Jessica Newman’s tragic childhood has come back to haunt her. Her father, a Catholic deacon she hasn’t seen since he was found not guilty of her mother’s death during an exorcism ritual, has turned up dead in Scotland, with a wound to the head.
Forced to take her family to Scotland and deal with her father’s estate―a derelict mansion in the Grampian Ranges. Jessica begins to question her mother’s death and what role her father played in it.
The house and its dark basement―could provide more answers than she bargained for.
Jessica Newman’s dark and tragic childhood is wrenched into the present when her father, ex-priest Douglas Mackinnon takes his own life in his homeland of Scotland.
Forced to travel with her husband and son to Aviemore to take ownership of her father’s manor, it’s not long before memories of her mother’s death come rushing to the surface.
Father Douglas Mackinnon exiled himself to Scotland in 1984, after he was found not guilty of his wife’s murder during an exorcism. Ever since, Jessica has questioned her mother’s death and whether her father was a murderer or saviour.
Her beliefs are tested when she finds her father’s Bible, filled with foul words and taunting messages across its pages. But this is only the beginning of a series of horrifying discoveries.
In the basement of the manor lurks the ultimate truth of what happened to Jessica’s mother and she must face it head-on when the evil reaches out to attack her own family. The climax sees Jessica’s faith challenged to the core when Hell itself turns up on her father’s doorstep. It does have a happy ending though with Jessica triumphing over the evil and solving the mystery of her mother’s death.
Torment is a horror novella, which explores grief, family secrets and the thin line separating heaven and hell.
Excerpt
The basement stairs vanished into a dense darkness and Jessica felt a slight breeze of cold air on her face. Instinct screamed at her not to go down the stairs, but David took a step closer into the doorway.
“Alex?” he cried into the darkness.
Nothing.
“Alex, are you down there?” Jessica called.
There was only the dark looking back at them. David put his foot on the top step. Jessica gripped his arm and when David turned he was startled by the fear in his wife’s eyes.
“Don’t!” she begged him.
“Alex might be down there!” David reasoned. “He could be hurt.”
Dark memories of twenty-five years ago bled into Jessica’s mind; she was sitting in that hallway in Boston, listening to her mother’s screams. The same fear was in her heart again.
“We should call the police,” she told David.
“I’m going down there,” he replied, desperate. “Are you coming?”
Before Jessica could respond, David proceeded down the steps, the darkness devouring him as if he’d dived into an oil slick.Jessica was left alone to stare at the darkness.
“David?” she called.
Jessica moved down the stairs one at a time. With each successive footstep, she was lost deeper into the darkness. She waved her hands in front of her, reaching for anything to connect her
back to the real world. She prayed she would touch David. She prayed her son was safe, anywhere else other than down here.
“David? Alex?” she called again, her voice echoless in the black basement.
“Here,” David finally replied. Jessica knew by the jerkiness of his voice that he was shaking.
She followed the sound and gradually the darkness receded to shadow and then a mottled grey light, like the sun struggling through fog. Jessica saw David staring into it. She too looked into it, eager to determine its source.
Jessica stood next to David and he grabbed her hand and squeezed it, a physical warning to his wife. Ever since they’d met, she’d known David to be composed and calm, but for the first time she could feel a terrible tremble of fear in his grip. Suddenly she
knew why.
A boy was tied up in the center of the room. He was naked, with thick ropes around his wrists, ankles and neck, bonds so tight they had stripped his white skin red raw. The marks paled
in comparison to the others that riddled his body; bruises, cuts, scratches, welts and burns―a sickening montage of violence.
The boy looked lost in the glow, like he wasn’t really there at all. Jessica’s maternal instinct kicked in; she wanted to rush to him and cut his bonds and mend his wounds, but the little girl
inside told her to run and hide.
Slowly, the boy lifted his head and smiled at them, a string of bloody saliva sliding from his bottom lip to the floor.
“Alex isn’t here right now,” the boy said, his voice distinctly Scottish, resonated around them.
Professional Reviews
Rocky Wood
“There are points in Torment when this novella is truly a torment to read, but in the all the right ways. Chapman inexorably draws the reader into Jessica Newman's terrifying world to the point where there are two choices - put the story down to still your beating heart, or read on into the complex mystery, rightly fearing what lies on the next page. This is at once a tale of demonic and ghostly terror, as well as a compelling nod to the core imagery of classic horror. I don't expect I'll forget this tale any time soon, and that may not be a good thing!”
Rocky Wood, author of Stephen King: The Non-Fiction and Horrors! Great Tales of Fear and Their Creators
Brett McBean
"Torment echoes The Exorcist with its tale of tortured souls and questions about faith. A chilling, tightly written story from a new voice in horror."
Brett McBean, author of The Mother, Tales of Sin and Madness, and Concrete Jungle
Shane Jiraiya Cummings
"Torment is a slow-burning supernatural thriller that fuses the darkness of Blatty's The Exorcist with the visceral thrills of ghost stories from masters such as Peter Straub and Robert Hood. With authorial sleight of hand, Chapman turns the exorcism sub-genre on its head with Torment. Greg Chapman is an author to watch.”
Shane Jiraiya Cummings, author of Shards and The Apocrypha Sequence
Happy Halloween. A volume of Horrible Haunts & Twisted Tales taken from the horror books La Belle Rouge has written every October for a decade and a half. If you have read her works in the horror genre, you know the invitation is for you to enjoy thr
The fortunate inherit riches, prestige, positive notoriety. Those not so lucky bear legacies filled with poverty, infamy or, worse yet, the unhinged insanity and murderous urges of their ancestors.
