JG Koratzanis
Apr 1, 2016 | Horror, 1st pages
CHAPTER 1
THE DESCENT
1
Death spreads his wings, and laughs.
Steel and glass doors crash against pale green ceramic tiles. EMS workers and a pair of police officers race a gurney through the emergency room corridor as a young man clings to life. Doctors and nurses rush out from behind counters and out of rooms.
“Room 6! Take him to Room 6! Doctor Patel and his team are on their way!” a nurse frantically shouts down the hall from her station. People waiting to be seen look up to see what all the fuss is about.
“Mommy, look!” an 8-year-old boy suffering from a case of the ‘tummies’ calls out, watching a strange darkness follow the gurney past triage.
“Honey, you shouldn’t look at those sorts of things. It’ll give you the spookies,” she tells him, not noticing the goose pimples crawl across his flesh and the terror in his eyes.
For the man on the gurney, blurred images and bright lights flash. Voices and noises become muddled, dark and murky, as if the world were underwater. Blood trickles from his mouth, as an EMT straddles him, never ceasing in his chest compressions. The man tries to speak, but no words come out. His lips barely part to breathe in the oxygen from his splattered mask.
“One, two, three!” grunt the EMTs, heaving him off of the stretcher and onto the operating table.
“Chase Romano, 29 years old. O Pos, gunshot wound right frontal lobe, no exit, unresponsive,” barks out the female EMT to the emergency team.
“Anyone who is not ER staff must leave now. You’re in the way!” the nurse calls out, holding her arms out and pushing against the cops.
“Doc! You gotta save him!” the towering, African-American cops yells out.
“You need to leave. Jennifer, show the officer the door,” Doctor Patel states, without looking up at the disturbance.
“Doc! You better make sure he makes it!” the cop growls as he’s being nudged to the door. Doctor Patel looks up angrily.
Simon Murik
Mar 11, 2016 | 1st pages, Horror, Paranormal
True Ghost Stories and Hauntings, Volume 1 : Chilling Stories of Poltergeists, Unexplained Phenomenon, and Haunted Houses.
I love superstitions. I make my living off of superstitions. America is teeming with haunted mansions that can be bought for a tenth of their actual value. Reselling them is tricky, but the valuable items within the mansions are sold off quite readily and tidy profits are made before I have to worry about what to do with the actual building. This mansion was to be the fifth time I’ve grossly profited off of someone’s ignorance.
The mansion had the standard story behind it. A child died. The parents had a picture of the child made, and eventually they committed suicide after claiming for years that they could hear the child breathing. Or something like that—I wasn’t really listening.
Less than $50,000 later and I owned a mansion worth ten times that before factoring in the sales of the valuables within. I arrived at the property the day after I bought it. Of course, I had sent an inspector before purchasing the mansion, but her job had mostly been to make sure the house hadn’t already been scavenged and burglarized. It had not been. I didn’t know much about the property itself; I had never needed to before. I had demolished the last mansion I’d purchased and given the property over to some people who wanted to plant some endangered species of bush or tree in the area.
Seeing the mansion for the first time, I was nonplussed. It wasn’t nearly as massive as the last one (which was to be expected; this one cost half as much) and I was actually feeling a bit disappointed before I entered through the doors that had once been majestic. The whole of the interior was covered in dust and the lights were out—I’d have to hire a mechanic to fix the lighting if I wanted to find anything of value. I searched a few rooms with my flashlight…
Erik Tomblin
Mar 11, 2016 | Horror, 1st pages
“You need anything while I’m out?” Gordon grins and raises an eyebrow.
“Nothing you can get in town,” he answers. Lily smiles and winks at her husband, sliding one of her long, smooth legs up the edge of the front door.
“Here,” he adds and flips her a shiny new penny from his pocket.
“Get yourself something pretty.” She laughs even though the joke is one he manages to slip in whenever possible.
“Don’t forget me while I’m gone,” she purrs, disappearing from view. He doesn’t.
***
Fifty years of sleeping in the den had long ago taken its toll on Gordon Lyles’s spine. He woke from the same dream every morning, reliving the final moments with his young bride. This time it was no different. Grunting through the spasms that jerked his back muscles like taffy, he rose from the same couch he and Lily had picked out a week before they were married. Tiny eruptions of dust burst from the upholstery and played in a single beam of morning sun that peeked around the curtains she had picked out at Sears to match the couch. Gordon rubbed his eyes, clearing the filmy trace of days gone by from his vision.
The wooden floor was blessedly cool on the soles of his tender feet. Already the South Georgia spring was threatening to unleash summer, waking Gordon with a warm wet kiss between his skin and clothing. He pinched the neckline of his yellowed T-shirt with one hand, pumping it like a bellows to relieve the sticky sensation from the humidity. He checked the scattering of Old Milwaukee cans atop the coffee table with his other hand, looking to rinse the taste of history from his mouth.
Martin Reaves
Mar 4, 2016 | Horror, 1st pages
Chloe stops midway down the long dark hallway, listening. Midway. The beginning is behind her but catching up. The end is still a long way ahead, but not as far as it was. Both truths—past and future—creep toward the center, to her, where she waits, asking her questions. The answers are buried equally in that long-ago beginning and yet-to-be-known ending. She is what ties the two together. If she blinks or misses some relevant detail, the corridor will dissolve and she’ll be forever adrift in a limbo of ignorance and oblivion—a vacuous place where none of the previous pain mattered; where it will prove to have been misery for misery’s sake.
She can’t let that happen. She has to know why. There has to be atonement, and atonement can only come with understanding. Knowing is the only thing that matters. Midway down the hall, in shadowed pause, breath held, the only sound the imagined whisper of blood sluicing through her arteries. That, and the person or monster or whatever it is behind her. A glance over her shoulder. Still there, humming a tune with no discernible melody. Every few seconds it taps the hardwood floor in rapid little bursts. She feels as though she should know what the tapping means, as though it is some veiled message or Morse code. Whatever or whoever is back there stops when she stops, moves when she moves, breathes when she breathes—the only constant the brittle tapping. The doorknob of the door on her left makes a small click, as if someone has laid a hand on it from the inside, preparing to turn the
Christopher Coleman
Mar 1, 2016 | 1st pages, Horror
She never got used to the taste. Even with the life and strength that teemed in every molecule, the fluid always went down heavy and painful. Like swallowing a fistful of thin mud that had been lifted from the bottom of a river.
There was a time in the early years of her life—this second life—because of the involuntary rejection by her mouth and throat, when she was forced to mix the liquid with soup or tea, or stir it into the batter of the sweet confections and pies that even today she took pleasure in baking. She had experimented relentlessly with temperatures and combinations—using ingredients she wouldn't have otherwise fed to a cockroach—hoping to create a formula that, if not tasty, was at least palatable. But she had had little success, and soon began believing the more she tampered with and diluted the delicate recipe, the more the regenerative effects were diminished. Her nails and hair didn't seem to grow quite as quickly, and her teeth, though they were restored, felt as if they had just a bit less length and severity.
Of course, it was plausible she was entirely wrong about the effects of the tampering, and she accepted the possibility that her observations were paranoid inventions of an overprotective mind. But she also wasn't taking any chances, and over time had trained herself to drink the mixture straight. After all, it took mere seconds for the solution to make it over her taste buds and down to her belly. After that it was eternal ecstasy.
The mixture—consisting of, among other things, spinal fluid, bile, and pancreatic blood, as well as several smaller, yet no less important measurements of other natural ingredients—usually began its rolling boil within seconds of reaching the acid that lined her stomach, before shooting into her blood stream and picking up the platelets in perfect stride. From there the journey through the body took less than a minute, administering almost instant relief to pains both bitter and dormant alike. There was a sense of rejuvenation in the bones and ligaments that went beyond simply where they joined. It was cellular.
The feeling in those first few moments was literally indescribable. On the rare occasions she had tried to explain it aloud, she always found there was simply no adequate experience with which to compare it. The benchmark didn't exist. Sex—usually the standard by which all great feelings are measured—didn't come close. Though it had been decades since she'd had a man, and in her lifetime had little experience with them generally, she knew even with the greatest lover in history, sex was a laughable comparison. As was any other potion—and potions she knew. What she lacked in bedroom prowess, she made up for in a long resume of chemical experiences.
But the physical feeling, as glorious as it was, was inconsequential.
A minor side-effect of the greatest treasure the Old World had ever produced, and one that she had captured and preserved in the Northlands for centuries. Whether she alone was in possession of the knowledge she couldn't be sure; it certainly wasn't impossible that another had been given the precious gift to which she had clung so tightly for the last three hundred years. But if she did share it with another, she would likely never know; her isolation had become almost absolute. The Age of Transmission had transformed her existence from that of a private villager—having few social connections other than in passing and commercial exchanges—to one of complete withdrawal. There were no neighbors to speak of, and any mail or necessary supplies were delivered to the receiving station she had built for herself just over a half-mile from the cabin.
Merabeth James
Feb 26, 2016 | 1st pages, Horror
PROLOGUE
(Two years earlier)
“Ah, there you be, Miss Feathers, with your fine, fluffy tail wavin’ in the breeze. Tis a fine day all round when I see the lot of you coming to keep an auld lady company while we share a wee bit of breakfast,” Morie Grady told the cats that seemed to come from everywhere as soon as the screen door banged open. In every color and size, they leapt on the porch and milled about her feet rubbing her ankles with their heads and sleek bodies, meowing in chorus, or leaping for the tray she carried to the small table that had seen better days.
“Not so fast there, me Angus. There’ll be none of your shenanigans this day,” she told the huge striped tom that had jumped up next to the tray rattling the stack of mismatched bowls and tipping over the bag of cat chow. Setting him down with the others that were weaving in and out in front of her, she arranged the bowls in a long line then filled each with kibbles.
“There’ll be no pushin’ and shovin’ like wee pigs to the trough. There be plenty for everyone,” she told them then silently did a head count while they were gathered around their bowls. Ten. One missing. It was white Emma with the tattered ear. It was only lately she had joined them at breakfast instead of watching and waiting from the bushes till the porch was clear before she took a turn at eating. Ah, there was always one or two of her ferals that worried her the most, she thought as she went back inside and returned with a large, steaming coffee mug. Taking a seat in the wicker chair she had rescued from somewhere and painted a soft lilac, she leaned back with a sigh and looked out over the sea.
The wind was gusty and cool churning up white caps on the cobalt blue water as far as she could see. Along the horizon, dark clouds were building, and she knew there would be a weather change before the day was through. Hopefully, it would bring nothing more than rain to worry her. Turning her face to the sky, she watched the sea gulls circling as they eyed the rocks below the cliff for any gift of food the sea might offer…emitting their raucous calls as the rising sun glinted off their white wings. It was peaceful.
A bit of heaven and she sighed again. She was truly blessed to have found a place so close to the sea though a very different sea than the one she had known so long ago. Her eyes grew distant…haunted…as memories overtook her unexpectedly. She had been so very young when an American who’d been camping out on the headland with his friends had found her walking along the beach one night.
