“I’ve learned so much, gained so much. I understand so much more for having met you and your people, Reverend. You’ve fed me, cared for me and my family. Things I could never have gotten anywhere else. Good things that’ve made me a better person,” Mike said solemnly and pulled the copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin out of his pocket, holding it in front of him. The old man smiled, nodding as they turned and walked in silence back out into the sunlight.
The next time they would see each other was sooner than either of them would have expected; only six hours and, by then, the world would have come to an end for Big Mike Golden.
*****
It was already dark when Mike pulled back into the church parking lot, his temples throbbing and his eyes swollen to a squint, his mind swimming with drugs and flashbacks; the police car waiting for him in his driveway when he got back to the 17th century farmhouse he and Jane had bought to “flip” the next year. People were gathered on his porch, one in a police uniform, the others, his neighbors, John and Patty Gundersen.
Hysteria ripped through him as he got out of his car and ran towards the porch. He could see out of the corner of his eye that Patty Gundersen was crying.
The policeman stepped up. “Mr. Golden?” the young officer said, a grim, pale expression on his face.
“Yes!” Mike shouted looking to pass him and get into the house. The young officer stopped him.
“Mr. Golden, I’m sorry. There’s been an accident.” In his panic, Mike hadn’t noticed that their second car, the old VW bug the kids loved, wasn’t in the drive. He stopped.
“What?”
“You’re wife has been in a car accident, sir. I’m sorry,” the young officer said, looking to the ground and shaking his head. The blood drained from Mike’s face. He knew what that meant. Mike’s mind reeled out of control, shooting in every direction. “My kids!” he cried out.
Patty Gundersen was standing next to him by then, holding him up. “The kids are fine, Mike. They’re over at our house with ours,” she said, tears running down her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry, Mike,” she said and hugged him.
Time seemed to stop for Michael Golden then. The world had just ended. For the next six hours he felt nothing and understood less. He was just a body going through the motions as he was directed by the young police officer and John Gundersen; identifying the body, signing papers he didn’t read and couldn’t understand. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Arrangements? He couldn’t fucking think now about arrangements. “What the hell are you talking about?” he shouted through his tears as he fell apart at the hospital; a voice in his mind screaming at him in his skull, She’s dead, Michael. Jane is dead! She ran off the road and into a tree, he kept hearing the young officer’s voice repeating in his head as he got out of the car in the church parking lot and stumbled sluggishly to the door, fumbling in his pocket for the key. Where else could he go? There was nowhere else to go. He went in and sat in the front pew; his head in his hands, drifting. This can’t be real, Lord. Can I please wake up now?
An Unfinished House by K. Patrick Malone
Gold Medal Winner, Horror, Nation Indie Excellence Book Awards, 2010
Bronze Medal Winner, Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Awards, 2010
Winner, USA Book News National Best Books Awards, Horror, 2010
Winner, Arizona Author's Association Awards (2nd prize), 2010
1st Runner-Up, New York Book Festival, 2010
Honorable Mention, Los Angeles Book Festival, 2010
Honorable Mention, Nashville Book Festival, 2010
Honorable Mention, New England Book Festival, 2010
Honorable Mention, London Book Festival, 2010
Honorable Mention, Paris Book Festival 2010
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Other Works by K. Patrick Malone
An Unfinished House
Steel yourselves readers, because nothing you have ever read can prepare you for An Unfinished House, K. Patrick Malone’s most harrowing and uncompromising foray yet into the darkness of both the natural and supernatural, and New York Book Festival 2009 Fiction First Runner Up.
Michael Golden, a hard working, every day builder and family man comes home from work one evening to find that his shy home maker wife has been killed in a car accident leaving him with two small children in the historic old colonial house they’d just bought. But something no one could have ever imagined happens when an outlaw biker arrives on his doorstep with a secret so devastating that it rocks An Unfinished House and those who live there to the very core of their existence; tearing the face off of human emotion and redefining the meaning of the word “love” with a haunting that will peel the paint off your walls and an ending that will leave you . . .shattered.
Feel welcome, readers, come into An Unfinished House, comforted by the smell of cinnamon baking in the kitchen and ducks swimming on the placid lake out back. But be warned, you will not leave the same way because, by the end, everything you ever thought you knew about life, death and love will have changed completely. No one comes away from Unfinished . . untouched. And as such, the author, K. Patrick Malone and publisher, A-Argus Books, attach a five hanky warning alert as part of this disclaimer.
Beyond The Pale
From the multi-award winning novelist now comes a collection of stories by one of modern horror’s most potent voices. Beginning with a ghostly romance (Tableau Vivant) through two wet hanky hauntings (ARMY BRAT and One Little Indian Boy) to downright wickedness (Nice, little old…) and the conscience shocking finale of the title story (Beyond the Pale), Malone once again delivers gripping, edge-of-your seat tension reflected through the prism of his unique brand of character driven, thought provoking spookery. So settle in, readers, put your feet up in your most comfortable chair on a stormy night or by a roaring fire, and be inextricably drawn into the shadowy emotional funhouse of America’s Master of the Macabre. But be warned, grab the safety bar and hold on tight, because once the ride begins there will be no turning back until the very last white knuckled word.
Inside a Haunted Mind
Small town police Chief, Terry Chagford is dying . . . of fright. The evil he thought he'd destroyed when he burned down the old Victorian house on the edge of town is back and it is after him. . . but not only him. It also wants Martin Welliver, the World Trade Center survivor he'd dragged from a car in the river not long before. Welliver, in an unfortunate twist of fate, bought the house hoping to find peace and quiet from a violent and uncaring world only to act as a conduit to revive the evil waiting for someone like him to give it life. But what do the Mah Jong tiles and dreams of murder have to do with it all? What is the link between the house and the old woman with the Mah Jong tile bracelet? Chagford is a man riddled with personal demons. With his growing thirst for alcohol, increasing dependence on pain killers and bouts of crippling depression, could it be that it is all just the terrifying sum of his crumbling mind? And why can he not get it out of his mind?
The Diggers Rest
Following his successful best-seller “Inside a Haunted Mind,” K. Patrick Malone delivers a new spine-chilling exploration into the macabre. A worthy successor to King, James, Jackson and Lee, Malone is comfortably situated at the pinnacle of his profession. From the pen of horror’s best-selling author, K. Patrick Malone, comes another blood-curdling excursion into the eerie world of the unknown.
King Arthur was just a fairy tale king. Or was he? Demons and evil spirits are just fables to scare children. Or are they. Do you dare find out?
Southwest England is the setting as Malone sends his motley team of art archaeologists to explore a long-concealed medieval castle ruins in search of the legendary King Arthur. What they uncover, however, is a legend much older, much more mind-rending and soul-shredding than anything anyone could have conceived.
As with all of Malone’s works, this latest will mesmerize readers and keep the
m on the very edge of their seats until the last haunting word in an ending that defies belief.
The House At Miller’s Court
“The Bookend Masterpiece to last year’s award-winning An Unfinished House, K. Patrick Malone has created the perfect companion read in The House at Miller’s Court.”
Readers can now add Head Football Coach George Lathero to Malone’s Terry Chagford (Inside a Haunted Mind), Mitchell Bramson (The Digger’s Rest) and Michael Golden (An Unfinished House) as the most memorable protagonists in recent horror literature. Big, handsome All American George and his pretty new wife, Renee, try to revive their lives and their loves when the move into the Civil War reconstruction manor house called Miller’s Court with her fourteen year old son, Robin, George’s troublesome, party-boy brother, Will, and Renee’s cancer-surviving Tammy Wynette era mother, Vivian. All seems to be glorious for them, finally happy for the first time in their lives, until Renee calls George at work one day with ominous words. “George, Robin’s has a fever,” sparking a journey of love and loss, guilt and shame for them all as each are confronted by the ghosts within themselves. But why is Robin burning? Uncontrollable temperatures leave doctors baffled and lead George Lathero into a life changing redefinition of the meaning of “Father Love” for a son that his not his own.
Once again, Malone has created an ensemble of indelible characters and a thought-provoking haunting that will leave readers on the edge of their seats, gasping as secrets are revealed and leading to an ending that is nothing less than. . . incendiary.
“Don’t cry, George. It’s only thunder.”
About our Author
Winner of more awards in the horror category than any small press author in history, K. Patrick Malone never ceases to amaze. His spine-tingling tales of terror in his novel Inside a Haunted Mind was only exceeded by his second into the excursion of mind-numbing horror in The Diggers’ Rest. Just when it seemed that Malone had reached the pinnacle of horror, he surpassed himself with yet another masterpiece, An Unfinished House. Surely that had to be THE ONE, but no! In his best yet, The House at Miller’s Street, Malone has ascended to the top of his profession, among the best writers of the 21st century.
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