Eight tales of joy and terror, good and evil, love and hate, disgrace and redemption.
A world where murderous shadows suddenly come to life, the love of a mother and wife reaches from beyond the grave, and a human monster sows the seeds of his own destruction. Eight tales of joy and terror, good and evil, love and hate, disgrace and redemption.
Excerpt
Petty Officer Hunter Singleton sat on the corrugated steel deck of the boiler room at the bottom of the USS Harlan County, wondering how and when—and if—the nightmare would end. Sweat stung his eyes, but exhaustion had set in to the point that he could not even raise an arm to wipe it off, so he simply blinked it away, flinging tiny beads of moisture through the air like droplets of rain. His blue dungaree uniform was soaked, the temperature in the bleak, gray room stifling hot. The noise from the engines was muffled from his hearing protection, yet his own breathing thundered in his ears, and his heart beat as if he had just run the New York Marathon. Though he couldn’t see it, he knew the thing was watching him from the other side of the door, waiting for the next move, as patient as a lion stalking its prey.
Next to the haggard sailor and under his trembling hand was an M-16 automatic rifle, which he had procured from the armory only hours ago. More of a security blanket than anything else, Hunter knew the gun was about as effective against “it” as a rubber band shooter or a barrage of spit wads.
He turned and looked across the steel plated deck at his dead shipmate, Dave Saunders. Boiler Tech second class, family man, work center supervisor, friend—now just a pallid, bloodless torso staring at him with accusing eyes that said, “You’re alive and I’m dead and who’s going to tell my family?”
Hunter could feel the bile rise in his throat, and he reached over with a booted foot and with all the strength he could muster, gave the corpse a push until it flopped over on one side and he could no longer see its eyes or hear its accusing tone. He had met the sailor’s family once, a wife and two children. God, he did not know how he could bring himself to look into those little girls’ eyes and tell them their daddy was dead, killed by a monster, a thing that had once been human, that had once been a friend and a shipmate. - from "In the Blood."
WEIRD RHODY is a short story collection featuring five strange tales all set in Rhode Island and written by five Rhode Island authors. The anthology is a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft, the Ocean State's famed author of pulp horror.
WEIRD RHODY is a short story collection featuring five strange tales all set in Rhode Island and written by five Rhode Island authors. The anthology is a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft, the Ocean State's famed author of pulp horror.
