Monster Men Halloween, Campfire Tales & More Ghoulish Fun
Another crazy week, but lots of good stuff to share. Aside from promoting Forest of Shadows like a door to door Bible salesman, I have been busy actually writing. I finished the first draft of a story for an anthology with Toys in the Attic as the theme. Going to start working on a couple of flash fiction pieces for another antho. Aaaaand, I’m ready to start the finishing touches on my first horror novel for kids. Ah, so many young minds to corrupt.
First up, I was interviewed on Jim Harold’s Campfire Tales podcast. It will be part of episode 87 where I talk about the phantom boy who may have come around to heal my ailing wife. 
Next is an interview awesome author Brian Moreland did with me on his great blog. While you’re at it, check out his book, Dead of Winter. Great, spooky reading.
And now for the fun stuff. The Monster Men Halloween episode is here! We talk about our ghosts from Halloweens past (specifically my embarrassing little drummer boy costume), and give you tips on what to read, watch and do to make the season the best ever. So, without further ado, I give you The Monster Men. And why the bucket hat, Hunter? It’s to honor the character Dale from The Walking Dead. New season starts tonight, so get to your TV as soon as you’re done watching The Monster Men! And then come back and like our brand spanking new Facebook fan page.
Guest Blogger W.D. Gagliani : How Movies Made The Reader, And Then The Writer
I am so happy to have one of my favorite authors guest blog today, W.D. Gagliani. Readers are devoted to his werewolf books, a delicious combination of crime noir, sexy werewolves (yeah, you heard right) and good old fashioned blood and guts. You may have read some of them (Wolf’s Bluff, Wolf’s Trap and Wolf’s Gambit just to name a few), and if you haven’t, do so now! His latest book, Wolf’s Edge, is now out through Samhain Publishing. 
The cool part about being one of the Samhain gang with him is that I’ve gotten to know him as more than just this dude who writes books that I buy, and I’m beginning to suspect he may be my brother from another mother. Enough of my babbling, let the Wolf Man tell you how he came to be…
My parents took me to see Midnight Cowboy when I was about eleven.
Why, you may ask? Well, either they couldn’t afford a sitter (which was very possible) or my dad thought it was actually a cowboy movie. English was his second language, so he might have misunderstood. And it really wasn’t the kind of movie he would have chosen. At least, I don’t think so. But the thing is, when the plot became clear, he didn’t hustle us out of the drive-in theater to save my young eyes from the evils of “bad images.”
Nope, we stayed to the sad and bitter end. I learned about a side of life (and New York) I hadn’t known existed. My eyes recorded everything they saw.
I think I was a seventh grader when my parents took me to see The Godfather. I was the only kid in my parochial school class to see that movie, R-rating and all. I was older and didn’t need a sitter, but still pretty young and they took me anyway. You know what, I didn’t become a wiseguy. But I did immediately start to read the novels of Mario Puzo, and an endless series of nonfiction Mafia books like The Valachi Papers and Mafia, USA, while still in high school. My parents were also responsible for me seeing Serpico, and then I was off on reading the book, as well as other gritty Seventies cop books like The Super Cops and The Blue Knight.
I remember the ultra violence of The Wild Bunch. Yup, my folks didn’t bat an eye when those people bought it in glorious color and slo-mo. Add to that list movies like The Getaway, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Straw Dogs (I guess we were a Peckinpah family), and such violent fare as The Anderson Tapes (Sean Connery as a thief, trying to ditch his Bond image). You know what? I went to read any books on which those movies were based, and when I couldn’t or they hadn’t been based on a novel, I sought out “just like ____” recommendations. My folks took me to the original Death Wish. And yes, I think they also took me to A Clockwork Orange, though I might have been too young to remember it. There wasn’t a spaghetti western I didn’t see on the big screen – I still think of them as the film noir of the western genre. There were horror movies, too: The Other, The Oblong Box, The Omen, The Exorcist. Eventually, my parents and I would watch just about every major ABC Movie of the Week: The Norliss Tapes, The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler, When Michael Calls, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Satan’s School for Girls, A Cold Night’s Death, Gargoyles, Duel… need I say more? If some don’t stand up today, be certain that they were rather effective for an impressionable kid who was already writing monster stories for school projects.
Oddball movies, too, led me to oddball books, and thank God for it. The Sterile Cuckoo, Little Big Man (made me a Thomas Berger fan for years and years), The Graduate (I still consider this my favorite movie) sent me to Charles Webb’s novel, which could be used as a scriptwriting textbook. The Seventies produced a lot of oddball movies. I think 1965 to 1979 may have been the best film era, because, on the whole, movies were made that were damned near uncategorizable. Some of the best oddball movies I saw in high school, as part of a progressive English program that showed movies on a big screen to all English classes and encouraged adventurous teachers to create writing assignments. I can still list the eclectic line-up I was thrilled to watch as part of my school day: David and Lisa, A Thousand Clowns, Harold and Maude (another favorite to this day), The Brothers Karamazov, The List of Adrian Messenger, Doctor Zhivago, and many more.
So what does this column about writing have to do with all these movies?
We are like sponges, especially when young and impressionable. We may not all want to admit it, but writers of thrillers and horror can very well be inspired and influenced by anything, and we are. In my case, I can thank my exceedingly liberal parents (considering they weren’t even born in the U.S.) for never censoring my viewing and reading habits. Well, there was this period in which my dad decided I was reading too many Hardy Boys books and banned them (which only led to a free-flowing black market operation). But all those movies they allowed me and even encouraged me to see, even if by mistake, turned out to be essential in making a solid foundation for a writer.
Movies led me to books – Bronson in Cold Sweat led me to Richard Matheson, Roger Corman led me to a million great things, Goldfinger led me to Ian Fleming and the British thriller authors I still revere). My desire to mix genres in my books and stories can probably be traced right back to the strange mélange of movies and books I consumed almost without restraint as a kid. I count myself lucky to have had parents who, despite the typical parental flaws I might have enumerated, never, ever tried to clap their hands over my eyes or ears. They never tried to “protect” me from the world and its imagery, or from history, or from the seedier side of life as portrayed in movies like They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Klute, The Last Picture Show, Five Easy Pieces, Adam at 6 A.M., and so many more. These were the days of the Middle East (the Six-Day War happened about the time I learned to speak English), the Vietnam War on the television news, and more upheaval than I can even remember. Yet all these movies made sure that a curious kid writer would want to explore strange, dark, and never safe themes in his stories.
Movies and books are truly the basis of my entire writing career. In all the good ways, they inspired me to imitate what I saw and read. And they challenged me to learn about things I’d never seen, or would have seen, if the folks hadn’t for some inexplicable reason felt I could handle even the strangest, offbeat subjects.
Thanks, Mom and Dad. I think I owe you more than I realized.
You can follow W.D. Gagliani and get all the latest news on his website at www.wdgagliani.com or follow him on Twitter at @WDGagliani. And by all means, pick up your copy of Wolf’s Edge today! 
Q&A With Author Brian Moreland
Brian Moreland is a damn good author with a damn good book out through Samhain Publishing’s new horror line. The book is called Dead of Winter and I was so curious about the man behind the book that I had to find him and pick his brain. Enjoy the pickins!
1. Your latest book, ‘Dead of Winter”, will be out with Samhain Publishing’s horror line this October. It’s set in the dead of winter in Ontario in the 1870’s at Fort Pendleton. Tell us a little about the book and the amount of research that went into making it so historically authentic.
My latest horror novel is a historical story based partly on true events and an old Algonquin Indian legend that still haunts the Great Lakes tribes to this day. It’s also a detective mystery and even has a couple of love triangles thrown in for fun. The story takes place near the end of the 19th Century at an isolated fur-trading fort deep in the Ontario wilderness. The main character is Inspector Tom Hatcher, a troubled detective from Montreal who had recently captured an infamous serial killer, Gustav Meraux, known as the Cannery Cannibal. Gustav is Jack-the-the-Ripper meets Hannibal Lecter. Even though the cannibal is behind bars, Tom is still haunted from the case, so he decides to move himself and his rebellious teenage son out to the wilderness. At the beginning of the story, Tom has taken a job at Fort Pendleton to solve a case of strange murders that are happening to the fur traders that involve another cannibal, one more savage than Gustav Meraux. Some predator in the woods surrounding the fort is attacking colonists and spreading a gruesome plague—the victims turn into ravenous cannibals with an unending hunger for human flesh. In Tom’s search for answers, he discovers that the Jesuits know something about this plague. My second main character is Father Xavier, an exorcist from Montreal who is ordered by the Vatican to travel to Ontario to help Tom battle the killer causing the outbreak.
2. The story, though fantastical, seems, in other ways, so real. How much is based on fact? Were there any actual odd occurrences at Fort Pendleton at that time?
While indeed a work of fiction, I wanted this book to feel real. Throughout the story I interweave several facts I pulled from history books and an interview I did with a descendent from a Canadian Ojibwa tribe. During my research, I came across some unexplained stories that the Ojibwa and Algonquin tribes all around the Great Lakes region, including Ontario, Quebec, Michigan, and Minnesota, feared a supernatural creature that lives in the woods and stalks people every winter. They migrated every year because of this superstition. This legend also spooked the white fur traders, like the Hudson’s Bay Company, who lived in isolated forts all across Canada and traded with the Indians. Fort Pendleton is a fictitious fort named after one my characters, a tycoon by the name of Master Avery Pendleton. When the mysterious killings start plaguing the colonists living within his fort, Pendleton hires Tom Hatcher to solve the case. Tom teams up with an Ojibwa tracker and shaman, Anika Moonblood. She doesn’t believe the killer is a man or animal, but something much more terrifying. In the book, everyone in the neighboring Ojibwa tribe is spooked by the stalker out in the woods.
As I researched this legendary evil spirit even deeper, I discovered an article about a real isolated fort in Quebec where all the colonists went crazy and turned cannibal. In the late 1700s, a Jesuit priest who visited this fort documented the case in his journal, describing the deranged colonists as possessed by the devil. This is all factual and documented by the Catholic Church. I also did extensive research on the history of frontier life in Canada in the 1800s. During the long winter months out in the wilderness, cannibalism became a way of survival for isolated villages that ran out of food. And sometimes soldiers would arrive at a fort to find that everyone was dead except one man, who survived by eating the others.
3. What did you enjoy most about writing ‘Dead of Winter’?
There are so many things. I had such a great time writing this one. My imagination was running wild at the time. I real love the cast of characters. While Tom is the protagonist, with Father Xavier being a second main character with his own story line, I also enjoyed writing the supporting characters, many of which have subplots that intertwine with Tom’s story. It’s a very complex book. I also enjoyed seeing the mystery unfold. When I write, I never know how a book is going to play out. I have a general idea that gets me started writing, but most of the time I’m trying to solve the riddle right alongside my detective. I also love writing scenes that have action and suspense and this novel has plenty of them. I wanted DEAD OF WINTER to be the scariest book that I could write, I didn’t hold back.
4. The horror genre is new to Samhain. What drew you to them as a publisher and how has the experience been?
My agent and I were trying to find a good fit for my new book. I had finished DEAD OF WINTER in November of 2009 and was eager to sell it to a publisher right away. That’s how I feel after finishing a novel. I just can’t wait to share it with readers. But in 2009, publishing houses were shuffling their editors like Vegas dealer shuffling cards. My agent was afraid my book would get bought up and then lost in the chaos, so she told me let’s wait it out. It was tough to do, but we held out from submitting my book for over a year. I’m glad we did, because was were ready and waiting for the right opportunity. And then in January of this year my agent told me that Leisure Books was dissolving their horror line and that their editor, Don D’Auria had moved over to Samhain Publishing to start up a brand new horror line called Samhain Horror. Don wanted to start the line in October 2011 and was looking for submissions. We submitted my book within about two weeks of Don starting his new job. My agent sold me on Don, saying he was a legend in the horror business. I hadn’t heard of him, but I did a little research and discovered that he had been the editor for many of my favorite authors—Brian Keene, Richard Laymon, Ronald Malfi, and Jack Ketchum, to name a few. On his blog, Brian Keene wrote a post about how much he loved working with Don D’Auria. I flipped through a dozen books by Leisure authors and read the Acknowledgements. Again and again, I kept seeing Don’s name being praised, many describing him as the nicest editor to work with. That sold me, so I told my agent let’s submit DEAD OF WINTER to Don at Samhain. Less than 30 days later in February, my agent called back and said that Don loves my book and wants it to be one of the first books to release in October. I was so excited. My first novel I had to wait over a year to see my book in print. With Samhain, my novel released eight months after we concluded the book deal. And working with Don has been a dream. Like everyone says, he is the nicest guy and very diplomatic in his style of editing. He made some great suggestions on how to improve my novel while keeping most of the book in tact. With Don and Samhain, I definitely feel like I’ve found a home to publish my future books as well.
5. Full time writers, especially in the horror genre, are few and far between. What do you do to pay the bills when you’re not tapping away at your keyboard? Do you envision leaving the 9-5 world behind in the future?
It’s been over ten years since I had a typical 9-5 job, but I still have to work on client projects to pay the bills. I’ve been working as a freelance video editor for a handful of clients. I mostly edit documentaries, TV commercials, and corporate videos. For two straight years I got to travel with the USO and Tostitos to military bases in Baghdad, Iraq. We filmed the troops the playing a football game with celebrity football players. That was a cool experience. You can see photos from my trip at my blog (http://brianmoreland.blogspot.com/2010/01/traveling-to-iraq.html). In addition to video editing, I also have done some ghostwriting and edited and designed books for other authors. As I see more frequent financial success from my novels, I envision working fewer client projects and writing all these novels I have inside my head like caged beasts clawing to get out.
6. What made you want to become a writer, and why horror? 
I’ve always loved monsters and the adrenaline rush from being scared. I grew up watching double-feature horror movies that aired on TV every Saturday. I collected monster toys and read lots of comic books. As I got into my teens, my reading turned to novels by Stephen King and other horror authors. I had an active imagination and, at age 19, I decided to try my hand writing and wrote my first horror novel. I discovered that creating my own fictitious worlds and characters was even more fun than watching movies or reading books. I can’t explain why I write horror, only that I write what I love to read. I just write and scary stuff happens.
7. You’re on a small boat fishing with Stephen King, Richard Matheson and Brian Keene. What do you ask each of them and who will be the best to share a beer with when the fish ain’t biting?
I would love to go fishing with such legendary authors. To Richard Matheson I was ask about how he came up with I Am Legend, one of my all-time favorite stories. Because I like to know how people achieve success, I’d ask how he got started on his path to being published and how he made a name for himself. This year I got to meet Brian Keene—a super nice guy by the way—and take one of his seminars. Sitting next to him at a conference table for four hours, I asked him all kinds of questions about the business and learned many of his success secrets. I would love to go fishing with Brian and just get to know him better as a person. With Stephen King, I would love to share a beer and as what his secrets are to being so prolific. I’ve read his book On Writing and that was the closest I’ve gotten to learning his secrets to being an author. But there’s something about hanging out and talking with someone in person that has a deeper impact. I’ve gotten to hang out with James Rollins and John Saul for greater lengths of time, and they both had a huge impact on how I approach my career as an author.
8. As many people will know, Samhain Publishing is named for the ancient tradition that became every horrorhead’s favorite festival of Halloween. What would make for your best ever Samhain celebration?
First, I’d have to have a killer costume. Ever year I struggle on what to dress up as. Then it’s all about the party. I’d go with my girlfriend and a group of friends to some exotic place that throws a great Samhain celebration like the French Quarter in New Orleans or Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Two years ago I was living on Maui, and a group of us went to a beach town called Lahaina. They blocked off the main street for a mega Halloween party and every bar was packed. I saw some of the craziest costumes and a lot of risqué ones too, where people are half-naked. Now that was a party to remember. What I’m really looking forward to doing in the future is meeting up with fellow Samhain Horror authors at a horror convention and celebrating the success of our books.
Brian Moreland writes novels and short stories of horror and supernatural suspense. He loves hiking, kayaking, rock climbing, and dancing. Brian lives in Dallas, Texas where he is diligently writing his next horror novel. You can communicate with him online at http://brianmoreland.com/ or on Twitter @BrianMoreland.
Brian’s Horror Fiction blog: http://www.brianmoreland.blogspot.com 
Coaching for Writers blog: http://www.coachingforwriters.blogspot.com
Sample Chapter from Author Kristopher Rufty’s Book, Angel Board
Kristopher’s debut horror novel, Angel Board, is part of Samhain Publishing’s new horror lineup that unleashed on the world yesterday. Here’s a sample chapter from his book. Enjoy it…then pick up your copy!
Tonight David Barker planned to kill himself.
As he stood in the bathroom, gawking into the fingerprint-smudged, toothpaste-dotted mirror, his reflection gazed back through eyes a vacant shell of white. He didn’t recognize this person. The haggard, soundless face inside the glass showed signs of a soul suffering, and not the wholesome thirty-year-old man he was—or used to be.
That wasn’t David in there, not anymore.
Who was that guy?
The October wind gusted outside, causing the old apartment to creak and pop. He slowly exhaled through his nostrils, fogging up a small patch on the mirror. He wiped it away with a finger.
A few months earlier, he couldn’t have been happier. Things changed drastically in a short span of time. He’d gone from being in love with life, and a special girl like Samantha Corben, to hating everything affiliated with all of it. Being stuck in the same miserable routine day in and day out, not doing anything about it, had only made his condition worse. Drained him. Put him in front of this mirror, giving himself once last look at the pathetic inflammation he’d become before cashing in his chips.
David Barker is clocking out for the last time.
He glanced up at the brown splotches sprinkled across the ceiling and shook his head. Sam had been right all along. The bathroom really was in desperate need of a makeover. The paint that hadn’t peeled was fading fast. The floor was warped; the boards were loose and springy and sunk under each step. He often imagined himself one day crashing through the rotting wood and landing somewhere in the apartment below.
Sam had been after him for months to either fix up the place or move. She tried convincing him he could do much better. As she would sheepishly say—shack up with her, but when she’d discovered he wasn’t ready for that obligation just yet, she’d argued that if he was going to remain in that clammy apartment, he should at least make it livable. Sam had even gotten the landlord’s permission to do just that. The old man had agreed with all her grievances, going so far as to promise that if she kept the receipts he’d deduct it from the rent and also added an extra bit of news. He was planning to remodel the entire structure anyhow. So David had more than just his permission to revamp the apartment, he had his blessing.
What had stopped him? 
Everything. And nothing. He’d never seen the point in fixing the place up because he hadn’t planned to be there long enough to enjoy the refashion. At the time, he was planning to move on to a better job, a bigger place, and a healthier life for the two of them. Now he realized it was a form of premonition, foreshadowing what he was meant to do.
Die, he thought, and felt the misting in his eyes.
David stepped away from the mirror and over to the bathtub. Much like the rest of the place, a cleaning was in order. Mildew lined the tile of the shower walls, and mold caked in the corners. It wasn’t quite an infestation yet, but was getting close. Leaning over the tub, he gripped the knob labeled Hot. It felt cold and clammy in his palm. He turned it. Water erupted from the faucet, the pipes groaning from inside the walls as they heated.
Almost immediately, the water was scorching. He twisted the Cold dial to help adjust the temperature to his liking. Why he was taking these extra measures, he had no idea, but it felt like the right thing to do. Finding the right balance, he stoppered the drain. Briskly, the water began to rise.
He stood up, flicking the excess water off his fingers. On his way back to the mirror, he removed his jacket and winced at the haggard appearance he saw in the reflective glass.
“That is the mug of a looker, ladies and gentlemen,” he muttered.
Dangling his jacket in front of him, he searched the pockets for his cigarettes. He found them in the left pocket, then tossed the jacket on the toilet. It slid across the lid, falling on the floor between the commode and wall. He cringed. His favorite jacket, a black, zippered hood, had landed in the dreaded pee spot. The area his streams would wildly spray while he tried to find the bowl in his groggy, middle of the night bathroom trips.
Not like he’d ever wear it again.
Hope to God I’m not buried in it, he thought. Buried in a jacket that smells like old piss.
Someone would wash it first, they’d have to. Then he realized how ridiculous it was to consider he could actually be buried in that old jacket, anyway. It is my favorite. He’d heard of people being buried in sports-themed coffins, old school jerseys, so the idea he could be buried in a jacket he liked to wear wasn’t too farfetched. Oh well, someone would surely smell that stench and toss it in a washer first.
Hopefully.
Bio: 
Kristopher Rufty has written and directed the independent horror movies: Psycho Holocaust, Rags, and Wicked Wood. Angel Board is his first horror novel. He is married to his high school sweetheart and is the father of two maniacal children. He resides in North Carolina, where he is at work on his next novel.
“A powerhouse debut novel. Rufty’s prose will suck you in and hold you prisoner!”
–Ronald Malfi, author of Floating Staircase and Snow
“A creepy, gripping tale of horror. And it’s got one of the best death scenes I’ve read in a long time!”
–Jeff Strand, author of Pressure and Dweller
The Big Day Is Finally Here! Forest of Shadows Unleashed.
On the one hand, it seems like I’ve been waiting forever for this day, but on the other, it feels like I just signed my contract with Samhain. All that matters is that Forest of Shadows is finally here and on sale everywhere.
- Forest of Shadows Cover
You can pick up your copy at :
Book Tour Update
The book/blog tour is in full swing and sleep is something I hear other people talk about. I wanted to give you all an update on the various articles, interviews, what-have-you that are either live or coming up in the next few days.
First, I have a writing essay that discusses how much authors expose their inner selves in their work at Nicholas Kaufman’s blog. Nick is an amazing writer that should, and I hope one day will, get top billing with the Kings and Koontzs of the world.
Next up is an article revealing my deepest fear at Thomas Scopel’s Staying Scared way cool blog.
I’ll be popping in and out at the Samhain Cafe to answer any and all questions starting 10/3 and throughout the week. They host the cafe group at Yahoo, so just click on the name to join in the fun. You must be 18 to join, because Lord know what may come out of my mouth.
On Tuesday, 10/4, I’ll be interviewed on Artist First Radio at 7pm ET. Their interviews are usually an hour long and get down to the nitty gritty.
In the words of the immortal Porky Pig, th-th-th-that’s all folks…at least for today.
Monster Men Episode 5 : The Monsters That Made Us
Jack and I discuss the television shows that warped our minds and made us complete horror/monster addicts. What shows did you watch as a kid that influenced you?
Pick 6 Interview at Macabre Republic
I’m officially kicking off my blog tour, with a first stop at Macabre Republic. I had a fun time answering their Pick 6 questions, where I got to choose 6 out of about 40 different questions. It’s a pretty cool concept. Enjoy!
Forest of Shadows Preview
The release of Forest of Shadows is only 1 week away and it’s time to get the ghosts out of the closet and from under the bed. Following is the opening chapter. You might want to sleep with the lights on tonight…
PROLOGUE
They screamed.
And impossible as it seemed, George Bolster was grateful for his family’s unbridled cries of terror as they masked the other unearthly sounds that ghosted their every move.
Whump. Whump. Whump.
The steady beat of an unseen giant’s footsteps up the stairs.
“Into the bedroom, now!” George shouted at his panicked wife and sons. They scrabbled into the room at the end of the hall while the floor quaked beneath their feet. Once inside, George slammed the door shut and braced his back against its oak frame. His sons Cory and Matt clung toSharon’s sides, their eyes wide and terrified, darting around the room, looking for death in benign shadows.
“Sharon, push the dresser over.”
Stifling a sob that made her entire body shudder, she reluctantly pulled away from the boys and ran over to the large dresser. George grunted as the unseen force in the hallway pounded against the door.
“Hurry!”
Matt leapt to his mother’s side to help push the heavy piece of furniture across the floor and against the bedroom door. Cory, who was only six and barely forty pounds, could only curl up into a corner and whimper. A clap of thunder made the entire house quake and they all shrieked in unison. George still pressed his weight against the door while Sharon and Matt gathered as much bulk as they could find and piled it as high and as fast as they could on top of the dresser.
The door shook as it was rammed again and again, so hard that the arch above the doorway began to crack. It wouldn’t be long before the entire wall would collapse and then where could they go?
A deep thrumming emanated from beyond the door, a sonorous hum that was not so much heard as it was felt. It hurt like hell. They felt it vibrate their chest walls, disrupt the hammering rhythm of their hearts. It crept up their spines and exploded in their skulls, threatening to liquefy their brains.
So they screamed. Fighting fire with fire. The pile of debris stashed against the door shook as the pounding on the door continued. Staggering on jellied knees, George peered out the sole window into the moon bathed woods outside. It was only a drop of twenty feet or so. Maybe, if he jumped first, he could catch them one at a time and they could run into the woods. But it was so damn cold, well below zero, and they didn’t have a coat between them. Could they possibly navigate their way through the snow steeped forest to their nearest neighbor a mile away?
Suddenly, everything stopped. The pain ceased and they all dropped to their knees. What sounded like a thousand tiny claws ticked across the hardwood floor of the hallway, retreating to the other end and descending the staircase that lead to the living room below.
George shook his head and went back to the window.
“Is it gone, daddy?” Cory whispered.
“I don’t know. Everyone stay quiet.”
He kept his eyes on the faintly illuminated yard and his ears tuned for any sounds within the house. Matt and Cory muffled their cries into their mother’s breast.
“What are you thinking?”Sharonmouthed.
George pointed out the window and used two fingers to simulate running. It was their only chance.
“George, we’ll freeze to death.”
One look from her husband ended any protest. Gently pulling the boys from her sides, she went over to the dresser and found two blankets, several pairs of sport socks and one wool hat. She worked in silence, wrapping the boys in the blankets and putting an extra pair of socks on their shoeless feet. Cory, being the youngest and frailest, got the hat.
George gathered his family by the window.
“I’m going to jump into the snow out there. Matt, I want you to go next, then Cory, then mom. Once we’re all out, I want you to stick close and run as fast as you can. We’re going to try to make it to Glenn’s house.”
“But that’s really far and it’s so dark out,” Matt protested.
George hugged him and felt close to tears. “I know, little man, I know. But we have to get out of here and Glenn’s house is the closest to us.”
“Maybe it’s gone away,” Cory said. They all looked towards the door. The entire house had been silent for almost five minutes now.
Sharonplaced a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “It might not be a bad idea to wait a while and see.”
George wanted nothing more than to run like hell from his house. Freezing to death was a welcomed option to the thing downstairs.
“I’m not sure−”
The floor exploded just five feet from where they sat as the assault recommenced, this time from below. A fist-sized hole opened up between the splintered wood. A maniacal rush of thrashing and clawing blasted from the fresh portal as the floor shook from repeated efforts to widen the gap.
“Everyone up!”
George threw the window up hard, shattering the glass. Without a moment’s hesitation, he jumped out into the cold night. He landed in a three foot pile of snow that cushioned his fall. His right leg throbbed a little and his lungs hurt as he sucked in his first draft of frigid air.
“Okay, Matt, jump!” he shouted.
Sharonplucked her youngest son and aimed him into his father’s waiting arms. George caught him and they both fell back into the snow. He was back on his feet by the time Cory had himself perched on the windowsill. Cory looked back at his mother, afraid to leave her alone, even if it was only for a moment.
“Go, Cory. I’ll be right behind you.”
The opening in the floor grew wider as more shards of wood shot out of the hole like lava from a volcano. Cory sprang into the air and almost sailed past his father. After a quick tumble in the freezing snow, George was back up and waiting forSharon.
Heavy moaning filled the room.Sharon’s bladder lost control. Something was trying to find purchase on the jagged edges of the hole. Something huge, black and evil.
“Sharon! Come on!” George and the boys were shouting to her from the yard. Momentarily mesmerized by creeping fear, she turned back to the window and placed a foot on the sill.
As she prepared to jump, a trio of shadows stretched from the trees like a sentient ink spill and engulfed her family. One second they were there, calling for her to jump, and the next instant they were gone as the shadows retreated back into the forest.
“Nooooooo!”
She never noticed the presence behind her.
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Forest of Shadows Cover
Hunter Shea 