BEHOLD! LORD DEXTON THE CONQUEROR! His black gates open! His face is a battle of armies! His doorway to our world is guarded by two sentinels: Lord Preston, and Lord Roman. These are their scriptures...and summons. THE JOURNAL OF PRESTON PENDLETON The blank page turns black when Preston's laptop breaks, and he resorts to writing with pens. He develops a deep obsession with them, and has even been arrested for stealing them. His life as a trucker is a maze of roads and places, which he feels a strong need to write about. When a load from a sugar mill is mysteriously delayed, he finds ample time to write at a vista point overlooking the bay. But when Preston Pendleton begins to write...bad things happen. He falls ill, and stumbles into a Punjabi restaurant, desperately seeking to be healed. Preston is stalked by more than just shadows, for he is followed by a private investigator from Brooklyn, Bruce Battiato--"Botta bing, botta boom!"--who explains to him that there's more to Preston's condition than mere ink. He suffers from a paranormal condition called umbrakinesis, triggered by the murder of his boss, which has made him a ticking time bomb. If Anaxagoras could argue that snow is black, then so too is the Journal of Preston Pendleton. THE STREETS OF SAN PEDRO The elusive crime boss known as Sixto tells the story of how he met Roman Bruder, a trucker who delivered a load of food to the Federal Detention Center in Miami, and sparked an explosive urban legend. Roman is attacked by a brazen criminal in the trailer while helping to unload, and responds in a way that spreads rapidly through the prison, and the entire criminal underworld. Sixto sends his goons, Porto and Tito, to track Roman down in San Pedro, to tell his version of the story, where they find him in a costume shop, wearing the bronze mask in which he will tell his incredible tale.