Lee Allen's Blog - Posts Tagged "novella"
The Jack O'Lantern Men - Preview
The Jack O'Lantern Men
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Life is but a whisper on a long forgotten wind.
They were the final words my wife spoke to me, as she lay on her death bed and limply held my hand, as mine grew tighter on hers. It is true, is it not? In that moment I forgave her all; her heresy, her infidelity, all the wounds she’d opened up in me over those long years. I stayed because I believed in my vows, and I cherished my daughter. Thus, I buried my hatred for this woman I had loved with all of my heart. Yet they were not the only reasons. I still loved her so, and though I never spoke of it again, my love sat with my hatred, and they shared the heart that belonged to that woman.
Oh Year, one which was so full of pain to enter, and shall be evermore agonising still to feel die. What secrets have you left to share with us in your final days? As the winter creeps upon us now that autumn has done its worst.
The fate of men resides in my hands once again. My keys grow heavier at my side, as I stalk the dark and dingy corridors, checking each cell to see if men still breathe so that we can take their last breaths from them. They are all sentenced to hang, all the men under my care.
Today, I was delivered the latest of these damned souls. Frank was his name. He said hardly a word as he was brought down to his cell and I unlocked the one farthest down the corridor. He turned and looked at me as I locked it behind him, looked me right in the eye and spoke to me without a word.
My day of reckoning had come.
Before leaving for home, I returned to his cell and looked through the bars. He sat motionless in the corner, and only stirred when I had stood at the bars for an endless five minutes.
“You know, don’t you?” His voice sounded as if it clawed over a thousand needles to escape his throat. For the first time, I noticed his nose and mouth were bloody; one blackened eye could only manage a squint to share vision with the other.
“I do,” I replied to him.
For I knew they haunted him too. I could feel them just out of sight at the end of the corridor. I ignored them, fixing my eyes on Frank.
“Find my daughter,” he implored me, finally moving from his corner toward me. “Find that she understands it was not of my doing.”
I nodded and said nothing further, moving from the cell into the darkness of the corridor.
The Jack O’Lantern Men followed me, their mouths grinning wickedly at my back. Long, tapered, fingers brushed my neck as I hurried from the prison.
“Leave me!” I cried into the dark, as I had done every night since she had gone.
They were not words that met my ears, more drifting thoughts that met my mind.
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The Jack O'Lantern Men, available October 31st.
Hear our words. Say your prayers.
Late on Hallowe’en night, Frank is delivered to the Jailer, standing accused of a crime for which he will hang. He has a tale to tell, and begs the Jailer to speak to his daughter.
His daughter, Laura, has her own tale to tell. Through their words, the Jailer hears of the events that will lead him to his last execution.
All the while, the Jack O’Lantern Men wait in the wings for the last act to play out and the curtain to fall.
Alone - A Supernatural Mystery
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All things must end.
Recovering from a recent accident and faced with the prospect of spending another Christmas alone, Jessica accepts the invitation of an old flame to spend Christmas with him and his aged aunt at his manor house in the midst of the Brecon Beacons.
Feeling her arrival is unwelcome, Jessica awaits her reunion with a face from the past, while a snowstorm postpones his arrival and renders her trapped within the house. Behind the silence, something dark is lurking.
Left with little choice, Jessica finds she must face the secrets the old house hides. Yet what she may come to learn is that nothing haunts us more than the secrets of our own pasts, and that burying them does not make them forgotten.
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Read on for a sample below:
December 16th
The gentle trickling of a glittering melody drifted on the air, creeping into the ears of the sleeping woman who lay on the bed in the corner of a sparsely furnished room. Her skin was deathly white, the only sign of life the water vapour escaping between her delicate lips as she breathed.
A shadow crossed her face, a slight creasing of anguish in her expression. There was something troubling about the sight of seeing innocence vanquished in something as subtle, like the moment a child suffers the loss of believing in magic. Worse still was that there was no one to witness the sight. Emptiness swirled around her clammy skin, dancing a Viennese Waltz with the silence that fell like frost in the wake of distant music that wasn’t quite alive.
Jessica awoke, her eyes drifting over the high ceiling. From her memory she grasped vaguely at what had woken her. A metallic tinkle. She listened to the dense blanket of night. The sound of being alone.
She rubbed her heavy brown eyes and sat up. Her unfinished glass of Irish Cream whisky sat on the bedside table, beside the candle that still held the ghost of its extinguished flame. She pulled her cardigan tighter around her shoulders, looking to the window, the landscape aglow even in the black of night.
She closed her eyes and touched her face. If she tried hard enough it was as if a hand reached from memory, fingertips brushing over her fingers, grasping her hand, lips bowing to graze her skin.
She shivered involuntarily. She had a feeling she could hear music, faint and distant, like bells carried on a still wind.
Her toes were cold. She flexed them on the worn carpet. Her feet were weary as she stood, crossing slowly to the window, watching the sky and the snow covered earth, the stars glowing beyond and the desolation of the stretch of beacons. She was lost, a lost girl nearing the end of her journey.
Turning from the window, she found the owner of the metallic tinkle. She stooped, a silver chain grasped in her fingers as she withdrew her hand. She felt the beads grasped under her cold fingertips, squeezing them as the crucifix fell across her palm. She felt the weight of her soul on her heart, sinking to her knees and bowing her head to her hands.
All things must end. And this was how it began.
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Merry Christmas!
