Chapter 1: The Beginning Loretta could see two versions of the mockingbird in the tree outside her window. One with ugly gray and black feathers, the other with beautiful aqua feathers. The aqua bird was so much more pleasing to Loretta’s sight. The black and gray...
They were gone. The call left me stunned, sick to my stomach. How did people go missing in today’s world? How did two perfectly capable adults vanish off the face of the earth in a place where everyone knew everything about the folks who lived...
“I don’t want the cops up here snooping in my stuff.” Brian’s voice told me he was angry almost as much as he was worried. Things were out of his control, and he never liked that. “Your wife and daughter are missing. Now isn’t the best...
“The first reported incident was an alleged homicide in which a man killed five people in the master bedroom, dissected them in a meticulous fashion and vanished with the lungs, vocal chords, and epiglottis of all five of the five victims. The killer, a man...
“I don’t know, man, the cabin is really far out there and you’d be alone until Sunday.” “Alright, If it’ll help you get over this thing with Sam you can stay at the cabin for the weekend. Just, you know, you remember what it’s like. Things...
Chapter 1: Blake and Dani’s Dark Tourism Welcome to Helltown, Ohio. The dripping letters and numbers appeared to have been spray-painted over the original town’s name and stats. Population: 3,000,000+ Elevation: -6666. A nice place to visit. A better place to live. I laughed out loud at...
Chapter 1 She sat in the window seat of the Allegiant direct flight from Springfield, Missouri to Tampa, Florida. Cruising at 42,000 feet above the earth, Elsie was dressed to kill, wearing a crimson red halter top and black yoga shorts so tight they appeared to...
Chapter 1 Vernon Hasker sat on the porch swing which had hung on the front porch of his old and now decaying farmhouse for many years. He’d spent many an evening looking at the tree that had started as a small volunteer sapling all those years...
Chapter 1: Costly Mistakes Saturday, December 27th – 5:45 a.m. – Rural Arkansas Confusion swirled inside his mind while trying to open his eyes. The lids were stuck. Did he drink too much after work? Take a tumble down the front steps? He didn’t remember having any...
Twenty-five years ago, I became the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Brash, arrogant, cocky and brilliant, I could do no wrong. I prosecuted organized crime figures, brought down corrupt Chicago politicians and started the first anti-terrorist department in the central United...
PART ONE During the second half of the twentieth century, an observation, some called Moore’s Law, spurred the computer industry to double the number of transistors on a computer processing chip every two years. This pace continued unabated during the first third of the twenty-first century....
She woke up again snared in a familiar nightmare. The horrific content had always been the same, yet different somehow. Gabby was fastened to this thick leather leash. The leash was attached to a silvery spiked collar. She’d been a shadowy tiger, a bear, even...
Part dream, part high, it was 4:30 A.M., again, that meant I’d been away from Jack Daniels and an iffy consciousness for a couple of hours. R.E.M. sleep and I don’t get along. He’d been standing there, the hare, or rabbit, for some time, I’d been...
The Tawny Finger Trap: The Cat Never run away from an apex predator; running can trigger an animal’s killer instincts. Terrible decisions consumed Akum’s thoughts. Having a difficult childhood hadn’t made him needy, quite the opposite, in fact. It had made him too strong. He was hiking off-grid...
There is thunder. There is lightning. Trent’s world ignites. He’s flat on the ship’s deck, surrounded by an ocean of fire. Rockets snap across the runway and explode–the horror. He’s in hell. Everything is burning. Trent gathers his thoughts as he pushes himself up from the...
Mia and I escape across the plains, and behind us, the sons of the storm god follow on. We are lifetime residents of the North Island, New Zealand. Now at the break of night, we run over its fields and up the hills towards the cliffs. ...
I know he is there—the man who lives in the forest. I am yet to see him directly, but I feel his presence nonetheless. He flows as a shifting shadow between the boughs and branches of the trees — a dancer in the darkness unheard...
“Hey, what’s the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery?” “What?” Togs looks at me, irritated. “You heard me, pal. What’s the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery?” I grimace. “I don’t know, Togs. What is the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery?” He grunts with...
The Crocodile House stands alone in the scrubland; old, abandoned and overgrown. And I use the term ‘stands’ in the loosest possible sense. It must have been a grand place, once, but the building is now a dilapidated wreck. The council put some fences up around...
There was always a pretty big homeless problem where I grew up. You’d see them with signs near off-ramps to the highway that asked for food or money, sometimes even in exchange for work. They’d rove in small gangs downtown, picking through dumpsters, begging for...
