Night Monsters (6 page)
Authors: Lee Allen Howard
Tags: #Horror, #Zombies, #Vampires, #Suspense, #Thriller, #Monsters, #ghosts
“They’re gaining!” Drew sounded scared now.
Gasping for breath, his legs burning with exhaustion, Justin looked back again.
A pallid hand reached out and clutched his coat collar. Behind it glittered obsidian eyes and a red maw crammed with white razors, contorted in silent gnashing.
Justin stumbled and fell headlong, breaking his attacker’s grip. Tasting grit, he clambered away, spitting. Drew was hurled to the ground. Drew’s eyes went wide when two of the guys descended on him.
Justin expected the guys to swear, swing their fists, but they were silent, machine-like. He staggered to his feet, but one wrenched him off-balance and slammed him on his back.
As the third guy arched over him, he saw this was no Halloween get-up. Half the guy’s face had been blown away by a shotgun blast. Bee-bees were imbedded in a bare patch of skull, and black blood oozed from the meaty wound. Justin gagged at the putrid stench.
Icy fingers burrowed under his coat. Talons curved out and raked his belly, slicing open the skin. Justin kicked like driving pistons until the ghoul pitched off him. He rolled and scrabbled away.
Justin was about to bolt when Drew bleated like an injured goat. Justin jerked around.
One creature buried its face in Drew’s abdomen like a swine feasting from a steaming slop trough. The other one lunged at his throat. Drew shrieked until the creature gnawed through his vocal cords.
Hot blood coursed down Justin’s belly. Eyes loomed before him like black pearls rolling, and the ravenous, gnarling jaws opened wide. The third creature reached for him with glinting talons.
Justin dodged. He dashed through the corn stalks, stumbled over the bank, and raced down the road in the darkness.
He ran like hell all the way home, glad he hadn’t thrown corn at the GTO Judge.
• • •
At midnight, after the moon sank below the horizon, four colorless figures filed through the corn. They climbed in the car silently, and the black GTO Judge disappeared into nothingness, without even the moon as its witness.
More Dark Fiction from Lee Allen Howard
I
n this duo of supernatural thrillers, Calvin Bricker deals with desperate spirits right in his own neighborhood.
In
“The Vacant Lot,”
a supernatural presence beckons from the empty neighborhood lot. Calvin’s curiosity leads him to an aged portrait painter with a terrible secret about a dead undertaker and his missing wife, who seeks eternal release.
In
“How I Was Cured of Naïveté,”
a seemingly innocent spirit appears in the foyer of Calvin’s home. When he discovers her fate, he sets her free—only to find that little girls aren’t always made of sugar and spice. Snick, snick!
If you like crime and mystery with a supernatural bent, succumb to the call of
Desperate Spirits
!
If Joe Lansdale and Carson McCullers somehow managed to spawn a literary, fictional child, “Mama Said” would probably be it. A damn good read!
—Trent Zelazny, author of
The Day the Leash Gave Way and Other Stories
O
n his thirteenth birthday, Buddy gets shipped up north by his religious mother, who can’t cope with his sister’s teenage pregnancy.
Just as he resigns himself to spending the entire summer at Gram’s farm caring for kittens and cows, his bitter sister Brinda arrives, ending his peace and solitude.
When her boyfriend Jackie shows up and turns his attentions to Buddy from his bride-to-be, Buddy must do what Mama said—or take matters into his own hands.
Download
“Mama Said”
now for the chilling conclusion
.
THE SIXTH SEED
– a novel
THE SIXTH SEED abducted my imagination and unsettled me with its pitch-perfect blend of science fiction, body horror and domestic terror. What a weird read!
—Michael A. Arnzen, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of
Proverbs for Monsters
Howard brings alien invasion up close and personal... buckle up for a thrill ride.
—Scott Nicholson, author of Liquid
Fear
T
oday’s stories of alien abduction and experimentation include temporary embryonic implantation.
THE SIXTH SEED
, a dark paranormal fantasy fraught with suburban Pittsburgh horror, takes this scenario one radical step further when the first alien/human hybrid fertilization develops to full term in utero.
Believing a vasectomy will prevent another unplanned pregnancy, 34-year-old Tom Furst—Melanie’s loving husband and the father of their five children—wants more than anything to dig himself out of the fiscal hole he’s mired in and become financially secure.
However, during the procedure, mysterious Dr. Prindar Krakhil secretly implants a worm-like alien seed in Tom’s vas deferens that not only ensures that Melanie gets pregnant, but plants in her womb a child half alien.
Their children are abducted. Melanie becomes gravely ill. When Tom loses his job, their home, and the sixth seed is born, will he be able to accept the child for what it really is—and conquer the temptation to exchange it for the money Krakhil offers?
Lee Allen Howard is an imaginative writer with slick, vivid prose and high octane pacing. He writes like no one else, and I mean this in a very good way
. —Trent Zelazny, author of
Fractal Despondency
SEVERED RELATIONS
is a duo of deadly stories that brings you the best in matrimonial butchery. Everyone has experienced a choppy relationship. But just wait until you read these two tales of horror...
In
“The Butcher’s Reunion,”
a cuckolded butcher slaughters his wife and seeks her lover only to find he cannot escape dire prophetic justice. WHAM!
Equally dark and suspenseful, in
“Almost Betrothed,”
a timid woman unlucky with love finds the courage to break what her daddy thinks is a promising engagement and discovers her boyfriend is Mr. Wrong. Dead wrong.
WARNING: These stories are not for the squeamish! But if you’re into good old pulp horror,
you’ll love
SEVERED RELATIONS
—chock full of blood and cutlery!
T
ad has a problem: he ran away from home only to find he has no place to stay in the big city. After selling his abusive father’s comics collection, the sixteen-year-old twink hasn’t near enough money for a bus ticket home.
Two days without food and two nights in an alley force him to do what he swore he wouldn’t: trick for cash. But trick he must—just this once—to get back home, lest he end up living on the streets of Pittsburgh.
At Lucky’s Lounge, the thirty-something with the reptilian tattoos seems to be his ticket home. Bruce is a kind man, a generous man, a spiritual man who takes in strays of all kinds. But Bruce needs a different kind of fix, and Tad is his only way to get it.
What will Tad forfeit for a bus ticket home?
To find out, download “
STRAY
,” bone-chilling gay horror from Lee Allen Howard.
