IF I WERE YOUR MONSTER
Children’s book by Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis
Creatures of the night teach a lesson of bravery in this full-color, illustrated bedtime story for all ages. Let vampires, ghosts, scarecrows, and mummies protect your little one from the bullies and mean people of the world. 24 screens or pages. View it at Haunted Computer or at Amazon US or Amazon UK
TOO MANY WITCHES
Children’s book by Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis
When Moanica Moonsweep plans a Halloween party, she needs the perfect potion of stinky stew. But when she asks her friends for advice, she ends up with one big mess and lots of hurt feelings. 28 full-color screens or pages. See it at Haunted Computer or for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
DUNCAN THE PUNKIN
Children’s book by Scott Nicholson, art by Sergio Castro
A momma pumpkin must teach her young pumpkin all about the dangers of Halloween, while a mysterious creature known as Skeerdy-Cat-Crow watches over the pumpkin patch. 30 full-color pages or screens. See it at Haunted Computer or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
IDA CLAIRE
By Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis
Little Ida is a handful of feisty fun for her harried dad, bursting with imagination and play while Dad tries to keep up. Features 32 full-color screens. View it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK.
TROUBLED (UK)
By Scott Nicholson
When twelve-year-old Freeman Mills arrives at Wendover, a group home for troubled children, it’s a chance for a fresh start. But second chances aren’t easy for Freeman, the victim of painful childhood experiments that gave him the ability to read other people’s minds.
Little does Freeman know that his transfer was made at the request of Dr. Richard Kracowski, whose research into the brain’s electrical properties is revealing new powers of the human mind. Freeman simply wants to survive, take his medicine for manic depression, and deceive his counsellors into believing he is happy. When he meets the anorexic Vicky, who may also be telepathic, he’s afraid some of his darkest secrets will be uncovered. But when the other children develop their own clairvoyant abilities, and insane spirits begin haunting the halls of Wendover, he can’t safely hide inside his own head anymore.
The author’s preferred edition of the 2005 U.S. paperback release The Home, in development as a feature film.
Learn more about the paranormal thriller Troubled or view it at Amazon UK
SOLOM (UK)
By Scott Nicholson
Katy Logan wasn’t quite sure why she left her finance career in the big city to marry religion professor Gordon Smith and move to the tiny Appalachian community of Solom.
Maybe she just wanted to get her 12-year-old daughter Jett away from the drugs and bad influences. Maybe she wanted to escape from the memories of her first husband. Or perhaps she was enchanted by the promise of an idyllic life on the farm that has been in Gordon’s family for 150 years.
But the residents of Solom know all about the man in the black hat. The Reverend Harmon Smith has come back more than century after his last missionary trip, and he has unfinished business. But first Katy and Jett must be brought into the family, and the farm must be prepared to welcome him home. Gordon has been denying his heritage, but now it’s time to choose sides. Does he protect the ones he loves, or surrender to the ancestral urge for revenge?
Author’s preferred edition of the 2006 U.S. paperback The Farm.
Learn more about the supernatural thriller Solom or view it at Amazon UK
THE GORGE (UK)
By Scott Nicholson
An experimental rafting expedition, an FBI manhunt for a delusional killer, and the worst storm in decades collide in the remote mountain wilderness...and then THEY come out.
Bowie Whitlock and a team of celebrity athletes is commissioned to test two experimental rafts in the rugged Unegama Wilderness Gorge in the remote Appalachian Mountains, considered the most dangerous whitewater rapids in the eastern United States. The expedition is tense from the start as jealousy, romance, and money are riding on the mission’s success.
FBI agent Jim Castle and his partner are in the gorge looking for Ace Goodall, a deranged abortion clinic bomber. Ace, accompanied by a fragile young woman, is having visions that guide his murderous behaviour. The race is on as dark storm clouds gather, the river is swollen, and Ace hijacks the rafting expedition to make his escape. But the bloodthirsty creatures swooping down from the high cliffs have been too long without prey.
Ace has one more bomb. God is talking to him. It’s raining again, and his young companion is pregnant.
And killing isn’t what it used to be, because the dead no longer stay dead.
Author’s preferred edition of the 2007 paperback They Hunger.
Learn more about The Gorge or view it at Amazon UK
OMNIBUS EDITIONS
You can also save with the omnibus editions
Ethereal Messenger at Amazon US or Amazon UK (contains The Red Church, Drummer Boy, and Speed Dating With The Dead)
Mystery Dance (contains Disintegration, Crime Beat, and The Skull Ring, and bonus stories and essays) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Three Ghost Stories, at Amazon US or Amazon UK (featuring Drummer Boy by Scott Nicholson, The Body Departed by J.R. Rain, and Cades Cove by Aiden James)
Horror Movies: Three Screenplays (The Gorge, Creative Spirit, and The Skull Ring screenplays) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Skeleton Tango (Cursed! and Ghost College with J.R. Rain) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Ghost Box Set (contains The Red Church, Drummer Boy, Transparent Lovers, Burial to Follow, Creative Spirit, and Speed Dating With The Dead) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Mad Stacks: Short Stories Box Set (Contains Gateway Drug, Head Cases, and Missing Pieces)
Bad Stacks: Short Stories Box Set (Contains Ashes, American Horror, and Curtains)
Odd Stacks: Short Stories Box Set (Contains The First, Flowers, and Zombie Bits)
Are you a writer? Please check out Write Good or Die and The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success
Contact me at [email protected] because I’d love to know what you think—and if you are in any way dissatisfied with this product, please give me a chance to make it right. Let me know about any misspellings and formatting issues, since books in the digital age are living documents.
Thanks to Dellaster Design, David H. Burton, and Neal Hock at Hock’s Editing Services.
Scott
[email protected]
www.hauntedcomputer.com
Table of Contents
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One misfit kid is all that stands between a small Appalachian town and a chilling supernatural force.
DRUMMER BOY
By Scott Nicholson
CHAPTER ONE
The Jangling Hole glared back at Bobby Eldreth like the cold eye of the mountain, sleepy and wary and stone silent in the October smoke.
“Th’ow it.”
Bobby squeezed the rock and peered into the darkness, imagining the throbbing heartbeat that had drummed its slow rumble across the ages. The air that oozed from the Southern Appalachian cave smelled like mushrooms and bat crap. He could have sworn he heard something back there in the slimy, hidden belly of the world, maybe a whisper or a tinkle or the scraping of claws on granite.
“Th’ow it, doof.”
Bobby glanced back at his heckler, who sat on a sodden stump among the ferns. Dex McCallister had a speech impediment that occasionally cut the “r” out of his words. Right now, Dex was so intent on pestering Bobby that he failed to note the defect. Good thing. When Dex made a mistake, everybody paid.
“I hear something,” Bobby said.
“Probably one of them dead Rebels zipping down his pants to take a big squat,” Dex shouted. “Do it.”
Vernon Ray Davis, who stood in the hardwood trees behind Dex, said, “They didn’t have zippers back then.
Nothing but bone buttons.”
Dex sneered at the skinny kid in the Atlanta Braves T-shirt. “What book did you get that out of? You’re starting to sound like Cornwad,” Dex said, using the class nickname for Mr. Corningwald, their eighth-grade history teacher.
Dex and Vernon Ray were thirty yards down the slope from Bobby, in a clearing safely away from the mouth of the cave. Not that any distance was safe, if what they said was true. The late-afternoon sun coated the canopy of red oak and maple with soft, golden light, yet Bobby shivered, due as much to the chill emanating from the cave as from his fear. The rock in his hand weighed as much as a sack of feed corn.
“I’ve been to the camps,” Vernon Ray said. “My daddy’s got all that stuff.”
“That’s just a bunch of guys playing dress-up,” Dex said.
“It’s authentic. 26th North Carolina Troops. Wool pants, breech loaders, wooden canteens—”
“Okay, Cornwad,” Dex said. “So they didn’t have no goddamn zippers.”
“Daddy said—”
“Your daddy goes to those reenactments to get away from your mom,” Dex said. “And you, too. My old man drags me along, but you always get left behind. What ya think of that, Cornwad?”
During Dex’s bullying, Bobby took the opportunity to ease a couple of steps back from the mouth of the cave. The noise inside it was steady and persistent, like a prisoner’s desolate scratching of a spoon against a concrete wall. The Hole seemed to be daring him to come closer. Bobby considered dropping the stone in his hand and pretending he had thrown it while Dex wasn’t looking. But Dex had a way of knowing things.
“Bobby’s chicken crap,” Vernon Ray said, changing the subject away from his dad and deflecting Dex’s attention.
Good one, V-Ray. I thought we were on the same side here.
Dex tapped a cigarette from a fresh pack, then pushed it in his mouth and let it dangle. “Ah, hell with it,” he said. “You can believe the stories if you want. I got better things to worry about.”
Relieved, Bobby took a step downhill but froze when he heard the whisper.
“Earley.”
It was the wind. Had to be. The same wind that tumbled a gray pillar of smoke from the end of Dex’s cigarette, that quivered the trees, that pushed dead autumn leaves against his sneakers.
Still, his throat felt as if he’d swallowed the rock in his hand. Because the whisper came again, low, personal, and husked with menace.
“Earrrr-leeee.”
A resonant echo freighted the name. If Bobby had to imagine the mouth from which the word had issued—and at the moment Bobby was plenty busy not imagining—it would belong to a dirty-faced, gaunt old man. But like Dex said, you could believe the stories if you wanted, which implied a choice. When in doubt, go with the safe bet.
“To hell with it,” Bobby said, putting extra air behind the words to hide any potential cracks. “I want me one of those smokes.”
He flung the rock—away from the cave, lest he wake any more of those skeletal men inside—and hurried down the slope, nearly slipping in his haste. One more whisper might have wended from the inky depths, but Bobby’s feet scuffed leaves and Dex laughed and Vernon Ray hacked from a too-deep draw and the music of the forest swarmed in: whistling birds, creaking branches, tinkling creek water, and the brittle cawing of a lonely crow.
Bobby joined his friends and sat on a flat slab of granite beside the stump. From there, the Hole looked less menacing, a gouge in the dirt. Granite boulders, pocked with lichen and worn smooth by the centuries, framed the opening, and stunted, deformed jack pines clung to the dirt above the cave. A couple of dented beer cans lay half-buried in the leaves, and a rubber dangled like a stubby rattlesnake skin from a nearby laurel branch. Mulatto Mountain rose another hundred feet in altitude above the cave, where it topped off with sycamore and buckeye trees that had been sheared trim by the high wind.
He took a cancer stick from Dex and fired it up, inhaling hard enough to send an inch of glowing orange along its tip. The smoke bit his lungs but he choked it down and then wheezed it out in small tufts. The first buzz of nicotine numbed his fingers and floated him slightly from his body. Relishing the punishment, he went back to mouth-smoking the way he usually did, rolling the smoke with his tongue instead of huffing it down.
“We ought to camp here sometime,” Dex said, smoking with the ease of the addicted. He played dress-up as much as the Civil War reenactors did, though his uniform of choice was upscale hoodlum—white T-shirt and a windbreaker that had “McCallister Alley” stitched over the left breast pocket. Three leaning bowling pins, punctured by a yellow starburst indicating a clean strike, were sewn beneath the label. Dex’s old man owned the only alley within 80 miles of Titusville, and about once a month Mac McCallister was lubed enough from Scotch to let the boys roll a few free games.
“It’ll be too cold to camp soon,” Vernon Ray said, constantly flicking ash from his cigarette like a sissy. Bobby was almost embarrassed for him, but at the moment he had other concerns besides his best friend maybe being queer.
Like the Jangling Hole, and whoever—or whatever—had spoken to him. The wind, nothing but the wind.
“Best time of year for it,” Dex said. “I can get my old man’s tent, swipe a couple six-packs, bring some fishing poles. Maybe tote my .410 and bag us a couple squirrels for dinner.”
“There’s a level place down by the creek,” Bobby said.
“Right here’s fine,” Dex said, sweeping one arm out in the expansive and generous gesture of one giving away something that wasn’t his. “Put the tent between the roots of that oak yonder. Already got a fireplace.” He booted one of the rocks that ringed a hump of charred wood.
“I don’t know if my folks will let me,” Vernon Ray said.
“Your dad’s doing Stoneman’s, ain’t he?” Dex dangled his cigarette from his lower lip. “Since he’s the big captain and all.”
Stoneman’s Raid was an annual Civil War reenactment that commemorated the Yankee incursion suffered by Titusville in 1864. The weekend warriors commemorated it by sleeping on the ground, drinking whiskey from dented canteens, and logging time in the saddle on rumps grown soft from too many hours in the armchair. If they were like Bobby’s dad, they spent their free time thumbing the remote between “Dancing With The Stars” and “The History Channel.”
“Sure,” Vernon Ray said, voice hoarse from the cigarette. He flicked his smoke twice, but no ash fell. “Mom will probably go to Myrtle Beach like usual.”
“The beach,” Dex said. “Wouldn’t mind eyeing some bikini babes myself.”
There was a test in Dex’s tone, maybe a taunt. Perhaps Dex, like Bobby, had been wondering about Vernon Ray’s sexual orientation. “What ya think, Bobby? Sandy squeeze sounds a lot better than watching a bunch of old farts in uniform, don’t it?”
Bobby’s gaze had wandered to the Hole again and he scanned the crisp line where the dappled sunlight met the black wall of hidden space that burrowed deep into Mulatto Moun tain. As Dex called his name, Bobby blinked and took a deep, stinging puff. He spoke around the exhaled smoke, borrowing a line from his dad’s secret stash of magazines in the tool shed. “Yeah, wouldn’t mind plowing a tight little sun goddess.”
Dex reached out and gave Vernon Ray a chummy slap on the back that was loud enough to echo off the rocks. “Beats pounding the old pud, huh?”
Vernon Ray nodded and took a quick hit. He even held his cigarette like a sissy, his pinky lifted in the air as if communicating in some sort of delicate sign language. Vernon Ray, unlike most of the kids at Titusville Middle School, already had a hair style, a soft, wavy curl flopping over his forehead. Bobby wished he could protect his best friend, change him, rip that precious blonde curl out by the roots and turn him into a regular guy before Dex launched into asshole mode. When Dex got rolling, things went mean quick, and Vernon Ray’s eyes already welled with water, either from the smoke or the teasing.
“I heard something at the
Hole,” Bobby said, not even realizing he was speaking until the sentence escaped.
“Do what?” Dex leaned forward, flicking his butt into the cold, dead embers of the campfire.
“Somebody’s in there.”
Dex twisted off a laugh that sounded like wheeze of an emphysema sufferer. “Something jangly, maybe? Bobby, you’re so full of shit it’s leaking out your ears.”
Vernon Ray looked at him with gratitude. Bambi eyes, Bobby thought. Pathetic.
Bobby put a little drama in it to grab Deke’s full attention. “It went ‘Urrrrr.’”
Deke snorted again. “Maybe somebody’s barfing.”
“Could have been a bum,” Bobby said. “Ever since they shut down the homeless shelter, I’ve seen them sleeping under the bridge and behind the Dumpster at KFC. They’ve got to go somewhere. They don’t just disappear.”
“Maybe they do,” Dex said. “I reckon those wino bastards better stay out of sight or they’ll run ‘em plumb out of the county.”
The shelter had been shut down through the insidious self-righteousness of civic pride. Merchants had complained about panhandling outside their stores and the Titusville Town Council had drafted an ordinance against loitering. However, the town attorney, a misplaced Massachusetts native who had married into the fifth-generation law firm that had ruled the town behind the scenes since Reconstruction, dug up some court rulings suggesting that such an ordinance would interfere with the panhandlers’ First Amendment rights. Since the town leaders couldn’t use the law as a whip and chair, they instead cut off local-government funding and drove the shelter into bankruptcy. Vernon Ray had explained all this to Bobby, but Bobby didn’t think it was that complicated. People who didn’t play by the rules lost the game, simple as that.
Scott Nicholson Library Vol 3 Page 73