The seciting sequel to the award-winning Ghost Road Blues. In the aftermath of Karl Ruger's savage murder spree the people of Pine Deep think that the horror is over. But Ruger is one finger on the hand of the monster who is reaching out of the darkness to crush the entire town.
It was October when it happened. It should always be October when these things happen. In October you expect things to die.
In October the sun shrinks away, it hides behind mountains and throws long shadows over small towns like Pine Deep. Especially towns like Pine Deep. The wind grows new teeth and it learns to bite. The colors fade from deep summer greens to the mournful browns and desiccated yellows of autumn. In October the harvest blades are honed to sharpness; and that’s when the sickles and scythes, the threshers and combines, maliciously attack the fields, leaving the long stalks of corn laying dead in haphazard piles along the beaten rows. Pumpkin growers come like headsmen to gather the gourds for the carvers’ knives. The insects, so alive during the long months of July, August, and September, die in their thousands; their withered carcasses crunching under the feet of children hurrying home from school, children racing to beat the fall of night. Children do not play out of doors in the nights of Pine Deep.
There are shadows everywhere; even in places they have no right to be. The shadows range from the purple haze of twilit streets to the utter, bottomless black in the gaping mouths of sewers. Some of the shadows are cold, featureless --just blocks of lightless air; other shadows seem to possess an unnatural vitality; they seem to roil and writhe, especially as the young ones --the innocent ones-- pass by. In those kinds of shadows something always seems to be waiting. Impatiently waiting. In those kinds of shadows something always seems to be watching. Hungrily watching. These are not the warm shadows of September, for in that month the darkness still remembers the warmth of summer suns; nor were they yet the utterly dead shadows of bleak November, to whom the sun’s warmth is only a wan memory. These were the shadows of October, and they were hungry shadows. When the dying sun cast those kinds of shadows, well....
This was Pine Deep, and it was October --a kind of October particular to Pine Deep. The Spring and Summer before had been lush; the autumn of the year before that had been bright and bountiful, yielding one of those rare and wonderful Golden Harvests that are written of in tourist books of the region; and though there had been shadows, there hadn’t been shadows as dark as these. No, these shadows belonged to an autumn whose harvest was going to be far darker--these were the shadows of a Black Harvest October in Pine Deep. So, it was October when it happened. It should always be October when these things happen.
In October you expect things to die.
Professional Reviews
Bentley Little Reviews Dead Man's Song
The drought is officially over. The pretentious solipsistic navel-gazing of the Abyss generation has long since gone the way of the dinosaurs, the rank amateurism of the self-publishing internet pioneers who rose from their ashes has failed to crack the mainstream, and now a new crop of writers has emerged that is returning horror to the glory of its King-led heyday. In Ghost Road Blues and now Dead Man’s Song, Jonathan Maberry rushes headlong toward the front of this pack, proving that he has the chops to craft stories at once intimate and epic, real and horrific, and to create the kind of fiction that should bring disaffected readers back to the fold. Jonathan Maberry is one of the brightest new lights in contemporary horror.
--Bentley Little
Tess Gerritsen Review
"Every so often, you discover an author whose writing is so lyrical that it transcends mere storytelling. Jonathan Maberry is just such an author, and his writing is powerful enough to sing with poetry while simultaneously scaring the hell out of you."
-- Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author of THE MEPHISTO CLUB
Gary Braunbeck Review
"Jonathan Maberry lands solidly on his feet in territory once dominated by Manly Wade Wellman and Joe Citro; this haunting, complex, terrifying, and deeply humane novel is steeped not only in folklore and history, but in modern dark mythology and the exploration of humankind's most valiant and unspeakable impulses. It's a wonder to behold, and a heady feast for those who've been looking for something new and lyrical in horror."
-- Gary A. Braunbeck -Bram Stoker Award-winner, author of DESTINATIONS
UNKNOWN and PRODIGAL BLUES
Chris has been fostered at the Crowley boot camp since he turned seven. At sixteen, he is finally ready to run away because his foster father is an abusive person who works Chris and the other children to the point of exhaustion. All he has left of h
