it is that you're providing must be of a fantastic value. That's simply the nature of SEO and organic search. Obviously, despite how they enter into your funnel, your goal as a marketer is to move them through the several phases that will take them from possibility to buyer. And when they  understand you, you need to build their interest. To do this, you need to develop a relationship with the consumer. You might have lured them with a fantastic deal (lead magnet) to grab their email address, but actually moving them through the funnel is a far higher challenge. The fact? Individuals are smart. They're not just going to purchase anything from anyone unless they feel there's an tremendous amount of worth to be had there. Hence, your funnel requirements to built that worth and bake it in through a range of ways. Most notably, you have to develop a strong bond with your prospect, and that occurs by being relatable, transparent and honest in your email warming sequence. Phase 2: Interest You acquire the potential customers interest through an email sequence. You start to relate stories to them that tie into who you are and how you've gotten here to this point in your life. Brunson, in his book, Professional Tricks, calls this the Appealing Character. Are you the reluctant hero whose journey occurred almost by mistake, but you seem like you owe it to yourself and the world to convey something of great value? Or, are you an adventurer, a leader or an evangelist ? How you position yourself is completely up to you, but your message should be consistent throughout your whole "pitch" and it needs to be steeped in the fact. Your backstory, and just how you communicate that through parables, character flaws and polarity, has much to do with simply how well you can "hook" in your prospects to produce a mass movement. Naturally, executing this isn't simple. You need to first develop your stories, then decide on how you're going to convey those stories and at what drip-rate. For instance, your first email or two might head out on the day they first signup, then one e-mail each day might head out afterwards. How much of that will be story-based and just how much will be pitches? In a recent discussion I had with Perry Belcher, co-founder of Native Commerce Media, he informed me that you also need to train your potential customers to click on links. You might have them click on a link of what interests them or link them to a blog site post or eventually to a product or service that you're selling, however you need to train them to build a routine of clicking on those links from the very beginning. Phase 3: Choice The next stage is the choice. Getting prospects to make a decision isn't easy. The finest way to get them there? Beyond the art of story informing, copywriting and developing the habit of link-clicking, you require to have lots and lots of consumer evaluations and testimonials. This is one of the most powerful manner ins which you can get individuals to take action. Of course, if you're going the paid ad route, you could likewise utilize Facebook and Google re-targeting to keep that awareness and interest level high. For instance, if you've ever noticed after leaving a specific website, that you start to see their ad all over, there's a particular reason for that. Particularly if they've currently entered your sales funnel , this is a really effective way to get them to act. For example, you could show them re-targeting ads that have video testimonials or evaluations by other clients. You could take that opportunity to highlight those if you have media publications that have written about you. It's simply an added element of exposure when they see this in your sales funnel and you follow them around with re-targeting. But however you get them to choose to act, flipping that switch isn't easy. You need to provide them with a fantastic opportunity and usage Robert Cialdini's 6 principles, laid out in his 1984 book, Impact, in one way or another to move them through this phase: Principle of reciprocity-- This is achieved by providing lots of value, either through whatever it is that you provided them as a free deal (lead magnet) in the very start, or in an continuous exchange through your emails. Concept of dedication & consistency-- When individuals commit to something, they're even more most likely to buy from you. That's why getting them to consent to something like a complimentary + shipping offer or by concurring with something you've stated in some way. This is a effective concept in sales and if you take notice of some of the best online marketers in the world, you'll see that they work busily to get your commitment to something, even if it's very small in the start. When people like you (i.e. they relate to your stories) they are more most likely to purchase something from you, principle of taste--. How well you craft your story and communicate that to your prospects is going to play a huge role in whether they choose to act or not. Principle of authority-- How much authority do your services or items have? Are their respected individuals in your community that have endorsed it? Scientific research studies that are backing it? Are you yourself an authority? All these elements enter play in this process. Concept of social proof-- Do you have social evidence? Are people on social networks raving or talking about how great your services or products are? Do you have some other type of social proof? Very popular books? Something else? If you do have them, it's importnat that you provide this to potential customers. Concept of deficiency-- How much scarcity have you baked into your email series? Once again, individuals are wise, but when you use the concept of scarcity, as in there are only a restricted amount of some deal or time left before a discount rate ends or slots readily available for an online class, it entices individuals to act. Stage 4: Action The last of the sales funnel is the action that you're planning them to perform. This is the purchase. Again, how well you move them through the numerous stages is going to set you up with a particular conversion for this action. If 100 people click on your offer and 10 individuals enter your sales funnel however only acquire people purchase, then you have a 2 percent conversion. The finest part about this, and the most powerful path that entrepreneurs take to scale their services, is that if you know that sending out 100 people to your website costs you $200, for example, however you get two people to convert at $300 each, then you have a $600 return on $200 invested (300 percent). When you understand that, that's when the entire game changes and you can considerably scale your offers. This how the world's most intelligent online marketers scale out their organisations. They know the conversion worth and they  have actually fine-tuned and refined their sales funnels, so they pursue this with a revenge by merely scaling out their deals. If you understand that, by investing $1 you're going to get $3 back, you will considerably invest $1 consistently. Understand? However, getting to this phase is no simple task. It takes an enormous quantity of work and effort plus tracking. By carrying out sales funnel software application, such as the platform built by Brunson, you can certainly cut down the headache, however there's still great deals of work to be done. Copy needs to be written, tracking pixels require to be set up and email sequences require to be developed. But that's what it requires to succeed. Believe about that the next time you're constructing out a sales funnel. This complex and intricate idea in business can literally take you from a total unknown to a global powerhouse quickly through the art of scaling out a highly-converting offer. Don't attempt to take shortcuts or implement hacks, and put in the time if you're looking to eventually enjoy the advantages and outcomes . What Is BossFunnels All About? Bossfunnels is a smart drag and drop funnel builder with all the functions that clickfunnels, leadpages ETC have! There's even more ... Bossfunnels creates VIRAL produces, so your customers can clients massive develop enormous get extreme amounts severe quantities. Promoting this incredibly high quality product you can offer your clients something that they will use and love for several years to come. Here's Are Some Key Advantages You May Be Interested In Getting: Done-For-You Funnels In 1-Click. Free Viral Traffic In Seconds Integrated ... No Hosting, Coding Or Style ... 3-Figure A Day Tutorials Consisted Of. No Monthly Fees ... Enjoy Sales While You Sleep ... Be Your Own Boss ... 180-Day Cash Back Warranty ... Get or get outcomes Paid $500 ...
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againbeholdthestars · 4 years
Text
What is a Funnel or Salesfunnel and do I really require a Funnel for my business
One of the core ideas in the digital marketing market is the sales funnel . While odd sounding in the beginning, this single core idea can take a business from unidentified and practically non-existent to multi-million-dollar marketing maker with mass saturation, seemingly overnight. There are skilled practitioners who have actually developed a profession around implementing this single concept in service. Just envision a real-world funnel if you're wondering what a sales funnel is. At the top of that funnel, some compound is gathered, which filters down towards one limited destination. In sales, something similar occurs. At the top, great deals of visitors arrive who may enter your funnel. Unlike the real-world funnel, not all who get in the sales funnel will reemerge out from the other end. To much better comprehend the principle of a sales funnel and simply how you can implement it in your own business, let's take a look at the following image from Shutterstock. On the left side of the image, you see a magnet. That magnet is bring in consumers, which occurs a variety of ways. From blogging to social media to paid ads and everything in between, how the visitors get here to your site has some influence on the success of your funnel. Phase 1: Awareness What's more crucial about the sales funnel is what happens when those visitors (we can call them potential customers) actually do arrive. Through a range of methods, a number of which you  have actually currently seen, such as e-mail newsletter signups, ebook downloads, online tests and more, those prospects participate in your sales funnel through an enticing offer. The goal of your whole sale funnel and platform is to solve your consumer's issue. When you know the issue, and you build content to draw them in, then provide them a services or product to solve their problem, that's when the genuine magic occurs. Nevertheless, getting to that phase takes work and you have to gather their awareness first. When the prospect remains in the proverbial funnel, you've peaked their awareness. That's the first phase of the funnel. Getting a prospect conscious of you is no basic feat. Relying on how they've arrived to your website ( naturally or through a paid ad), those customers may see your funnel in a different way and your opt-in rates will differ substantially. For example, when a customer finds you naturally through a Google look for example, that means you have some component of authority. When you have authority, potential customers are more likely to participate in your funnel since they know that if they found you relevantly, that whatever it is that you're providing must be of a terrific worth. That's just the nature of SEO and organic search. Of course, despite how they enter into your funnel, your goal as a online marketer is to move them through the several phases that will take them from possibility to purchaser. And as soon as they  understand you, you require to develop their interest. To do this, you need to develop a relationship with the client. You may have lured them with a excellent deal (lead magnet) to get their email address, however really moving them through the funnel is a far higher difficulty. The fact? People are wise. They're not just going to purchase anything from anybody unless they feel there's an immense quantity of value to be had there. Thus, your funnel needs to built that value and bake it in through a range of ways. Most significantly, you have to produce a strong bond with your possibility, and that happens by being relatable, honest and transparent in your e-mail warming sequence. Phase 2: Interest You gain the prospects interest through an email series. You start to relate stories to them that tie into who you are and how you  have actually arrived to this point in your life. Brunson, in his book, Expert Secrets, calls this the Appealing Character. Are you the reluctant hero whose journey happened practically by mistake, however you seem like you owe it to yourself and the world to convey something of excellent worth? Or, are you an traveler, a leader or an evangelist ? How you position yourself is totally approximately you, but your message needs to be constant throughout your entire "pitch" and it requires to be soaked in the truth. Your backstory, and just how you communicate that through parables, character flaws and polarity, has much to do with simply how well you can "hook" in your prospects to develop a mass motion. Of course, executing this isn't easy. You need to very first develop your stories, then pick how you're going to communicate those stories and at what drip-rate. Your very first e-mail or 2 might go out on the day they initially signup, then one email per day may go out afterwards. How much of that will be story-based and just how much will be pitches? In a recent conversation I had with Perry Belcher, co-founder of Native Commerce Media, he told me that you also need to train your potential customers to click on links. You might have them click on a link of what interests them or link them to a blog post or eventually to a item or service that you're offering, however you need to train them to build a routine of clicking on those links from the very beginning. Phase 3: Decision The next phase is the decision. Getting potential customers to make a choice isn't simple. The very best method to get them there? Beyond the art of story informing, building the routine and copywriting of link-clicking, you need to have lots and lots of consumer evaluations and reviews. This is among the most effective manner ins which you can get people to act. Obviously, if you're going the paid advertisement path, you might likewise use Facebook and Google re-targeting to keep that awareness and interest level high. For instance, if you've ever observed after leaving a specific website, that you start to see their advertisement all over, there's a specific factor for that. If they  have actually already entered your sales funnel, particularly , this is a extremely effective method to get them to act. For instance, you might show them re-targeting ads that have video reviews or reviews by other clients. If you have media publications that have written about you, you might take that chance to highlight those. It's just an included aspect of direct exposure when they see this in your sales funnel and you follow them around with re-targeting. But however you get them to choose to act, turning that switch isn't easy. You require to present them with a fantastic chance and usage Robert Cialdini's 6 concepts, laid out in his 1984 book, Impact, in one method or another to move them through this phase: Concept of reciprocity-- This is accomplished by delivering great deals of value, either through whatever it is that you supplied them as a complimentary offer (lead magnet) in the very beginning, or in an ongoing exchange through your emails. Principle of commitment & consistency-- When people devote to something, they're far more likely to buy from you. That's why getting them to accept something like a totally free + shipping offer or by agreeing with something you  have actually said in some way. This is a effective principle in sales and if you focus on some of the very best marketers on the planet, you'll observe that they work fervently to get your commitment to something, even if it's really small in the start. When people like you (i.e. they relate to your stories) they are more likely to acquire something from you, principle of preference--. How well you craft your story and communicate that to your prospects is going to play a huge function in whether they decide to act or not. Principle of authority-- Just how much authority do your services or items have? Are their respected individuals in your community that have backed it? Scientific studies that are backing it? Are you yourself an authority? All these elements enter into play in this procedure. Concept of social proof-- Do you have social proof? Are individuals on social media raving or talking about how excellent your service or products are? Do you have some other type of social proof? Very popular books? Something else? If you do have them, it's importnat that you present this to potential customers. Principle of scarcity-- Just how much shortage have you baked into your e-mail series? Once again, people are wise, but when you use the concept of scarcity, as in there are only a limited quantity of some offer or time left before a discount rate ends or slots offered for an online class, it attracts individuals to act. Stage 4: Action The final phase of the sales funnel is the action that you're meaning them to carry out. Most of the times this is the purchase. Once again, how well you move them through the various stages is going to set you up with a specific conversion for this action. For example, if 100 individuals click on your deal and 10 individuals enter your sales funnel however only acquire individuals purchase, then you have a 2 percent conversion. The best part about this, and the most powerful path that entrepreneurs take to scale their businesses, is that if you know that sending out 100 people to your website costs you $200, for example, but you get 2 people to convert at $300 each, then you have a $600 return on $200 invested (300 percent). That's when the whole game modifications and you can definitely scale your offers when you know that. This how the world's smartest online marketers scale out their businesses. They know the conversion worth and they've fine-tuned and refined their sales funnels, so they pursue this with a revenge by merely scaling out their deals. If you know that, by investing $1 you're going to get $3 back, you will considerably invest $1 consistently. Get the point? However, getting to this stage is no basic accomplishment. It takes an huge amount of work and effort plus tracking. By implementing sales funnel software, such as the platform constructed by Brunson, you can absolutely reduce the headache, but there's still great deals of work to be done. Copy requirements to be written, tracking pixels need to be installed and email series require to be produced. That's what it takes to succeed. Consider that the next time you're constructing out a sales funnel. This complex and elaborate principle in business can actually take you from a total unknown to a worldwide powerhouse quickly through the art of scaling out a highly-converting offer. Don't attempt to take faster ways or implement hacks, and put in the time if you're wanting to eventually reap the results and benefits . So What Is BossFunnels All About? Bossfunnels is a smart drag and drop funnel contractor with all the functions that clickfunnels, leadpages ETC have! But there's a lot more ... Bossfunnels develops VIRAL funnels, so your consumers can construct enormous lists and get severe amounts of traffic. Promoting this incredibly high quality product you can give your consumers something that they will enjoy and use for many years to come. Here's Are Some Secret Benefits You Might Be Interested In Getting: Done-For-You Funnels In 1-Click. Free Viral Traffic In Seconds Built-In ... No Hosting, Coding Or Design ... 3-Figure A Day Tutorials Consisted Of. No Regular monthly Fees ... Enjoy Sales While You Sleep ... Be Your Own Boss ... 180-Day Refund Warranty ... Get or get results Paid $500 ...
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thatguyben · 4 years
Text
What is a Funnel or Salesfunnel and do I really need a Funnel for my business
One of the core concepts in the digital marketing market is the sales funnel . While odd sounding initially, this single core principle can take a service from practically non-existent and unknown to multi-million-dollar marketing machine with mass saturation, seemingly overnight. There are competent professionals who have actually constructed a career around executing this single principle in company. Just envision a real-world funnel if you're questioning what a sales funnel is. At the top of that funnel, some compound is gathered, which filters down towards one finite destination. In sales, something similar occurs. At the top, lots of visitors arrive who may enter your funnel. Unlike the real-world funnel, not all who go into the sales funnel will reemerge out from the other end. To much better comprehend the concept of a sales funnel and just how you can implement it in your own business, let's take a look at the following image from Shutterstock. On the left side of the image, you see a magnet. That magnet is drawing in clients, which takes place a number of ways. From blogging to social networks to paid advertisements and whatever in between, how the visitors arrive to your site has some influence on the success of your funnel. Stage 1: Awareness When those visitors (we can call them potential customers) in fact do show up, what's more crucial about the sales funnel is what happens. Through a range of means, a lot of which you've currently seen, such as email newsletter signups, ebook downloads, online tests and more, those prospects participate in your sales funnel through an enticing deal. The objective of your entire sale funnel and platform is to solve your consumer's problem. When you understand the problem, and you build content to draw them in, then offer them a services or product to fix their issue, that's when the genuine magic happens. Nevertheless, getting to that stage takes work and you need to garner their awareness first. Once the possibility is in the proverbial funnel, you've peaked their awareness. That's the very first phase of the funnel. Getting a possibility aware of you is no simple feat. Relying on how they've arrived to your site ( naturally or through a paid ad), those clients may view your funnel in a different way and your opt-in rates will differ considerably. For instance, when a customer discovers you naturally through a Google search for example, that implies you have some aspect of authority. When you have authority, potential customers are most likely to enter into your funnel because they understand that if they discovered you relevantly, that whatever it is that you're supplying need to be of a great worth. That's simply the nature of SEO and organic search. Obviously, regardless of how they participate in your funnel, your goal as a marketer is to move them through the multiple phases that will take them from possibility to purchaser. And once they're mindful of you, you need to construct their interest. To do this, you need to develop a relationship with the customer. You might have attracted them with a fantastic deal (lead magnet) to get their email address, but actually moving them through the funnel is a far greater obstacle. The truth? People are wise. They're not just going to buy anything from anyone unless they feel there's an immense quantity of value to be had there. Thus, your funnel requirements to built that worth and bake it in through a range of means. Most importantly, you have to create a strong bond with your possibility, and that occurs by being relatable, sincere and transparent in your e-mail warming series. Phase 2: Interest You get the prospects interest through an email series. You begin to relate stories to them that tie into who you are and how you  have actually shown up to this point in your life. Brunson, in his book, Specialist Secrets, calls this the Appealing Character. Are you the reluctant hero whose journey took place practically by mistake, however you feel like you owe it to yourself and the world to convey something of excellent value? Or, are you a leader, an evangelist or an adventurer ? How you position yourself is entirely as much as you, however your message should be constant throughout your entire "pitch" and it needs to be steeped in the fact. Your backstory, and simply how you convey that through parables, character defects and polarity, has much to do with simply how well you can "hook" in your potential customers to produce a mass movement. Naturally, implementing this isn't easy. You require to first establish your stories, then select how you're going to communicate those stories and at what drip-rate. Your first e-mail or 2 may go out on the day they initially signup, then one email per day might go out afterwards. How much of that will be story-based and how much will be pitches? In a recent discussion I had with Perry Belcher, co-founder of Native Commerce Media, he told me that you likewise require to train your potential customers to click on links. For instance, you could have them click a link of what interests them or connect them to a post or eventually to a product and services that you're selling, but you require to train them to develop a routine of clicking on those links from the very start. Stage 3: Decision The next stage is the decision. Getting prospects to decide isn't simple. The best method to get them there? Beyond the art of story telling, developing the practice and copywriting of link-clicking, you require to have lots and great deals of consumer evaluations and reviews. This is among the most effective manner ins which you can get individuals to act. Naturally, if you're going the paid ad path, you could likewise utilize Facebook and Google re-targeting to keep that awareness and interest level high. For instance, if you  have actually ever observed after leaving a particular site, that you begin to see their advertisement everywhere, there's a particular factor for that. If they've currently entered your sales funnel, especially , this is a really effective method to get them to act. You could show them re-targeting ads that have video testimonials or evaluations by other consumers. If you have media publications that have written about you, you might take that opportunity to highlight those. It's just an included component of exposure when they see this in your sales funnel and you follow them around with re-targeting. However you get them to decide to act, flipping that switch isn't easy. You require to present them with a fantastic opportunity and use Robert Cialdini's 6 principles, detailed in his 1984 book, Influence, in one method or another to move them through this stage: Concept of reciprocity-- This is achieved by providing great deals of value, either through whatever it is that you supplied them as a complimentary deal (lead magnet) in the very beginning, or in an ongoing exchange through your e-mails. Concept of commitment & consistency-- When people devote to something, they're far more most likely to buy from you. That's why getting them to consent to something like a totally free + shipping deal or by agreeing with something you've stated in some method. This is a effective principle in sales and if you take notice of a few of the very best marketers on the planet, you'll observe that they work fervently to get your commitment to something, even if it's very little in the beginning. When individuals like you (i.e. they relate to your stories) they are more likely to acquire something from you, concept of taste--. How well you craft your story and convey that to your prospects is going to play a huge role in whether they choose to act or not. Principle of authority-- Just how much authority do your services or items have? Are their reputable individuals in your community that have endorsed it? Scientific research studies that are backing it? Are you yourself an authority? All these aspects come into play in this procedure. Concept of social proof-- Do you have social evidence? Are people on social media talking or raving about how excellent your service or products are? Do you have some other kind of social evidence? Very popular books? Something else? If you do have them, it's importnat that you present this to prospects. Principle of scarcity-- How much scarcity have you baked into your e-mail series? Once again, individuals are smart, however when you apply the principle of deficiency, as in there are only a limited quantity of some offer or time left prior to a discount rate ends or slots readily available for an online class, it lures people to act. Stage 4: Action The final phase of the sales funnel is the action that you're planning them to carry out. This is the purchase. Again, how well you move them through the various phases is going to set you up with a specific conversion for this action. If 100 individuals click on your deal and 10 individuals enter your sales funnel however just buy people purchase, then you have a 2 percent conversion. Nevertheless, the finest part about this, and the most effective route that business owners take to scale their services, is that if you understand that sending out 100 individuals to your website costs you $200, for example, however you get two individuals to convert at $300 each, then you have a $600 return on $200 invested (300 percent). When you know that, that's when the entire video game modifications and you can definitely scale your offers. This how the world's smartest marketers scale out their services. They know the conversion worth and they've fine-tuned and improved their sales funnels, so they go after this with a revenge by merely scaling out their offers. If you understand that, by investing $1 you're going to get $3 back, you will considerably invest $1 consistently. Get the point? Getting to this stage is no simple accomplishment. It takes an huge quantity of work and effort plus tracking. By implementing sales funnel software application, such as the platform constructed by Brunson, you can absolutely reduce the headache, but there's still lots of work to be done. Copy requirements to be composed, tracking pixels require to be installed and email sequences require to be created. That's what it takes to prosper. Think about that the next time you're constructing out a sales funnel. This complex and complex principle in company can actually take you from a total unidentified to a global powerhouse rapidly through the art of scaling out a highly-converting deal. Do not attempt to take faster ways or execute hacks, and put in the time if you're seeking to ultimately reap the outcomes and benefits . So What Is BossFunnels All About? Bossfunnels is a wise drag and drop funnel contractor with all the functions that clickfunnels, leadpages ETC have! However there's much more ... Bossfunnels develops VIRAL funnels, so your customers can develop massive lists and get extreme quantities of traffic. Promoting this incredibly high quality item you can give your customers something that they will enjoy and use for many years to come. Here's Are Some Secret Benefits You Might Be Interested In Getting: Done-For-You Funnels In 1-Click. Free Viral Traffic In Seconds Integrated ... No Hosting, Coding Or Style ... 3-Figure A Day Tutorials Included. No Monthly Fees ... Enjoy Sales While You Sleep ... Be Your Own Manager ... 180-Day Cash Back Assurance ... Get Outcomes Or Get Paid $500 ...
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andya-j · 6 years
Text
“Hard rain coming down,” Cheryl said, and I nodded in agreement. Through the diner’s plate-glass windows, a dense curtain of rain flapped across the Gulf gas pumps and continued across the parking lot. It hit Big Bob’s with a force that made the glass rattle like uneasy bones. The red neon sign that said BIG BOB’S! DIESEL FUEL! EATS! sat on top of a high steel pole above the diner so the truckers on the interstate could see it. Out in the night, the red-tinted rain thrashed in torrents across my old pickup truck and Cheryl’s baby-blue Volkswagen. “Well,” I said, “I suppose that storm’ll either wash some folks in off the interstate or we can just about hang it up.” The curtain of rain parted for an instant, and I could see the treetops whipping back and forth in the woods on the other side of Highway 47. Wind whined around the front door like an animal trying to claw its way in. I glanced at the electric clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes before nine. We usually closed up at ten, but tonight—with tornado warnings in the weather forecast—I was tempted to turn the lock a little early. “Tell you what,” I said. “If we’re empty at nine, we skedaddle. ’Kay?” “No argument here,” she said. She watched the storm for a moment longer, then continued putting newly washed coffee cups, saucers, and plates away on the stainless-steel shelves. Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip. The diner’s lights flickered, then came back to normal. A shudder of thunder seemed to come right up through my shoes. Late March is the beginning of tornado season in south Alabama, and we’ve had some whoppers spin past here in the last few years. I knew that Alma was at home, and she understood to get into the root cellar right quick if she spotted a twister, like that one we saw in ’82 dancing through the woods about two miles from our farm. “You got any love-ins planned this weekend, hippie?” I asked Cheryl, mostly to get my mind off the storm and to rib her too. She was in her late thirties, but I swear that when she grinned she could’ve passed for a kid. “Wouldn’t you like to know, redneck?” she answered; she replied the same way to all my digs at her. Cheryl Lovesong—and I know that couldn’t have been her real name—was a mighty able waitress, and she had hands that were no strangers to hard work. But I didn’t care that she wore her long silvery-blond hair in Indian braids with hippie headbands, or came to work in tie-dyed overalls. She was the best waitress who’d ever worked for me, and she got along with everybody just fine—even us rednecks. That’s what I am, and proud of it: I drink Rebel Yell whiskey straight, and my favorite songs are about good women gone bad and trains on the long track to nowhere. I keep my wife happy. I’ve raised my two boys to pray to God and to salute the flag, and if anybody don’t like it he can go a few rounds with Big Bob Clayton. Cheryl would come right out and tell you she used to live in San Francisco in the late sixties, and that she went to love-ins and peace marches and all that stuff. When I reminded her it was 1984 and Ronnie Reagan was president, she’d look at me like I was walking cow-flop. I always figured she’d start thinking straight when all that hippie-dust blew out of her head. Alma said my tail was going to get burnt if I ever took a shine to Cheryl, but I’m a fifty-five-year-old redneck who stopped sowing his wild seed when he met the woman he married, more than thirty years ago. Lightning crisscrossed the turbulent sky, followed by a boom of thunder. Cheryl said, “Wow! Look at that light show!” “Light show, my ass,” I muttered. The diner was as solid as the Good Book, so I wasn’t too worried about the storm. But on a wild night like this, stuck out in the countryside like Big Bob’s was, you had a feeling of being a long way off from civilization—though Mobile was only twenty-seven miles south. On a wild night like this, you had a feeling that anything could happen, as quick as a streak of lightning out of the darkness. I picked up a copy of the Mobile Press-Register that the last customer—a trucker on his way to Texas—had left on the counter a half-hour before, and I started plowing through the news, most of it bad: those A-rab countries were still squabbling like Hatfields and McCoys in white robes; two men had robbed a Qwik-Mart in Mobile and been killed by the police in a shoot-out; cops were investigating a massacre at a motel near Daytona Beach; an infant had been stolen from a maternity ward in Birmingham. The only good things on the front page were stories that said the economy was up and that Reagan swore we’d show the Commies who was boss in El Salvador and Lebanon. The diner shook under a blast of thunder, and I looked up from the paper as a pair of headlights emerged from the rain into my parking lot. 2 The headlights were attached to an Alabama state-trooper car. “Half-alive, hold the onion, extra brown the buns.” Cheryl was already writing on her pad in expectation of the order. I pushed the paper aside and went to the fridge for the hamburger meat. When the door opened, a windblown spray of rain swept in and stung like buckshot. “Howdy, folks!” Dennis Wells peeled off his gray rain slicker and hung it on the rack next to the door. Over his Smokey the Bear trooper hat was a protective plastic covering, beaded with raindrops. He took off his hat, exposing the thinning blond hair on his pale scalp, as he approached the counter and sat on his usual stool, right next to the cash register. “Cup of black coffee and a rare—” Cheryl was already sliding the coffee in front of him, and the burger sizzled on the griddle. “Ya’ll are on the ball tonight!” Dennis said; he said the same thing when he came in, which was almost every night. Funny the kind of habits you fall into, without realizing it. “Kinda wild out there, ain’t it?” I asked as I flipped the burger over. “Lordy, yes! Wind just about flipped my car over three, four miles down the interstate. Thought I was gonna be eatin’ a little pavement tonight.” Dennis was a husky young man in his early thirties, with thick blond brows over deep-set light brown eyes. He had a wife and three kids, and he was fast to flash a walletful of their pictures. “Don’t reckon I’ll be chasin’ any speeders tonight, but there’ll probably be a load of accidents. Cheryl, you sure look pretty this evenin’.” “Still the same old me.” Cheryl never wore a speck of makeup, though one day she’d come to work with glitter on her cheeks. She had a place a few miles away, and I guessed she was farming that funny weed up there. “Any trucks moving?” “Seen a few, but not many. Truckers ain’t fools. Gonna get worse before it gets better, the radio says.” He sipped at his coffee and grimaced. “Lordy, that’s strong enough to jump out of the cup and dance a jig, darlin’!” I fixed the burger the way Dennis liked it, put it on a platter with some fries, and served it. “Bobby, how’s the wife treatin’ you?” he asked. “No complaints.” “Good to hear. I’ll tell you, a fine woman is worth her weight in gold. Hey, Cheryl! How’d you like a handsome young man for a husband?” Cheryl smiled, knowing what was coming. “The man I’m looking for hasn’t been made yet.” “Yeah, but you ain’t met Cecil yet, either! He asks me about you every time I see him, and I keep tellin’ him I’m doin’ everything I can to get you two together.” Cecil was Dennis’ brother-in-law and owned a Chevy dealership in Bay Minette. Dennis had been ribbing Cheryl about going on a date with Cecil for the past four months. “You’d like him,” Dennis promised. “He’s got a lot of my qualities.” “Well, that’s different. In that case, I’m certain I don’t want to meet him.” Dennis winced. “Oh, you’re a cruel woman! That’s what smokin’ banana peels does to you—turns you mean. Anybody readin’ this rag?” He reached over for the newspaper. “Waitin’ here just for you,” I said. Thunder rumbled, closer to the diner. The lights flickered briefly once … then again before they returned to normal. Cheryl busied herself by fixing a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched the rain whipping against the windows. When the lightning flashed, I could see the trees swaying so hard they looked about to snap. Dennis read and ate his hamburger. “Boy,” he said after a few minutes, “the world’s in some shape, huh? Those A-rab pig-stickers are itchin’ for war. Mobile metro boys had a little gunplay last night. Good for them.” He paused and frowned, then tapped the paper with one thick finger. “This I can’t figure.” “What’s that?” “Thing in Florida couple of nights ago. Six people killed at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, near Daytona Beach. Motel was set off in the woods. Only a couple of cinder-block houses in the area, and nobody heard any gunshots. Says here one old man saw what he thought was a bright white star falling over the motel, and that was it. Funny, huh?” “A UFO,” Cheryl offered. “Maybe he saw a UFO.” “Yeah, and I’m a little green man from Mars,” Dennis scoffed. “I’m serious. This is weird. The motel was so blown full of holes it looked like a war had been going on. Everybody was dead—even a dog and a canary that belonged to the manager. The cars out in front of the rooms were blasted to pieces. The sound of one of them explodin’ was what woke up the people in those houses, I reckon.” He skimmed the story again. “Two bodies were out in the parkin’ lot, one was holed up in a bathroom, one had crawled under a bed, and two had dragged every piece of furniture in the room over to block the door. Didn’t seem to help ’em any, though.” I grunted. “Guess not.” “No motive, no witnesses. You better believe those Florida cops are shakin’ the bushes for some kind of dangerous maniac—or maybe more than one, it says here.” He shoved the paper away and patted the service revolver holstered at his hip. “If I ever got hold of him—or them—he’d find out not to mess with a ’Bama trooper.” He glanced quickly over at Cheryl and smiled mischievously. “Probably some crazy hippie who’d been smokin’ his tennis shoes.” “Don’t knock it,” she said sweetly, “until you’ve tried it.” She looked past him, out the window into the storm. “Car’s pullin’ in, Bobby.” Headlights glared briefly off the wet windows. It was a station wagon with wood-grained panels on the sides; it veered around the gas pumps and parked next to Dennis’ trooper car. On the front bumper was a personalized license plate that said: Ray & Lindy. The headlights died, and all the doors opened at once. Out of the wagon came a whole family: a man and woman, a little girl and boy about eight or nine. Dennis got up and opened the diner door as they hurried inside from the rain. All of them had gotten pretty well soaked between the station wagon and the diner, and they wore the dazed expressions of people who’d been on the road a long time. The man wore glasses and had curly gray hair, the woman was slim and dark-haired and pretty. The kids were sleepy-eyed. All of them were well-dressed, the man in a yellow sweater with one of those alligators on the chest. They had vacation tans, and I figured they were tourists heading north from the beach after spring break. “Come on in and take a seat,” I said. “Thank you,” the man said. They squeezed into one of the booths near the windows. “We saw your sign from the interstate.” “Bad night to be on the highway,” Dennis told them. “Tornado warnings are out all over the place.” “We heard it on the radio,” the woman—Lindy, if the license was right—said. “We’re on our way to Birmingham, and we thought we could drive right through the storm. We should’ve stopped at that Holiday Inn we passed about fifteen miles ago.” “That would’ve been smart,” Dennis agreed. “No sense in pushin’ your luck.” He returned to his stool. The new arrivals ordered hamburgers, fries, and Cokes. Cheryl and I went to work. Lightning made the diner’s lights flicker again, and the sound of thunder caused the kids to jump. When the food was ready and Cheryl served them, Dennis said, “Tell you what. You folks finish your dinners and I’ll escort you back to the Holiday Inn. Then you can head out in the morning. How about that?” “Fine,” Ray said gratefully. “I don’t think we could’ve gotten very much further, anyway.” He turned his attention to his food. “Well,” Cheryl said quietly, standing beside me, “I don’t guess we get home early, do we?” “I guess not. Sorry.” She shrugged. “Goes with the job, right? Anyway, I can think of worse places to be stuck.” I figured that Alma might be worried about me, so I went over to the pay phone to call her. I dropped a quarter in—and the dial tone sounded like a cat being stepped on. I hung up and tried again. The cat scream continued. “Damn!” I muttered. “Lines must be screwed up.” “Ought to get yourself a place closer to town, Bobby,” Dennis said. “Never could figure out why you wanted a joint in the sticks. At least you’d get better phone service and good lights if you were nearer to Mo—” He was interrupted by the sound of wet and shrieking brakes, and he swiveled around on his stool. I looked up as a car hurtled into the parking lot, the tires swerving, throwing up plumes of water. For a few seconds I thought it was going to keep coming, right through the window into the diner—but then the brakes caught and the car almost grazed the side of my pickup as it jerked to a stop. In the neon’s red glow I could tell it was a beat-up old Ford Fairlane, either gray or a dingy beige. Steam was rising off the crumpled hood. The headlights stayed on for perhaps a minute before they winked off. A figure got out of the car and walked slowly—with a limp—toward the diner. We watched the figure approach. Dennis’ body looked like a coiled spring ready to be triggered. “We got us a live one, Bobby boy,” he said. The door opened, and in a stinging gust of wind and rain a man who looked like walking death stepped into my diner. 3 He was so wet he might well have been driving with his windows down. He was a skinny guy, maybe weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, even soaking wet. His unruly dark hair was plastered to his head, and he had gone a week or more without a shave. In his gaunt, pallid face his eyes were startlingly blue; his gaze flicked around the diner, lingered for a few seconds on Dennis. Then he limped on down to the far end of the counter and took a seat. He wiped the rain out of his eyes as Cheryl took a menu to him. Dennis stared at the man. When he spoke, his voice bristled with authority. “Hey, fella.” The man didn’t look up from the menu. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.” The man pushed the menu away and pulled a damp packet of Kools out of the breast pocket of his patched Army fatigue jacket. “I can hear you,” he said; his voice was deep and husky, and didn’t go with his less-than-robust physical appearance. “Drivin’ kinda fast in this weather, don’t you think?” The man flicked a cigarette lighter a few times before he got a flame, then lit one of his smokes and inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” he replied. “I was. Sorry. I saw the sign, and I was in a hurry to get here. Miss? I’d just like a cup of coffee, please. Hot and real strong, okay?” Cheryl nodded and turned away from him, almost bumping into me as I strolled down behind the counter to check him out. “That kind of hurry’ll get you killed,” Dennis cautioned. “Right. Sorry.” He shivered and pushed the tangled hair back from his forehead with one hand. Up close, I could see deep cracks around his mouth and the corners of his eyes and I figured him to be in his late thirties or early forties. His wrists were as thin as a woman’s; he looked like he hadn’t eaten a good meal for more than a month. He stared at his hands through bloodshot eyes. Probably on drugs, I thought. The fella gave me the creeps. Then he looked at me with those eyes—so pale blue they were almost white—and I felt like I’d been nailed to the floor. “Something wrong?” he asked—not rudely, just curiously. “Nope.” I shook my head. Cheryl gave him his coffee and then went over to give Ray and Lindy their check. The man didn’t use either cream or sugar. The coffee was steaming, but he drank half of it down like mother’s milk. “That’s good,” he said. “Keep me awake, won’t it?” “More than likely.” Over the breast pocket of his jacket was the faint outline of the name that had been sewn there once. I think it was Price, but I could’ve been wrong. “That’s what I want. To stay awake as long as I can.” He finished the coffee. “Can I have another cup, please?” I poured it for him. He drank that one down just as fast,” then rubbed his eyes wearily. “Been on the road a long time, huh?” Price nodded. “Day and night. I don’t know which is more tired, my mind or my butt.” He lifted his gaze to me again. “Have you got anything else to drink? How about beer?” “No, sorry. Couldn’t get a liquor license.” He sighed. “Just as well. It might make me sleepy. But I sure could go for a beer right now. One sip, to clean my mouth out.” He picked up his coffee cup, and I smiled and started to turn away. But then he wasn’t holding a cup. He was holding a Budweiser can, and for an instant I could smell the tang of a newly popped beer. The mirage was there for only maybe two seconds. I blinked, and Price was holding a cup again. “Just as well,” he said, and put it down. I glanced over at Cheryl, then at Dennis. Neither one was paying attention. Damn! I thought. I’m too young to be losin’ either my eyesight or my senses! “Uh …” I said, or some other stupid noise. “One more cup?” Price asked. “Then I’d better hit the road again.” My hand was shaking as I picked it up, but if Price noticed, he didn’t say anything. “Want anything to eat?” Cheryl asked him. “How about a bowl of beef stew?” He shook his head. “No, thanks. The sooner I get back on the road, the better it’ll be.” Suddenly Dennis swiveled toward him, giving him a cold stare that only cops and drill sergeants can muster. “Back on the road?” He snorted. “Fella, you ever been in a tornado before? I’m gonna escort those nice people to the Holiday Inn about fifteen miles back. If you’re smart, that’s where you’ll spend the night too. No use in tryin’ to—” “No.” Price’s voice was rock-steady. “I’ll be spending the night behind the wheel.” Dennis’ eyes narrowed. “How come you’re in such a hurry? Not runnin’ from anybody, are you?” “Nightcrawlers,” Cheryl said. Price turned toward her like he’d been slapped across the face, and I saw what might’ve been a spark of fear in his eyes. Cheryl motioned toward the lighter Price had laid on the counter, beside the pack of Kools. It was a beat-up silver Zippo, and inscribed across it was NIGHTCRAWLERS with the symbol of two crossed rifles beneath it. “Sorry,” she said. “I just noticed that, and I wondered what it was.” Price put the lighter away. “I was in ’Nam,” he told her. “Everybody in my unit got one.” “Hey.” There was suddenly new respect in Dennis’ voice. “You a vet?” Price paused so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. In the quiet, I heard the little girl tell her mother that the fries were “ucky.” Price said, “Yes.” “How about that! Hey, I wanted to go myself, but I got a high number and things were windin’ down about that time anyway. Did you see any action?” A faint, bitter smile passed over Price’s mouth. “Too much.” “What? Infantry? Marines? Rangers?” Price picked up his third cup of coffee, swallowed some, and put it down. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when they opened they were vacant and fixed on nothing. “Nightcrawlers,” he said quietly. “Special unit. Deployed to recon Charlie positions in questionable villages.” He said it like he was reciting from a manual. “We did a lot of crawling through rice paddies and jungles in the dark.” “Bet you laid a few of them Vietcong out, didn’t you?” Dennis got up and came over to sit a few places away from the man. “Man, I was behind you guys all the way. I wanted you to stay in there and fight it out!” Price was silent. Thunder echoed over the diner. The lights weakened for a few seconds; when they came back on, they seemed to have lost some of their wattage. The place was dimmer than before. Price’s head slowly turned toward Dennis, with the inexorable motion of a machine. I was thankful I didn’t have to take the full force of Price’s dead blue eyes, and I saw Dennis wince. “I should’ve stayed,” he said. “I should be there right now, buried in the mud of a rice paddy with the eight other men in my patrol.” “Oh.” Dennis blinked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—” “I came home,” Price continued calmly, “by stepping on the bodies of my friends. Do you want to know what that’s like, Mr. Trooper?” “The war’s over,” I told him. “No need to bring it back.” Price smiled grimly, but his gaze remained fixed on Dennis. “Some say it’s over. I say it came back with the men who were there. Like me. Especially like me.” Price paused. The wind howled around the door, and the lightning illuminated for an instant the thrashing woods across the highway. “The mud was up to our knees, Mr. Trooper,” he said. “We were moving across a rice paddy in the dark, being real careful not to step on the bamboo stakes we figured were planted there. Then the first shots started: pop pop pop—like firecrackers going off. One of the Nightcrawlers fired off a flare, and we saw the Cong ringing us. We’d walked right into hell, Mr. Trooper. Somebody shouted, ‘Charlie’s in the light!’ and we started firing, trying to punch a hole through them. But they were everywhere. As soon as one went down, three more took his place. Grenades were going off, and more flares, and people were screaming as they got hit. I took a bullet in the thigh and another through the hand. I lost my rifle, and somebody fell on top of me with half his head missing.” “Uh … listen,” I said. “You don’t have to—” “I want to, friend.” He glanced quickly at me, then back to Dennis. I think I cringed when his gaze pierced me. “I want to tell it all. They were fighting and screaming and dying all around me, and I felt the bullets tug at my clothes as they passed through. I know I was screaming too, but what was coming out of my mouth sounded bestial. I ran. The only way I could save my own life was to step on their bodies and drive them down into the mud. I heard some of them choke and blubber as I put my boot on their faces. I knew all those guys like brothers … but at that moment they were only pieces of meat. I ran. A gunship chopper came over the paddy and laid down some fire, and that’s how I got out. Alone.” He bent his face closer toward the other man’s. “And you’d better believe I’m in that rice paddy in ’Nam every time I close my eyes. You’d better believe the men I left back there don’t rest easy. So you keep your opinions about ’Nam and being ‘behind you guys’ to yourself, Mr. Trooper. I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Got it?” Dennis sat very still. He wasn’t used to being talked to like that, not even from a ’Nam vet, and I saw the shadow of anger pass over his face. Price’s hands were trembling as he brought a little bottle out of his jeans pocket. He shook two blue-and-orange capsules out onto the counter, took them both with a swallow of coffee, and then recapped the bottle and put it away. The flesh of his face looked almost ashen in the dim light. “I know you boys had a rough time,” Dennis said, “but that’s no call to show disrespect to the law.” “The law,” Price repeated. “Yeah. Right. Bullshit.” “There are women and children present,” I reminded him. “Watch your language.” Price rose from his seat. He looked like a skeleton with just a little extra skin on the bones. “Mister, I haven’t slept for more than thirty-six hours. My nerves are shot. I don’t mean to cause trouble, but when some fool says he understands, I feel like kicking his teeth down his throat—because no one who wasn’t there can pretend to understand.” He glanced at Ray, Lindy, and the kids. “Sorry, folks. Don’t mean to disturb you. Friend, how much do I owe?” He started digging for his wallet. Dennis slid slowly from his seat and stood with his hands on his hips. “Hold it.” He used his trooper’s voice again. “If you think I’m lettin’ you walk out of here high on pills and needin’ sleep, you’re crazy. I don’t want to be scrapin’ you off the highway.” Price paid him no attention. He took a couple of dollars from his wallet and put them on the counter. I didn’t touch them. “Those pills will help keep me awake,” Price said. “Once I get on the road, I’ll be fine.” “Fella, I wouldn’t let you go if it was high noon and not a cloud in the sky. I sure as hell don’t want to clean up after the accident you’re gonna have. Now, why don’t you come along to the Holiday Inn and—” Price laughed grimly. “Mr. Trooper, the last place you want me staying is at a motel.” He cocked his head to one side. “I was in a motel in Florida a couple of nights ago, and I think I left my room a little untidy. Step aside and let me pass.” “A motel in Florida?” Dennis nervously licked his lower lip. “What the hell you talkin’ about?” “Nightmares and reality, Mr. Trooper. The point where they cross. A couple of nights ago, they crossed at a motel. I wasn’t going to let myself sleep. I was just going to rest for a little while, but I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” A mocking smile played at the edges of his mouth, but his eyes were tortured. “You don’t want me staying at that Holiday Inn, Mr. Trooper. You really don’t. Now, step aside.” I saw Dennis’ hand settle on the butt of his revolver. His fingers unsnapped the fold of leather that secured the gun in the holster. I stared at him numbly. My God, I thought. What’s goin’ on? My heart had started pounding so hard I was sure everybody could hear it. Ray and Lindy were watching, and Cheryl was backing away behind the counter. Price and Dennis faced each other for a moment, as the rain whipped against the windows and thunder boomed like shellfire. Then Price sighed, as if resigning himself to something. He said, “I think I want a T-bone steak. Extra rare. How ’bout it?” He looked at me. “A steak?” My voice was shaking. “We don’t have any T-bone—” Price’s gaze shifted to the counter right in front of me. I heard a sizzle. The aroma of cooking meat drifted up to me. “Oh … wow,” Cheryl whispered. A large T-bone steak lay on the countertop, pink and oozing blood. You could’ve fanned a menu in my face and I would’ve keeled over. Wisps of smoke were rising from the steak. The steak began to fade, until it was only an outline on the counter. The lines of oozing blood vanished. After the mirage was gone, I could still smell the meat—and that’s how I knew I wasn’t crazy. Dennis’ mouth hung open. Ray had stood up from the booth to look, and his wife’s face was the color of spoiled milk. The whole world seemed to be balanced on a point of silence—until the wail of the wind jarred me back to my senses. “I’m getting good at it,” Price said softly. “I’m getting very, very good. Didn’t start happening to me until about a year ago. I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing. What’s in your head comes true—as simple as that. Of course, the images only last for a few seconds—as long as I’m awake, I mean. I’ve found out that those other men were drenched by a chemical spray we called Howdy Doody—because it made you stiffen up and jerk like you were hanging on strings. I got hit with it near Khe Sahn. That shit almost suffocated me. It felt like black tar, and it burned the land down to a paved parking lot.” He stared at Dennis. “You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper. Not with the body count I’ve still got in my head.” “You … were at … that motel, near Daytona Beach?” Price closed his eyes. A vein had begun beating at his right temple, royal blue against the pallor of his flesh. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered. “I fell asleep, and I couldn’t wake myself up. I was having the nightmare. The same one. I was locked in it, and I was trying to scream myself awake.” He shuddered, and two tears ran slowly down his cheeks. “Oh,” he said, and flinched as if remembering something horrible. “They … they were coming through the door when I woke up. Tearing the door right off its hinges. I woke up … just as one of them was pointing his rifle at me. And I saw his face. I saw his muddy, misshapen face.” His eyes suddenly jerked open. “I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” “Who?” I asked him. “Who came so fast?” “The Nightcrawlers,” Price said, his face devoid of expression, masklike. “Dear God … maybe if I’d stayed asleep a second more. But I ran again, and I left those people dead in that motel.” “You’re gonna come with me.” Dennis started pulling his gun from the holster. Price’s head snapped toward him. “I don’t know what kinda fool game you’re—” He stopped, staring at the gun he held. It wasn’t a gun anymore. It was an oozing mass of hot rubber. Dennis cried out and slung the thing from his hand. The molten mess hit the floor with a pulpy splat. “I’m leaving now.” Price’s voice was calm. “Thank you for the coffee.” He walked past Dennis, toward the door. Dennis grasped a bottle of ketchup from the counter. Cheryl cried out, “Don’t!” but it was too late. Dennis was already swinging the bottle. It hit the back of Price’s skull and burst open, spewing ketchup everywhere. Price staggered forward, his knees buckling. When he went down, his skull hit the floor with a noise like a watermelon being dropped. His body began jerking involuntarily. “Got him!” Dennis shouted triumphantly. “Got that crazy bastard, didn’t I?” Lindy was holding the little girl in her arms. The boy craned his neck to see. Ray said nervously, “You didn’t kill him, did you?” “He’s not dead,” I told him. I looked over at the gun; it was solid again. Dennis scooped it up and aimed it at Price, whose body continued to jerk. Just like Howdy Doody, I thought. Then Price stopped moving. “He’s dead!” Cheryl’s voice was near-frantic. “Oh God, you killed him, Dennis!” Dennis prodded the body with the toe of his boot, then bent down. “Naw. His eyes are movin’ back and forth behind the lids.” Dennis touched his wrist to check the pulse, then abruptly pulled his own hand away. “Jesus Christ! He’s as cold as a meat locker!” He took Price’s pulse and whistled. “Goin’ like a racehorse at the Derby.” I touched the place on the counter where the mirage steak had been. My fingers came away slightly greasy, and I could smell the cooked meat on them. At that instant Price twitched. Dennis scuttled away from him like a crab. Price made a gasping, choking noise. “What’d he say?” Cheryl asked. “He said something!” “No he didn’t.” Dennis stuck him in the ribs with his pistol. “Come on. Get up.” “Get him out of here,” I said. “I don’t want him—” Cheryl shushed me. “Listen. Can you hear that?” I heard only the roar and crash of the storm. “Don’t you hear it?” she asked me. Her eyes were getting scared and glassy. “Yes!” Ray said. “Yes! Listen!” Then I did hear something, over the noise of the keening wind. It was a distant chuk-chuk-chuk, steadily growing louder and closer. The wind covered the noise for a minute, then it came back: CHUK-CHUK-CHUK, almost overhead. “It’s a helicopter!” Ray peered through the window. “Somebody’s got a helicopter out there!” “Ain’t nobody can fly a chopper in a storm!” Dennis told him. The noise of rotors swelled and faded, swelled and faded … and stopped. On the floor, Price shivered and began to contort into a fetal position. His mouth opened; his face twisted in what appeared to be agony. Thunder spoke. A red fireball rose up from the woods across the road and hung lazily in the sky for a few seconds before it descended toward the diner. As it fell, the fireball exploded soundlessly into a white, glaring eye of light that almost blinded me. Price said something in a garbled, panicked voice. His eyes were tightly closed, and he had squeezed up with his arms around his knees. Dennis rose to his feet; he squinted as the eye of light fell toward the parking lot and winked out in a puddle of water. Another fireball floated up from the woods, and again blossomed into painful glare. Dennis turned toward me. “I heard him.” His voice was raspy. “He said . . . ‘Charlie’s in the light.’” As the second flare fell to the ground and illuminated the parking lot, I thought I saw figures crossing the road. They walked stiff-legged, in an eerie cadence. The flare went out. “Wake him up,” I heard myself whisper. “Dennis … dear God … wake him up.” 4 Dennis stared stupidly at me, and I started to jump across the counter to get to Price myself. A gout of flame leapt in the parking lot. Sparks marched across the concrete. I shouted, “Get down!” and twisted around to push Cheryl back behind the shelter of the counter. “What the hell—” Dennis said. He didn’t finish. There was the metallic thumping of bullets hitting the gas pumps and the cars. I knew if that gas blew we were all dead. My truck shuddered with the impact of slugs, and I saw the whole thing explode as I ducked behind the counter. Then the windows blew inward with a god-awful crash, and the diner was full of flying glass, swirling wind, and sheets of rain. I heard Lindy scream, and both the kids were crying, and I think I was shouting something myself. The lights had gone out, and the only illumination was the reflection of red neon off the concrete and the glow of the fluorescents over the gas pumps. Bullets whacked into the wall, and crockery shattered as if it had been hit with a hammer. Napkins and sugar packets were flying everywhere. Cheryl was holding on to me as if her fingers were nails sunk to my bones. Her eyes were wide and dazed, and she kept trying to speak. Her mouth was working, but nothing came out. There was another explosion as one of the other cars blew. The whole place shook, and I almost puked with fear. Another hail of bullets hit the wall. They were tracers, and they jumped and ricocheted like white-hot cigarette butts. One of them sang off the edge of a shelf and fell to the floor about three feet away from me. The glowing slug began to fade, like the beer can and the mirage steak. I put my hand out to find it, but all I felt was splinters of glass and crockery. A phantom bullet, I thought. Real enough to cause damage and death—and then gone. You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper, Price had warned. Not with the body count I’ve got in my head. The firing stopped. I got free of Cheryl and said, “You stay right here.” Then I looked up over the counter and saw my truck and the station wagon on fire, the flames being whipped by the wind. Rain slapped me across the face as it swept in where the window glass used to be. I saw Price lying still huddled on the floor, with pieces of glass all around him. His hands were clawing the air, and in the flickering red neon his face was contorted, his eyes still closed. The pool of ketchup around his head made him look like his skull had been split open. He was peering into hell, and I averted my eyes before I lost my own mind. Ray and Lindy and the two children had huddled under the table of their booth. The woman was sobbing brokenly. I looked at Dennis, lying a few feet from Price: he was sprawled on his face, and there were four holes punched through his back. It was not ketchup that ran in rivulets around Dennis’ body. His right arm was outflung, and the fingers twitched around the gun he gripped. Another flare sailed up from the woods like a Fourth of July sparkler. When the light brightened, I saw them: at least five figures, maybe more. They were crouched over, coming across the parking lot—but slowly, the speed of nightmares. Their clothes flapped and hung around them, and the flare’s light glanced off their helmets. They were carrying weapons—rifles, I guessed. I couldn’t see their faces, and that was for the best. On the floor, Price moaned. I heard him say “light … in the light …” The flare hung right over the diner. And then I knew what was going on. We were in the light. We were all caught in Price’s nightmare, and the Nightcrawlers that Price had left in the mud were fighting the battle again—the same way it had been fought at the Pines Haven Motor Inn. The Nightcrawlers had come back to life, powered by Price’s guilt and whatever that Howdy Doody shit had done to him. And we were in the light, where Charlie had been out in that rice paddy. There was a noise like castanets clicking. Dots of fire arced through the broken windows and thudded into the counter. The stools squealed as they were hit and spun. The cash register rang and the drawer popped open, and then the entire register blew apart and bills and coins scattered. I ducked my head, but a wasp of fire—I don’t, know what, a bit of metal or glass maybe—sliced my left cheek open from ear to upper lip. I fell to the floor behind the counter with blood running down my face. A blast shook the rest of the cups, saucers, plates, and glasses off the shelves. The whole roof buckled inward, throwing loose ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and pieces of metal framework. We were all going to die. I knew it, right then. Those things were going to destroy us. But I thought of the pistol in Dennis’ hand, and of Price lying near the door. If we were caught in Price’s nightmare and the blow from the ketchup bottle had broken something in his skull, then the only way to stop his dream was to kill him. I’m no hero. I was about to piss in my pants, but I knew I was the only one who could move. I jumped up and scrambled over the counter, falling beside Dennis and wrenching at that pistol. Even in death, Dennis had a strong grip. Another blast came, along the wall to my right. The heat of it scorched me, and the shock wave skidded me across the floor through glass and rain and blood. But I had that pistol in my hand. I heard Ray shout, “Look out!” In the doorway, silhouetted by flames, was a skeletal thing wearing muddy green rags. It wore a dented-in helmet and carried a corroded, slime-covered rifle. Its face was gaunt and shadowy, the features hidden behind a scum of rice-paddy muck. It began to lift the rifle to fire at me—slowly, slowly … I got the safety off the pistol and fired twice, without aiming. A spark leapt off the helmet as one of the bullets was deflected, but the figure staggered backward and into the conflagration of the station wagon, where it seemed to melt into ooze before it vanished. More tracers were coming in. Cheryl’s Volkswagen shuddered, the tires blowing out almost in unison. The state-trooper car was already bullet-riddled and sitting on flats. Another Nightcrawler, this one without a helmet and with slime covering the skull where the hair had been, rose up beyond the window and fired its rifle. I heard the bullet whine past my ear, and as I took aim I saw its bony finger tightening on the trigger again. A skillet flew over my head and hit the thing’s shoulder, spoiling its aim. For an instant the skillet stuck in the Nightcrawler’s body, as if the figure itself was made out of mud. I fired once … twice … and saw pieces of matter fly from the thing’s chest. What might’ve been a mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the thing slithered out of sight. I looked around. Cheryl was standing behind the counter, weaving on her feet, her face white with shock. “Get down!” I shouted, and she ducked for cover. I crawled to Price, shook him hard. His eyes would not open. “Wake up!” I begged him. “Wake up, damn you!” And then I pressed the barrel of the pistol against Price’s head. Dear God, I didn’t want to kill anybody, but I knew I was going to have to blow the Nightcrawlers right out of his brain. I hesitated—too long. Something smashed into my left collarbone. I heard the bone snap like a broomstick being broken. The force of the shot slid me back against the counter and jammed me between two bullet-pocked stools. I lost the gun, and there was a roaring in my head that deafened me. I don’t know how long I was out. My left arm felt like dead meat. All the cars in the lot were burning, and there was a hole in the diner’s roof that a tractor-trailer truck could’ve dropped through. Rain was sweeping into my face, and when I wiped my eyes clear I saw them, standing over Price. There were eight of them. The two I thought I’d killed were back. They trailed weeds, and their boots and ragged clothes were covered with mud. They stood in silence, staring down at their living comrade. I was too tired to scream. I couldn’t even whimper. I just watched. Price’s hands lifted into the air. He reached for the Nightcrawlers, and then his eyes opened. His pupils were dead white, surrounded by scarlet. “End it,” he whispered. “End it …” One of the Nightcrawlers aimed its rifle and fired. Price jerked. Another Nightcrawler fired, and then they were all firing point-blank into Price’s body. Price thrashed and clutched at his head, but there was no blood; the phantom bullets weren’t hitting him. The Nightcrawlers began to ripple and fade. I saw the flames of the burning cars through their bodies. The figures became transparent, floating in vague outlines. Price had awakened too fast at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, I realized; if he had remained asleep, the creatures of his nightmares would’ve ended it there, at that Florida motel. They were killing him in front of me—or he was allowing them to end it, and I think that’s what he must’ve wanted for a long, long time. He shuddered, his mouth releasing a half-moan, half-sigh. It sounded almost like relief. The Nightcrawlers vanished. Price didn’t move anymore. I saw his face. His eyes were closed, and I think he must’ve found peace at last. 5 A trucker hauling lumber from Mobile to Birmingham saw the burning cars. I don’t even remember what he looked like. Ray was cut up by glass, but his wife and the kids were okay. Physically, I mean. Mentally, I couldn’t say. Cheryl went into the hospital for a while. I got a postcard from her with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front. She promised she’d write and let me know how she was doing, but I doubt if I’ll ever hear from her. She was the best waitress I ever had, and I wish her luck. The police asked me a thousand questions, and I told the story the same way every time. I found out later that no bullets or shrapnel were ever dug out of the walls or the cars or Dennis’ body—just like in the case of that motel massacre. There was no bullet in me, though my collarbone was snapped clean in two. Price had died of a massive brain hemorrhage. It looked, the police told me, as if it had exploded in his skull. I closed the diner. Farm life is fine. Alma understands, and we don’t talk about it. But I never showed the police what I found, and I don’t know exactly why not. I picked up Price’s wallet in the mess. Behind a picture of a smiling young woman holding a baby there was a folded piece of paper. On that paper were the names of four men. Beside one name, Price had written “Dangerous.” I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing, Price had said. I sit up at night a lot, thinking about that and looking at those names. Those men had gotten a dose of that Howdy Doody shit in a foreign place they hadn’t wanted to be, fighting a war that turned out to be one of those crossroads of nightmare and reality. I’ve changed my mind about ’Nam because I understand now that the worst of the fighting is still going on, in the battlefields of memory. A Yankee who called himself Tompkins came to my house one May morning and flashed me an ID that said he worked for a veterans’ association. He was very soft-spoken and polite, but he had deep-set eyes that were almost black, and he never blinked. He asked me all about Price, seemed real interested in picking my brain of every detail. I told him the police had the story, and I couldn’t add any more to it. Then I turned the tables and asked him about Howdy Doody. He smiled in a puzzled kind of way and said he’d never heard of any chemical defoliant called that. No such thing, he said. Like I say, he was very polite. But I know the shape of a gun tucked into a shoulder holster. Tompkins was wearing one under his seersucker coat. I never could find any veterans’ association that knew anything about him, either. Maybe I should give that list of names to the police. Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll try to find those four men myself, and try to make some sense out of what’s being hidden. I don’t think Price was evil. No. He was just scared, and who can blame a man for running from his own nightmares? I like to believe that, in the end, Price had the courage to face the Nightcrawlers, and in committing suicide he saved our lives. The newspapers, of course, never got the real story. They called Price a ’Nam vet who’d gone crazy, killed six people in a Florida motel, and then killed a state trooper in a shoot-out at Big Bob’s diner and gas stop. But I know where Price is buried. They sell little American flags at the five-and-dime in Mobile. I’m alive, and I can spare the change. And then I’ve got to find out how much courage I have.
“Hard rain coming down,” Cheryl said, and I nodded in agreement. Through the diner’s plate-glass windows, a dense curtain of rain flapped across the Gulf gas pumps and continued across the parking lot. It hit Big Bob’s with a force that made the glass rattle like uneasy bones. The red neon sign that said BIG BOB’S! DIESEL FUEL! EATS! sat on top of a high steel pole above the diner so the truckers on the interstate could see it. Out in the night, the red-tinted rain thrashed in torrents across my old pickup truck and Cheryl’s baby-blue Volkswagen. “Well,” I said, “I suppose that storm’ll either wash some folks in off the interstate or we can just about hang it up.” The curtain of rain parted for an instant, and I could see the treetops whipping back and forth in the woods on the other side of Highway 47. Wind whined around the front door like an animal trying to claw its way in. I glanced at the electric clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes before nine. We usually closed up at ten, but tonight—with tornado warnings in the weather forecast—I was tempted to turn the lock a little early. “Tell you what,” I said. “If we’re empty at nine, we skedaddle. ’Kay?” “No argument here,” she said. She watched the storm for a moment longer, then continued putting newly washed coffee cups, saucers, and plates away on the stainless-steel shelves. Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip. The diner’s lights flickered, then came back to normal. A shudder of thunder seemed to come right up through my shoes. Late March is the beginning of tornado season in south Alabama, and we’ve had some whoppers spin past here in the last few years. I knew that Alma was at home, and she understood to get into the root cellar right quick if she spotted a twister, like that one we saw in ’82 dancing through the woods about two miles from our farm. “You got any love-ins planned this weekend, hippie?” I asked Cheryl, mostly to get my mind off the storm and to rib her too. She was in her late thirties, but I swear that when she grinned she could’ve passed for a kid. “Wouldn’t you like to know, redneck?” she answered; she replied the same way to all my digs at her. Cheryl Lovesong—and I know that couldn’t have been her real name—was a mighty able waitress, and she had hands that were no strangers to hard work. But I didn’t care that she wore her long silvery-blond hair in Indian braids with hippie headbands, or came to work in tie-dyed overalls. She was the best waitress who’d ever worked for me, and she got along with everybody just fine—even us rednecks. That’s what I am, and proud of it: I drink Rebel Yell whiskey straight, and my favorite songs are about good women gone bad and trains on the long track to nowhere. I keep my wife happy. I’ve raised my two boys to pray to God and to salute the flag, and if anybody don’t like it he can go a few rounds with Big Bob Clayton. Cheryl would come right out and tell you she used to live in San Francisco in the late sixties, and that she went to love-ins and peace marches and all that stuff. When I reminded her it was 1984 and Ronnie Reagan was president, she’d look at me like I was walking cow-flop. I always figured she’d start thinking straight when all that hippie-dust blew out of her head. Alma said my tail was going to get burnt if I ever took a shine to Cheryl, but I’m a fifty-five-year-old redneck who stopped sowing his wild seed when he met the woman he married, more than thirty years ago. Lightning crisscrossed the turbulent sky, followed by a boom of thunder. Cheryl said, “Wow! Look at that light show!” “Light show, my ass,” I muttered. The diner was as solid as the Good Book, so I wasn’t too worried about the storm. But on a wild night like this, stuck out in the countryside like Big Bob’s was, you had a feeling of being a long way off from civilization—though Mobile was only twenty-seven miles south. On a wild night like this, you had a feeling that anything could happen, as quick as a streak of lightning out of the darkness. I picked up a copy of the Mobile Press-Register that the last customer—a trucker on his way to Texas—had left on the counter a half-hour before, and I started plowing through the news, most of it bad: those A-rab countries were still squabbling like Hatfields and McCoys in white robes; two men had robbed a Qwik-Mart in Mobile and been killed by the police in a shoot-out; cops were investigating a massacre at a motel near Daytona Beach; an infant had been stolen from a maternity ward in Birmingham. The only good things on the front page were stories that said the economy was up and that Reagan swore we’d show the Commies who was boss in El Salvador and Lebanon. The diner shook under a blast of thunder, and I looked up from the paper as a pair of headlights emerged from the rain into my parking lot. 2 The headlights were attached to an Alabama state-trooper car. “Half-alive, hold the onion, extra brown the buns.” Cheryl was already writing on her pad in expectation of the order. I pushed the paper aside and went to the fridge for the hamburger meat. When the door opened, a windblown spray of rain swept in and stung like buckshot. “Howdy, folks!” Dennis Wells peeled off his gray rain slicker and hung it on the rack next to the door. Over his Smokey the Bear trooper hat was a protective plastic covering, beaded with raindrops. He took off his hat, exposing the thinning blond hair on his pale scalp, as he approached the counter and sat on his usual stool, right next to the cash register. “Cup of black coffee and a rare—” Cheryl was already sliding the coffee in front of him, and the burger sizzled on the griddle. “Ya’ll are on the ball tonight!” Dennis said; he said the same thing when he came in, which was almost every night. Funny the kind of habits you fall into, without realizing it. “Kinda wild out there, ain’t it?” I asked as I flipped the burger over. “Lordy, yes! Wind just about flipped my car over three, four miles down the interstate. Thought I was gonna be eatin’ a little pavement tonight.” Dennis was a husky young man in his early thirties, with thick blond brows over deep-set light brown eyes. He had a wife and three kids, and he was fast to flash a walletful of their pictures. “Don’t reckon I’ll be chasin’ any speeders tonight, but there’ll probably be a load of accidents. Cheryl, you sure look pretty this evenin’.” “Still the same old me.” Cheryl never wore a speck of makeup, though one day she’d come to work with glitter on her cheeks. She had a place a few miles away, and I guessed she was farming that funny weed up there. “Any trucks moving?” “Seen a few, but not many. Truckers ain’t fools. Gonna get worse before it gets better, the radio says.” He sipped at his coffee and grimaced. “Lordy, that’s strong enough to jump out of the cup and dance a jig, darlin’!” I fixed the burger the way Dennis liked it, put it on a platter with some fries, and served it. “Bobby, how’s the wife treatin’ you?” he asked. “No complaints.” “Good to hear. I’ll tell you, a fine woman is worth her weight in gold. Hey, Cheryl! How’d you like a handsome young man for a husband?” Cheryl smiled, knowing what was coming. “The man I’m looking for hasn’t been made yet.” “Yeah, but you ain’t met Cecil yet, either! He asks me about you every time I see him, and I keep tellin’ him I’m doin’ everything I can to get you two together.” Cecil was Dennis’ brother-in-law and owned a Chevy dealership in Bay Minette. Dennis had been ribbing Cheryl about going on a date with Cecil for the past four months. “You’d like him,” Dennis promised. “He’s got a lot of my qualities.” “Well, that’s different. In that case, I’m certain I don’t want to meet him.” Dennis winced. “Oh, you’re a cruel woman! That’s what smokin’ banana peels does to you—turns you mean. Anybody readin’ this rag?” He reached over for the newspaper. “Waitin’ here just for you,” I said. Thunder rumbled, closer to the diner. The lights flickered briefly once … then again before they returned to normal. Cheryl busied herself by fixing a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched the rain whipping against the windows. When the lightning flashed, I could see the trees swaying so hard they looked about to snap. Dennis read and ate his hamburger. “Boy,” he said after a few minutes, “the world’s in some shape, huh? Those A-rab pig-stickers are itchin’ for war. Mobile metro boys had a little gunplay last night. Good for them.” He paused and frowned, then tapped the paper with one thick finger. “This I can’t figure.” “What’s that?” “Thing in Florida couple of nights ago. Six people killed at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, near Daytona Beach. Motel was set off in the woods. Only a couple of cinder-block houses in the area, and nobody heard any gunshots. Says here one old man saw what he thought was a bright white star falling over the motel, and that was it. Funny, huh?” “A UFO,” Cheryl offered. “Maybe he saw a UFO.” “Yeah, and I’m a little green man from Mars,” Dennis scoffed. “I’m serious. This is weird. The motel was so blown full of holes it looked like a war had been going on. Everybody was dead—even a dog and a canary that belonged to the manager. The cars out in front of the rooms were blasted to pieces. The sound of one of them explodin’ was what woke up the people in those houses, I reckon.” He skimmed the story again. “Two bodies were out in the parkin’ lot, one was holed up in a bathroom, one had crawled under a bed, and two had dragged every piece of furniture in the room over to block the door. Didn’t seem to help ’em any, though.” I grunted. “Guess not.” “No motive, no witnesses. You better believe those Florida cops are shakin’ the bushes for some kind of dangerous maniac—or maybe more than one, it says here.” He shoved the paper away and patted the service revolver holstered at his hip. “If I ever got hold of him—or them—he’d find out not to mess with a ’Bama trooper.” He glanced quickly over at Cheryl and smiled mischievously. “Probably some crazy hippie who’d been smokin’ his tennis shoes.” “Don’t knock it,” she said sweetly, “until you’ve tried it.” She looked past him, out the window into the storm. “Car’s pullin’ in, Bobby.” Headlights glared briefly off the wet windows. It was a station wagon with wood-grained panels on the sides; it veered around the gas pumps and parked next to Dennis’ trooper car. On the front bumper was a personalized license plate that said: Ray & Lindy. The headlights died, and all the doors opened at once. Out of the wagon came a whole family: a man and woman, a little girl and boy about eight or nine. Dennis got up and opened the diner door as they hurried inside from the rain. All of them had gotten pretty well soaked between the station wagon and the diner, and they wore the dazed expressions of people who’d been on the road a long time. The man wore glasses and had curly gray hair, the woman was slim and dark-haired and pretty. The kids were sleepy-eyed. All of them were well-dressed, the man in a yellow sweater with one of those alligators on the chest. They had vacation tans, and I figured they were tourists heading north from the beach after spring break. “Come on in and take a seat,” I said. “Thank you,” the man said. They squeezed into one of the booths near the windows. “We saw your sign from the interstate.” “Bad night to be on the highway,” Dennis told them. “Tornado warnings are out all over the place.” “We heard it on the radio,” the woman—Lindy, if the license was right—said. “We’re on our way to Birmingham, and we thought we could drive right through the storm. We should’ve stopped at that Holiday Inn we passed about fifteen miles ago.” “That would’ve been smart,” Dennis agreed. “No sense in pushin’ your luck.” He returned to his stool. The new arrivals ordered hamburgers, fries, and Cokes. Cheryl and I went to work. Lightning made the diner’s lights flicker again, and the sound of thunder caused the kids to jump. When the food was ready and Cheryl served them, Dennis said, “Tell you what. You folks finish your dinners and I’ll escort you back to the Holiday Inn. Then you can head out in the morning. How about that?” “Fine,” Ray said gratefully. “I don’t think we could’ve gotten very much further, anyway.” He turned his attention to his food. “Well,” Cheryl said quietly, standing beside me, “I don’t guess we get home early, do we?” “I guess not. Sorry.” She shrugged. “Goes with the job, right? Anyway, I can think of worse places to be stuck.” I figured that Alma might be worried about me, so I went over to the pay phone to call her. I dropped a quarter in—and the dial tone sounded like a cat being stepped on. I hung up and tried again. The cat scream continued. “Damn!” I muttered. “Lines must be screwed up.” “Ought to get yourself a place closer to town, Bobby,” Dennis said. “Never could figure out why you wanted a joint in the sticks. At least you’d get better phone service and good lights if you were nearer to Mo—” He was interrupted by the sound of wet and shrieking brakes, and he swiveled around on his stool. I looked up as a car hurtled into the parking lot, the tires swerving, throwing up plumes of water. For a few seconds I thought it was going to keep coming, right through the window into the diner—but then the brakes caught and the car almost grazed the side of my pickup as it jerked to a stop. In the neon’s red glow I could tell it was a beat-up old Ford Fairlane, either gray or a dingy beige. Steam was rising off the crumpled hood. The headlights stayed on for perhaps a minute before they winked off. A figure got out of the car and walked slowly—with a limp—toward the diner. We watched the figure approach. Dennis’ body looked like a coiled spring ready to be triggered. “We got us a live one, Bobby boy,” he said. The door opened, and in a stinging gust of wind and rain a man who looked like walking death stepped into my diner. 3 He was so wet he might well have been driving with his windows down. He was a skinny guy, maybe weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, even soaking wet. His unruly dark hair was plastered to his head, and he had gone a week or more without a shave. In his gaunt, pallid face his eyes were startlingly blue; his gaze flicked around the diner, lingered for a few seconds on Dennis. Then he limped on down to the far end of the counter and took a seat. He wiped the rain out of his eyes as Cheryl took a menu to him. Dennis stared at the man. When he spoke, his voice bristled with authority. “Hey, fella.” The man didn’t look up from the menu. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.” The man pushed the menu away and pulled a damp packet of Kools out of the breast pocket of his patched Army fatigue jacket. “I can hear you,” he said; his voice was deep and husky, and didn’t go with his less-than-robust physical appearance. “Drivin’ kinda fast in this weather, don’t you think?” The man flicked a cigarette lighter a few times before he got a flame, then lit one of his smokes and inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” he replied. “I was. Sorry. I saw the sign, and I was in a hurry to get here. Miss? I’d just like a cup of coffee, please. Hot and real strong, okay?” Cheryl nodded and turned away from him, almost bumping into me as I strolled down behind the counter to check him out. “That kind of hurry’ll get you killed,” Dennis cautioned. “Right. Sorry.” He shivered and pushed the tangled hair back from his forehead with one hand. Up close, I could see deep cracks around his mouth and the corners of his eyes and I figured him to be in his late thirties or early forties. His wrists were as thin as a woman’s; he looked like he hadn’t eaten a good meal for more than a month. He stared at his hands through bloodshot eyes. Probably on drugs, I thought. The fella gave me the creeps. Then he looked at me with those eyes—so pale blue they were almost white—and I felt like I’d been nailed to the floor. “Something wrong?” he asked—not rudely, just curiously. “Nope.” I shook my head. Cheryl gave him his coffee and then went over to give Ray and Lindy their check. The man didn’t use either cream or sugar. The coffee was steaming, but he drank half of it down like mother’s milk. “That’s good,” he said. “Keep me awake, won’t it?” “More than likely.” Over the breast pocket of his jacket was the faint outline of the name that had been sewn there once. I think it was Price, but I could’ve been wrong. “That’s what I want. To stay awake as long as I can.” He finished the coffee. “Can I have another cup, please?” I poured it for him. He drank that one down just as fast,” then rubbed his eyes wearily. “Been on the road a long time, huh?” Price nodded. “Day and night. I don’t know which is more tired, my mind or my butt.” He lifted his gaze to me again. “Have you got anything else to drink? How about beer?” “No, sorry. Couldn’t get a liquor license.” He sighed. “Just as well. It might make me sleepy. But I sure could go for a beer right now. One sip, to clean my mouth out.” He picked up his coffee cup, and I smiled and started to turn away. But then he wasn’t holding a cup. He was holding a Budweiser can, and for an instant I could smell the tang of a newly popped beer. The mirage was there for only maybe two seconds. I blinked, and Price was holding a cup again. “Just as well,” he said, and put it down. I glanced over at Cheryl, then at Dennis. Neither one was paying attention. Damn! I thought. I’m too young to be losin’ either my eyesight or my senses! “Uh …” I said, or some other stupid noise. “One more cup?” Price asked. “Then I’d better hit the road again.” My hand was shaking as I picked it up, but if Price noticed, he didn’t say anything. “Want anything to eat?” Cheryl asked him. “How about a bowl of beef stew?” He shook his head. “No, thanks. The sooner I get back on the road, the better it’ll be.” Suddenly Dennis swiveled toward him, giving him a cold stare that only cops and drill sergeants can muster. “Back on the road?” He snorted. “Fella, you ever been in a tornado before? I’m gonna escort those nice people to the Holiday Inn about fifteen miles back. If you’re smart, that’s where you’ll spend the night too. No use in tryin’ to—” “No.” Price’s voice was rock-steady. “I’ll be spending the night behind the wheel.” Dennis’ eyes narrowed. “How come you’re in such a hurry? Not runnin’ from anybody, are you?” “Nightcrawlers,” Cheryl said. Price turned toward her like he’d been slapped across the face, and I saw what might’ve been a spark of fear in his eyes. Cheryl motioned toward the lighter Price had laid on the counter, beside the pack of Kools. It was a beat-up silver Zippo, and inscribed across it was NIGHTCRAWLERS with the symbol of two crossed rifles beneath it. “Sorry,” she said. “I just noticed that, and I wondered what it was.” Price put the lighter away. “I was in ’Nam,” he told her. “Everybody in my unit got one.” “Hey.” There was suddenly new respect in Dennis’ voice. “You a vet?” Price paused so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. In the quiet, I heard the little girl tell her mother that the fries were “ucky.” Price said, “Yes.” “How about that! Hey, I wanted to go myself, but I got a high number and things were windin’ down about that time anyway. Did you see any action?” A faint, bitter smile passed over Price’s mouth. “Too much.” “What? Infantry? Marines? Rangers?” Price picked up his third cup of coffee, swallowed some, and put it down. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when they opened they were vacant and fixed on nothing. “Nightcrawlers,” he said quietly. “Special unit. Deployed to recon Charlie positions in questionable villages.” He said it like he was reciting from a manual. “We did a lot of crawling through rice paddies and jungles in the dark.” “Bet you laid a few of them Vietcong out, didn’t you?” Dennis got up and came over to sit a few places away from the man. “Man, I was behind you guys all the way. I wanted you to stay in there and fight it out!” Price was silent. Thunder echoed over the diner. The lights weakened for a few seconds; when they came back on, they seemed to have lost some of their wattage. The place was dimmer than before. Price’s head slowly turned toward Dennis, with the inexorable motion of a machine. I was thankful I didn’t have to take the full force of Price’s dead blue eyes, and I saw Dennis wince. “I should’ve stayed,” he said. “I should be there right now, buried in the mud of a rice paddy with the eight other men in my patrol.” “Oh.” Dennis blinked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—” “I came home,” Price continued calmly, “by stepping on the bodies of my friends. Do you want to know what that’s like, Mr. Trooper?” “The war’s over,” I told him. “No need to bring it back.” Price smiled grimly, but his gaze remained fixed on Dennis. “Some say it’s over. I say it came back with the men who were there. Like me. Especially like me.” Price paused. The wind howled around the door, and the lightning illuminated for an instant the thrashing woods across the highway. “The mud was up to our knees, Mr. Trooper,” he said. “We were moving across a rice paddy in the dark, being real careful not to step on the bamboo stakes we figured were planted there. Then the first shots started: pop pop pop—like firecrackers going off. One of the Nightcrawlers fired off a flare, and we saw the Cong ringing us. We’d walked right into hell, Mr. Trooper. Somebody shouted, ‘Charlie’s in the light!’ and we started firing, trying to punch a hole through them. But they were everywhere. As soon as one went down, three more took his place. Grenades were going off, and more flares, and people were screaming as they got hit. I took a bullet in the thigh and another through the hand. I lost my rifle, and somebody fell on top of me with half his head missing.” “Uh … listen,” I said. “You don’t have to—” “I want to, friend.” He glanced quickly at me, then back to Dennis. I think I cringed when his gaze pierced me. “I want to tell it all. They were fighting and screaming and dying all around me, and I felt the bullets tug at my clothes as they passed through. I know I was screaming too, but what was coming out of my mouth sounded bestial. I ran. The only way I could save my own life was to step on their bodies and drive them down into the mud. I heard some of them choke and blubber as I put my boot on their faces. I knew all those guys like brothers … but at that moment they were only pieces of meat. I ran. A gunship chopper came over the paddy and laid down some fire, and that’s how I got out. Alone.” He bent his face closer toward the other man’s. “And you’d better believe I’m in that rice paddy in ’Nam every time I close my eyes. You’d better believe the men I left back there don’t rest easy. So you keep your opinions about ’Nam and being ‘behind you guys’ to yourself, Mr. Trooper. I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Got it?” Dennis sat very still. He wasn’t used to being talked to like that, not even from a ’Nam vet, and I saw the shadow of anger pass over his face. Price’s hands were trembling as he brought a little bottle out of his jeans pocket. He shook two blue-and-orange capsules out onto the counter, took them both with a swallow of coffee, and then recapped the bottle and put it away. The flesh of his face looked almost ashen in the dim light. “I know you boys had a rough time,” Dennis said, “but that’s no call to show disrespect to the law.” “The law,” Price repeated. “Yeah. Right. Bullshit.” “There are women and children present,” I reminded him. “Watch your language.” Price rose from his seat. He looked like a skeleton with just a little extra skin on the bones. “Mister, I haven’t slept for more than thirty-six hours. My nerves are shot. I don’t mean to cause trouble, but when some fool says he understands, I feel like kicking his teeth down his throat—because no one who wasn’t there can pretend to understand.” He glanced at Ray, Lindy, and the kids. “Sorry, folks. Don’t mean to disturb you. Friend, how much do I owe?” He started digging for his wallet. Dennis slid slowly from his seat and stood with his hands on his hips. “Hold it.” He used his trooper’s voice again. “If you think I’m lettin’ you walk out of here high on pills and needin’ sleep, you’re crazy. I don’t want to be scrapin’ you off the highway.” Price paid him no attention. He took a couple of dollars from his wallet and put them on the counter. I didn’t touch them. “Those pills will help keep me awake,” Price said. “Once I get on the road, I’ll be fine.” “Fella, I wouldn’t let you go if it was high noon and not a cloud in the sky. I sure as hell don’t want to clean up after the accident you’re gonna have. Now, why don’t you come along to the Holiday Inn and—” Price laughed grimly. “Mr. Trooper, the last place you want me staying is at a motel.” He cocked his head to one side. “I was in a motel in Florida a couple of nights ago, and I think I left my room a little untidy. Step aside and let me pass.” “A motel in Florida?” Dennis nervously licked his lower lip. “What the hell you talkin’ about?” “Nightmares and reality, Mr. Trooper. The point where they cross. A couple of nights ago, they crossed at a motel. I wasn’t going to let myself sleep. I was just going to rest for a little while, but I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” A mocking smile played at the edges of his mouth, but his eyes were tortured. “You don’t want me staying at that Holiday Inn, Mr. Trooper. You really don’t. Now, step aside.” I saw Dennis’ hand settle on the butt of his revolver. His fingers unsnapped the fold of leather that secured the gun in the holster. I stared at him numbly. My God, I thought. What’s goin’ on? My heart had started pounding so hard I was sure everybody could hear it. Ray and Lindy were watching, and Cheryl was backing away behind the counter. Price and Dennis faced each other for a moment, as the rain whipped against the windows and thunder boomed like shellfire. Then Price sighed, as if resigning himself to something. He said, “I think I want a T-bone steak. Extra rare. How ’bout it?” He looked at me. “A steak?” My voice was shaking. “We don’t have any T-bone—” Price’s gaze shifted to the counter right in front of me. I heard a sizzle. The aroma of cooking meat drifted up to me. “Oh … wow,” Cheryl whispered. A large T-bone steak lay on the countertop, pink and oozing blood. You could’ve fanned a menu in my face and I would’ve keeled over. Wisps of smoke were rising from the steak. The steak began to fade, until it was only an outline on the counter. The lines of oozing blood vanished. After the mirage was gone, I could still smell the meat—and that’s how I knew I wasn’t crazy. Dennis’ mouth hung open. Ray had stood up from the booth to look, and his wife’s face was the color of spoiled milk. The whole world seemed to be balanced on a point of silence—until the wail of the wind jarred me back to my senses. “I’m getting good at it,” Price said softly. “I’m getting very, very good. Didn’t start happening to me until about a year ago. I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing. What’s in your head comes true—as simple as that. Of course, the images only last for a few seconds—as long as I’m awake, I mean. I’ve found out that those other men were drenched by a chemical spray we called Howdy Doody—because it made you stiffen up and jerk like you were hanging on strings. I got hit with it near Khe Sahn. That shit almost suffocated me. It felt like black tar, and it burned the land down to a paved parking lot.” He stared at Dennis. “You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper. Not with the body count I’ve still got in my head.” “You … were at … that motel, near Daytona Beach?” Price closed his eyes. A vein had begun beating at his right temple, royal blue against the pallor of his flesh. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered. “I fell asleep, and I couldn’t wake myself up. I was having the nightmare. The same one. I was locked in it, and I was trying to scream myself awake.” He shuddered, and two tears ran slowly down his cheeks. “Oh,” he said, and flinched as if remembering something horrible. “They … they were coming through the door when I woke up. Tearing the door right off its hinges. I woke up … just as one of them was pointing his rifle at me. And I saw his face. I saw his muddy, misshapen face.” His eyes suddenly jerked open. “I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” “Who?” I asked him. “Who came so fast?” “The Nightcrawlers,” Price said, his face devoid of expression, masklike. “Dear God … maybe if I’d stayed asleep a second more. But I ran again, and I left those people dead in that motel.” “You’re gonna come with me.” Dennis started pulling his gun from the holster. Price’s head snapped toward him. “I don’t know what kinda fool game you’re—” He stopped, staring at the gun he held. It wasn’t a gun anymore. It was an oozing mass of hot rubber. Dennis cried out and slung the thing from his hand. The molten mess hit the floor with a pulpy splat. “I’m leaving now.” Price’s voice was calm. “Thank you for the coffee.” He walked past Dennis, toward the door. Dennis grasped a bottle of ketchup from the counter. Cheryl cried out, “Don’t!” but it was too late. Dennis was already swinging the bottle. It hit the back of Price’s skull and burst open, spewing ketchup everywhere. Price staggered forward, his knees buckling. When he went down, his skull hit the floor with a noise like a watermelon being dropped. His body began jerking involuntarily. “Got him!” Dennis shouted triumphantly. “Got that crazy bastard, didn’t I?” Lindy was holding the little girl in her arms. The boy craned his neck to see. Ray said nervously, “You didn’t kill him, did you?” “He’s not dead,” I told him. I looked over at the gun; it was solid again. Dennis scooped it up and aimed it at Price, whose body continued to jerk. Just like Howdy Doody, I thought. Then Price stopped moving. “He’s dead!” Cheryl’s voice was near-frantic. “Oh God, you killed him, Dennis!” Dennis prodded the body with the toe of his boot, then bent down. “Naw. His eyes are movin’ back and forth behind the lids.” Dennis touched his wrist to check the pulse, then abruptly pulled his own hand away. “Jesus Christ! He’s as cold as a meat locker!” He took Price’s pulse and whistled. “Goin’ like a racehorse at the Derby.” I touched the place on the counter where the mirage steak had been. My fingers came away slightly greasy, and I could smell the cooked meat on them. At that instant Price twitched. Dennis scuttled away from him like a crab. Price made a gasping, choking noise. “What’d he say?” Cheryl asked. “He said something!” “No he didn’t.” Dennis stuck him in the ribs with his pistol. “Come on. Get up.” “Get him out of here,” I said. “I don’t want him—” Cheryl shushed me. “Listen. Can you hear that?” I heard only the roar and crash of the storm. “Don’t you hear it?” she asked me. Her eyes were getting scared and glassy. “Yes!” Ray said. “Yes! Listen!” Then I did hear something, over the noise of the keening wind. It was a distant chuk-chuk-chuk, steadily growing louder and closer. The wind covered the noise for a minute, then it came back: CHUK-CHUK-CHUK, almost overhead. “It’s a helicopter!” Ray peered through the window. “Somebody’s got a helicopter out there!” “Ain’t nobody can fly a chopper in a storm!” Dennis told him. The noise of rotors swelled and faded, swelled and faded … and stopped. On the floor, Price shivered and began to contort into a fetal position. His mouth opened; his face twisted in what appeared to be agony. Thunder spoke. A red fireball rose up from the woods across the road and hung lazily in the sky for a few seconds before it descended toward the diner. As it fell, the fireball exploded soundlessly into a white, glaring eye of light that almost blinded me. Price said something in a garbled, panicked voice. His eyes were tightly closed, and he had squeezed up with his arms around his knees. Dennis rose to his feet; he squinted as the eye of light fell toward the parking lot and winked out in a puddle of water. Another fireball floated up from the woods, and again blossomed into painful glare. Dennis turned toward me. “I heard him.” His voice was raspy. “He said . . . ‘Charlie’s in the light.’” As the second flare fell to the ground and illuminated the parking lot, I thought I saw figures crossing the road. They walked stiff-legged, in an eerie cadence. The flare went out. “Wake him up,” I heard myself whisper. “Dennis … dear God … wake him up.” 4 Dennis stared stupidly at me, and I started to jump across the counter to get to Price myself. A gout of flame leapt in the parking lot. Sparks marched across the concrete. I shouted, “Get down!” and twisted around to push Cheryl back behind the shelter of the counter. “What the hell—” Dennis said. He didn’t finish. There was the metallic thumping of bullets hitting the gas pumps and the cars. I knew if that gas blew we were all dead. My truck shuddered with the impact of slugs, and I saw the whole thing explode as I ducked behind the counter. Then the windows blew inward with a god-awful crash, and the diner was full of flying glass, swirling wind, and sheets of rain. I heard Lindy scream, and both the kids were crying, and I think I was shouting something myself. The lights had gone out, and the only illumination was the reflection of red neon off the concrete and the glow of the fluorescents over the gas pumps. Bullets whacked into the wall, and crockery shattered as if it had been hit with a hammer. Napkins and sugar packets were flying everywhere. Cheryl was holding on to me as if her fingers were nails sunk to my bones. Her eyes were wide and dazed, and she kept trying to speak. Her mouth was working, but nothing came out. There was another explosion as one of the other cars blew. The whole place shook, and I almost puked with fear. Another hail of bullets hit the wall. They were tracers, and they jumped and ricocheted like white-hot cigarette butts. One of them sang off the edge of a shelf and fell to the floor about three feet away from me. The glowing slug began to fade, like the beer can and the mirage steak. I put my hand out to find it, but all I felt was splinters of glass and crockery. A phantom bullet, I thought. Real enough to cause damage and death—and then gone. You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper, Price had warned. Not with the body count I’ve got in my head. The firing stopped. I got free of Cheryl and said, “You stay right here.” Then I looked up over the counter and saw my truck and the station wagon on fire, the flames being whipped by the wind. Rain slapped me across the face as it swept in where the window glass used to be. I saw Price lying still huddled on the floor, with pieces of glass all around him. His hands were clawing the air, and in the flickering red neon his face was contorted, his eyes still closed. The pool of ketchup around his head made him look like his skull had been split open. He was peering into hell, and I averted my eyes before I lost my own mind. Ray and Lindy and the two children had huddled under the table of their booth. The woman was sobbing brokenly. I looked at Dennis, lying a few feet from Price: he was sprawled on his face, and there were four holes punched through his back. It was not ketchup that ran in rivulets around Dennis’ body. His right arm was outflung, and the fingers twitched around the gun he gripped. Another flare sailed up from the woods like a Fourth of July sparkler. When the light brightened, I saw them: at least five figures, maybe more. They were crouched over, coming across the parking lot—but slowly, the speed of nightmares. Their clothes flapped and hung around them, and the flare’s light glanced off their helmets. They were carrying weapons—rifles, I guessed. I couldn’t see their faces, and that was for the best. On the floor, Price moaned. I heard him say “light … in the light …” The flare hung right over the diner. And then I knew what was going on. We were in the light. We were all caught in Price’s nightmare, and the Nightcrawlers that Price had left in the mud were fighting the battle again—the same way it had been fought at the Pines Haven Motor Inn. The Nightcrawlers had come back to life, powered by Price’s guilt and whatever that Howdy Doody shit had done to him. And we were in the light, where Charlie had been out in that rice paddy. There was a noise like castanets clicking. Dots of fire arced through the broken windows and thudded into the counter. The stools squealed as they were hit and spun. The cash register rang and the drawer popped open, and then the entire register blew apart and bills and coins scattered. I ducked my head, but a wasp of fire—I don’t, know what, a bit of metal or glass maybe—sliced my left cheek open from ear to upper lip. I fell to the floor behind the counter with blood running down my face. A blast shook the rest of the cups, saucers, plates, and glasses off the shelves. The whole roof buckled inward, throwing loose ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and pieces of metal framework. We were all going to die. I knew it, right then. Those things were going to destroy us. But I thought of the pistol in Dennis’ hand, and of Price lying near the door. If we were caught in Price’s nightmare and the blow from the ketchup bottle had broken something in his skull, then the only way to stop his dream was to kill him. I’m no hero. I was about to piss in my pants, but I knew I was the only one who could move. I jumped up and scrambled over the counter, falling beside Dennis and wrenching at that pistol. Even in death, Dennis had a strong grip. Another blast came, along the wall to my right. The heat of it scorched me, and the shock wave skidded me across the floor through glass and rain and blood. But I had that pistol in my hand. I heard Ray shout, “Look out!” In the doorway, silhouetted by flames, was a skeletal thing wearing muddy green rags. It wore a dented-in helmet and carried a corroded, slime-covered rifle. Its face was gaunt and shadowy, the features hidden behind a scum of rice-paddy muck. It began to lift the rifle to fire at me—slowly, slowly … I got the safety off the pistol and fired twice, without aiming. A spark leapt off the helmet as one of the bullets was deflected, but the figure staggered backward and into the conflagration of the station wagon, where it seemed to melt into ooze before it vanished. More tracers were coming in. Cheryl’s Volkswagen shuddered, the tires blowing out almost in unison. The state-trooper car was already bullet-riddled and sitting on flats. Another Nightcrawler, this one without a helmet and with slime covering the skull where the hair had been, rose up beyond the window and fired its rifle. I heard the bullet whine past my ear, and as I took aim I saw its bony finger tightening on the trigger again. A skillet flew over my head and hit the thing’s shoulder, spoiling its aim. For an instant the skillet stuck in the Nightcrawler’s body, as if the figure itself was made out of mud. I fired once … twice … and saw pieces of matter fly from the thing’s chest. What might’ve been a mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the thing slithered out of sight. I looked around. Cheryl was standing behind the counter, weaving on her feet, her face white with shock. “Get down!” I shouted, and she ducked for cover. I crawled to Price, shook him hard. His eyes would not open. “Wake up!” I begged him. “Wake up, damn you!” And then I pressed the barrel of the pistol against Price’s head. Dear God, I didn’t want to kill anybody, but I knew I was going to have to blow the Nightcrawlers right out of his brain. I hesitated—too long. Something smashed into my left collarbone. I heard the bone snap like a broomstick being broken. The force of the shot slid me back against the counter and jammed me between two bullet-pocked stools. I lost the gun, and there was a roaring in my head that deafened me. I don’t know how long I was out. My left arm felt like dead meat. All the cars in the lot were burning, and there was a hole in the diner’s roof that a tractor-trailer truck could’ve dropped through. Rain was sweeping into my face, and when I wiped my eyes clear I saw them, standing over Price. There were eight of them. The two I thought I’d killed were back. They trailed weeds, and their boots and ragged clothes were covered with mud. They stood in silence, staring down at their living comrade. I was too tired to scream. I couldn’t even whimper. I just watched. Price’s hands lifted into the air. He reached for the Nightcrawlers, and then his eyes opened. His pupils were dead white, surrounded by scarlet. “End it,” he whispered. “End it …” One of the Nightcrawlers aimed its rifle and fired. Price jerked. Another Nightcrawler fired, and then they were all firing point-blank into Price’s body. Price thrashed and clutched at his head, but there was no blood; the phantom bullets weren’t hitting him. The Nightcrawlers began to ripple and fade. I saw the flames of the burning cars through their bodies. The figures became transparent, floating in vague outlines. Price had awakened too fast at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, I realized; if he had remained asleep, the creatures of his nightmares would’ve ended it there, at that Florida motel. They were killing him in front of me—or he was allowing them to end it, and I think that’s what he must’ve wanted for a long, long time. He shuddered, his mouth releasing a half-moan, half-sigh. It sounded almost like relief. The Nightcrawlers vanished. Price didn’t move anymore. I saw his face. His eyes were closed, and I think he must’ve found peace at last. 5 A trucker hauling lumber from Mobile to Birmingham saw the burning cars. I don’t even remember what he looked like. Ray was cut up by glass, but his wife and the kids were okay. Physically, I mean. Mentally, I couldn’t say. Cheryl went into the hospital for a while. I got a postcard from her with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front. She promised she’d write and let me know how she was doing, but I doubt if I’ll ever hear from her. She was the best waitress I ever had, and I wish her luck. The police asked me a thousand questions, and I told the story the same way every time. I found out later that no bullets or shrapnel were ever dug out of the walls or the cars or Dennis’ body—just like in the case of that motel massacre. There was no bullet in me, though my collarbone was snapped clean in two. Price had died of a massive brain hemorrhage. It looked, the police told me, as if it had exploded in his skull. I closed the diner. Farm life is fine. Alma understands, and we don’t talk about it. But I never showed the police what I found, and I don’t know exactly why not. I picked up Price’s wallet in the mess. Behind a picture of a smiling young woman holding a baby there was a folded piece of paper. On that paper were the names of four men. Beside one name, Price had written “Dangerous.” I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing, Price had said. I sit up at night a lot, thinking about that and looking at those names. Those men had gotten a dose of that Howdy Doody shit in a foreign place they hadn’t wanted to be, fighting a war that turned out to be one of those crossroads of nightmare and reality. I’ve changed my mind about ’Nam because I understand now that the worst of the fighting is still going on, in the battlefields of memory. A Yankee who called himself Tompkins came to my house one May morning and flashed me an ID that said he worked for a veterans’ association. He was very soft-spoken and polite, but he had deep-set eyes that were almost black, and he never blinked. He asked me all about Price, seemed real interested in picking my brain of every detail. I told him the police had the story, and I couldn’t add any more to it. Then I turned the tables and asked him about Howdy Doody. He smiled in a puzzled kind of way and said he’d never heard of any chemical defoliant called that. No such thing, he said. Like I say, he was very polite. But I know the shape of a gun tucked into a shoulder holster. Tompkins was wearing one under his seersucker coat. I never could find any veterans’ association that knew anything about him, either. Maybe I should give that list of names to the police. Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll try to find those four men myself, and try to make some sense out of what’s being hidden. I don’t think Price was evil. No. He was just scared, and who can blame a man for running from his own nightmares? I like to believe that, in the end, Price had the courage to face the Nightcrawlers, and in committing suicide he saved our lives. The newspapers, of course, never got the real story. They called Price a ’Nam vet who’d gone crazy, killed six people in a Florida motel, and then killed a state trooper in a shoot-out at Big Bob’s diner and gas stop. But I know where Price is buried. They sell little American flags at the five-and-dime in Mobile. I’m alive, and I can spare the change. And then I’ve got to find out how much courage I have.
From Horror photos & videos June 23, 2018 at 08:00PM
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gamerestart · 6 years
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My Personal History with Electronic Games: 4 of N
Previously on Game Restart: [it’s a series]
The thing about arcades is that arcades are expensive. 
Adjusted for inflation, a quarter in early 80s money is approximately 63¢ in today’s money at the time of this writing. Most people probably aren’t used to spending money after the initial investment in the console and then the game for their home, but imagine spending that for every three tries, lives, or continues.
And some games in the 1980s were 50¢ (or $1.25 as of 2018). Many remember Dragon’s Lair (I certainly do), one of several LaserDisc based games which rocked arcades back in the day, and games like these certainly commanded a pretty high price. I have to admit, my total investment in that particular bit of entertainment probably amounts to no more than $1.50 in 80s money. Nine lives all ended in failure, and then the bank was broke.
I didn’t investigate any of the others, though I was morbidly fascinated by the gory bits present in the attract mode for Bega’s Battle standing in the entryway to the base exchange in Yokota.
Still, on occasion, I’d spring for Pac-Man, but since most of these games demanded a lot more than home console versions, they tended to end pretty quickly. I was more keen on spending my video game money on books, specifically game books, specifically, books, like, for example:
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Among others. Modules were $5.50, rulebooks for the Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert were $6.00, and I want to say boxed sets were something like $12, but that included dice and sometimes another module, too. The hardcover books ranged from $15 to $18 (for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide). I was also into Star Frontiers and paperback game books like Joe Dever and Gary Chalk’s Lone Wolf series.
Arcades got a little play, but I spent much less time in them than I spent in libraries. And clearly, I could certainly kill some time gazing at the books at the Stars and Stripes bookstores over the summers (or at Waldenbooks, stateside). 
When it came to money, what I wasn’t spending on Zoids, I was saving for books, which frequently came to me used. I spent a lot of time amassing my collection of role playing game materials, and most of it I’ve kept since those days. Virtually everything else, like the video games, Commodore 128, and toys, were either lost or sold somewhere along the way. Moving a lot meant regularly purging; I purged books absolutely last and only if it was absolutely necessary. I did my best to keep the books, but the Vectrex and Atari 2600 never properly belonged to me anyway.
Moving was big, and was done every two years without fail—even if it was literally down the street on base. Once our stuff was packed up and shipped out, we had a short empty stay in our former residence—always as empty as it was whenever we first arrived two years prior—and then either drove or flew out to the next destination. Often, there would be extensive road trips regardless, because that’s when the vacations would be timed: between Dad’s assignments, over the summer so we missed as little school as possible.
May, 1984 involved a trip to pick up some cousins and we hied forth to Orlando and Disney World and—with the greatest possible anticipation by myself—EPCOT Center. I might play games in medieval-styled fantasy worlds, but at heart I’ve always been a futurist, and this marvelous new place promised to speak eloquently to me of better futures.
I voraciously consumed science fiction in print and whatever I could get on television or in theaters and home video. Star Wars at the drive-ins had been a favorite of mine since I was seven. The Empire Strikes Back made a greater impact, but was more downbeat, and I’d seen Return of the Jedi only the year before in an outdoor theater in Antigua. Anything else was delayed to home video. Living abroad often meant missing or being otherwise behind whenever it came to pop cultural stuff. Base TV (AFRTS) also didn’t have commercials, so we only saw local programming, not the stuff people were being subjected to stateside.
I was more a fan of our space program, and NASA. My elementary school in Antigua was named after the astronauts of Apollo 1 (Chaffee, White, and Grissom), and there was a small mural of the astronauts inside the building. 
Heck, it was a small building, holding grades 1-4 in one room, and 5-7 in the next. There was a small library—read Watership Down for the first time from there—and a few bathrooms and closets but that was it for the most part. It was a very small school. Eighth graders were sent elsewhere, I forget where, but it was moot in my case, since I would be repeating seventh grade when I got to Japan. Being held back for “developmental reasons” always struck me as bullshit. I could have been out of school one year earlier. I got back at everyone by failing the ninth grade, but that backfired and I was moved into the tenth grade on Adak anyway. I may have honestly earned a bit of my opposition to establishments which practice hypocrisy back then. The world of adults made no sense, and they were too inconsistent with the rules to be trusted.  
But this was a trip to remember, and I was looking forward to it.
Apart from the long drive with cousins, there was always entertainment. Reading in a moving vehicle was still something I could do at that time, so I did that a lot. There were also a very few portable electronic games. Crazy Climber (from Bandai), a “Monkey Business” wristwatch (also by Bandai), and an VFD (vacuum fluorescent display) game I’d resurrected from dead—purchased for about a dollar at a yard sale on Antigua. It came with considerable battery corrosion from four AA batteries, and I actually spent a lot of time trying to recover it to a working state. Some soldering was required (my Dad helped with that part) and I was able to get it working again. It was Star Hawk by Mattel, the first electronic game I would ever fix. Anyway, these saw some use, but these would be mostly forgotten when we arrived at the campsite.
KOA campgrounds were all over the US (near as I could tell), and we’d spent a lot of time in them, driving all over the country, saving money (I assume) on hotel bills. We set up tents, visited bathrooms, gazed at the swimming pool,  and … and then …
And then it rained like a swimming pool poured through a sieve for almost the entire week. I didn’t care: Disney World/EPCOT were too nearby to feel anything but slightly dampened anticipation.
The only dry spot was the KOA laundry and check-in building where the snacks and vending machines were and—
And there it was. One arcade console by Atari—still close enough to the heyday to inspire excitement even in a jaded, dampened, and world-weary twelve-year-old—and no mere upright cabinet console this, and certainly not the blocky-chunky pixels of the Atari 2600 home console but the clean vector graphics I would later associate with the Vectrex; this was a cockpit to climb into to save the rebel alliance from the Death Star. (And it had some early voice samples from the film itself.)
Star Wars was fifty cents to play. Half a dollar. Cripplingly costly. 
Objectively I knew I needed to save money for the Disney experiences which were the entire basis for the whole trip, but I also must needed to play it. It’s one thing to grab a friend’s X-wing (er, with permission—I never had my own), and run around the playground like a lunatic blowing up the enemy, one gets tired of that kind of exercise. Also there are compromises like Luke technically being unavailable so a Micronaut Time Traveller had to step in and save the day, but imagination is as fierce and unyielding as it is malleable.
This was the summer of 1984, and I probably spent 70% of my budget into that damned machine. The parents did not object. It was rainy, and we had been holding out for better weather, and it was warm and dry nearer to the glow of the screen. X rays are like that. And what was I going to do otherwise? Go swimming? That was like walking.
The rain relented slightly, and I had a fabulous time at EPCOT and Disney World (adventures to recount later), and it turns out, even after coaxing one last play before we packed up camp and left, I was unable to end the Death Star. That fight would have to continue later.
Back to 2003, at a Tacoma Fred Meyers, I wander into electronics, just to see if there was anything new. I may have been killing time for the next bus home. Fred Meyer doesn’t seem to do this any more for home consoles, but they had a video game kiosk set up for the Nintendo GameCube.
Nintendo. I’d heard of them. Why not. The demo is playing Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II. I grasp the controller, and feel my way around playing for a bit.
And I’m back in 1984, sitting in the cockpit of an X-wing, trying to ‘splode the Death Star.
In 1995, graphics like this would have been mind-blowing. But I regularly used SGI hardware far more capable than any video game console, and there wasn’t that much difference between this and the PS2. Perhaps the GameCube was better overall, but that’s not the whole experience. Running down TIE fighters and crashing into walls is.
I bought the game. I bought the GameCube (Indigo, because, reasons). I bought a copy of Luigi’s Mansion. And I bought a wireless Wavebird controller all on the same day.
It would take a few months, and I certainly didn’t know it at the time, but this machine would put dust on the Sony PS2.
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