The Flip (An Angel Hill novel)
Page 26
This isn’t right, he said inside his head. This isn’t the way. I can’t die on the floor in this basement.
Get up.
He tried to open his eyes, but they felt glued shut.
Get up.
He moved a finger, then two, then his hand. He curled the fingers, opened them, then tried the other hand. His chest felt like someone had placed a bowling ball in the middle of it.
Get up.
He tried an arm, found it worked, and tried to move his body. Pain shot through his torso. He was bleeding. He could feel it wet and sticky under him.
He moved a leg. It wasn’t broken. Neither was the other one.
Get up.
God, he was so weak.
He clenched his jaw, then rolled onto his side so he could put his hands under him and get off the floor.
The pain was incredible and he couldn’t believe a body could feel like this.
Then he was on his feet. He coughed. There was blood in his mouth. He needed an ambulance. He tried to remember what he’d done with his phone. He took it off the charger in his room. The man with the tattoos was coming in. He hid the phone in his pocket. His back pocket.
He pulled it out, tried the screen. He had landed on it when he fell through the stairs. The screen was shattered. He tried it anyway, but the damage was too much. He was getting nothing on the display.
The hospital isn’t far, he thought. On the other side of the park. He could drive there in five minutes. He only hoped he had that long left.
He coughed again, which turned into a fit, and he thought for a moment he would cough until he died, but then he spat a wad of blood on the floor, and it stopped.
He went to the bottom of the stairs, hoping he could make it to the top without another incident. He didn’t know how many of them were broken, and with the light out, he would be going by feel alone, which wasn’t easy considering his hands and feet were starting to feel numb.
He felt in the dark, half-expecting something to come out and bite him. Instead, he felt splintered wood, then nothing. He felt higher up and decided he had probably only fallen through four steps. Was that a distance he could cross in the dark, at an upward angle?
He would have to if he wanted to live.
Mike steeled himself, found his resolve and tried not to let the pain knock him out as he climbed to where the first missing step was, then, with his hand on the banister, hauled himself up over that four-stair gap, then had to lift himself up to the next intact step. Tears rolled down his face. He wondered if there were broken pieces of wood still stuck in him, if that’s why it hurt so bad.
He made it over the gap and up to the top of the stairs, then stopped for a second inside the door. He knew it would be locked. The house wanted to keep him inside forever. He would fall again, and pass out on the basement floor, and something would come out of the dark and eat him and no one would ever know he’d been here.
He tried to door anyway. It opened.
He wanted to laugh, but knew it would send fresh waves of grinding muscle and crunching bone agony through him. Instead he stepped out into the kitchen.
The house was pitch black and silent as the grave, as the saying goes.
He considered getting one of Brian’s towels and packing the wound, but he didn’t want to touch it, nor did he want to postpone the hospital any longer. He stumbled through the dining room, into the living room, then almost fell onto the couch.
He got outside, managed, somehow, to find the strength to get down to his car. The keys were in his pocket. He climbed behind the wheel, and knew he had to go now, because he was going to lose consciousness very soon if he kept bleeding like this.
The climb up into the Jeep was difficult and the pain in his back and side was like gears grinding inside him.
It’s a short drive, he reminded himself. You’ll be there in a couple of minutes, tops. Just go.
He drove down Irving, slowly. He wanted to be careful, but he didn’t want to die on the road. He made the left at 5th Street, then right on Quinault. He was coming to the bridge over the Platte River just before 7th Street and felt his eyes closing. He tried to fight it, but it was no use; he was dying if he didn’t hurry.
Mike pressed on the gas, just as his eyes closed and his head nodded forward. His arms went slack on the wheel, turning to the right where the burst of speed sent him over the edge of the bridge, down into the river. The Jeep hit the muddy bank, then fell backward, rolling onto its side in the water. The windows were open and, at this time of year the river was high and flowing. The Jeep filled up fast. Mike woke in time to feel the cold water against his skin, running into his open wounds and making him scream just for a second, just long enough for his mouth, throat and lungs to fill with the icy water.
END
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If you would like to read more, the next few pages contains information on more Angel Hill novels, followed by a, more or less, complete list of my available works.
THE THIRD FLOOR
BY C. DENNIS MOORE
THEIR NEW HOME IS OUT TO GET THEM
Welcome to Angel Hill, Missouri, a town that shot blood from the ground at its own groundbreaking. There are only two roads in or out of town, and everything within those borders is subject to the whims of reality. Those who grew up here are immune to the town's peculiarities. But Jack and Liz have just moved here, and for their young son, Joey, it's almost like coming home again.
As the Kitches start settling into their new home, a large abandoned house in need of a lot of TLC, Angel Hill welcomes them the only way it knows how. Footsteps in the middle of the night. Voices on the phone. Their big empty house wasn't so empty after all. There's a presence, and it's growing stronger. And angrier.
DOES MADNESS LIVE ON AFTER DEATH?
A hulking figure stalks the halls while childlike voices whisper in mourning. And there's something unexplainable happening to Joey. His hair is shorter now, and his eyes . . . they didn't used to be that color, did they? And that birthmark on his neck looks more like a scar every day. Jack doesn't want to believe his own eyes, but for Liz the threat is all too real, and it's closing in.
From the invisible shapes under the sheets, the eyes she feels on her constantly, and the banging coming from the third floor . . . is that something trying to get in? Or something wanting out? Welcome to Angel Hill.
THE MAN IN THE WINDOW
BY C. DENNIS MOORE
Angel Hill is not a place to be taken lightly. For many, it’s the sort of town you escape from, not one you move into. And those who do often find the ghosts of their past have a way of following them.
When Todd Morgan finally moved out on his own, the last thing he expected was the feeling of isolation that came with breaking his leg in a new town, far from his home. That feeling only got worse when the man in the window showed up, a small, somehow familiar man who did nothing, just stood there and stared at him.
The worst part is Todd’s the only one who can see him. But this is no imaginary playmate. The man in the window brings with him memories Todd buried years ago, and once they’re woken, he’ll have to make a trip back home to revisit the worst day of his life.
Horror author C. Dennis Moore returns to the town of Angel Hill, Missouri, where ghosts are just the beginning. If Todd wants to solve the riddle of the man in the window, he’ll have to face his worst fears before they drive him insane.
THE GHOSTS OF MERTLAND
BY C. DENNIS MOORE
Horror author C. Dennis Moore returns to the town of Angel Hill, site of his #1 bestselling haunted house novel THE THIRD FLOOR, for another tale in the ongoing saga of this dark and twisted place.
Mandy is about to start as a caregiver at the Mertland Childrens’ Home in Angel Hill, Missouri, a town that keeps its secrets by hiding them in plain sight. For the Mertland Home, this means ghosts. Word aroun
d town is the place is haunted, and for the workers at Mertland, they make no bones about it: it is. There are menacing reflections, the third floor hallway, and a dark force lurking in the woods out back. But if Mandy can keep her wits and remember the rules of dealing with the ghosts, she just might have found her calling.
However, unbeknownst to Mandy, she’s brought a few ghosts of her own, and when she discovers the truth at the heart of the place, all she wants to do is go home.
Unfortunately, as her co-worker Lynn tells her, “the building likes you.”
Graphic Novels in Prose:
The American Way
Fluke
Collaborations:
Band of Gypsies (with David Bain)
Terror Is Our Trade (with David Bain)
Power & the Gravy (with Marcus Kilroy and Mike Evans)
Poetry:
The ‘I Hate You’ Book of Love Poems
Short Story Samplers
Coming Down the Mountain
Renovation
The Fish in the Fields
five fictions
Short Story Collections:
Terrible Thrills
Icons to Ashes
Dancing On a Razorblade
With Just a Hint of Mayhem: The C. Dennis Moore Short Fiction Omnibus, Vol. 1
The Dichotomy of Monsters
Novellas:
Camdigan
Safe at Home
Epoch Winter
Aftermath
Novels:
Revelations
The Man in the Window
The Third Floor
The Ghosts of Mertland
Nonfiction:
The C. Dennis Moore Horror Movie Guide, Vol. 1
The C. Dennis Moore Horror Movie Guide, Vol. 2
The C. Dennis Moore Horror Movie Guide, Vol. 3
50 Horror Classics
50 Sci-Fi Classics
Holiday Horrors:
New Year’s Day
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Groundhog Day
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances were in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor and The Ghosts of Mertland. He has recently finished the first draft of a new Angel Hill novel and is in the middle of writing another one with co-author David Bain.
You can connect with the author at his website, http://www.cdennismoore.com/
Or on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CDennisMoore
To subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, Direct Message me on Twitter.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Cover photo taken by C. Dennis Moore
Cover design by David G. Barnett
I have to thank the people who let me use their names:
the three Mikes, the two Keiths, Brian, Steven,
Lynette, Kevin and Paul.
Also, shouts out to Cody and Ashley.
Copyright © 2014 Charles Moore
All rights reserved