About The Horror at Pleasant Brook:
Excerpt:
October 31st, 2020
Pleasant Brook
Adirondack Park, New York
7:45 PM
1.
Lisa Owen knew what she had to do. As she paced back and forth through the kitchen, smartphone ringing against her ear, headache pulsing in her temples, she understood it was finally time to accept the inevitable. Time to stop delaying what she’d put into motion. The shadows in the corners of the room stretched along the walls, whispering promises she could no longer ignore. Whispering that their time had come.
Still, she wanted to give Robert one last chance. To answer his phone. To be her lifeline, so she didn’t have to...
“Hi, you've reached Robert Owen, Lifestyles Editor for The Poughkeepsie Journal. Please leave a message...”
She slapped the kitchen counter open-handed, savoring the sting in her flesh. She hit redial. One more chance. Just one more.
It rang two times, clicked, and then: “...Lifestyles Editor for The Poughkeepsie Journal...”
Rather than slap the counter again, Lisa hugged herself with one arm and pressed redial with her thumb. She thought just once more as she glanced around the kitchen, then out into the den. Despite the bright lights blazing in both rooms, the shadows swelled in the corners. Whispering promises to her. Things they’d give her if she’d only let them in.
She closed her eyes and bit the inside of her cheek.
“Not yet,” she mumbled. “Not yet.”
She opened her eyes and clenched the smartphone tight. Her gaze darted back and forth from kitchen to den. She peered into the corners, daring the shadows to crawl towards her. They quivered, but for now, remained still.
She shivered again and clutched the smartphone tighter. Telling herself she didn’t need the darkness and what it offered because everything was fine.
Just fine.
But that wasn't true, was it?
Things weren’t fine. Not after years of a barren womb. Years of miscarriages. Years of growing distance between her and Robert, pushing them farther and farther apart until they weren’t even husband and wife anymore. Now they were nothing more than roommates. Cohabitants living under the same roof and moving around each other mechanically, every day both locked in a distant dream of how things used to be before she’d failed to produce the children Robert so desperately wanted. Before he'd given up on her.
Before the parade of other women.
Things weren't fine.
Nothing was fine.
At all.
She hated her life and everything it had become. Loathed it in a furious but quiet way, with every fiber of her being. She’d even come to hate what she’d once loved. The art surrounding her where she worked at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica. She wanted to smash hundred-year-old vases to pieces. Slash decades-old paintings into ribbons.
In fact, the only thing good about her job as the Art Curator was how it had given her access to something which could take it all away. Something which could let the shadows in and cover everything and make her forget, if only she had the courage to make it happen...
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About Kevin Lucia:
Kevin Lucia is the eBook and trade paperback editor at Cemetery Dance Publications. His short fiction has been published in many venues, most notably with Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, David Morell, Peter Straub, Bentley Little, and Robert McCammon.
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