Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (35 page)
Authors: Cathy Perkins,Taylor Lee,J Thorn,Nolan Radke,Richter Watkins,Thomas Morrissey,David F. Weisman
I am as real as the words on the page.
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The Moscow Affair
Book1
The Dangerous Affairs Collection
Copyright, 2013 by Taylor Lee
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This book is a work of fiction. Characters, incidents, places and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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"This is a great start for what promises to be an engaging, intense series."
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Reversion: The Inevitable Horror
(The Portal Arcane Series - Book I)
By J. Thorn
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Table of Contents
Reversion: The Inevitable Horror
(The Portal Arcane Series - Book I)
Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2012
by J. Thorn
All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a
work of fiction. The characters, incidents, places, and dialogue are drawn from
the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed
as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
Edited by
Talia Leduc,
Katy Sozaeva,
Laurie Love and Rebecca T. Dickson
Proofread by Laurie Love
For more information:
For those
who seek redemption, may you find it.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
-Albert Einstein, 1931
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Samuel pushed the twisted sheet from his
shoulder and let the makeshift noose coil on the ground like a dead snake. He
stepped out of the rope and looked up at the decaying branch overhead, shaking
his head. His eyes darted about the empty forest as his heart raced.
He drew a breath, wincing at the pain in
his throat as his lungs tried to pull in more oxygen. He smiled at the
joy of being alive until the memory of his prison cell surfaced. Like a leaf at
the mercy of the wind, the image of the bars floated from Samuel’s reach. Worry
rushed back in as he struggled to find a connection, a reason for being here.
He stepped over the jagged rocks and
closed his eyes. Silence. It could have been midsummer. It could have been the
dead of winter. He could no longer tell and even if he could, Samuel
struggled to remember what those seasons meant. The wind was still. The
creek in the distance murmured like the whispers at a funeral procession. The
insects, the animals–the creatures of the wood were silent. Again, Samuel
fought to recall hearing any sound. A leather string holding an amulet lay on
the ground at his feet and he picked it up. The charm was silver,
three triple spirals connected and curling in on each other. He slid the
leather string over his head until the amulet lay on his chest.
He walked in silence over branches
sprawled on the ground and onto a rough path that wound itself farther
into the forest. Samuel heard a slight rustle of leaves underneath his feet and
yet his canvas sneakers did not make as much noise as they should have. The
sun hung at an odd angle, tossing a bland shaft of light ahead, with most of
the rays never reaching the ground. Samuel looked to the right and saw
tattered, yellow caution tape dangling from the trunks of ancient oaks.
What is this?
The tape ran from trunk to trunk in
tattered, random shreds like an abandoned crime scene. He reached out and tore
a shred of tape from the tree while looking for the human remains that should
have been there.
Samuel looked up into the canopy of
branches, which hovered overhead like a worried mother. As far as he could see,
ropes and nooses hung empty and cold. Piles of clothing, personal items, and
other artifacts lay beneath some.
He tossed the scrap of tape to the ground
and continued down the path, knocking aside a shoe, a sport coat, a backpack. He
stopped and bent down to grab the backpack, the aching in his neck causing him
to wince. The backpack was made of nylon, the zipper long gone and its
teeth forever in a black grin. He reached into it, his fingers brushing against
a few leaves that rustled inside. Nothing. He turned it over to reveal three
characters embroidered on the front: BCD. He rubbed his head and stared at them
until he recognized the letters of the alphabet, and a thin smile spread over
his lips. He was not sure if those letters mattered anymore, and he could not
recall why they ever would. Samuel dug through a few of the mounds beneath the
hanging trees, shoving articles of clothing into the backpack.
He threw the only remaining strap over
one shoulder and shuffled farther down the path on instinct. He kept the
pack to store items that might keep him alive. The creek moved closer with each
step, and he was happy to hear its meanderings. The natural noise brought a
brief sense of normalcy, a memory from childhood: long summer days in a valley
and a creek that cut a ragged line through the forest. Some days he
would spend hours in solitude, overturning rocks in a search of salamanders. On
other days, he would throw stones across the bank with his brothers in a
friendly competition that would end when his mother’s voice echoed through the
trees, calling them home for the evening meal.
He saw more items strewn across the path
and kicked a pair of shoes to the side. So many shoes. He wondered why the
shoes remained and the bodies did not.
Samuel looked down at his sneakers with
Velcro instead of laces. A faded denim shirt hung open revealing a plain grey
T-shirt underneath. His khakis sat loose on his hips. The guards did not
care how well they fit the inmates.
The path curved as it approached the
stream, turning right into a grove of high pines, their needles covering the
ground. Samuel drew a deep breath through his nose, catching the faintest odor
of pine, and it made him smile. He savored the distant aroma for as long
as he could. It did not last.
He sat on the ground next to an
abandoned, blue shopping bag and reached inside, pulled out the contents and
arranged them in a circle over the pine needles. He remembered the names for
most of them. Lighter. Pen. Nickel. A few he could not recognize, but his brain
assured him he would. Samuel picked up the lighter with his right hand, pinched
between a thumb and finger. Muscle memory snapped into place as his thumb
struck down on the flint. The lighter sparked, and Samuel smiled. He could
almost taste the burnt, woody smoke of a hand-rolled cigarette. He could almost
feel the airy buzz with each puff of the tobacco. He struck the lighter again
and again, but each time it failed to ignite, and each time it reminded him of
the temporary satisfaction delivered by the nicotine. Another item returned to
his expanding repertoire of old words as he opened a supple leather
wallet.
Samuel removed the paper sticking out
from its fold. As with the pine needles, he caught a faint whiff of the earthy,
organic scent of the rawhide.
He looked up and noticed the sun had
dropped closer to the horizon, as if touching the tops of the trees to ignite
them. Darkness crept closer, surrounding the far edges of his vision. Samuel’s
toes became numb from the cold and he realized his exposure could kill him.
With the chill of the approaching night,
the undoing of the universe tightened its stranglehold on this place,
slowly crushing the life from it. Each universe exists infinitely close to one
other much like grains of sand on a beach. The collection of universes is known
as the multiverse. In this place, the reversion started on the edges where
sounds disappeared and colors dulled, draining it all of rich, sensory
perceptions. The physical world began to fold in upon itself and threatened to
swallow everything into the eternal void. Not every universe was cursed with a
reversion that held souls in transition, but this one was.
