NightWhere (41 page)

He slipped his hands beneath her slim form and lifted her body from the floor. He pressed his lips to hers in the gentlest, most loving kiss he could give.

“Stay with me now,” he begged. “I need you more now than I ever did before.”

Mark moved through the door that led into the hallway of The Red, and then with a quick thrust of his hand, opened the door to the Blue Room and moved past the last couple of laggards still hanging at the bar towards the door out of NightWhere. Tailor still stood guard, but Mark didn’t even wait for the Watcher to try to stop him. Instead he aimed a kick at the man’s crotch, and threw the door open himself as the Watcher fell backwards.

He stepped outside and saw the orange of the sun on the horizon.

“Are you with me?” he asked the still form in his arms.

Selena struggled to open her eyes again. Those icy blue orbs stared into his again. But the spark was gone. She was fading.

“Stay with me,” he begged.

“I’ve always been with you,” she whispered. “You just never noticed.”

“Well I know now,” he said. “And I know that we just need to get those cuts stitched up and you’re going to be okay.”

Selena coughed again. A wet, wheezing sound. “If you say so,” she said.

“I’m your guardian now,” he promised. “Just hold on a little longer.”

Mark saw the inconspicuous grey of his Sonata out in the empty field near the vacant farmhouse. Normally it blended into a crowd and was often difficult to spot, but now…it stood there alone. NightWhere was gone, and soon, Selena might be too. He began to run. When they reached the car, he struggled to pull his keys from his pocket without dropping her.

“We’ll be at the hospital in just a few minutes,” he whispered, finally unlocking the car and carefully slipping her into the passenger’s seat. He lay the back of the seat down as far as it would go. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll never let anyone hurt you again,” he said.

Selena responded with a sad, but hopeful, smile.

“I know,” she whispered. “And I want you to know I’m glad I broke the truce.”

He kissed her forehead. The glow of the dawn colored the horizon and lit her face in a dusky-red light. Like NightWhere, but then again, not at all the same. This light bore hope, not blood.

“Hang on for me,” he begged, as the car started.

Selena nodded, but didn’t answer.

All he could promise her was love, but love was supposed to conquer all, right?

Mark pulled onto the road back towards the city, whispering three words to Selena like a prayer: “I love you.”

“I know,” she answered, smiling faintly. A trickle of blood bled from the corner of her mouth.

“Hang on,” Mark repeated. “I promise, if you just stick with me now, I’ll never leave you again.”

Selena nodded. “I know,” she whispered and a tear slipped down her face.

One clear, wet, saltwater tear.

About the Author

John Everson is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of
Covenant,
as well as the novels
Sacrifice, The 13th, Siren
and
The Pumpkin Man.
Over the past 20 years, his short stories have appeared in more than 75 magazines and anthologies and have also been compiled in the collections
Creeptych, Deadly Nightlusts, Needles & Sins, Vigilantes of Love
and
Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions
.  His work has been translated into Polish, Italian, Turkish and French, and optioned for potential film production. He is also the founder and publisher of the independent press Dark Arts Books.

John shares a deep purple den in Naperville, Illinois with a cockatoo and cockatiel, a disparate collection of fake skulls, twisted skeletal fairies, Alan Clark illustrations and a large stuffed Eeyore. There's also a mounted Chinese fowling spider named Stoker courtesy of Charlee Jacob, an ever-growing shelf of custom mix CDs and an acoustic guitar that he can't really play but that his son Shaun likes to hear him beat on anyway. Sometimes his wife Geri is surprised to find him shuffling through more public areas of the house, but it's usually only to brew another cup of coffee. In order to avoid the onerous task of writing, he holds down a regular job at a medical association, records pop-rock songs in a hidden home studio, experiments with the insatiable culinary joys of the jalapeno, designs photo collage art book covers for a variety of small presses, loses hours in expanding an array of gardens and chases frequent excursions into the bizarre visual headspace of '70s euro-horror DVDs with a shot of Makers Mark and a tall glass of Newcastle.

To catch up on his blog, join his newsletter or get information on his fiction, art and music, visit John Everson: Dark Arts at
www.johneverson.com
.

All it needs to live again is fresh blood!

House of Skin

© 2012 Jonathan Janz

Myles Carver is dead.
 
But his estate, Watermere, lives on, waiting for a new Carver to move in.
 
Myles’s wife, Annabel, is dead too, but she is also waiting, lying in her grave in the woods.
 
For nearly half a century she was responsible for a nightmarish reign of terror, and she’s not prepared to stop now.
 
She is hungry to live again…and her unsuspecting nephew, Paul, will be the key.

Julia Merrow has a secret almost as dark as Watermere’s.
 
But when she and Paul fall in love they think their problems might be over.
 
How can they know what Fate—and Annabel—have in store for them?
 
Who could imagine that what was once a moldering corpse in a forest grave is growing stronger every day, eager to take her rightful place amongst the horrors of Watermere?

Enjoy the following excerpt for
House of Skin:

The night of the first death, Myles Carver was trying to bed his brother’s wife. He stared at her through the French doors, the partygoers buzzing around him like gnats, his own date Maria tugging at the lapel of his best black jacket like a goddamned kid.

“Myles,” she said. He smelled the sweet tang of wine on her breath, studied the large breasts peeking out of her dress, but those things did nothing for him.

Annabel did.

She was out there on the veranda, leaning forward so her rump stuck out, taunting him, the pale skin of her shoulders luminous in the night air.

He moved away from Maria, thought he’d escaped her when she gripped his arm. Then she was jabbering away at him and he realized she was drunk. Despite the band playing next to them atop the ballroom stage, her shrill, slurry voice bit through the noise and turned heads.

“Why can’t you respect your brother? Why can’t you leave her alone?”

Jesus. Airing their dirty laundry out here in front of everyone.

“Look at me, Myles.” Both hands on his lapels now. “She doesn’t want you. If she did she wouldn’t have married David.” Maria threw a sidelong glance at the men and women gawking at them. “That’s right, I said she doesn’t want you.” Getting into it now that she had an audience. “So why don’t you leave like your little brother. Robert knew she’d never have him so he left for Memphis. Why don’t you run away too?”

She needed a good smack in the mouth. Painted little whore with a little boy at home watched by his grandma tonight because his mother would rather have a man between her legs than a son on her lap.

He thought of saying all that, thought of saying what everybody already knew about her, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “You’ve no room to talk,” and walked away.

As he shut the French doors behind him he heard her say, “You’re a coward.” But she said nothing more because she was afraid of Annabel. Little Maria with her big mouth shut up quick whenever Annabel was around. Lovely Annabel.

Myles stood watching her.

He knew if he didn’t say something soon he’d lose his nerve, so standing beside her he said, “Smoke?”
 

Elbows on the cement wall bordering the veranda, she stared quietly at the forest, making no sign she’d heard him or was even aware of his presence.

Playing it cool, Myles tapped one out for himself, lit it. He leaned there beside her showing her he was comfortable with the silence too. He stole glances at her, though, because he couldn’t help it. Thin, sculptured nose below large blue eyes with lashes so long she needn’t cake them with that black shit Maria smeared on hers. Annabel had her blond hair pulled back tonight. Myles realized his hands were shaking. He had to say something.

“Where’s David?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said. As it usually was, her delivery was toneless, maddening.

“It’d be nice if he came to his own party.” When she said nothing, he added, “And paid some attention to his wife.”

Had there been the slightest hint of a smile? Without looking at him she said, “He does.”

“I don’t mean in the bedroom, I mean when there are fifty people at his house drinking his liquor and having sex in his rooms.”

“They’re your rooms, too, Myles.”

“And I’m here, aren’t I.”

Annabel turned and moved toward the veranda steps.

“That’s it?” he said and despised the plaintive note in his voice.

She descended the steps into the lawn, and for the first time he noticed she was barefoot.

He was about to shout at her, tell her that David didn’t deserve her, that he was probably off in the woods with another woman, when a cry erupted from within the house.

It wasn’t a normal cry, like a man who’d been cuckolded or a woman who’d been groped. It was a cry of anguish, of heartbroken doom, and as he pushed through the crowd gathered near the bandstand he realized it was Maria’s wail he was hearing. It rose up to the chandeliers, knifed through his eardrums, and he spotted Maria’s mother then, old and haggard and covered with blood. He thought at first she’d been stabbed, but then the crowd opened up and he saw Maria kneeling there in a lake of blood, her little boy clutched to her blood-shiny chest, her dead little boy whose throat was slashed so deeply it hung open like the mouth of some toothless animal.

Myles turned to look for his brother, for David, who would know what to do in a situation like this. But David wasn’t around. Everywhere he looked were shocked faces, weeping men and women who were too stunned to move. Myles turned, not wanting to face the grotesque spectacle any longer but unable to block out the sound of Maria’s wailing, and as he did he beheld a solitary figure standing in the open French doors, leaning there in a shimmering white dress.

It was Annabel, and she was smiling.

NightWhere

John Everson

She yearned to go beyond... but some curtains should never be opened.

When Rae broached the idea of visiting an underground sex club, Mark didn’t blink. He should have. Because NightWhere is not your usual swingers club.
Where
it’s held on a given
night
…only those who receive the red invitations know. Soon Rae is indulging in her lust for pain. And Mark is warned by a beautiful stranger to take his wife away before it’s too late.

But it’s already too late. Because Rae hasn’t come home. Now Mark is in a race against time—to find NightWhere again and save his wife from the mysterious Watchers who run the club. To stop her from taking that last step through the degradations of The Red into the ultimate BDSM promise of The Black. More than just their marriage and her life are at stake: Rae is in danger of losing her soul...

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

Cincinnati OH 45249

NightWhere

Copyright © 2012 by John Everson

ISBN: 978-1-60928-644-6

Edited by Don D’Auria

Cover by Angela Waters

All Rights Are 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.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: June 2012

www.samhainpublishing.com