Will Haunt You (Fiction Without Frontiers) - Hardcover

Kirk, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1787581381 ISBN 13: 9781787581388

Verlag: FLAME TREE PUB, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

"Kirk’s suspenseful and terror-driven novel employs supernatural elements to capitalize on the dread and horror of reality... [his] handling of visceral horror and human drama make for an immersive tale." - Publisher's Weekly

You don’t read the book. It reads you.

Rumors of a deadly book have been floating around the dark corners of the deep web. A disturbing tale about a mysterious figure who preys on those who read the book and subjects them to a world of personalized terror.

Jesse Wheeler—former guitarist of the heavy metal group The Rising Dead—was quick to discount the ominous folklore associated with the book. It takes more than some urban legend to frighten him. Hell, reality is scary enough. Seven years ago his greatest responsibility was the nightly guitar solo. Then one night when Jesse was blackout drunk, he accidentally injured his son, leaving him permanently disabled. Dreams of being a rock star died when he destroyed his son's future. Now he cuts radio jingles and fights to stay clean.

But Jesse is wrong. The legend is real—and tonight he will become the protagonist in an elaborate scheme specifically tailored to prey on his fears and resurrect the ghosts from his past.

Jesse is not the only one in danger, however. By reading the book, you have volunteered to participate in the author’s deadly game, with every page drawing you closer to your own personalized nightmare. The real horror doesn’t begin until you reach the end.

That’s when the evil comes for you.

FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launching in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Brian Kirk is an author of dark thrillers and psychological suspense. His debut novel, We Are Monsters, was released in July 2015 and was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.

His short fiction has been published in many notable magazines and anthologies. Most recently, Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories and Behold! Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders, where his work appears alongside multiple New York Times bestselling authors, and received an honorable mention in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year compilation.

During the day, Brian works as a freelance marketing and creative consultant. His experience working on large, integrated advertising campaigns for international companies has helped him build an effective author platform, and makes him a strong marketing ally for his publishing partners. In addition, Brian has an eye for emerging media trends and an ability to integrate storytelling into new technologies and platforms.

While he’s worked to make this bio sound as impressive as possible, he’s actually a rather humble guy who believes in hard work and big dreams. Feel free to connect with him through one of the following channels. Don’t worry, he only kills his characters.

Bram Stoker Award Nominee: Superior Achievement in a First Novel - 2015

Brian Kirk is an author of dark thrillers and psychological suspense. His debut novel, We Are Monsters, was released in July 2015 and was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.

His short fiction has been published in many notable magazines and anthologies. Most recently, Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories and Behold! Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders, where his work appears alongside multiple New York Times bestselling authors, and received an honorable mention in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year compilation.

During the day, Brian works as a freelance marketing and creative consultant. His experience working on large, integrated advertising campaigns for international companies has helped him build an effective author platform, and makes him a strong marketing ally for his publishing partners. In addition, Brian has an eye for emerging media trends and an ability to integrate storytelling into new technologies and platforms.

While he’s worked to make this bio sound as impressive as possible, he’s actually a rather humble guy who believes in hard work and big dreams. Feel free to connect with him through one of the following channels. Don’t worry, he only kills his characters.

Bram Stoker Award Nominee: Superior Achievement in a First Novel - 2015

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Will Haunt You

Uncorrected First Proof

By Brian Kirk

Flame Tree Publishing Ltd

Copyright © 2019 Brian Kirk
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78758-138-8

CHAPTER 1

The book was the last thing on my mind when I got to the gig that night. Though something should have triggered my memory when I saw Solomon. The burn mark creeping up through the collar on his neck. That goddamn glint in his eye.

"Jesse, my man!" he hollered when he saw me enter the hazy room. Solomon's a dour asshole, not the jolly chum welcoming me like some hero returning from war. "How you been?"

We clasped hands, exchanged an awkward hug. He was hot. That could have been another clue. His chest and back were radiating like he was running a high-grade fever, but I blamed it on the summer heat. Nervous excitement before the show.

Caspian was already at the bar, downing what appeared to be his third shot of Jameson. Two dead soldiers were sprawled on the bar in front of him and I knew what that meant, the kind of night it prophesized. Caspian with a bottle of whiskey was more ominous than a clown in a dark alley. And the flashbacks it produced almost made me turn and walk back out the door.

Not that leaving would have mattered. I was screwed no matter what I did next.

The little reunion was brief. We hadn't played together in a decade but we'd all kept in touch. Caspian still tooled around — had a sycophant fan base that followed him wherever he went. Solomon had gone in with a merchandise company, selling concert shirts and bumper stickers and other crap tchotchkes. Kevin's been working as a sound engineer at a reputable studio, making decent money from what I understand.

I've been ... well, I'll get to that, I guess.

I'd arrived just before the show was supposed to start in order to avoid the pre-game festivities. The temptation was still too strong. I know my limits and avoidance is the best way for me to stay clean. Not that the Full Moon Saloon has a backstage greenroom where the heavy stuff goes down. But, still. One slipup and I could kiss the last seven years goodbye. Why take the chance?

The bar manager signaled it was time and we made our way to the stage and got our instruments set up. Solomon took a seat and thumped the bass drum, pattered the snare. Kevin positioned himself on the right-hand side of the stage, me on the left. The guitar strap felt snug on my shoulder, my Jim Root Telecaster thrummed in my hands. And it all came flooding back through me in that moment. That otherworldly energy that comes when the amp is turned on and the audience is tuned in — even in half-empty dives like this.

Caspian, standing center stage, stomped his foot to the beat of the bass drum. Then, right on cue, threw his fist in the air and for the first time in ten years summoned the dead to rise. A chorus of drunken howls came from the meager crowd, the faithful few who had come to watch their favorite cult band from an era they hardly remembered.

I turned to Caspian and grinned at the absurdity of what I saw. The greying hairs sprouting from his armpit were fluttering like the tentacles of some diseased sea anemone. Ten years ago he would have been shirtless, oil glistening off his rock-star abs. But tonight he was wearing a tank top to conceal his sagging gut and fleshy breasts. At least the pentagram printed on the front of his shirt reinforced the rage that still existed in his ageless heart. And the ink on his arm sleeves remained as bright as fresh blood.

Solomon was now pounding the foot pedal, a ritualistic war beat that counted down to showtime. Three, two, one....

I strummed the guitar as hard as I could; a single downstroke that turned time back ten years, blasting a chord of distortion so loud it caused one of our old roadies, Sam Holt, to stumble back and drop his beer. Sam had been fired from three jobs, ditched by two wives, and lost the bus keys more times than I could count. But this was the first time I'd ever seen beer slip though his veteran hands.

We opened the set with `Coffin Dust', a power ballad about unrequited love that Caspian had written after being dumped his sophomore year in high school. It was a lewd metaphor for what his ex-girlfriend was like in bed. Lance Caspian, always the class act. Next came `Within a Cage of Hate'. There are no lyrics to this one, only screams and guttural howls. The guitar riff is basically me raking my pick across the E string as fast as I can while Kevin drops bombs with his bass.

I spread my legs and hunkered down, assuming the pose I had always imagined striking in front of an arena filled with screaming fans. That had never come to fruition. This would have to do.

Still, it felt damn good.

The crowd had loosened up by the third song, the sixty-or-so people who were scattered around the stage. Old metal-heads from the Eighties. Still wearing their black concert shirts tucked into too-tight jeans. Heads banging on rigid necks. Clinging to whatever hair they had left. Arms raised riotously in the air, fingers forked in devil horns.

Fuck yeah, I thought. The dead rise again.

Time grew elastic around the sixth song, and a calmness descended upon me like the eye of a deadly storm. Peace inside fury. My happy place. I stood in this pocket of tranquility watching sweat fly from our old fans, their faces contorted into angry sneers of post-hormonal rage.

The burn in my arm had faded several songs ago. I could play all night if needed. In fact, given how the last ten years had gone, that was exactly what I needed. Needed it more than I had known. And, for the briefest moment, I didn't even miss the booze, or mind being at a bar. Even a shit shack like this.

We were nearing our ninth, and final, song when I first saw the chick three rows back, watching me, trying to catch my eye, swaying her hips so hypnotically it could have put a venomous snake to sleep. She smiled when she saw me looking and began to raise her shirt, a faded halter top with our old logo on the front. A fetid zombie crawling up from the earth. RISING DEAD etched across the leaning tombstone behind. Solomon sells these now for $14.99.

She raised her shirt in slow, incremental spurts, teasing me, incorporating the movement into the gyrating way that she danced. She was much younger than everyone else, still in her twenties. Which may have put her around seventeen or so when we'd split up. I wondered which of us she'd slept with. Wasn't me, I would have remembered. That was part of what had brought the whole thing crashing down, anyway. Some one-night stands last a lifetime, I've learned.

Her stomach was flat and tight, with a vertical crease down the middle. Tan. She had a steel stud pierced through her navel and, as I saw when she licked her lips, another through her tongue. She swayed her hips, childbearing hips, the old man in me mumbled, and raised the shirt further to reveal the swollen underside of her breasts. Just a couple of inches more and the baby feeders would be shown.

That's the worst part about having a kid. Tits take on new context.

Her eyelids closed as she yanked the shirt up and over her chest, the fabric snagging for a second on her nipples. I flubbed my next chord but didn't care. We were just producing one big soundgasm at that point anyway. A cacophony of discordant noise designed to invoke chaos. To shatter the walls of what had become our structured lives.

Caspian's voice was fading and starting to crackle, which was just as well. We were building towards the final climax. No encore tonight, we had decided to leave it all on stage. Blow...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: FLAME TREE PUB
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1787581381
• ISBN 13: 9781787581388
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 230
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar