Monsters

by Keri Knutson

About the Story: Monsters

  When I was first uprooted and moved from Colorado to Louisiana (and that’s how I think of it, as an uprooting), I was plopped into a world that seemed alien to me: the people, the climate, the eccentricities of a tiny rural town. I described it at the time as a feeling of waking up suddenly inside Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” I was apprehensive all the time.

  I used to walk from our house to the center of town, and the walk was much like Renee’s, past shell-paved driveways and down narrow, overhung lanes. There was a bulldog that rarely barked, save for the one time a stranger emerged from the bushes and I leapt rather dramatically into the yard, startling her. There was an old warehouse, thick with all manner of vegetation that smothered the walls and hung down over the gaping entrance.

  I always felt a chill walking past it, even on the hottest Louisiana day. And I would glance into the darkness of the old ramshackle building and wonder what watched from the shadows. Thus the story was born.

  Sneak Preview - Running Red

  Jesse Stone has been running the night roads for 150 years, preying on humanity for survival, but he still feels an ache from the empty place where his soul was torn away. Other vampires – an ex-SS soldier, a fanatical tent preacher, an Aztec biker – have been gathering an army for an assault on humanity. Now Jesse must lead a rag-tag band of humans against the others, in a last-ditch attempt to find redemption…