Book Spotlight: The Death Chute

Today I have another book spotlight, this time for the ghostly horror novella, The Death Chute by Ambrose Stolliker. Enjoy.

The Death Chute by Ambrose Stolliker

When his mother, Sophia, is diagnosed with an aggressive form of dementia, 44-year-old reality television producer Jake Porter is forced to leave Hollywood and return to his native Vermont to look after her. His plan is to quickly set her up in a posh new retirement community in the Green Mountains and then head back to Los Angeles to revive his career, which is now in jeopardy after his last few projects bombed in spectacular fashion with TV audiences.

But when he learns that the retirement community was once a tuberculosis sanatorium where many patients died of the dreaded disease, Jake is uneasy at the prospect of leaving Sophia on her own. Only the assurances of the community's chief medical officer, Diane Barrett, convince Jake that his mother will be in good hands. Not long after she's moved in, however, Sophia has the first of many frightening experiences when she encounters the apparition of a little boy suffering from TB. At first, Jake dismisses her story as a symptom of her dementia, but as time goes on, it becomes clear the rest home houses dark secrets and is haunted by something strange and terrible. 

The Death Chute is available on Amazon

About the Author

Ambrose Stolliker lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and son. He is the author of two horror novellas, Old Hollow (2018) and The Death Chute (coming April 9, 2019), both from indie publisher Aurelia Leo LLC. His short stories can be seen in Stupefying Stories Magazine, WEIRD CITY, the Tales to Terrify podcast from District of Wonders, Creepy Campfire Quarterly, Ghostlight Magazine, Sex and Murder Magazine, Hungur Magazine, Sanitarium Magazine, The Tincture Journal, Charon Coin Press’ State of Horror: Louisiana, Volume II anthology and DAOwen Publications’ horror anthology Muffled Scream I: Corner of the Eye. Mr. Stolliker is a former newspaper and magazine journalist and currently works in digital marketing at a global technology company in Seattle.

Halloween Week: The Weeping Lady

Welcome to Halloween Week! This year I'm doing a monster theme, and to kick things off, I'm showcasing a new freebie I have, my short story The Weeping Lady. This is a ghost tale loosely based of the White Lady and La Llorona folklore. It was previously published by Xchyler Publishing as part of the Beyond the Wail: 12 Grave Stories of Love and Loss anthology. So prepare to be haunted...

The Weeping Lady by A. F. Stewart

Eva has mother issues.

And now she has a missing sister.

Rushing home to help with the search, she tumbles into family secrets, local legends, and worst of all, a ghost that haunts the nearby river. What connection does she have to the lingering spirit? Is the ghost really responsible for her sister disappearance? What horrible mystery surrounds the truth about her birth mother?  Can Eva confront her tragic past and save her sister? Or will the ghost finally claim its own?

Download from Prolific Works

Here's a little snippet:

Eva Douglas was headed home.

And she wasn’t happy about it.

As she neared the town limits, Eva manoeuvred her car off the road and parked in the shadow of the forest. Over the purr of the still-running engine, she debated with herself, hesitated, and stared at the outlying reaches of her childhood. Through the early morning sun glinting past the windshield, she could see the edges of Ashford, her quaint, picturesque hometown, that perfect hamlet she thought she left behind. Instinct urged her to flee, to turn around and drive back to university, back to her newfound sanctuary.

If only her sister hadn’t gone missing.

Halloween Week Begins With The Dark Man

Today, I officially kick off the beginning of my Halloween Week, (October 24th-31st) a spooky extravaganza of fun to celebrate the season. I have stories, poetry, a character interview with Lizzie Borden (from Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter), and some book spotlights, including one for the new release,  Furr by Axel Howerton. And don't forget to enter my Halloween Horror Haiku Giveaway (live until October 31st) by clicking on the Giveaway Tab at the top of the blog or this link: Halloween Horror Haiku Giveaway!  So come join me if you dare.

Now, settle in for my story based on another variation of the headless horsemen, this time a death rider from Ireland called The Dullahan. So don't walk alone at night and beware the Dark Man...

The Dark Man

On the blackest of evenings, when not a star nor moonbeam lit the sky and the clouds seemed made of soot and charcoal, a solitary figure walked the road home. His gait swayed and his liquor-laden breath puffed grey in the cold, while the lantern in his hand swung shadows across his footsteps. A jaunty, but off-tune, whistle played from his lips, and a grin lit his face.

“The best of nights it was!” He shouted raucous joy to the darkened heavens, before returning to his whistling.

His words echoed through the trees, a shiver to disturb the night birds and other things...

A shadow far beyond the road, the trees, or thoughts of drunken evenings, stirred. A scrape and a thump, a rhythmic pounding, and shudder of inky damnation set an ill-wind blowing across the countryside. And spinning on its eddy, came the sound of a name.

“Conall.”

The whistling man stopped at the chime of his name and turned, holding the lantern high and peering down the path he left behind. Hollow emptiness met his eyes and a chill breeze scattering the leaves of autumn.

“Hello. Is anyone there? If it’s you Fergus, you’ve had your laugh. Come on out.”

The only answer was the hoot of an owl.

Conall shrugged. “I’m hearing things, I suppose. Silly imaginings.”

He swung himself and his lantern roundabout, and took three steps forward before his name again travelled down the road to his ears.

“Conall.”

He shivered, but glanced back shining his light. Once more to see an empty road, devoid of any living soul. He shook his head, and turned back...

Another noise echoed, a faint thrash of hoofbeats. Conall spun, and saw nothing but a scatter of dust filling the air in the far distance. But no horse, no rider. Only the sound of a galloping beast and a spray of dirt.

He trembled, a shimmer of panic coursing through blood and bone. Then he ran, lantern waving wildly, racing as if the devil himself chased him. Breath heaving, feet pounding, his heart thumping a thunder boom in his chest, Conall bolted, while ever behind him rose the reverberation of a galloping horse. Closer, closer, louder, louder, until the rhythmic hammer of the sound smashed against his head, driving him faster into his mad flight.

He cried out, “What are you?!” as a immense shadow closed over him, and a great wind blew past him.

No not past, it felt as if the gale went through him. Chilled to the marrow, each breath an agony, Conall pulled short his frantic escape, stumbling over his feet as he stopped. A foul stench made him choke and he shuddered, his body rife with a damp stickiness. He looked down at his hands. They were covered in blood. His hands, his clothes his skin, his hair, all soaked in blood. On the tattered ends of his scream, he heard his name.

“Conall.”

Slowly, fearfully, he lifted his gaze. Before him was a massive black steed pawing at the ground. The creature tossed its head, snorting ruddy sparks from its nostrils and small flames from its mouth and staring at Conall with radiant crimson eyes. But as fearsome as the creature was, the rider atop its back seized Conall’s blood and soul in unspeakable dread.

It held all semblance of a man dressed in black, save it had no head, or rather a head tucked in the crook of its right arm. This severed cranium shimmered in a translucent glow and it grinned at him, a hideous grimace stretching from ear to lopsided ear. Blue veins snaked across sallow skin, and its coal-black eyes darted like summer mosquitoes. A low chuckle emanated from its mouth, followed by  another utterance of his name.

“Conall.”

Conall clutched his chest, choking out, “God save me!”

“It is too late for that.” The figure raised its left arm, and Conall spied a great whip made from the bones of a human spine. He fell to his knees, terror ripping through his guts.

“Spare me!”

Without word or mercy the creature brandished its whip, the malleable bones lashing around the flesh of Conall, and permeating to his very core. He screamed, the thousand times despair of the damned piercing him, and then he died, the soul shredded from his mortal form.

“Farewell, Conall.”

© A. F. Stewart 2016 All Rights Reserved 

And please, return and join me tomorrow for my dark poetry corner.

#OctoberFrights Day 5: The Horseman

Welcome to Day 5 of the October Frights Blog Hop!

Today I you bring a flash fiction story, a little homage to a sleepy hollow...

The Horseman

The ancient oak tree stood at the top of the hill, all gnarled and bare, its fallen autumn leaves a crumpled shroud over lifeless grass. A few ebony crows roosted in its branches; dark solemn harbingers of death, awaiting the coming of the midnight hours.

Still air breathed an unnatural silence, while the rising moon bathed the sky in a nebulous pale glow. The night dripped an ambience, an expectation that held suspense and terror in its sway. As if it knew. As if it rejoiced.

The Horseman was coming.

A tinge of sulphur slithered from the loam beneath the leafy rot, the breath of Hell released by untrodden footsteps. The limbs of the oak quivered in the breezeless sky, while the crows screeched a raucous caw and twitched their wings in restless flapping. In the distance the drumming rhythmic thud of hoofbeats sounded their harbinger echo. A fog of sepia dust and ash grey unfurled along the hillside cloaking its vista and shrinking the world to misty obscurity.

The Horseman was riding.

A stygian nightmare emerged from the fog, an onyx wraith atop a ghostly sable steed. The creature’s long coat flailed in a cloud of malodorous smoke as it rode, its beast’s hoofprints leaving burning impressions in their wake. Petrified skin pulled taunt over its bones, as bony hands gripped the reins, and crimson eyes glared at the world. A tattered uniform of coal cloth and stained brass buttons, along with scuffed black boots, clothed the spectre, a remnant of a persistent but forgotten past. It ran long dead fingers through thin wisps of ebon hair and drew its mount to a halt beneath the oak tree. High in the branches the crows stayed silent and still.

The Horseman had arrived.

The fog parted, in whirl of choking grime and fetid rot, leaving a clear view of the land beyond. Below the hill, nestled a village in a tranquil hollow, dark and sleeping. The fearsome apparition looked down upon the quaint houses and exhaled, the crackle of fire in its eyes and the whiff brimstone on its breath. It nudged its horse forward and began the canter down the hill. High in the oak tree the crows cawed a futile warning.

And the Horseman laughed.

© A. F. Stewart 2016 All Rights Reserved

And now for the Giveaways!

You can check out my Halloween Horror Haiku Giveaway! (live until October 31st) by clicking on the Giveaway Tab at the top of the blog or this link: Halloween Horror Haiku Giveaway!

And here's my October Frights Book Giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And now you can continue on your journey, and check out the rest of the Blog Hop and the delights these wonderful people have in store.

An InLinkz Link-up

Drabble Wednesday: Reflections

Today on Drabble Wednesday, we look into the abyss, and see what is reflected back…

Asylum

They locked me in a room.

A sad room.

I’m mad you know. Mad. Mad. Mad.

That’s what they say.

They put me in a solitary place. Threw away the key.

They’ll make me better here.

They say.

I hurt people.

Can’t have that.

So they brought me here, to the hospital. Isolated.

All alone. All alone.

At least that’s what they thought.

But I have friends.

My lovely, lovely friends.

They look after me. They whisper their thoughts in my ear. They’ve offered to help me.

They’ve offered me asylum.

Or did they offer me the asylum.

To kill.

~*~

Push

The jagged crack sliced across the mirror. A streak of red dripped down the reflective surface. Blood. She reached out a finger to smear the fluid away, but she couldn’t make herself touch it. She heard her husband screaming in the background.

“Why did you make me do it? You always make me do these things!”

“I didn’t make you do anything! You’re the one who can’t control themselves!”

She screamed at full volume, but he seemed not to hear her.

Maybe she was dead.

After all, she stared at her motionless body sprawled on the floor under the mirror.

~*~

Perfidy

I hear her call my name, when the moon shines through the black sky and the wind howls against the window pane. The reflection of her face settles in the glass, her dark eyes gleaming hatred in crimson.

She haunts me.

Her whispers, her accusing looks in my dreams, and on nights like these. I wronged her, and she shifts through reality to abuse me with my misdeed. And I deserve her punishment.

She trusted me.

I thought I could change. That her darkness would soothe my own. Alas, it was not to be.

And betrayal lingers far after death.

© A. F. Stewart 2016 All Rights Reserved

Drabble Wednesday: Past Reality

This week, Drabble Wednesday steps beyond the realm of the existent into worlds beyond…

Debt Collector

The man in the black coat waited. At the end of the street, his white gloved hands resting on his walking stick, a derby hat upon his head. He stood still, though the wind plucked at his coat, his silver eyes staring.

I remembered those silver eyes.

I remembered the last night he stood waiting. The night of my unholy bargain. Now it’s time to pay my due.

Well, he won’t collect anything from me. I shan’t go out tonight.

I take my tea into the drawing room. Silver eyes stared at me.

“Hello, James. I was tired of waiting.”

~*~

The Visitor

My sister died a year ago.

Horribly.

My family shut away her existence, even refuses to whisper her name. They shush me when I try to talk of her, and I see their looks of pity. I ignore them now. I am simply glad they granted me the gift of her mirror.

I hung it on my bedroom wall, over my dressing table, where the sun can catch the gilt finish and make it shine. Where I sit and stare into the polished glass, remembering. Where I smile, laugh, and cast her name to the heavens.

Where she answers me.

~*~

Sunshine

Skittered particles of dust, like sparkles on a lake surface, shifting, shattering inside sunbeams. Suspended in air, visible as the light passes giving form to the insubstantial. Whispers of what went before, the aged dust of humanity, hovering, lingering.

Caught.

In the gossamer net of the sun, exposed. A minuscule river, flowing, bobbing, desiccated powdered remains, of what was once flesh and life. We were washed away, but now reborn specks of matter again, fragments to be certain, but alive, aware. For one moment in the sun. Before we disappear to the nether beyond.

To the world of the dead.

© A. F. Stewart 2016 All Rights Reserved

October Frights: Departed Fortune

Welcome to the October Frights Blog Hop!

We go a little bit mystical and magical for today’s ethereal post…

Departed Fortune

“A coin, sir, a small token for your fortune?” The small gypsy woman held out her hand.

The man gaped, bewildered. Garish red, gold, and purple emblazoned their hues on his eyeballs. Vivid chroma assaulted him, from her gilt beaded, violet shawl, to the crimson and mauve tent that fluttered in the wind behind her. He would have sworn it had not been there a moment past.

“Would the gentleman care to have his fortune told?” She wiggled her fingers attached to her still outstretched palm. “Only a penny.”

“I—I would love that.” The man clapped a hand atop his mouth, shocked at his words. He thought fortunetelling mere hokum. Yet, he dug in his pockets for a penny. Oddly, he found none.

“I seem to be without coin. Peculiar. I know I had some when I left this morning.”

The gypsy smiled. “No matter. I accept other forms of payment. Come.” She beckoned and the man followed her into the tent.

The small interior held only a small, round table and two wooden chairs. The gypsy settled into a chair, and pulled a small metal trinket box from her skirts. She plunked the box on the table and waved a hand carelessly at the perch opposite her.

“Have a seat, sir.”

The man sat, and blinked at the woman from across the table.

“I am Esma. Your name, good sir?”

“I am—I am…” The man’s body shook, his mind a jumbled blur. “I don’t seem to recall.”

“Ah. It happens. Do not fret, sir. All will be revealed soon.” Esma smiled, but the man did not feel reassured. He felt afraid.

“If you would let me see you palm, please.” He dutifully held out his hand, face up. “Yes. It is as I feared. Such a sad tragedy. So quick. Your sort often have disarranged memories when it is sudden and unexpected.”

“My sort? What do you mean, my sort?” The man bristled, sensing insult.

“Why, the wandering dead of course. Ghosts, spirits, shades of the former living. Those that haven’t the wisdom or the will to move from this life to the next. Such lost souls.” She shook her head, then smiled. “But such a boon to me. I collect lost souls, you see.”

She lifted the lid of her box.

Inside swirled a tiny vortex, infinitesimal in form and eternal in shadow. It held scream and silence, rage and calm. Voices cried, voices sang, and all called to him. He reached out his hand, dangling his fingers over the timeless eddy in a box.

“That’s right, touch it. Add your essence to the collective. Join all those adrift souls.”

The man lowered his finger, caressing the edge of the box’s heart. It felt cold, and then—

Smiling at the now empty chair, the gypsy closed the lid of the box.

© 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: Fallen Kingdoms

Today on Drabble Wednesday we travel to lands rent asunder, to kingdoms fallen…

After the War

The rivers still flow, past the ruins, past the end of our world.

And we flow with them, on our small boat. On and on with the current, a bobbing bit of nothing waiting to see what transpires. Waiting to see if we become pawns or join the ranks of the dead.

We are the royal children, smuggled away in the night as the kingdom fell, as the palace burned. We exchanged our silks and velvet for coarse linen and wool, our beautiful home for a cramped and tiny boat.

But we are alive. There is a chance for vengeance.

~*~

Eternally Beneath the Moons

The ghost of queen always walks under the moons, when the blue glow merges with pale silver. In each passing footstep the celestial radiance weeps tears, following her eternal, spectral form as it keeps vigil. The queen seeks peace, but finds only anguish in her death.

Around the old palace garden she strolls, calling the names of her lost and vanished children, babes stolen from her arms and slaughtered by invaders. They never answer, for they cannot. Tiny slashed throats no longer speak.

Still, she searches, her voice an echo off the moons. She calls endlessly, and forever, in vain.

~*~

Invasion

My tiny one whimpers, afraid but uncomprehending. I press my lips to her ear and murmur, “Hush, my sweet. It will be over soon. Close your eyes and Mama will make it better.”

My darling girl obeys, never realising. I raise my knife and pierce her heart. She dies in my arms, and I kiss her cold cheek in farewell. I hoped she understood. I did it to spare her.

She will not be taken as sacrifice to their awful gods.

They may control our kingdom, but they will not have royal blood.

I raise the knife to my throat.

© A. F. Stewart 2015 All Rights Reserved

My 777 Challenge - Paranormal Style

I don't usually post twice in a day, but I was nominated to take part in the 777 Challenge by fellow Xchyler Publishing author, the very talented Danielle E. Shipley. So I say...

Challenge Accepted!

Basically this is how it works:

THE CHALLENGE: 

SHARE 7 LINES FROM PAGE 7 OF YOUR MANUSCRIPT + TAG 7 BLOGGERS.

And like Danielle, I've decide to share a snippet from my story that is soon to be part of the upcoming  (and as yet untitled) paranormal anthology from Xchyler Publishing.

My story, The Weeping Lady, is loosely based on the La Llorona and White Lady ghost tales. This excerpt is a flashback, to the first time the main character of Eva has an encounter with the ghost.

Excerpt from The Weeping Lady

Hunched under the tree, young Eva didn’t hear the weeping at first, the sound drowned in her own tears and the noise of the river. Then it grew louder, more insistent, until the forest reverberated and the trees quaked with the heartbreaking wail intoned of aching sorrow. Her child’s mind imagined a gruesome horror, and terror sprinted within her skin. Her tears dried up, replaced with frightened whimpers. She pressed against the tree, wishing she could vanish inside the bark. Something was coming for her; she knew it.
The surrounding mist coagulated, twisted, taking strange form and ethereal substance before her eyes, transforming into the figure of a woman.

© A. F. Stewart 2015 All Rights Reserved 

I hope you enjoyed that little snippet, and check out the book this fall.

(And don't worry I'll keep you updated on its release) 

And now for my nominations.

The seven bloggers I choose are:

Aaron Paul Lazar

Nina D'Arcangela

Clarissa Johal

Sheila Deeth

Angela Yuriko Smith

Ash Krafton

Carole Gill

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!

The Return of Drabble Wednesday

After being preempted by National Poetry Month in April, Drabble Wednesday is back! And I've dug into the vault for four humorous stories- two strange ghost tales, and two adventures of Oscar the private detective fairy.  Enjoy.

Ghostsville

Welcome to Ghostsville.

Just in time for Halloween, this real life haunted theme park opens to the public.

For the first time in recorded history, actual spirits have been captured and are now housed for your amusement.

Come and thrill at the wonder of the ghost of Anne Boleyn.  She gives new meaning to the phrase “talking head”!  Shake in fright as the spectre of Lizzie Borden tells what really happened to her parents!

We have phantoms for all ages, for great family chills or dark terror for those horror fans!

Ghostsville, where everyone is dying to be.

Take the Deal

I stood in my new home, smiling and passing out cookies to the neighbours. Thanks to Itty-Bitty Realtors I owned a pale pink painted house overlooking the bay. I didn’t care that the house looked strange, tall and upright, with a door overhang resembling a duck bill, or that it came with an unexpected feature, namely the ghost of the former owner. Ralph was nice actually, and helpful; he’s the one that baked the cookies. His presence also knocked the price down by half and this place sure beats living in a double-wide trailer in the middle of a swamp.

Yummy

“It is I, Orville the Enchanted Hamster!”

I looked up from my beer to see a furry rodent wearing an odd hat standing on the table. “Good for you. I’m Oscar the Fairy. We’re introduced, now buzz off.”

“So rude my friend. Do not be that way. Not when I am here to offer you the opportunity of a lifetime. For only $49.95 you can have a front row seat to the greatest –”

I twitched in my seat, as the annoying hamster disappeared into the maw of Felix the Enchanted Cat. “I love a good sales rodent,” he purred.

It’s No Joke

A priest, a rabbi and a lady snake charmer walk into a bar. Sounds like the first line to bad joke, but there was nothing funny about this trio. And they were looking for me, with a vengeance.

Who am I? I’m Oscar, supernatural fairy by nature and private investigator by trade, and I made one heck of a mess for those three. Didn't mean to, a spell went awry and they got caught in the crossfire. And accidentally doing a mind-switch between a priest, a rabbi and a lady snake charmer can cause some problems, let me tell you.

Book Spotlight: The Serpent's Eye

Today I'm venturing back to the dark side, with horror front and center, and shining the spotlight on the novel, The Serpent's Eye by Thomas H. Brand. Enjoy, my darklings...

The Serpent's Eye by Thomas H. Brand

When George Sandings is sent to Buenos Aires in the summer of 1816 to deal with the estate of the late Earl Edgar Leer, he sees it simply as an opportunity to prove himself to his employers and advance his career. However, as he delves deeper and deeper into the Earl's dark and immoral past, he discovers that not everything is as natural as it should be. Soon be begins to realise that something from the Earl's past, from the Earl's father's life, and from many centuries before them, is following him. Haunting him. Is this spectre real? Or is this simply a plot to undermine him? As George tries to rationalise what is happening to his life, he must decide whether the only rational answer is the irrational.

Links

Kindle edition - 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00M66IHY2

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M66IHY2

Paperback edition - 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1503390454

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1503390454

https://www.createspace.com/5127132

Author Bio:

Thomas H. Brand is a writer and project manager, living and working in London. In his spare time he gets confused as it was so long since he last had any spare time he's not sure what to do with it.

Originally from Hampshire, he now lives in North London with his wife and a one-eyed ginger cat. He finds he spends more and more of his time sitting staring at the computer screen or notebook page. He loves every moment. When he isn't doing that, he can usually be found reading things other people have written instead.

Please visit www.thomashbrand.com for more information on the author and his writing.