Mike’s heart jack-hammered in his chest.
“Or perhaps father to daughter...”
No!
“You can’t do this!” he screamed into the darkness.
“I understand your disappointment with our decision, but Rebecca is simply too great of a threat to us. In the future, with her inherent disapproval of the rules, she could perhaps rise to take arms against us. She would not be the first to have tried.”
I have to save her! Mike struggled to his feet, blindly searching for the front door to this obscenely violated prison cell he’d once called home. He found himself careening over the small wooden table sat before the television. Pain sliced through him with renewed vigour as his head collided hard with the wooden corner, and his nose split open with a sickening crack.
He was utterly, pathetically helpless. Lost in the dark.
He roared as a primal, impotent rage fought with a grief unlike any he’d ever known and the perfect blackness that would be forever his reality seemed to laugh at his pathetic attempts at rebellion.
And the soulless, evil thing in the television laughed right along with it.
“This has been a public service announcement to help reaffirm your belief that ignorance is bliss. We value your support here at Prism TV. Thank you and goodbye.”
The sound of static could not compete with Michael Echol’s screams as he lay there, on the sodden, blood-soaked floor.
And in the distance, a siren wailed, drawing ever closer.
***
It is 11pm on the fifteenth of June, 2066, and on Filamore Drive all the children are asleep under light summer bed-sheets while their parents relax together on well-loved sofas wrapped in each other’s arms - supping their ice-cold beers and staring into the cold digital luminance of their television screens...
Excerpt from the authors upcoming full-length novel
DEVILS DAY
PROLOGUE
The roiling clouds break, revealing stars that seem to shiver in sympathy with the night. The autumn moon bleeds cold radiance on those gathered in the hollow.
Torchlight casts dancing, capering shadows throughout the forest clearing, as the circle of figures gather in silence.
In the centre of the circle – a girl on the cusp of womanhood huddles together with a much younger girl - only six years old.
Dressed in only light garments that were worn as they were dragged from the comfort of their beds; they tremble not only from the harsh biting winds of the late October night, but from a deep and penetrating dread.
They hold each other tightly as the cloaked and hooded figures watch and wait with terrible patience.
The older girl is crying as she tries to calm the terrified child.
The child shakes uncontrollably, untameable in her fear. Her eyes dart from face to face, discerning the familiar visages of people she has known and trusted her whole life.
In her confusion she reaches out to the tallest of the figures.
A man...
His is a face she has loved as long as she can remember.
He has bathed her. Read her bedtime tales and comforted her when her imagination has crept up from black places to drag her into its fearful depths. He has held her as she wept, tended to her hurts and to her ailments as she has grown. He has played games with her in the fervent woodlands that surround their home and taught her of all the wonders hiding in their quiet little corner of the world.
In her father’s eyes, she see’s great sadness, and while she cannot understand it on any conscious level of thinking - she senses a terrible resolve.
The promise of something unspeakable...
She reaches out to him.
The older girl loosens her desperate hold on the child only fleetingly as the young one implores with tiny, shaking hands to her father.
He remains still. Tears run down his cheeks in rivers, though his face is solid stone.
Even though she is so very young and until this moment she has lived her life as little more than perfect innocence and light, the girl is aware.
She can feel the tremors pass through her guardian and instinctually she presses her face into the older girls breast, even now hoping to give comfort as much as receive it.
She can hear her heartbeat pounding faster and faster as endless seconds pass and her fright envelops her.
The child’s eyes dance from her protector’s warm chest to her father’s shadow as it looms over them both.
She turns her head and watches him as he moves forward and with a small, almost imperceptible nod, he summons the others in the circle to join him.
Before she has time to think about what her father will do, she is torn by grasping, cold hands from the fragile sanctuary of the young woman’s embrace.
Her guardian screams.
It is a sound unlike any the child has ever heard in her short, sweet life.
In that anguished wail all the goodness in the world seems to wither and die.
Rough hands grab at the older girl as the two are parted.
The child’s eyes are running with tears as she uselessly struggles with her captors and reaches out for the other, who seems a million miles adrift.
One of the people holding her– a woman – puts a knife to her throat.
The older girl screams.
The child sees everything...
The blade slides slowly across the girl’s smooth, pale throat.
A wash of red colours the flowered nightdress she wears, turning once beautiful blue and pink-embroidered flowers to ebony black.
She sees the light fade from the young woman’s eyes.
And as the lifeless body of her only companion is allowed to fall unceremoniously to the wet woodland floor, the child’s terror affords her its final lesson.
She is alone.
Her guardian is gone forever.
And her father will not protect her.
The purity of the betrayal cleaves hopeless furrows through her young heart.
Still fighting, and with only desperate despair and terror left within her, she looks up at the man who was once and always her sanctuary.
He reaches into the deep red folds of the cloak he wears.
He removes a blade of his own, much longer than the other.
It shines in the cold and unconcerned light of the harvest moon.
She has no time to plead. Only time to search his eyes one last time for any sign of the perfect love the two have shared.
She can still see his warmth fighting to break the surface, but in the witnessing of it, she knows that nothing more of grace will pass between them.
The hands that hold her little body begin to tighten their vice-like grip with renewed vigour. She ceases her pitiful struggles at last.
All is still.
The forest that has so often sang its majestic song and captivated her heart seems to tremble in a fear of its own. But for the sound of her own hammering pulse, there is only dead silence. Nature herself has abandoned her.
And then the voice of her father - “I’m so sorry, baby.”
He raises the blade above his head and plunges down with all his might, and she hears her own scream collide with the howl of despair that flees him like a damned spirit as the final tethers of his soul loosen all bonds with goodness.
And in the eternity between the final beat of her heart and the cold kiss of the blade, she hears something else.
Laughter...
It is like no laughter she has ever heard before.
It is cold, and ancient, and utterly maleficent.
And then she hears nothing at all.
About the author
Kyle M. Scott – an earthling - hails from the sun-starved climes of deepest, darkest Glasgow, Scotland.
By night he fights crime in a profoundly camp costume, and by day he can usually be found reviewing horror cinema for a number of genre-based websites, (when he’s not at the bar with his lady and his buds).
CONSUMED: VO
LUME 1 is his first independent fiction release. His first full-length novel will be available in late 2014.
To learn more follow him on Twitter, Facebook or visit his blog,
Thehorrorhotel.blogspot.com
Consumed - Volume 1 Page 13