A HAUNTING OF HORRORS
A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult
A Macabre Ink Production
Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright 2014
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Other books by authors in this collection
AL SARRANTONIO
Al Sarrantonio's Book of Holidays
Campbell Wood
Halloween and Other Seasons
Halloweenland
Hallows Eve
Hornets & Others
Horrorland
Horrorween
House Haunted
Moonbane
October
Skeletons
The Boy With Penny Eyes
The Worms
Totentanz
Toybox
Underground
B.W. BATTIN
Into the Pit
It's Loose
Mary, Mary
Night Sounds
Satan's Servant
CHET WILLIAMSON
Ash Wednesday
Defenders of the Faith
Dreamthorp
Hunters
Lowland Rider
McKain's Dilemma
Reign
Second Chance
Soulstorm
DAVID J. SCHOW
Black Leather Required
Black Orchids
Bullets of Rain
Eye
Havoc Swims Jaded
The Kill Riff
Lost Angels
Rock Breaks, Scissors Cut
Seeing Red
Wild Hairs
Zombie Jam
ELIZABETH MASSIE
Abed
Afraid
Homegrown
Naked, on the Edge
Sineater
Wire Mesh Mothers
GERARD HOUARNER
A Blood of Killers
I Love You and There's Nothing You Can Do About It
In the Country of Dreaming Caravans
Road to Hell
Road from Hell
The Beast That Was Max
Waiting for Mister Cool
HUGH B. CAVE
Disciples of Dread
Lucifer's Eye
Murgunstrumm and Others
Shades of Evil
The Dawning
The Evil
The Evil Returns
The Lower Deep
The Nebulon Horror
The Restless Dead
JEFFREY SACKETT
Blood of the Impaler
Candlemas Eve
Grogo the Goblin
Lycanthropos
Stolen Souls
JOHN FARRIS
All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By
Before the Night Ends
Catacombs
Dragonfly
Fiends
King Windom
Minotaur
Phantom Nights
Sacrifice
Sharp Practice
Shatter
Solar Eclipse
Son of the Endless Night
Soon She Will Be Gone
The Axeman Cometh
The Captors
The Fury
The Fury and the Power
The Fury and the Terror
Unearthly
When Michael Calls
Wildwood
You Don't Scare Me
JOHN SKIPP & CRAIG SPECTOR
Animals
Dead Lines
The Cleanup
The Light at the End
The Scream
JOSEPH A. CITRO
DEUS-X: The Reality Conspiracy
Guardian Angels
Lake Monsters
Shadow Child
The Gore
MELANIE TEM
Black River
Blood Moon
Daughters
In Concert
Prodigal
Slain in the Spirit
The Ice Downstream
The Man on the Ceiling
The Tides
YVONNE NAVARRO
AfterAge
DeadTimes
Mirror Me
DAVID NIALL WILSON
A Taste of Blood & Roses
An Unkindness of Ravens
Ancient Eyes
Cockroach Suckers
Darkness Falling
Deep Blue
Defining Moments
Etched Deep
Foreman James
Heart of a Dragon
Kali's Tale
Killer Green
Maelstrom
My Soul to Keep
Nevermore
On the Third Day
Roll Them Bones
Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky
The Call of Distant Shores
The Fall of the House of Escher & Other Illusions
The Not Quite Right Reverend Cletus J. Diggs
The Preacher's Marsh
The Whirling Man & Other Tales of Blood, Pain, and Madness
This is My Blood
Vintage Soul
NANCY KILPATRICK
Bloodlover
Child of the Night
Eternal City
Near Death
Reborn
The Vampire Stories of Nancy Kilpatrick
RONALD KELLY
After the Burn
Cumberland Furnace & Other Fear Forged Fables
Dark Dixie
Dark Dixie II: Tales of Southern Horror
Fear
Flesh Welder
Hell Hollow
Hindsight
Long Chills
Mister Glow-Bones and Other Halloween Tales
Pitfall
Restless Shadows
The China Doll
The Dark'Un
The Sick Stuff
Timber Gray
Twelve Gauge
Twilight Hankerings
Undertaker's Moon
Unhinged - Tales of Darkness & Depravity
SIDNEY WILLIAMS
Azarius
Blood Hunter
Deadly Delivery
Gnelfs
Midnight Eyes
New Year's Evil
Night Brothers
Scars and Candy -- Tales of Terror and Dark Mystery
The Gift
When Darkness Falls
STEVE RASNIC TEM
Absent Company
City Fishing
Daughters
Excavation
In Concert
The Book of Days
The Man on the Ceiling
G. WAYNE MILLER
Asylum - Book 2 of the Thunder Rise Trilogy
Since the Sky Blew Off
Summer Place - Book 3 of the Thunder Rise Trilogy
The Beach That Summer
Thunder Rise - Book 1 of the Thunder Rise Trilogy
Vapors
TOM PICCIRILLI
A Lower Deep: A Self Novel
All You Despise
Clown in the Moonlight
Frayed
Futile Efforts
Hexes
Loss
Meeting the Black
Nightjack
Pale Preachers
Pentacle: A Self Collection
The Fever Kill
The Last Deep Breath
The Night Class
The Nobody
Thrust
Vespers
You'd Better Watch Out
CONTENTS
Horrorween
It's Loose
Ash Wednesday
The Kill Riff
Wire Mesh Mothers
The Beast That Was Max
The Evil
Blood of the Impaler
The Fury
The Light at the End
Lake Monsters
Prodigal
AfterAge
Ancient Eyes
Child of the Night
The Dark’Un
Gnelfs
Excavation
Thunder Rise
Hexes
HORRORWEEN
Book One of the Orangefield Series
By Al Sarrantonio
Foreword
The original name of the town was Orangefield, after a Scottish Earl who was little remembered and therefore expendable. But the locals, by referendum in 1930, changed it to Pumpkinfield in order to make money.
“Hell, it sounds like Halloween!” was the general consensus. It was hoped that with a name like Pumpkinfield folks would come by and, if disappointed at the lack of pumpkins, would at least enjoy the foliage and spend dollars.
The second choice was Little Salem.
They didn’t grow many pumpkins in the region in 1930, but in a bizarre case of the cart leading the horse, and then winning the race, it turned out that the soil was richly perfect and that pumpkins grew in profusion – up hillsides, in the fertile valleys, in straight tended rows, in backyard patches. By the late 1930s the place literally turned orange in late summer, and stayed that way until October 31st.
After that, with so many rotting (and smashed) pumpkins, the town smelled sickly sweet for a week.
Just before World War II, another referendum changed the named back to Orangefield.
It was sometime during this period that strange things began to happen in Orangefield – usually around the time of Halloween. There was the disappearance of the entire Cutler family in 1940, who left behind warm tea and a game of Monopoly in progress. Just after the war there was the murder of Amos Stone by his three children, wearing Halloween masks, aged seven, five, and four, who then went on to murder one another, leaving a knife-induced bloodbath. In 1951 there was the brand-new Sullivan house which went up in flames on its first All Hallows Eve, was rebuilt, and burned down again the following Halloween. And then again. (The plot was left fallow after that.) These and other similar stories are covered in the first two volumes of this history.
There were, and continue to be, many tales of Samhain, the Celtic Lord of Death and master of Halloween, and many so-called ‘Sam Sightings.’ It has been said that Samhain somehow owns Orangefield, had claimed it before man of any kind – native American or Englishman – had laid plough to the land. There occurred, during the writing of this history, the case of Hattie Ivers, and many others, who have claimed direct confrontation with Samhain.
And then there was perhaps the worst thing that ever happened in Orangefield, which concerned in part my own father, as well as the Pumpkin Boy, the children’s book writer Peter Kerlan, the police detective Bill Grant, as well as the three chosen by Samhain himself….
– Thomas Robert Reynolds, Jr.
Occult Practices in Orangefield and Chicawa County, New York, Volume Three
Part One
“Something’s Coming”
Chapter One
Too warm for October.
Staring out through the open door of his house, Peter Kerlan loosened the top two buttons of his flannel shirt, then finished the job, leaving the shirt open to reveal a gray athletic tee-shirt underneath. Across the street the Meyer kids were re-arranging their newly purchased pumpkins on their front stoop – first the bigger of the three on the top step, then the middle step, then the lower. They were jacketless, and the youngest was dressed in shorts. Their lawn was covered, as was Kerlan’s, with brilliantly colored leaves: yellow, orange, a dry brown. The neighborhood trees were mostly shorn, showing the skeleton fingers of their branches; the sky was a sharp deep blue. Everything said Halloween was coming – except for the temperature.
Jeez, it’s almost hot!
Behind him, out through the sliding screen door that led to the back yard, Peter could hear Ginny moving around, making an attempt at early Sunday gardening.
Maybe it’s cold after all.
He opened the front screen door, retrieved the morning newspaper he had come for, and turned back into the house, unfolding the paper as he went.
In the kitchen, he sat down at the breakfast table and studied the front page.
The usual assortment of local mayhem – a robbery, vandalism at the junior high school, a teacher at that same school suspended for drug use.
In the back, Ginny cursed angrily; there was the sound of something being knocked against something else.
“Peter!” she called out.
He pretended not to hear her for a moment, then answered, “I’m eating breakfast!” and began to study the paper much more closely then it deserved.
On the second page, more local mayhem, along with the weather – sunny and unseasonably warm for at least the next three days – as well as a capsule listing of the rest of the news, which he scanned with near boredom.
Something caught his eye, and he gave an involuntary shiver as he turned to the page indicated next to the summary and found the headline:
Hornets Attack Preschoolers
Another shiver caught him as he noted the picture embedded in the story – a man clothed in mosquito netting and a pith helmet holding up the remains of a huge papery nest; one side of the structure was caved in and within he could make out the clumped remains of dead insects –
Again he gave an involuntary shiver, but went on to the story:
(Orangefield, Special to the Herald, Oct. 7) Scores of preschoolers were treated today for stings after a small group of the children inadvertently stirred up a hornets’ nest which had been constructed in a hollow log. The nest, which contained hundreds of angry hornets, was disturbed when a kick ball rolled into it. When one of the children went to retrieve the ball, the insects, according to witnesses, “attacked and kept attacking.”
Twenty eight children in all were treated for stings, and the Klingerman Pre School was closed for the rest of the day.<
br />
The nest was removed by local beekeeper Floyd Willims, who said this kind of attack is very common. “The nests are mature this time of year, and can hold up to five hundred drones, along with the Queen. Actually, new drones are maturing all the time, and can do so until well into fall. With the warm weather this year, their season is extended, for another few weeks at least. The first real cold snap will kill them off.”
Willims continued, “Everyone thinks that yellow jackets are bees, but they’re not. They’re hornets, and can get pretty mean when the nest is threatened. At the end of the season, next year’s Queens will leave the nest, and winter in a safe spot, before laying eggs and starting the whole process over again with a new nest.”
As of last night, none of the hornet stings had proved dangerous, and Klingerman Preschool will reopen tomorrow.
Peter finished the story, looked at the picture again – the bee keeper holding the dead nest up with a triumphant grin on his face – and gave a third involuntary shiver.
Ugh.
At that moment Ginny appeared at the back sliding door, staring in through the screen. He looked up at her angry face.
“I can’t get that damned shed door open!” she announced. “Can you help me please?”
“After I finish my breakfast–”
Huffing a breath, she turned and stormed off.
“Aren’t you going to eat with me?” he called after her, hoping she wouldn’t turn around.
She stopped and came back. “Not when you talk to me with that tone in your voice.”
“What tone?” he protested, already knowing that today’s version of ‘the fight’ was coming.
She turned and gave him a stare – her huge dark eyes as flat as stones. She was as beautiful as she had ever been, with her close cropped blonde hair and anything but boyish looks. “Are we going to start again?”
“Only if you want to,” he said.
“I never want to. But I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
“How much more of what?”
She stalked off, leaving the door open. After a moment, Peter threw down the paper and followed her, closing the sliding screen door behind him and dismounting the steps of the small deck. She was in front of the garden shed, a narrow, four foot deep, one story-high structure attached to the house to the right of his basement office window.
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