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SPECIAL OFFER: Order
Zombies!, Ghosts! and Vampires!
All 3 Anthologies for
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Many of us have been haunted. We have watched
with wide eyes as bowls burst
into splinters on our countertops, broken by no
force we could discern. We’ve trembled as
footfalls pounded the stairwell in the empty
apartment adjacent to our own, though no one has
been there in weeks. We’ve crept toward bolted
windows from which no draft could escape simply
to stop a feather-light curtain from fluttering,
though no wind and no heat moves through the
space. We’ve closed up our closets to keep the
shadows from spilling out into our children’s
rooms, and we’ve left the nightlight on though
darkness still clings link spider silk to the
corners of a room no matter how much light tries
to chase it away.
Shades and specters, orbs,
poltergeists, white ladies, and spirits; these
beings have haunted us since humans have known
about death. And even then, those first horror
stories must have been no more than cave men
plucking up charred sticks to scribble the
terror of their own shadows against cave walls
so long ago.
And after them, others came.
Shakespeare gave us Hamlet’s father and a charge
of vengeance cold as steel. Henry James gave us
possessed children turning like screws to the
twist of two dead lovers. And then the very real
Fox sisters came knocking at our tables, and
soon after ectoplasm was born. Even Arthur Conan
Doyle sought after the murky substance, as
ardent a believer as we.
Then, soon after, ghosts were
really busted, and it was a long time before
believers crept out of the sunlight and back
into their shadowy attics, armed with
orb-sensing cameras and sensitive voice
recorders looking for the proof to support what
they already knew.
Now, again, we see dead
people.
We are the ones who still
believe. In our periphery, we see them dancing
darkly in moon beams, flickering like ghouls in
the candlelight, and braying like witches to the
wind that flutters the branches in the trees. We
turn to look, but the specters sway just out of
our line of vision, always behind us like our
own shadows.
Sometimes we feel them brush
against our cheek while we sleep. Cold, clammy
palms weep against our shoulders before we turn
with a start. A chill sweeps over us.
Sometimes we are fortunate
enough to catch a glimpse. The white lady on the
stairs raising her willowy arm to point at you.
The poltergeist who scrambles under your bed
when you flick on the light. The banshees
howling like a windstorm at the front gate.
And when we see them, we
know. Something wicked this way comes.
Danger lurks beyond, riddled
in these stories. Ghosts and specters will haunt
you if you turn the page. They are there, just
beyond your vision. Rapping. Creeping. Waiting.
Don’t look now.
(FOREWORD
BY ARAMINTA STAR MATTHEWS)
Ashland (TOM WORTMAN)
Penny Pinchers (E. K.
COUGHLIN)
The Scratch (CODY R.
LANGILLE)
Mommy (C. W. LaSART)
A Dream for Sugar
(BRUCE MEMBLATT)
Red Route (JAMES
EVERINGTON)
House of Horrors (LORI
MICHELLE)
The Hold of Broken Things
(MORGEN KNIGHT)
Graven Image (J. B.
WILLIAMS)
Entangled Souls
(BENJAMIN MORE)
Gallery Three (GERALD
VINCENT)
Echo (MAX BOOTH III)
38 Jars (RICHARD J.
O’BRIEN)
The Tunnel (JOHN HUNT)
Open ‘Til Midnight (J.
A. EASTIN)
Immortal Longings
(CHRISTOPHER LEPPEK and EMANUEL ISLER) |
