1 “Dump the fuckin’ tiles out on the table, boy.” Billy John Cader said gruffly to his son of only fourteen years old who sat shaking in the chair with fear. Billy Jay had just celebrated, if that’s what it could be called, his birthday only two...
1 Olive woke up suddenly from her usual restless sleep. At nearly 65, she was now accustomed to never sleeping very soundly. After all, she knew they were out there—all slimy with stinking skin drowning in their own warts. Warts that would easily pass on to...
Sebastian’s hand adjusted on the gun. His palms were sweating. A year ago he wouldn’t have even imagined things like this were real. A year ago the whole world seemed different. It was different. Horrors like the thing in front of him were the stuff...
Part One: The Wallachian Csejte Castle, Hungary, 25 May 1605 Blood dripped from the Wallachian’s blade like macabre gemstones of garnet and ruby shimmering in the sunlight. His preternatural hearing alerted him to the charge of a Hajduk raider from behind; he twirled, guiding his blade to...
Early Monday Morning The creature paused. Sensing her prey’s agony, even from afar, brought her satisfaction. She had become the embodiment of obsession, and she would greet whatever fate awaited her with the wild passion of her kind’s primitive demoniac spirits. The creature paused and took...
“Donnie, when are we gonna stop? I’m tired, and I need to pee.” Shannon and Donnie, her sometimes boyfriend, had been driving for hours. They’d left Georgia for Arizona two days earlier and still had a ways to go. The trip was more of a...
Ryan and Nicole Sullivan parked their SUV in front of the badly weathered Victorian house. They had purchased the old home sight unseen at a bank auction for pennies on the dollar. Unbeknownst to them, the price reflected the house’s curious history, but as successful...
“I’m late. I’m late for a very important date. No time to say hello, goodbye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m …..” – The White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland “…laaate!” thought Bryan as he sped from his third-floor apartment. He pressed the down button at least...
“Peter? Oh, Peter? It’s time to wake up, sleepyhead.” The quiet voice drifted through the blackness of the small enclosure, like a fall leaf looking for a place to land. Peter lay sprawled across a concrete floor. His eyelids fluttered as the sing-songy voice pulled him...
Annabelle awoke to complete and impenetrable darkness, as she did every evening, although that was perfectly normal for a Vampire Lady of the Forsaken Coast. The Hematocrats, as they were affectionately known, did not hide from the sun in coffins, but in ornate inner sanctums...
I live in a picturesque little housing development overlooking the Avalon River, just a short drive away from Sombermorey. It's surrounded by enough woods to muffle out the sound of traffic on the adjacent highway, and the road leading into the neighborhood is so discreet...
It was that time of year when ‘fresh corn’ signs along the rural roadside are a common sight. Not being a big connoisseur of either fresh produce or farmer’s markets, I had never pulled over for one myself. But it was one particularly attention-grabbing sign...
If you’ve heard of Overbrook, it’s probably because of The Overbrook Impaler. What a way to put your hometown on the map, right? He’s why half the world heard about our quiet coastal town. Tommy-Lee Rawlings. That’s how he was eventually identified. He preferred girls. The...
When I was growing up, we had an amazing toy store in our town. It was designed to resemble a medieval castle with multiple floors and took up an enormous portion of a nearby strip mall. You wouldn’t find national toy brands like Mattel or...
Chapter 1 A loud screeching noise interrupts my shower. Reaching for my towel, I hear it again, only louder. I get out of the shower and towel off quickly. Listening carefully, I don’t hear the screech I heard earlier, and think to myself it must be nothing....
Valan forest, Derbyshire 1984 I sat in the driver's seat of my aging Ford Granada and listened to the rain pound relentlessly on the car's metal roof, a sound I had always found strangely soothing. Once the torrent subsided, I looked outside to watch late afternoon...
My friends Kev and Nat were about to celebrate their fourteenth anniversary and wanted it to be something special, so after a few months of indecision, I made the suggestion they renew their vows. “We’ve done that before though!” Kev told me. “Hmm, but have you...
Blue. Life is blue. Existence, awakening sentience, all of it is blue. Not black, nor shining brightness or anything, but blue. True blue. Once in a blue moon. That’s a saying, right? The blue of ignorance, wafting like…oh, what are they? Those lovely warbling mountains...
There are very few absolutions I have in this life. But leave it to me to ensure that I absolutely had three. Firstly, there is no one on this planet who knows the workings of the St. Magisford national park as I do. Woven through...
Growing up in Lenora, nobody died. Not in that quiet, dust-flavored hamlet. Even with a humble town like ours, the small sadnesses you’d see every so often were gone, however young, old, or misfortune. The hospital beds lay empty, aside from the drunks resting off...
