Wednesday 23 October 2013

This week only ... get your horrors FREE!

Anyone tempted by my latest e-collection of horror stories and novellas, DON’T READ ALONE, may be interested to learn that it will be FREE to download from midnight tonight, October 23, and will remain so until midnight on October 27.

From that point on, it will be subject to a special Halloween promotion, enabling those still interested to download it for only 99p. That deal in turn will run until November 10.

In case anyone is still undecided, allow me to fill you in a little on the book itself. Though I’m better known for writing crime and thriller novels these days, I have dipped into the horror market on a number of occasions, primarily to pen movie scripts but also short stories and novellas. I’m certainly no stranger to having collections of my stories published, though up until now only a handful have appeared electronically.

Anyway, all that is now set to change.

The first of these new e-collections, DON’T READ ALONE – which I repeat (because I reckon it’s worth repeating) can be yours completely FREE from midnight tonight until midnight on October 27 – comprises 70,000 words of hopefully chilling and challenging fiction.

It features five long stories in total, each one of which I’m fairly proud of – just read on for further details, snippets and such.

(I should point out that the images scattered throughout this column, while for the most part do not relate directly to these stories, should give some indication of the kind of horrors you’ll find in there).


THE OLD NORTH ROAD (winner of the International Horror Guild Award, 2007)

A disgruntled writer pursues the legend of the Green Man, only to run into trouble of a less ethereal kind on the isolated Old North Road …

“So … the Green Man, he wasn’t actually supposed to have existed then? He wasn’t like a god or spirit?”
“Well … no.” Drayton was caught on the hop: she’d clearly understood his introduction. “No, he’s more of a symbolic figure. His original meaning, if there ever was one, is lost to us now. He’s often associated with paganism of course, and fertility rites … but that’s all bollocks. It’s just New Age fantasy. In medieval times he was a representative of Nature … an embodiment of all its beauty and danger. The Church used him as an allegorical figure; an image of what Man could turn into if he didn’t stay on the straight and narrow.”
“Yuk!” she interrupted, and he knew immediately what she was looking at.
Among his notes, he’d inserted a variety of cut-outs and original photographs, the majority of them depicting the so-called ‘foliate heads’, the original and most common way in which the Green Man was presented to his mystified audience. These were invariably carvings, drawings or mouldings, usually found in religious buildings, and nearly always they’d feature a humanoid head that was either peeking out through dense vegetation or which had actually become part of that vegetation. In most cases, the semi-transformed heads were quite beautiful, their normal human features melding flawlessly into concentric layers of crisp new leaves, their hair hung with fruit and flowers, though one or two – and these were undoubtedly the ones that Shirley had just found – were more gory; in their case, thick vines tended to uncurl from the face’s gaping mouth, buds hung from the nostrils, branches often sprouted from the eye sockets, having first, presumably, popped out the eyeballs. They made for a very ugly sight, and Drayton had often thought them reminiscent of rotting corpses through which natural undergrowth had penetrated.


THE POPPET

When two college friends fall out over the same girl, one of them turns to withcraft, and unwittingly unleashes a nightmarish force …

I took the kettle from the cupboard, filled it at the sink and plugged it in, then went to close the blinds and draw the curtains, and as I did I glanced out of the window – down onto the quadrangle. And for the second time that evening I stopped dead.
Someone had just vanished out of sight below. Someone who had just walked diagonally across the quadrangle.
The chill went to my very bones.
There was nobody else here, I told myself. Aside from Cheerwick, and it certainly hadn’t been him. I tried to recall who it was I’d just seen. But no answer was possible, because who could there be in Crawford House who was less than three feet tall and walked with an ungainly limp?
A child maybe?
But there were no children here. And in any case, when did you ever see a child wearing a headscarf and old, peasant-type clothing?
Downstairs, I heard the swing and bang of the door being violently opened.
     A terrible second passed, before I threw myself across the room and yanked my own door open. What sounded like heavy but strangely hollow feet were clumping up the stone stair.


GRENDEL’S LAIR

A suspected murderer leads a bunch of a cops into a network of derelict air-raid shelters to find a missing child – where a hideous evil awaits them!

“Where the fuck are you taking us to?” Brunton asked. He was still coming the heavy, but the eyes were darting about, rabbit-like, in his red, pudgy face.
“We’re almost there,” Grimwood answered, a curious half-smile twisting his mouth.
A few minutes later they entered an area of tunnel more heaped with debris than anything they’d so far seen; huge sections of its roof and walls had long ago collapsed. In consequence, this space was the tightest and dingiest yet. A black fungus coated the damp and rotted fragments of wall that were still visible – it seemed to leach away what minuscule light there was, and fuelled the sensation that the party had now burrowed to the deepest point of the air-raid shelters. In that respect, when Grimwood suddenly stopping to think, chuckled and, hunkering down, began to scoop bricks and dirt away from the piled rubble with his cuffed hands, it filled the three cops with revulsion.
“Can you imagine,” Craegan said, “this slimy little toe-rag brought a child down here!” His gun was trained firmly on Grimwood’s back; sweat gleamed on his pallid face.
Lockhart glanced warily at the firearms man. “That’s behind him now though, isn’t it? Eh … Gordon?”
Grimwood made no reply.
“Confession’s good for the soul,” Lockhart added.
“So’s prison,” Craegan said, his voice rising. “Too good. He should’ve been strung up for what he did!”
Grimwood ignored him and continued to dig.
“Easy, Craegan,” Lockhart advised.
     “Easy?” For the first time, the firearms man looked round at the chief super. “Easy? He’s had it easy … for way too long!”


HELL IN THE CATHEDRAL

When holiday-makers are marooned in a Mediterranean sea-cave, they at first think it's a joke, only to find themselves at the mercy of a relentless and voracious beast …

“We may have another problem,” Dolph said. “This cave-system is of course tidal ... it may be that with high tide, some of these passages become impassable.”
The terror of that thought gripped us like a vice.  “Let’s go now!” I said urgently. “Now!”
We moved in a group towards the tunnel, at a steady breast-stroke – but not before Dolph handed us two flares each in case any of us got separated from the rest, though we were only to use them one at a time. The two Germans were proving themselves good companions – they both took off their flippers and fastened them to their harness, so as not to get too far ahead. As we swam, Karen came up beside me and asked if I was sure I could make it. I could have laughed. What choice did I have?
I could never have imagined however, just what a feat of strength and endurance was required even to make it out of that deepest chamber. Anyone who has ever tried to swim against a rising tide, even in shallow water off some pleasant beach, will know how difficult it is. For every three yards we made towards the black crevasse that was our first exit, the current pushed us back two. We gasped and grunted and strained every muscle, yet at the same time we knew we couldn’t afford to overtax ourselves. Just thinking about the distance between us and the outer world was unbearable. Mind you, I doubt in that particular moment that any one of the four of us knew the real meaning of fear.
One second later, we did.
It was Karen who first saw it coming up behind us. She was in front of me and had glanced around, concerned that I was dropping behind, when I saw her face change. She gave a shrill, prolonged scream. I looked around too, and had a fleeting vision of some vast shape barrelling towards us, under the surface.
     Before I could cry out, a huge object – squashy, rubbery, freezing cold – bundled into me with such force that I was catapulted out of the water and into the midst of the others.


THE BALEFUL DEAD

An ageing metal band reunite to make one last album, but the country mansion they choose for a venue has a history of madness, massacre and necromancy …

“Luke! Luke …wake up man!”
But it was too late. Because suddenly they were onto me, ragged hordes of black and ragged things swarming out from either side of the path. I ploughed into them, crunched headlong into their midst as though driving through a cluster of saplings. There was a grinding of metal, a tearing and snapping of fibrous limbs, and then bodies were being hurled aside or going down flailing beneath my wheels. The next thing, the world turned upside-down: the quad bike flipped over and I was flung hard onto the verge. I took the brunt of it on the right shoulder and the right side of my head. It knocked me senseless, and for some time I lay grovelling in the leaf-rubble and what I assumed was a pool of my own vomit. But even groggy, I knew that I wasn’t alone.
With agonised dizziness, I was able to look up.
The crash had put out the headlight, so I was denied much detail, but I sensed as much as saw them standing all around me – those still capable of standing, for I had mown a good number down, and I had the distinct impression that beneath their dented plate and mildewed leather they were more bones and filth than actual flesh.

(The witch doll image is by Malcolm Lidbury, the image of the Green Man costume is by David R. Tribble, and the image of the Green Man in stone by Johanne McInnis).

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