Book Spotlight: Humbug

Today's book spotlight is for Humbug by Luciano Marano. Enjoy.

Humbug by Luciano Marano

From award-winning author Luciano Marano comes Humbug—a gruesome, noir-infused reimagining of A Christmas Carol that blends supernatural horror, crime thriller, and psychological suspense into one unforgettable holiday nightmare.

A terrifying new take on the most famous ghost story of all time.

 

In modern-day Seattle, Detective Stuart (Scrooge) Caine is a jaded homicide cop on the edge of burnout. Every Christmas brings another murder, but this year’s case is different. A brilliant psychopath—dubbed “Humbug” by the press—has made a tradition of killing an entire family every December 25th. With the investigation going cold and his career slipping away, Scrooge receives a visitation on Christmas Eve that shatters his skepticism: the ghost of his former partner, Marley, and three monstrous spirits—manifestations of history’s most notorious unsolved killers: Jack the Ripper, Zodiac, and The Cleveland Torso Murderer.

 

As the line between nightmare and reality blurs, Scrooge is forced to confront his past, his sins, and the darkness waiting for him on Christmas morning.

 

Sometimes, the ghosts of Christmas past don’t come to save you…they come to collect.

Humbug is a chilling holiday horror novella—a macabre fusion of ghost story, police procedural, and psychological redemption tale—perfect for fans of A Christmas Ghost Story, Candy Cain Kills, and Hark! The Herald Angels Scream.

 

Book Link: https://getbook.at/Humbug

“Luciano Marano extracts the DNA of Dickens’s classic tale and rewires it for his own gonzo spin on the noir detective story."—Matthew Mercier, author of Poe & I

About the Author

Luciano Marano is an award-winning writer, journalist, and photographer. He is the author of the werewolf novella trilogy The Ambush Moon Cycle (Raven Tale Publishing) and numerous works of short fiction appearing in anthologies such as Year’s Best Hardcore Horror and The Best New Weird Horror, among others, as well as Nightscript, PseudoPod, Chthonic Matter Quarterly, and Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. His written and photographic reporting has earned a number of industry accolades, and he was twice named a Feature Writer of the Year by the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association. A U.S. Navy veteran originally from rural western Pennsylvania, he now resides near with his wife. 

Book Spotlight: Poe and I

 A book spotlight today for the new release from Crystal Lake Entertainment, Poe and I. Enjoy.

Poe and I by Matthew Mercier

Welcome to Poe Cottage. Would you like a tour?

Jonah Peabody takes a job as caretaker and docent for the last home of Edgar Allan Poe in The Bronx, but from the moment he moves into Poe’s Basement—where the caretaker must live—he finds himself also living inside a Poe story, stalked by a man who seems to be his doppelganger and who seeks revenge for past misdeeds. 

Jonah claims to be hunting for his lost sister, but as the narrative shifts between past and present, it’s clear that he’s not telling us the entire story. What is he hiding and why?  

Haunted by the violent ghosts of his own family and Poe himself, Jonah must reconcile with his dark past before the dual shadow of guilt and grief buries him alive. Living in Poe’s Basement might just be his last chance at redemption.

Book Link: https://getbook.at/Poe

About the Author

Matthew Mercier is a writer and storyteller living in the woods of the Hudson Valley. He’s worked as a tour guide at the Mystic Aquarium, run a youth hostel in Albuquerque, been slimed as a salmon packer in Naknek, Alaska, provided showers for homeless men on the Bowery, and proudly served three years as head docent and caretaker for the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in The Bronx. He earned an MFA from Hunter College where he taught writing and children’s literature. His work has appeared The Brooklyn Rail, Mississippi Review, Glimmer Train, Rosebud Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, The Fairy Tale Review, Shotgun Honey, and Mystery Tribune. He’s told stories live on stage with The Moth and been heard on NPR’s The Moth Radio Hour, as well The Story Collider, RISK and The Truth podcasts. He’s been awarded the Leon B. Burstein scholarship from the New York chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, and a residency from the Saltonstall Foundation. Currently, he is writing and producing radio dramas for Radio Free Rhinecliff in Rhinecliff, NY. 

For more information, visit him at matthewmercier.com.  

Halloween Week - Drabble Wednesday: Infernal Ghosts

Welcome to the Halloween Week Edition of Drabble Wednesday. Today I bring you spectres, spooks and phantoms from the deepest, darkest bowels of the underworld...

Twilight Whispers

The clouds hung the sky in muted grey, settling low to meld with the horizon. The gloom of dusk stole the last burnished rays of sunset and crept up to meet the clouds. The air spread a leaden cast, a hint of dampness clinging to a vigorous wind.

From the old burial ground, with its sunken earth and broken gravestones, came a scratching, rasping, slithering sound. A noise of crawlers and claws, of burrowing and hiss. Dirt bulged and ground erupted, in a spray of grime and worms.

And momentary silence.

To be broken by skittering whispers.

Death is coming...

~*~

Autumn in the Country

The cold howl of the not-yet-winter wind as it blew through the bare branched trees. The smell of leaf rot and smoke, of apple cider. Sweet memories of my uncle’s home, the grand Marbury Estate.

We visited him every autumn, my parents and I, each weekend until the last week in October. I so enjoyed the visits, I never questioned the reasons.

Until it was too late.

Why didn’t I ask? Why didn’t I wonder?

They might be alive if I had.

Oh, what that thing did to them...

What it made me do...

I don’t want to kill again.

~*~

Mislaid

Another teenager has gone missing.

The third one in eight months. Plus two more from last year.

I hear the murmurs from the townsfolk as they pass, the scared voices wondering what happened to the boy and the others. Some say they were kidnapped, some say crazy Old Man Potter killed them, others think they simply ran off. Teenagers do that, you know.

Of course, they’re all wrong. They never left. All the town’s missing are so close.

You see, each missing teen trespassed in the abandoned Pritchard house.

My house.

So I tucked them away.

Even ghosts need company.

© A. F. Stewart 2016 All Rights Reserved

That's it for today, but don't forget my Halloween Horror Haiku Giveaway (live until October 31st) You can find it by clicking on the Giveaway Tab at the top of the blog or this link: Halloween Horror Haiku Giveaway!

October Frights: An Ocean View

Welcome to the October Frights Blog Hop!

For today’s post, we stare at the sea’s undying horizon…

An Ocean View

It sits atop a craggy cliff, a small old stone crypt, at the end of a winding stairway carved from the rock itself. The land around it has grown wild, sitting idle from years of neglect. Few have ventured there over the years; only the brave or the foolishly curious.

The wind at the top blows cold, and often, rustling the overgrown grass and the ever spreading wildflowers. The sound of the ocean echoes, as it laps at the cliff base, and the seaborne horizon stretches out in an eternal panorama. There is a peace up there, far from the confusing world and its progression into the future.

The surroundings suit her, the woman buried there.

For it is her bones that keep company with the wind.
It is her ghost that haunts the cliff every moonlit night.

Just a whisper of ethereal gossamer standing at the cliff’s edge.

Many stories scatter and abound, about the ghost. The one most often told spins thusly…

Her name was Rose, and she died at eighteen, back when corsets were the rage, and ladies sat demurely in the parlour for tea. Rose boasted a sweetheart, a local sailor, and was promised in marriage upon his homecoming from sea. But sadly, the wedding never came to happen. On a moon soaked night, not far from the shore, her betrothed’s ship floundered on the rocks and sank. Broken-hearted and in despair, Rose threw herself from the very cliff where she was later to be buried.

A sad tale indeed. Sadder still when you know the rest.

For you see, her ghost still waits for him. Waits every full moon, until his ship appears on the horizon. Then she stares, onto that eternal horizon, and watches her love sink under the waves once more.

© A. F. Stewart 2015 All Rights Reserved

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October Frights: Homecoming

Welcome to the October Frights Blog Hop!

For today’s post—Sometimes your loved ones refuse to stay dead…

Homecoming

Strange worlds whisper in the silence of the night.

Listen and you will hear. Listen in the fragile hours when breath and consciousness still and drift, when the wind snakes along moonbeams and the shadows spew their secrets upon the cold earth. When the unseen becomes visible, no longer lurking beyond your senses.

When things abandoned and forgotten return home.

I’m coming home.

Decaying roses petals cover the garden path, a desiccating pink and white carpet of broken life. He planted new bushes. I suppose he needed a plausible reason to dig my grave. He chose my favourite roses. A nice macabre touch.

It’s odd standing three feet away from where your murdered body is buried. Even odder staring through the garden window at your husband, your killer.

He’s sitting at his desk, in that pretentious antique chair he loves, working at his computer. Or maybe emailing his girlfriend.

He thought I didn’t know. But I did. He thought he could get rid of me. That murder was quicker than divorce. He was so wrong. He’ll never be rid of me now.

I slide through wall of the house as if it didn’t exist and float in front of him. His skin turns as white—well, as white as a ghost.

“Hi, honey.” Blood drips on to the floor. For some reason that happens when I speak. Maybe because I choked on my own blood after he shot me in the chest. “I’m home. Did you miss me?”

He screams.

© A. F. Stewart 2015 All Rights Reserved

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October Frights Blog Hop: Ghosts Beneath the Sea

Welcome to the October Frights Blog Hop!

For today’s post on October Frights, we embark on a deadly sea voyage…

Ghosts Beneath the Sea

“Have you ever seen the phenomenon called fairy lights? I’ve heard tell it’s a luminescence glow floating just below the waves.” The pale, frail-looking woman smiled at the grizzled sailor, and waited patiently for an answer.

“No, miss, though I’ve heard stories. That’s what I expect they are, just stories.”

“Yes. I’ve heard them as well. Water sprites, mermaids, sea monsters, and the like. I’ve heard the scientific explanations, too. Phosphorus seaweed, bio-luminescent crustaceans, fish waste.” She shook her head. “It’s all quite erroneous.”

She looked at the sailor, staring with such an intensity that he shivered.

“Would you like to know what they truly are, sir?

“So you know, do you?” He smiled, all unease gone in a wave of condescension. “A little thing like you knows the secret to some mysterious sea phenomenon?”

“I know many secrets, sir. But this one most of all.”

She laughed, a cackle born deep in her belly spilling out across deck, and raising to the height of the ship. The old sailor trembled, this time the shiver travelled far into his bones and froze his very marrow. He took a step back from the woman, fright sketched over his salted washed face.

The woman tilted her head, seemingly amused by the man’s discomfort.  “It’s ghosts, you see. Poor men gone down in shipwrecks. Lost souls forever taken by the sea.”

The sailor made the sign of the cross. “You shouldn’t talk like that, miss. ‘Tis bad luck. You’ll curse this ship with talk like that.”

She smiled. “Oh, you poor dear. This ship was cursed the moment I stepped on board.”

She opened her mouth, but it was not a laugh that issued forth, but a roar. A elemental challenge that shook the ship from bow to stern.

The sailor answered it with a cry of his own, a scream born of primal terror.

For no demure, delicate lady faced him now. Her face no longer reflected anything human. Hollow eyes burned black and sunken, peering from ridged sockets, and her flesh dissolved into a death mask of bone and scales. Her torso grew and bulged, while limbs stretched and transformed into scaly, grasping tentacles.

The sailor shouted, “Kraken!” before a tentacle swept forward to knock the old man overboard. Another scream followed him into the sea.

“Rise my children! Rise and greet your new brothers!”

From the waves ascended light, a thousand pinpricks of radiance that swirled and danced, and surrounded the ship. They hovered, waiting to bear witness. They did not wait long. Inhuman tentacles wrapped themselves around the ship’s mast, around its rudder, snaking past its shrieking crew. The Kraken pulled, heaving against wood as it cracked and fractured. She shredded the ship with ease, and tore it all apart.

As the poor ship died, the lights keened—their sound pure and mournful. As the ship sank, as men submerged beneath the waves, the lights enveloped them. Slowly, one by one, they sucked the dying souls from their drowning bodies, and welcomed all the doomed crew into their undead ranks.

Her  task finished, the Kraken descended into the sea, taking her children—new and old—with her. Above her, and her brood, floated the flotsam of another tragic shipwreck.

© A. F. Stewart 2015 All Rights Reserved

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Drabble Wednesday: Macabre Musings

Today, on this Canada Day edition of Drabble Wednesday, I bring you some ghosts, some trains, and a tiny touch of the apocalypse…

Endings

I sit on the damp park bench, careful not to slip on the wet pavement. It’s a foggy morning full of drizzle, not any different from yesterday or the day before. The days seem to blend now, with rain and faded colours.

Still, the park is beautiful. It’s quiet, no one is here yet. The fog diffuses the morning light, giving the trees a soft, velvet look. Almost a sepia tone, like pictures my grandmother showed me.

It won’t stay this way. The scavengers, the abandoned survivors of the plague will come soon. Nevertheless…

It’s a nice place to die.

The Bridge

Why am I here?

I am standing on a bridge?

In the fog?

I am so cold…

Why am I here?

I am still on the bridge?

It is so cold.

I thought it was summer.

Why am I here?

Why is it so foggy?

Why is my dress sodden?

It is cold... so cold.

Why am I here?

I am cold… so cold… so wet…

I cannot see in this fog… wait, I believe… there are people?

Help me… oh, please, help me…

And folks, this turn of the century bridge is the next stop on our ghost tour…

Old Photos

Look at the photo.

Can you hear the train?

There’s no train in the photo you say.

I know. But it’s there, a ghost at my shoulder. I can hear it.

I can hear its forlorn whistle, the clackety clack of its wheels against the tracks, sense its rumble under my feet. I even smell its belching smoke.

I see that smile. The ramblings of an old man. I’m not crazy. The train is real. It’s haunting me.

It’s John’s old train you see. He’s never forgiven me, and now he’s coming back. Each day the train gets closer, closer…

~*~

And for an extra Canada Day treat, here’s the link to my free flash fiction short, Even the Paranormal Play Sports: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/113780

Even the Paranormal Play Sports

Things have taken a turn for the paranormal in a small corner of Canada. Set against the backdrop of a hockey game, teenager Deidre Dawson tells her strange story to a reporter.

Happy Canada Day!

Christmas Lites IV for Charity

Today I have the spotlight on the charity anthology, Christmas Lites IV. I'm one of the authors included in this wonderful book, (with a steampunk tale, The Professor's Christmas Ghost, about ghost hunting in an orphanage), and all the proceeds are being donated to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Christmas Lites IV

Help support the NCADV (The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence) by diving into 20 delectably wonderful Christmas tales told by authors from all over the world. Go on a space adventure, meet a demon with a heart not quite made of gold, find true love, discover a serial killer and much more. Every dime of your purchase goes to help support the victims of domestic violence. Enjoy your holiday even more knowing your purchase benefits so many people in this special time of year!

Stories by:

Ron C. Nieto

Phil Cantrill

Mysti Parker

Vered Ehsani

Tricia Kristufek

Jonathan Tidball

JA Clement

K.A. Davur

Frank W. Smith

Mark Mackey

Addison Moore

Amy Eye

Monica La Porta

S. Patrick Pothier

Anne Sanders

MaryMargret Tucker

A.F. Stewart

D.T. Dyllin

Angela Yuriko Smith

Brandon Eye

The book is available on Amazon and Smashwords

And here's a little video I whipped up for my contribution to the anthology:

Short Story Month of May

The month of May is Short Story Month, so I thought I would post a few random bits of short fiction this month in honour of the short story. First up is a a story I wrote for a prompt over on Facebook, I hope you enjoy it...

House of Wyndham

Would you like to know about Wyndham House on Sycamore Drive?

It imposes a presence over the neighbourhood, doesn't it? The house is old world architecture, with its stone façade and strong timbers, nestled at the far end of the street. It is tucked back from the asphalt, apart, but the house still looms in the minds of the area residents.

Why you ask? Because everyone knows its history, of course. Death seeps out of each pane, rafter and stone.

It started with the designer and builder of the house, Josiah Wyndham. He was the first to die, shot over his unfaithful wife in 1902. His murderer died next, apparently poisoned by Josiah’s wife, who confessed all in a letter before drowning herself in liquor and the bathtub.

Josiah’s oldest son inherited the house, but he died a year later at the hands of his youngest sibling, who stabbed him during a heated argument. After that, the house passed from relative to relative, all of whom died tragically. Eventually no Wyndham would go near the place and it sat abandoned for years, until it sold in 1922. And the legacy of the house continued for decades, bouncing between owners, deaths and realtors.

I've heard it said the house is cursed, that Josiah condemned it with his dying breath. Perhaps he did, but the real truth of the matter lies with the house itself. Somewhere, somehow the house is alive. Yes, alive. Not breathing, heart-beating alive, but aware nonetheless.

Don’t laugh, it’s true.

And worse, it collects people. All those poor souls that died within the walls of Wyndham House, well they never left. Their ghosts still roam the corridors and rooms, their phantom eyes still peer out the windows.

You may scoff, I wouldn't blame you. I scoffed too, before I bought the house, before I died here. I believe now, as the days turn to years and I keep wandering the house, as my spirit stays trapped and I welcome the newly dead to our ghostly ranks.

So welcome, you poor fool, to Wyndham House.