Both the movie (the made for television mini-series from 1978) and the book (written in 1973) are absolute wins. Harvest Home is the story about Cornwall Coombe, a tiny, almost forgotten hamlet tucked away somewhere within the Connecticut countryside and follows a young family (the Constantines) who desire a more quiet and peaceful life.
It’s part folk and part cult, but all solidly horror-based. The book does take its time “getting there”, but what Tryon does masterfully is set the scenes and create the world, so by the time hell breaks loose (and trust me, it does), you are all in.
The characters are riveting and truly jump off the page. Like ‘em or hate ‘em, you’ll get to know and understand them. And while we might not live in a world like ‘the Coombe’, there’s enough folk horror of today for readers to have a firm grasp on the entirety of the story. Think Midsommar, The Wicker Man (the original), and to a degree, The Stepford Wives (the original), and even The Witch.
I recommend this book (and the made for tv movie – you can find a fairly decent offering on YouTube. It’s not the cleanest version, but you’ll get the gist.) It’s perfect for the fall, for Halloween, or anytime you want a fantastic story and pulls you in and refuses to let go long after you’ve finished with it.
Boo-graphy: Sue Rovens is an indie suspense/horror author who hails from Normal, Illinois. She has written four novels and two books of short horror stories, with her latest book, Rage, having “hit the shelves” in July 2021.
Track 9, her second novel, snagged a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly (May 2018), her short story, “Coming Over”, from her book In a Corner, Darkly (Volume 1), was turned into a screenplay and short student indie film by the theater department of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and another short story, “When the Earth Bled”, won 2nd place in the Support Indie Authors short story contest earlier this year. Her two most recent books (Buried and Rage) are under Plump Toad Press.
Sue owns a blog which includes interviews with authors, musicians, podcasters, and artists. She is an Executive Producer for an indie (short) horror film which is currently in production called “Let’s Do Things that Make Us Happy”. Sue is also a co-host and story writer for the new horror podcast, Ye Olde Terror Inn.
Sue is a member of The Chicago Writers Association and the Alliance for Independent Authors (ALLi).
Rage — Weston Cross is a bullied and abused man who wants nothing more than to escape from his agonizing mental anguish and excruciating misery. After a harrowing brush with death, he discovers a better way to twist his depression and self-despair into something different…something sinister.Lindsay Yager, the therapist assigned to help Weston with his internal battles, is fighting her own demons. On the verge of a nasty divorce, she finds solace at the bottom of a bottle. Her anger and vitriol take no prisoners, even when lives are at stake – including her own.Depression sets the stage, but RAGE will have the final say.
Meghan: Hi, Sue. Welcome to Meghan’s Haunted House of Books. What is your favorite part of Halloween?
Sue: I’ve always loved “the feel” and “the atmosphere” of the season. Fall is my favorite time of year; October is my favorite month. The movies, the pumpkins, the spooky things, the trick-or-treating – all of it. I would totally go trick-or-treating now (if Charlie, my husband, would go with!) I think it would be a gas.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween tradition?
Sue: Trick-or-treating the old school way. Get dressed up, grab a pillowcase, and run house to house for hours.
Meghan: What are you superstitious about?
Sue: I don’t know if I’m superstitious, per se, but I also don’t see the need to tempt the fates. If I spill salt, I’ll throw some grains over my left shoulder. I won’t walk under a ladder (if I can help it). I’ll try not to open an umbrella in the house. I DO have a black cat, though. Noodle is adorable and not scary at all. 😊
Meghan: What/who is your favorite horror monster or villain?
Sue: I don’t really have a favorite villain, but I do have a lot of respect for the originals – The Mummy (the real one, not the Brendan Fraser mashup), Dracula, etc. So much was built on those characters, it’s hard not to have some reverence toward the ones who came before.
Meghan: Which urban legend scares you the most?
Sue: I imagine if I had to pick, I would say anything revolving around Ouija Boards. Even after writing an in-depth scholarly article about them (and knowing that they were created for parlor entertainment), I still think that there’s SOME way they can invite “evilness” into a house. And why in the world would I want to do that??
Meghan: Who is your favorite serial killer and why?
Sue: The question is a bit of a misnomer as I don’t have a “favorite” serial killer (and, thinking about it, I don’t know if ordinary folks should). BUT having said that, I find Ed Gein one of the most interesting/character studies, probably because of the time period in which everything took place. The 1950’s were generally seen as such an idyllic era (no, not socially forward thinking, but we’re not addressing that here) that discovering what types of activities Ed Gein was actually engaged in was a complete and unconscionable shock. Eventually, the powers that be had to have his house torn down because people continued to be drawn to this “house of horrors” (for a variety of reasons).
Meghan: How old were you when you saw your first horror movie?
Sue: That goes back pretty darn far! LOL. I can’t say I remember what my very first horror movie was, BUT I do recall watching parts of The Mummy (1932), The Crawling Hand (1963), and Dracula (1931) when I was a kid (my brother would be watching these and I’d be in the same room). A little later (probably 9 – 15), I’d watch Made-for-TV “horror”. Those were the best (1970s).
Meghan: Which horror novel unsettled you the most?
Sue: When I was around 15, 16, I read ‘Salem’s Lot (Stephen King). That was the main impetus of me wanting to become a writer. I found it really scary at the time.
Meghan: Which horror movie scarred you for life?
Sue: Hmmm. Well, this might not be the kind of answer you’re looking for, but there’s been a few “extreme” horror movies that I wish I could unsee (for a whole host of reasons). Cannibal Holocaust is certainly one. I refused to watch the “animal scenes” because that’s where I draw the line. Plus, it’s basically just a poorly made slaughter-fest which, to me, isn’t “scary” or “horror”, but simply disgusting and grotesque.
Salo (120 Days) is another movie that I couldn’t come to terms with, no matter how I tried. If there are any redeeming qualities to this film, they’re beyond my capacity of understanding and critical ability. Yes, it’s created to provoke emotions and feelings, but the only feeling I retained after having witnessed it was that of nausea.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween costume?
Sue: When I was 17, I dressed up as Richard Simmons. 😊
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween-themed song?
Sue: I didn’t know there were actual Halloween songs! LOL.
Meghan: What is your favorite Halloween candy or treat? What is your most disappointing?
Sue: Reese’s are perfection in any size, but I’ll take a Milk Dud or Butterfinger any day. Oh, the “fun size” they sell now? Scam. Total scam. Fun Size USED to be about half (maybe a third) of a regular bar. Now? Forget about it.
Neccos are beyond disappointing. They’re just evil and wrong.
Meghan: One more thing before we go: What are some Halloween movies you think we should definitely watch?
Sue: Pontypool – Trust me. This is a brilliantly made Canadian film which doesn’t rely on special effects, excessive gore, or goofy one-liners. One of my favorite movies.
Burnt Offerings – Sure, it’s from 1976, but it’s fantastic. Spooky, great story, and some really scary scenes. Very little gore – doesn’t need it. The characters and story drive it home.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch – Campy, but insane, all at the same time. I love revisiting this one. If you can overlook the “smarminess” of the main character, it’s a great romp and features an additive melody.
The Sentinel – Again, another old school one. This movie is so trippy, though, it’s a delight to behold. If you’re looking for weird jump cuts and Burgess Meredith reveling in his scenes, give this one a try.
The Thing (1982) – Pure, unadulterated horror. Scary. Shocking. Intense. Great all around.
Boo-graphy: Sue Rovens is an indie suspense/horror author who hails from Normal, Illinois. She has written four novels and two books of short horror stories, with her latest book, Rage, having “hit the shelves” in July 2021.
Track 9, her second novel, snagged a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly (May 2018), her short story, “Coming Over”, from her book In a Corner, Darkly (Volume 1), was turned into a screenplay and short student indie film by the theater department of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and another short story, “When the Earth Bled”, won 2nd place in the Support Indie Authors short story contest earlier this year. Her two most recent books (Buried and Rage) are under Plump Toad Press.
Sue owns a blog which includes interviews with authors, musicians, podcasters, and artists. She is an Executive Producer for an indie (short) horror film which is currently in production called “Let’s Do Things that Make Us Happy”. Sue is also a co-host and story writer for the new horror podcast, Ye Olde Terror Inn.
Sue is a member of The Chicago Writers Association and the Alliance for Independent Authors (ALLi).
Rage — Weston Cross is a bullied and abused man who wants nothing more than to escape from his agonizing mental anguish and excruciating misery. After a harrowing brush with death, he discovers a better way to twist his depression and self-despair into something different…something sinister.Lindsay Yager, the therapist assigned to help Weston with his internal battles, is fighting her own demons. On the verge of a nasty divorce, she finds solace at the bottom of a bottle. Her anger and vitriol take no prisoners, even when lives are at stake – including her own.Depression sets the stage, but RAGE will have the final say.
Two novel recommendations for horror fans who appreciate well-told stories about devilish characters.
What respectable horror fan doesn’t love a good novel in which the devil, or something closely resembling him, comes to Earth to stage an uprising, possess an unsuspecting soul, or otherwise wreak havoc on the mortal world? I sure do; in fact, I used the trope as a central part of my 2020 novel, Burn, Beautiful Soul, in which a demon king named Basil departs his subterranean kingdom for the surface to take a job writing ad copy for an agency in rural Nebraska.
Two excellent novels that incorporate this idea ended up on my nightstand in the past year: Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin (1967); and The Summer That Melted Everything by Tiffany McDaniel (2017). In some ways, these two novels are opposites; one is written in first person, the other in third person; one is a coming-of-age story set in a small Ohio town that does not exist, and the other is an occult-driven mystery set in the world’s largest metropolis; and one surrounds the end of innocence, while the other details the postpartum beginning of hell on earth.
Both, however, are amazingly written, completely engrossing, and creepy as hell.
Let’s start with Rosemary’s Baby. I picked up a hardback copy of this novel for less than a dollar at a used-book sale in a suburb of Philadelphia, figuring that even if it landed in the “DNF” pile, at least I had it in my collection; it’s considered a classic for good reason. I had not watched the film in its entirety until last year, though I had seen the final unsettling scene a dozen times in Terror in the Aisles and other films about horror’s best and most iconic titles.
You likely know the story, too, even if you have not read the novel or seen the film. The gist: A young married couple moves into a gorgeous Manhattan apartment building with an insidious past; a klatch of elderly and eccentric neighbors gets increasingly chummy with the couple, because they are grooming the protagonist, Rosemary, to bear the Dark Lord’s progeny; and, in the end, Rosemary’s maternal instincts kick in as she comes to terms with the idea of spending the next 18 years mothering the antichrist, at which point the antichrist will be of legal age and able to make decisions for himself.
Rosemary’s Baby is an excellent read. Even though I knew the story, I felt a sense of eerie delight as I turned the patchouli-scented pages. (Incidentally, I love the personalities of used books; many come with notes in the margins, underlined passages the prior owner found particularly profound, or, in this case, evidence of the prior owner’s lifestyle.) Without giving away too much of the story, Rosemary finds herself on the horns of a thorny dilemma. She and her husband, Guy, want to have a baby. Her new neighbors seem kind enough, even if they are a bit strange and take a little too quickly to the new folks in town, particularly Guy, who is an aspiring actor. When the neighbors learn that the couple is trying to procreate, things happen, as they generally do in novels.
Rosemary’s pregnancy takes, which should be a cause for celebration. Her memory of certain events surrounding the pregnancy seems fuzzy, which may or may not have something to do with the “cold sour” concoctions one of the neighbors has been feeding her to sustain the bundle of joy growing inside her. Or it could be the stink of the strange charm around her neck, another gift from the overbearing neighbor. Of course, Rosemary also abhors the atrocious dreams—or are they memories?—about a seemingly demonic figure having its way with her as Guy and others look on approvingly.
Levin, the author, does a wonderful job of making the reader struggle along with his protagonist. Rosemary begins to suspect that her neighbors, her doctor, and even her loving husband are conspiring against her, and gaslighting her into thinking her pregnancy is going according to plan, when, in fact, her body is nourishing a monster. Part of Rosemary does not want to believe such horrible things are happening, despite the impassioned warnings of a male friend who digs a little too deeply into the curious goings-on. Likewise, the reader suspects Rosemary’s fate is not a good one, but the nugget of doubt keeps the reader turning pages until the perfectly devilish conclusion.
Which brings me to Tiffany McDaniel’s The Summer That Melted Everything. This is not a horror novel; rather, it’s a dark coming-of-age story about a young boy named Fielding Bliss who grows up in a town called Breathed (pronounced BRETH-ed), Ohio, during a particularly hot summer in the early 1980s. Circumstances convince Fielding’s father, a kind man named Autopsy — give McDaniel credit for inventive character names — to advertise a peculiar invitation in the local newspaper: He welcomes the devil to visit and shake up their sleepy town.
Soon enough, the devil shows up… in the form of a thirteen-year-old black boy named Sal.
Sal looks nothing like one might expect from the Prince of Darkness: no horns, no hooves, no pitchfork. He does, however, have a peculiar way about him, and he seems to have no discernible past. Sal also possesses an uncanny ability to understand people’s intentions and past traumas, even if they cannot understand those things themselves.
Despite outcries from certain sects of Breathed’s population, led by a feisty dwarf named Elohim, the Bliss family takes Sal in as one of their own. That’s where the story gets good — amazing, in fact. Mysterious occurrences ensue. People die. Innocent snakes get set alight. (Great line, among too many to mention: “You can tell a lot about a man by what he does with a snake.”) Along the way, Fielding learns about kindness and cruelty, friendship and love, good and evil, life and death.
The writing ranks among the best I have ever had the pleasure to consume. Several times while reading this novel I stopped and nearly gasped at McDaniel’s talent for turning a phrase and plucking a nerve I didn’t know was there.
Of the sixty or so books I read last year, I consider The Summer That Melted Everything my favorite. I immediately bought McDaniel’s follow-up, Betty, which is a prequel of sorts. It, too, was incredibly well written, but reading it pained me because of the many hells the title character and her family must endure. It’s even more unsettling to consider the novelist’s suggestion that some of those hells were slightly fictionalized versions of episodes from her own family’s history.
Betty is one of the few books that I nearly stopped reading purely because of a scene’s intensity. The author took one step across a line that made me wonder if I wanted to finish; only the strength of the narrative kept me going. I’m glad I did because of the novel’s resolution, which included a graceful reintroduction to some of the characters from The Summer That Melted Everything.
I have read my share of horror novels flush with gore and brutality, and some of them have a permanent place on my bookshelves at home. Even so, my favorite horror stories, meaning the ones I will return to, have a certain elegance to them—moments of quiet and tenderness among the screaming and bloodshed. To me, few novels achieve this balance more effectively than the two I’ve outlined here.
Boo-graphy: William J. Donahue’s novel Burn, Beautiful Soul won the horror category in the 2021 International Book Awards. He also authored three short-story collections: Too Much Poison, Filthy Beast, and Brain Cradle, one of which (Filthy Beast) was a finalist for Foreword’s 2004 Book of the Year Award. His next novel, Crawl on Your Belly All the Days of Your Life, will be released in April 2022. He lives in a small but well-guarded fortress in the Keystone State, somewhere on the map between Philadelphia and Bethlehem. Although his home lacks a proper moat, it does have plenty of snakes.
Burn, Beautiful Soul — Basil the demon king has come to a crossroads. He has grown tired of life underground and regretful of the atrocities he has committed to maintain his hold on power. Wanderlust leads him to the surface, to live freely among humans. Considering the state of the world, most humans seem unfazed by his arrival – but not all. A religious zealot with murderous intentions and a vengeful biker gang seek his end. Meanwhile, Basil must contend with two internal forces: the disturbing dreams that suggest he once walked the earth as a human; and the pull of the underworld, drawing him back to deal with the troubles he left behind – namely, a cunning foe who craves the throne, a monstrous kraken, and an ancient evil as cold and dark as the soil.
‘Burn, Beautiful Soul is The Wizard of Oz with a demon Dorothy… It is a loving but unsentimental dissection of America and its people. It is a story you will never forget.’ John Schoffstall, author of Half-Witch
Erika Fisher swore she could still smell fire somewhere nearby. Fire, and charred flesh. In the parking lot of Smith County High, police lights flashed red and blue, making the night look strange and otherworldly. The night of her junior prom needed no help being either. She was seated on a concrete bench, next to the bike rack. A pudgy, baldheaded officer whose badge said his name was Kurtz stood over her, frowning at his notepad and pinching a pen he’d gotten from Greener Pastures Baptist Church. Radio chatter hissed and crackled on his CB.
“And you’ve never seen this guy before?” he asked again. “You’re sure about this?”
“No, I’ve never seen him before.” She let out a grim sigh. “And yes, I’m sure.”
“And he just … what? Waltzed into the auditorium, started dancing with your friend, and then they just … what? Vanished?”
She chewed her lip and stared at her glittery shoes. The police strobes gave the illusion they were burning.
“Vanished is the wrong word,” she said. “It wasn’t … into thin air or anything.”
The corner of his mouth twitched up.
“Right, it was like what? Their feet started a fire and it just consumed them.”
“Look, I know how it sounds. You don’t have to tell me it sounds crazy.”
“You’re sure she and this boy didn’t just run off together and…”
“And now I’m covering for them?”
“You said it, not me.”
“I guess that’s why I’m so upset. Right, Officer?”
“Don’t get smart with me, girl. If I had half a mind, I’d put you away for obstruction of justice.”
She blew out another breath. She tried not to think of Danielle’s face in those final moments. It was contorted in some awful marriage of fear and pain. And that boy, that gorgeous, dark-eyed boy had been grinning so wide, she thought his cheeks might split open and reveal all his teeth.
“Now, is there anything else you can think of? Anything at all you think might help us find your friend and this mystery boy?”
“I’ve told you all I know.” She put her head in her hands but did not close her eyes. She feared if she did, that boy would be standing there when she opened them instead of this cop. Or even Danielle, which would be somehow worse. “Not like you’d believe me anyway.”
“It’s not my job to believe or not believe,” he said, as if he hadn’t been condescending to her the entire time. “I just have to turn in my reports and bust scumbags. Now, are you sure there’s nothing else?”
“There’s nothing else. Does this mean I can go home?”
He pressed his lips together. She thought he meant to admonish her again. Instead, he handed her a business card.
“You think of anything else, you call me. I or a detective may call you if we have additional questions. Your parents picking you up tonight?” Erika nodded. “You better give them a call. Let them know the prom ended early.”
He smirked again walked to a cluster of officers standing in a semicircle.
And he says I’m the smartass.
Erika dug her phone out of her clutch and called her mother.
On the way back, Erika told her mother everything. The woman who hadn’t birthed her but had raised her just the same said nothing, only listened. Dark as it was inside the car, Erika could see her getting paler after every sentence. Erika finished the story and asked what her mother thought. She took so long to answer, Erika thought she might not have heard the question. Before she could repeat it, her mother began to speak.
“That’s almost word-for-word an old Texas folktale,” she said. “Supposedly, in the 1950s or so, a girl about your age was forbidden from going to a dance because a preacher told her mama it was for the devil. Of course, she snuck out anyway and at the dance, she met this gorgeous stranger. He danced with her, spinning her round and round until the earth opened up and sucked her down to Hell. The stranger was the devil.”
“Yeah, but mine really happened,” she said.
Her mother looked at her. Exhaustion had darkened the skin beneath her eyes.
“But you agree the stories are very similar, yes?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, maybe you heard it before and…”
“And what? Imagined the whole thing? Other people were there, Mom. Other people saw it.”
Her mother pressed her lips together. A muscle worked in her jaw.
“I love you, Erika Marie. I just want you to be honest with me. You can tell me anything. I promise.”
“Yeah, Mom,” Erika said and rested her head against the cool window.
She watched the trees go by along the dark country road. She wondered if it was dark where Danielle was.
That night, when she came home, she got undressed and turned off the light. Though she harbored no delusions that she’d be able to sleep, she decided to at least try. She lay down on her bed. Moonlight shone through her window. On most nights, she thought the silver-blue illumination was pretty and comforting. This was not most nights. With her curtains parted, it was all too easy to imagine the mysterious boy levitating up the side of her house and peering through her window with those obsidian eyes of his. Smiling that smile that looked like it’d split open his cheeks.
Erika closed the curtains. The moonlight backlit them. The shadows of the still somewhat bare tree branches danced like skeletons under some bizarre resurrection spell. She expected the shadow of the boy to rise up and join them. To reach through her window and its curtains. To take her dancing, like he’d taken Danielle. She turned onto her side and faced the wall. Her Luke Bryan poster was unrecognizable in the dimness. She felt no safer.
As she lay in bed not sleeping, she remembered meeting Danielle for the first time.
Back in freshman year, Danielle had transferred in after her parents joined the ever-growing ranks of mass shooting victims. Danielle had almost joined those ranks herself. One afternoon, her family had gone to a Sonic for frozen cherry lemonades. While they waited, a man opened fire on every car in the lot. Danielle had managed to escape into the nearby woods with a boy from another vehicle.
He’d lost his parents in the massacre too. Danielle told Erika that she developed an intense attraction to the boy, not like a crush or anything, just an intense need to be around him as much as possible. They’d been through this terrible thing together. They were the only survivors, other than a couple of fry-cooks and a car hop who’d all hidden inside when the killer opened fire. This shared experience had created an intense, psychic bond between them. Danielle worried she would never fully heal from the experience without him. Unfortunately for her, the death of her parents put her in the care of her aunt and uncle who lived in Tyler. She didn’t know where the boy was sent.
“But you seem sweet,” she’d said to Erika.
Erika gave her a hug then, said she was sorry all that horrible stuff had happened.
Even at her young age, Erika found it a little weird for someone to give away such an intense, personal story to a total stranger. More than that though, she felt a responsibility to show love and compassion to the new girl. At that time, she’d already started to question, and in some cases outright reject, the religiosity her mother had attempted to instill. Heaven and Hell, angels, Jonah getting swallowed by a whale and living to talk about it, men rising from the dead; it all felt like fairy tale stuff to her. Metaphors in the best cases. Propaganda in the worst.
What stuck were the tenets of loving strangers and caring for those who suffered.
When she’d given Danielle that hug and expressed regret for the new girl’s family tragedy, she still thought of these behaviors as Christian love in action. Looking back now, it just seemed like basic human decency. Whether divinely-inspired love or secular humanism at its finest, it hadn’t been enough to save Danielle Prescott. That girl had a shadow over her. Maybe the shooting deaths of her parents had brought it. Maybe it was older than that. Whatever its origin, whatever its age, it’d finally caught up to her.
“You believe they’re calling this a regular kidnapping?” Bobby Kirsch said the Monday after.
They were standing behind the same auditorium where it’d happened. School was in session but they’d gone around the side of the building so he could vape while they talked. She was usually careful about not putting herself in situations which could land her in trouble. Today, she didn’t care about suspension or fines. She just needed to share her grief with someone who’d also loved Danielle.
For Erika, the weekend had been weirdly normal. Shopping trips with Mom. Morning jogs. Homework. A lot of denial. She slept probably more than was healthy, but she didn’t care, and Mom let her do it.
Bobby sucked furiously on his vape pen. His face tightened and went red. To Erika, it looked like he just couldn’t get enough of a hit to take him away from whatever he was feeling. He’d dated Danielle a little bit, back in the fall. It hadn’t worked out, but he’d tried more than once to get her back. He’d even threatened to knock out the gorgeous stranger in a jealous rage earlier that night, but Erika had stopped him. She bet he wished he hadn’t listened to her. She sure wished she’d just let him do it. Maybe things would have gone differently.
“They’re acting like that shit we all fucking saw was some kind of mass hysteria.” He took another drag and shook his head as he coughed out a plume of cherry-scented smoke. “That was some devil shit.”
Bobby was still pretty religious, but it didn’t stop him from vaping or talking like a sailor. Erika nodded here and there throughout his tirade. He was saying everything she was feeling. In spite of this, she couldn’t help but tune him out. She couldn’t help feeling like his tough talk was some effort on his part to make this all about him. Maybe she wasn’t being fair. Her mother had offered to let her stay home for a few days. Ultimately, Erika decided it’d be better to be with friends. She probably should’ve taken her mother up on the offer.
School turned out to be every bit the nightmare she’d feared it might be.
During every class, her gaze drifted to the seats where Danielle usually sat. She daydreamed about the strange way her friend had been taken. The awful expression on her face. The grinning stranger who’d made her go up in flames with him. Danielle’s story about the massacre she’d survived with some strange boy. At lunch, she couldn’t eat. Between classes, she tried not to hear the other kids talk about what happened, spinning ridiculous theories, and telling outright lies about what kind of person Danielle had been. They said she was into drugs, sex with older men, and had even known the shooter who’d killed her parents and all those people at the Sonic. None of it was true. All of it pissed Erika off.
When she came home to an empty house, she rushed upstairs and collapsed on her bed. She tried to cry but no tears came. She seldom cried anymore. Some days, she thought she’d run out of tears. Other days, she thought she was saving them for a time she’d really need them. If the latter was true, she couldn’t imagine something that could make her feel worse than how she felt now.
She went to visit Danielle’s Aunt and Uncle after she tried and failed to do her homework. On her way there, she remembered Bobby’s words. Mass hysteria. No wonder that pissed him off. It was an insulting suggestion and unfortunately all too typical when it came to how the locals viewed the young: like lost sheep susceptible to all manner of deception, satanic or otherwise.
She parked her bike in the patchy lawn and walked to the door. As if he’d been watching for her, Danielle’s Uncle Horatio answered before she even had the chance to knock. His steely gaze kept her from coming in. Not only was it intimidating, it caught her off-guard. He’d always been kind to her in the past. Danielle had even said he liked her, so why the cold stare now?
“H-hi, Mr. Prescott,” she said. “I wanted to check in with y’all. Can I come in?”
He narrowed his eyes, and it made his expression even less welcoming.
“Please.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, let the poor girl come in,” Danielle’s Aunt Stella called from further back in the house. “Winter’s not over and she rode all the way over here.”
It was only a mile, but Erika appreciated the sentiment.
Horatio opened the door wider and stepped aside. The house smelled like cinnamon. It made her nostalgic for happier times, even if happy was sometimes a weird way to describe any time spent with Danielle. She did have a light side, of course. Everybody did. For Danielle, it shone most prominently when she and Erika were riding bikes together. Or when she was dancing to X Ambassadors or Walk the Moon. She often looked so radiant when dancing, her end seemed all the more bitter.
Though Horatio didn’t slam the door, it sounded overwhelmingly loud as it closed behind Erika. Stella came out to meet her. Her eyes were dry but red. She wore periwinkle pajamas and her hair was unkempt.
“Erika,” she said, holding out her arms. They felt frail and brittle around Erika. She smelled stuffy and dry, like she’d just gotten out of bed.
They sat down in the living room and Stella put on water for tea. Horatio sat alone on a dusty recliner, scowling at Erika. She and Stella sat on opposite ends of a worn, leather sofa. For almost a minute and a half, no one said anything. Erika licked her lips.
“Um, have you heard anything from the police?” she asked.
“No,” Stella said. “Not a word.”
“Of course not,” Horatio said. “She vanished into thin air.”
He said it with bitter disdain. His scowl deepened.
“That’s not what I said. I said…”
He coughed out a dry laugh. “She went up in flames.”
“Honey…” Stella said.
“I know you’re covering for her. Her and that boy ran off together.”
“I’m not, Mr. Prescott. I’ve never seen that boy in my life. If she planned to run away with a boy, I’d know who he was. We were close.”
“Maybe you two weren’t as close as you think.” He focused his attention on his wife. “Everyone has secrets.”
Stella looked down and away.
“Maybe I should go,” Erika said.
“Maybe you should.”
The tea kettle whistled and broke the tension. Stella bolted up and walked quickly to the kitchen. While she grabbed mugs and saucers, Erika tried to look anywhere but at Horatio. Family photos, a dark TV screen, a painting of Jesus, a framed Texas flag and a shelf of porcelain clowns.
Everyone has secrets. The statement played on repeat in her mind. She knew Danielle had secrets. Those secrets were part of what had made her so intriguing. Every day with her was a revelation.
Stella came back with a tray full of steaming teacups.
“That boy,” she said. “What did he look like?”
Horatio’s cheeks flushed pink.
“He had thick, dark hair, purplish-black, like a raven’s. Dark eyes. He was tall and well-built and very pale. His skin reminded me of the moon.”
“Did he have a scar?” Stella pointed to her left eyebrow.
Erika tried to remember. The lighting hadn’t been great in the auditorium. She closed her eyes and pictured the boy’s face. All she could see was that awful, cheek-splitting smile. She made herself remember his eyes. Above the left one, sure enough, he’d had an X-shaped scar. She nodded.
Stella looked at Horatio. Her eyes were wide and soft.
“It’s him,” she said.
Horatio scoffed.
“Who?” Erika asked, though she had a feeling she knew.
“The boy she wouldn’t stop talking about after…”
“The one who escaped with her.”
Stella slowly shook her head. Horatio pressed his fingers to his temples like he had a mean migraine coming on.
“Erika,” Stella said. “No one but Danielle survived that day.”
Erika rode home, her entire body knotted with tension. Stella’s revelation repeated in her head like a hypnotist’s mantra. When she got back to her room, she called Bobby.
“Erika?” he said.
She understood his uncertainty. Though she’d texted him a couple of times when he and Danielle were dating, she never called him, back then or any other time before now.
“We need to talk,” she said. “Can I come over?”
“Uh, yeah.”
He didn’t live as far as Danielle had, so she walked. When he answered the door, he was holding two bottles of Miller High Life. His parents let him drink, so long as he did so in their house and not out where he could get into trouble. Erika imagined he’d taken full advantage of this freedom over the past few days. He offered a bottle to her. She shook her head. They went inside and sat in the kitchen.
“So, what’s up?” he asked.
She told him. With every sentence, his eyes grew wider. He chugged the first beer and started on the second. When she finished, he shook his head.
“Like I said, some devil shit, man.”
“Maybe. Whoever he is, do you know why he came back to her?”
He took another long pull of beer. Finished nearly half the second bottle in one swallow. Then he got up and went into the other room. He returned with an envelope and tossed it at her. She unsealed it and pulled out its contents. It was a photo. A gray image, the shape of an enlarged lima bean, sat against an all-black background. It was an ultrasound image. She could feel her eyes stretch wide. She met Bobby’s gaze. His bottom lip trembled.
“She couldn’t get an abortion.”
“The baby was yours?”
His face darkened and he nodded.
“You were okay with her getting one?”
He chewed his lip and looked away.
“I mean, not really,” he said. “But … Well, she and I weren’t ready to be parents. We’re just kids. I think … I hope God would understand.”
She thought for a second.
“Is that why you were so aggressive the other night? She was carrying your kid and here was this gorgeous stranger, sweeping her off her feet.”
“Well, yeah. I was feeling … protective. Then you stopped me, and I went to go sulk in the corner, wishing the punch was spiked with something that could make me forget.”
“The police probably think it was.” She shook her head. “Mass hysteria. Pigs.”
“Ah, you don’t have to be like that.”
“Maybe not. I guess I’m still mad about how the one condescended to me.”
“Well, some of them can be pigs. That’s for sure.”
“Especially in this town.”
“Amen, girl.” He finished his second beer. Went to the fridge for a third. “Anyway, no doctor in town would help her. I thought about taking her out of state but neither of us had a license yet. I could’ve borrowed dad’s truck, but honestly, he’d kill me if he found out I knocked up a girl. Especially Danielle. He never liked her.”
“Did her aunt and uncle know? About the baby, I mean.”
“No. She didn’t want them to know. Didn’t think they’d be any help.”
Erika remembered Horatio’s scowl earlier that afternoon. No, she didn’t suppose they would’ve been any help.
“So, what does all this mean?” she asked.
“Like I said, devil shit. He helped her survive that shooting. I bet she asked him to help her out again. Not sure whatever she could’ve offered him though if he already had dibs on her soul.”
“You really believe that.” She didn’t pose it as a question.
“How could I not? They hardwire that shit into you from birth in this town.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s true though.”
“I guess not. Hard to rewire it. Hard as hell.”
“So, the devil took her. That’s that?”
He laughed then but it lacked humor. It was almost a sob. She didn’t think she could handle it if he started crying. Not that she expected to cry herself but still. It’d be too much to see. If she had lost all her tears or was storing them for something that was somehow worse than watching her friend go up in flames, how could he still cry?
“I guess…” He drifted off and tightened his expression. “I guess I like to think he took her somewhere she could free herself. Not just of our child but of this town, even of me. I like to think wherever she is, she’s happy. That she’s somehow made peace with all she’s been through. Most of all, I hope she’s alive and I hope she repents. Maybe if she prays hard enough, her soul…”
He sounded uncertain of himself. She didn’t know if he doubted what he hoped for the mother of his unborn child or if he doubted everything he thought he knew, all the things his parents and preachers and teachers had programmed into his brain since birth.
Erika took Bobby’s hand, gave it a squeeze, and left him to cry into his beer.
She didn’t even bother trying to start her homework. Instead, she sat in her room, staring out the window at the tree. A few more leaves had begun to bud on its branches. Occasionally, she checked Instagram and absently LIKED photos of dogs and good-looking girls. She thought about recording an Insta-story, some kind of tribute to Danielle. But if she did that, she feared it would confirm, once and for all, that her friend was lost forever. Dead, dragged to hell, or simply gone, without a trace, never to return. She wasn’t ready to accept that. Didn’t think she ever would be, even if they found Danielle’s charred remains tomorrow, and had a funeral sometime in the middle of the week. Danielle would live on somehow, someway. Erika was too young for people her age to start dying.
On that note, she realized just how tired she actually was. She texted her mother to say she’d be skipping dinner, and willed herself to dream of Danielle, somewhere else in the country, but safe and happy. At first, she imagined the mystery boy at her friend’s side but then she decided he was best relegated to being no more than a bad dream.
She imagined her friend deciding to keep the baby, but wandering the highways like some cowgirl samurai, drifting town to town and finding odd jobs to keep her and the baby fed and sheltered. It was nice to think about and it helped her sleep, peacefully this time.
Erika got her driver’s license that summer. She went driving a lot, mostly alone. Though Tyler itself was some bizarre marriage of a working-class suburbia and some kind of skyscraperless inner-city, many winding country roads cut through the surrounding rural areas. It was easy to get lost, even with the best GPS technology. She liked to drive aimlessly and while she physically seldom got lost, she often wandered the remote acres of her mind.
She’d finally allowed herself to accept that whether Danielle was dead or alive, she’d likely never see her again. Sometimes, it still made her sad. She often felt a sickening emptiness, but she never cried. She just drove.
She drove these country roads, blasting country music and letting her thoughts run free. She thought of Danielle the wanderer, Danielle the dead girl, Danielle the damned. She thought of Bobby sobbing into a Miller High Life. She thought of the way Horatio Prescott scowled at her. How Stella Prescott smelled stuffy and dry. The condescending smirk of Officer Kurtz. The way everything smelled like fire that night. How she sometimes smelled fire when she walked outside. Or when she was trying to sleep. Or when she was driving.
Like now. At night. Not intoxicated. She never drove drunk. She was one of the few kids in her class on which the fear-mongering, if well-intended, PSAs had worked. Instead, she downed mug after mug of black coffee. She liked to feel it surge through her veins as she rounded sharp curves. As lights from homes appeared scattered far and wide and the stars seemed so multitudinous and close together, they were like seams in a silvery, glowing blanket across the blackness overhead.
She wasn’t drunk, nor was she driving all that much higher than the speed limit, but the unpredictability of the road played no favorites.
The deer jumped out at her just as she rounded a sharp, sloping curve. It leapt into the road with timing so expert, it was as if it had hoped to strike her car. The thumping impact scared Erika so bad, she lost her grip on the wheel. Her tires lost their grip on the road. Her car tumbled down a steep embankment, striking stone and clay and stumps. As the car flipped, an image of Danielle spinning on the dance floor broke through her overwhelming panic and confusion.
Then the car lay still, and she smelled fire and it was there for real this time, all around her, it seemed. Adrenaline blocked out the pain from the rough ride off the road, but it could not dampen her terror, nor would it hold off the agony for long.
She frantically tried to unbuckle her seatbelt, succeeded, but the door wouldn’t open. She screamed and tried to scramble to the passenger side, but she came face to face with the deer. The animal was still alive but mortally wounded. Shards of glass from the windshield had lodged in its throat. Blood had matted his fur. Terror blazed in its eyes. Terror, and the fire’s reflection. It made an awful, wet mewing sound and kicked its hooves against the hood.
Everything was hot, so goddamn impossibly hot.
Erika glanced back to the driver’s window.
The gorgeous stranger from her junior prom crouched there, behind the glass. His dark eyes blazed. He smiled, but it was subdued, a subtle curving of the lips, not the cheek-splitting horror he’d flashed while spinning Danielle to her fiery death. His X-shaped scar looked red and irritated.
He reached for the window with spidery fingers. The glass bent inward and parted. It looked like slow-motion footage of stones thrown into an unmuddied pool. His hand came all the way inside the car. Up to his elbow now, his fingers curled and uncurled, beckoning to Erika.
As her hair began to sizzle and her flesh began to bubble and pain broke through the adrenaline, she remembered how this boy devil had saved Danielle from a gunman in a Sonic parking lot. How he’d spun her into oblivion when, in a fit of desperation, she could find help nowhere else. Would taking his hand damn her soul? Did she care?
Even as her skin burned, even with damnation certain, Erika reached for the boy devil’s hand and let him pull her from the flames of premature death into a life under his Damoclean sword, and she cried while they danced.
The Final Gate – Something is terrifying the residents of St. Luke’s Orphanage. Gurgling moans echo through the hallways. Hulking shapes lurk in the surrounding woods. And those who wake in the morning will find one less child under their roof…
Brandon and his girlfriend, Jillian, believe his younger brother is in serious danger. Even though the caretakers at St. Luke’s told them that he’s been adopted, Brandon has his doubts. With the help of a friend and a mysterious guide, they will do whatever it takes to find out just what is happening inside the orphanage walls…and at the bottom of the basement steps…
From Splatterpunk Award-Winning author Wesley Southard and Splatterpunk Award-Nominated author Lucas Mangum comes The Final Gate, the ultimate tribute to Italian horror master Lucio Fulci. With blood, guts, and all the nightmarish madness you’d expect from the Godfather of Gore himself, Southard and Mangum present a loving homage to spaghetti splatter and the glory of 1980’s Euro horror.
Pandemonium – A stranger in a mask walks through Philadelphia, handing out tickets to an underground wrestling show promising a level of violence unlike anything fans have seen before. The card features a mix of legends and hot up-and-comers. Most intriguing, it will mark the debut of the enigmatic, hammer-wielding Crimson Executioner, a monster of a man whose promo videos look like something out of Saw or Hostel.
The crowd enters past masked guards who don’t speak. Even the talent doesn’t know who funded the show or why; they’re happy just so long as the checks clear. None of them know the diabolical plot behind it all. When the Executioner murders his opponent in the ring, it soon becomes clear the show is a ritual to open the gates of Hell and unleash PANDEMONIUM.
Demons rise throughout the venue, using the bodies of the dead as vessels to wreak all manner of brutal carnage. Audience members and performers alike must now fight for survival as the contagion spreads all around them, inside the arena and out into the city.
In the tradition of Dario Argento’s Demons franchise and set in the world of hardcore wrestling, PANDEMONIUM is a hyper-violent tale of demonic possession, ancient evil gods, and bleeding the hard way.
American Garbage – A young adult tries to hold his band of burnouts together while navigating his own mental illness and tumultuous intimate relationships during the early years of the War on Terror.
Gather round everyone because the story I am about to tell you is a strange one indeed.
I was introduced to it by an old man who lived on the edge of our village. His name was Robert Clements, but everyone called him Bobby Clem.
Bobby Clem lived in a tumbledown cottage atop a small hill. If you passed by during the day you would swear it was derelict and long abandoned, but at night, a candle burned in every window.
I first met Bobby Clem when I was a small boy. Indeed, I was small in every way. At nine years old, I was shorter than the seven-year-olds — a shy, only child whose mother had died when I was a baby. Dad and I lived together, and my father would work all hours trying to keep food on the table and clothes on my back.
On school holidays and weekends, I was left to my own devices while Dad was at work and I took to wandering off on my own, exploring the many country lanes and shady pine woods.
One day I came across a man with a shock of white hair. He was bending over a trap, releasing a dead rabbit. Job done and prize retrieved, he stood, and towered over me but I was used to craning my neck. The man’s unkempt beard covered his face and neck, leaving only piercing blue eyes and a kindly smile. Dirty, old corduroy trousers were tied at his waist with frayed string, while a threadbare overcoat and grimy shirt completed his appearance.
“What’s your name, lad?” His voice sounded gruff but not unkind. Despite having been repeatedly instructed never to speak to strangers, maybe it was something about his eyes — an innate benevolence. Suffice it to say, I made an exception in his case.
“Brian,” I said.
“Well, Brian. Do you want to come and share some rabbit stew with me?”
I had nothing else to do, and rabbit stew was one of my favorites. Like any boy of my age, anytime was dinner time.
On the short walk to his home, he questioned me about my life and I told him everything, from losing my mother to being bullied at school, taunted because of my height and poverty. All the other kids seemed to have so much more than I did. I told him everything, but all I learned about him was his name. Bobby Clem. And I kind of knew that anyway. He was spoken of in hushed whispers by grown-ups. Robert Clements who used to be a professor at the university. Now reduced to the local down and out. “Stay away from Bobby Clem,” we children were told. “Or no good will come to you.” But I didn’t have any friends. No one wanted to play with me. Bobby Clem was the first person who had taken an interest in me, and I so wanted a friend of my own.
I had passed his cottage many times but never paid it much heed. Now, Bobby pushed open the door and it groaned, swinging wildly on broken hinges, revealing a sparsely furnished room, its rickety table sporting a leg supported by ancient, moldy books. Galvanized buckets stood like sentries awaiting the next heavy rainfall which otherwise — judging by the gaping holes in the roof of the one-story building — would cascade down, flooding the place.
Bobby Clem led me through the room into the kitchen, such as it was. My new friend slapped the rabbit down on a none-too-clean pine table. From the sink he selected two of the least dirty plates and a vicious looking knife. He then proceeded to skin and butcher the rabbit. I looked around in vain for a cooker, but only a fire burned in a small range. A cooking pot, like a witch’s cauldron, hung suspended over it. That’s where our meal would be cooked.
I thought there was no electricity but a sudden, clanking buzzing told me otherwise. In the corner of the room, an ancient, massive fridge stood, plugged into a single socket. Bobby saw me looking.
“Ah, there’s a story behind that fridge,” he said as he carried on preparing our meal. “One Halloween, years ago, a man knocked on my door. It was a raw night, a blizzard blew, and this stranger stood on my doorstep, dripping from head to toe and shivering. I brought him in, sat him by the fire, gave him dry clothes, a blanket and something hot to eat and drink. In the morning, the storm had blown over and the sun was shining. The man was so grateful for my hospitality, he wanted to repay me. I refused to take payment and he made to leave. He called me outside, saying he needed some help with his van. It was a big old cranky thing, and it wouldn’t start. I used to tinker a bit with cars when I was younger, so I checked his engine. Sure enough, there was a loose cable. Once I reconnected it the engine turned over fine and the man was away. I went back inside and there it was.” He pointed his bloodied knife at the fridge. “How he got it in here… Let’s put it down to one of life’s mysteries because it got here somehow, didn’t it? I opened it and it was piled high with everything you could want for a delicious Halloween feast. Turkey, all the trimmings, even pumpkin pie and I’d never eaten that before. Have you eaten that, Brian?”
I shook my head.
He smacked his lips. “Delicious. Hey, it’s Halloween in a few days, maybe your father will let you come and eat pumpkin pie with me.”
I doubted that but, as Halloween was on Friday and Dad was working nights all over the weekend, he wouldn’t have to know, would he?
Bobby chopped up the meat, added carrots, potatoes, herbs and onion and dumped the whole lot into the cooking pot, along with fresh water he drew from a hand-pump by the sink. “There, we’ll let that stew for an hour or so. Are you hungry, Brian?”
My stomach gave a growl. Bobby laughed and I liked the sound. It was tinkly and sincere.
“Now let’s have a look in that fridge. Is there anything in there, I wonder?”
He opened the door wide. I stared at the empty shelves. It was certainly the cleanest thing in that house, except… “What is that?” I pointed to a large black blob that looked a bit like a jelly fish, stuck to the back wall.
“Oh, that’s my friend. The Curiosity, I call him. As it’s so close to Halloween, I thought he might come out. But no.” He slammed the door shut. “Must leave him to his privacy. He doesn’t like to be disturbed.”
“But—”
Bobby put a finger to his lips. “No questions, Brian. You’ll meet him right enough. At the proper time. But it must be on his terms, do you understand?”
Of course I didn’t, but I nodded and hoped that would suffice. It seemed to.
Whatever else Bobby Clem was, he cooked a delicious stew and, a couple of hours later, stuffed to the gills, I made my way home with promises to return on Halloween.
October 31st. It rained. All day, torrents of it poured down. A river ran down the road at the end of our path. Small children cried as their Trick or Treat costumes were ruined or parents decided it was too wet to venture out. I didn’t care. They never included me anyway and for once, unlike them, I had plans I could keep.
I arrived at Bobby Clem’s cottage and the aroma of a delicious meal set my taste buds tingling and my mouth watering even before he opened the door.
“Welcome, Brian,” he said. “We’re all ready for you. Look what a feast we have.”
I stared. Bobby had moved the kitchen table into the living room. It was heaving with a roasted turkey — its skin golden brown — little chipolatas wrapped in bacon, dishes of roast potatoes, vegetables. There was gravy, and the promised pumpkin pie. I never questioned how he managed to create all that in one cooking pot. No questions, remember? Never.
Bobby Clem had cleaned the room so that it shone. Even the floor revealed polished floorboards. The only evidence to the dilapidated state of his cottage was provided by the buckets into which rainwater dripped.
“Some people spring clean. I do mine on Halloween. It’s my ‘thank you’.”
I pondered that while I took my place at the table. “Oh, you mean a ‘thank you’ to the man who gave you the fridge?”
“Not entirely.”
It was then I noticed a third place setting.
“Is someone joining us?” I was a little disappointed. I suppose I wanted to keep my new friend to myself.
“Our benefactor,” Bobby said. “Now you can meet the Curiosity.”
I blinked. There was no one there, but a slithering noise came from behind me, moving closer.
“Don’t be alarmed by his appearance, young Brian. He can’t help that any more than we can help being quite hideous to him.”
I swallowed and dared to look down as the Curiosity slipped past me. It moved on pseudopodia — I had recently learned that word at school where we had studied the life cycle of an amoeba. It thrust out its jelly-like protrusions and made its slow way round to its place at the head of the table. A few seconds later, its head — if you could call the blob a head — emerged. Bobby sat down and proceeded to load the Curiosity’s plate with pumpkin pie.
“He doesn’t like turkey,” Bobby said, setting the plate down in front of his friend. “He has other…tastes. But he adores pumpkin pie. Now, Brian. help yourself. Tuck in and eat. The Curiosity has provided all this fine food for us. Don’t ask me how. It’s enough that he does it. Every year. But only at Halloween. The rest of the year he keeps himself to himself and I…look after him.”
I tried to work it all out in my nine-year-old head. “So, the fridge is his?”
“That’s right. The stranger — I never did learn his name — looked after him. For some reason, the Curiosity prefers to live in there. I suppose the temperature suits him, and he is left alone, which is what he likes. He can turn very nasty if you disturb his slumber.”
Bobby Clem rubbed his hand, and I noticed a scar where his little finger should have been. Odd that I hadn’t noticed it before.
“He sleeps for most of the year. And before you ask, I don’t know what type of creature he is, where he came from, how old he is, or any of the usual things. I know that he exists. That he is. And that’s all you need to know too, Brian.”
From that day on, every year at Halloween, I joined Bobby and the Curiosity for a sumptuous feast. I grew up. Dad died, and I moved into the cottage. Years passed and the place was falling down piece by piece, so I built us this nice new home, with our own generator. We took care of our friend and benefactor together until Bobby Clem passed away last year. He’s buried out in the woods. So now, it’s just me and the Curiosity. He continues to provide me with a Halloween feast and asks so little in return. Merely that I provide him with food for the rest of the year.
She lives by the sea in Southport, England with her long-suffering husband, and a black cat called Serafina who has never forgotten that her species used to be worshipped in ancient Egypt. She sees no reason why that practice should not continue.
In Darkness, Shadows Breathe – Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer. In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions – bending and twisting time itself – and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.
Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen?
The answer lies deep in the darkness…
The Malan Witch – “Naught remained of their bodies to be buried, for the crows took back what was theirs.”
An idyllic coastal cottage near a sleepy village. What could be more perfect? For Robyn Crowe, borrowing her sister’s recently renovated holiday home for the summer seems just what she needs to deal with the grief of losing her beloved husband.
But behind those pretty walls lie many secrets, and legends of a malevolent sisterhood—two witches burned for their evil centuries earlier. Once, both their vile spirits were trapped there. Now, one has been released. One who is determined to find her sister. Only Robyn stands in her way.
Meghan's House of Books 