A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

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by Chet Williamson




  A HAUNTING OF HORRORS

  A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

  A Macabre Ink Production

  Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright 2014

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Other books by authors in this collection

  AL SARRANTONIO

  Al Sarrantonio's Book of Holidays

  Campbell Wood

  Halloween and Other Seasons

  Halloweenland

  Hallows Eve

  Hornets & Others

  Horrorland

  Horrorween

  House Haunted

  Moonbane

  October

  Skeletons

  The Boy With Penny Eyes

  The Worms

  Totentanz

  Toybox

  Underground

  B.W. BATTIN

  Into the Pit

  It's Loose

  Mary, Mary

  Night Sounds

  Satan's Servant

  CHET WILLIAMSON

  Ash Wednesday

  Defenders of the Faith

  Dreamthorp

  Hunters

  Lowland Rider

  McKain's Dilemma

  Reign

  Second Chance

  Soulstorm

  DAVID J. SCHOW

  Black Leather Required

  Black Orchids

  Bullets of Rain

  Eye

  Havoc Swims Jaded

  The Kill Riff

  Lost Angels

  Rock Breaks, Scissors Cut

  Seeing Red

  Wild Hairs

  Zombie Jam

  ELIZABETH MASSIE

  Abed

  Afraid

  Homegrown

  Naked, on the Edge

  Sineater

  Wire Mesh Mothers

  GERARD HOUARNER

  A Blood of Killers

  I Love You and There's Nothing You Can Do About It

  In the Country of Dreaming Caravans

  Road to Hell

  Road from Hell

  The Beast That Was Max

  Waiting for Mister Cool

  HUGH B. CAVE

  Disciples of Dread

  Lucifer's Eye

  Murgunstrumm and Others

  Shades of Evil

  The Dawning

  The Evil

  The Evil Returns

  The Lower Deep

  The Nebulon Horror

  The Restless Dead

  JEFFREY SACKETT

  Blood of the Impaler

  Candlemas Eve

  Grogo the Goblin

  Lycanthropos

  Stolen Souls

  JOHN FARRIS

  All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By

  Before the Night Ends

  Catacombs

  Dragonfly

  Fiends

  King Windom

  Minotaur

  Phantom Nights

  Sacrifice

  Sharp Practice

  Shatter

  Solar Eclipse

  Son of the Endless Night

  Soon She Will Be Gone

  The Axeman Cometh

  The Captors

  The Fury

  The Fury and the Power

  The Fury and the Terror

  Unearthly

  When Michael Calls

  Wildwood

  You Don't Scare Me

  JOHN SKIPP & CRAIG SPECTOR

  Animals

  Dead Lines

  The Cleanup

  The Light at the End

  The Scream

  JOSEPH A. CITRO

  DEUS-X: The Reality Conspiracy

  Guardian Angels

  Lake Monsters

  Shadow Child

  The Gore

  MELANIE TEM

  Black River

  Blood Moon

  Daughters

  In Concert

  Prodigal

  Slain in the Spirit

  The Ice Downstream

  The Man on the Ceiling

  The Tides

  YVONNE NAVARRO

  AfterAge

  DeadTimes

  Mirror Me

  DAVID NIALL WILSON

  A Taste of Blood & Roses

  An Unkindness of Ravens

  Ancient Eyes

  Cockroach Suckers

  Darkness Falling

  Deep Blue

  Defining Moments

  Etched Deep

  Foreman James

  Heart of a Dragon

  Kali's Tale

  Killer Green

  Maelstrom

  My Soul to Keep

  Nevermore

  On the Third Day

  Roll Them Bones

  Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky

  The Call of Distant Shores

  The Fall of the House of Escher & Other Illusions

  The Not Quite Right Reverend Cletus J. Diggs

  The Preacher's Marsh

  The Whirling Man & Other Tales of Blood, Pain, and Madness

  This is My Blood

  Vintage Soul

  NANCY KILPATRICK

  Bloodlover

  Child of the Night

  Eternal City

  Near Death

  Reborn

  The Vampire Stories of Nancy Kilpatrick

  RONALD KELLY

  After the Burn

  Cumberland Furnace & Other Fear Forged Fables

  Dark Dixie

  Dark Dixie II: Tales of Southern Horror

  Fear

  Flesh Welder

  Hell Hollow

  Hindsight

  Long Chills

  Mister Glow-Bones and Other Halloween Tales

  Pitfall

  Restless Shadows

  The China Doll


  The Dark'Un

  The Sick Stuff

  Timber Gray

  Twelve Gauge

  Twilight Hankerings

  Undertaker's Moon

  Unhinged - Tales of Darkness & Depravity

  SIDNEY WILLIAMS

  Azarius

  Blood Hunter

  Deadly Delivery

  Gnelfs

  Midnight Eyes

  New Year's Evil

  Night Brothers

  Scars and Candy -- Tales of Terror and Dark Mystery

  The Gift

  When Darkness Falls

  STEVE RASNIC TEM

  Absent Company

  City Fishing

  Daughters

  Excavation

  In Concert

  The Book of Days

  The Man on the Ceiling

  G. WAYNE MILLER

  Asylum - Book 2 of the Thunder Rise Trilogy

  Since the Sky Blew Off

  Summer Place - Book 3 of the Thunder Rise Trilogy

  The Beach That Summer

  Thunder Rise - Book 1 of the Thunder Rise Trilogy

  Vapors

  TOM PICCIRILLI

  A Lower Deep: A Self Novel

  All You Despise

  Clown in the Moonlight

  Frayed

  Futile Efforts

  Hexes

  Loss

  Meeting the Black

  Nightjack

  Pale Preachers

  Pentacle: A Self Collection

  The Fever Kill

  The Last Deep Breath

  The Night Class

  The Nobody

  Thrust

  Vespers

  You'd Better Watch Out

  CONTENTS

  Horrorween

  It's Loose

  Ash Wednesday

  The Kill Riff

  Wire Mesh Mothers

  The Beast That Was Max

  The Evil

  Blood of the Impaler

  The Fury

  The Light at the End

  Lake Monsters

  Prodigal

  AfterAge

  Ancient Eyes

  Child of the Night

  The Dark’Un

  Gnelfs

  Excavation

  Thunder Rise

  Hexes

  HORRORWEEN

  Book One of the Orangefield Series

  By Al Sarrantonio

  Foreword

  The original name of the town was Orangefield, after a Scottish Earl who was little remembered and therefore expendable. But the locals, by referendum in 1930, changed it to Pumpkinfield in order to make money.

  “Hell, it sounds like Halloween!” was the general consensus. It was hoped that with a name like Pumpkinfield folks would come by and, if disappointed at the lack of pumpkins, would at least enjoy the foliage and spend dollars.

  The second choice was Little Salem.

  They didn’t grow many pumpkins in the region in 1930, but in a bizarre case of the cart leading the horse, and then winning the race, it turned out that the soil was richly perfect and that pumpkins grew in profusion – up hillsides, in the fertile valleys, in straight tended rows, in backyard patches. By the late 1930s the place literally turned orange in late summer, and stayed that way until October 31st.

  After that, with so many rotting (and smashed) pumpkins, the town smelled sickly sweet for a week.

  Just before World War II, another referendum changed the named back to Orangefield.

  It was sometime during this period that strange things began to happen in Orangefield – usually around the time of Halloween. There was the disappearance of the entire Cutler family in 1940, who left behind warm tea and a game of Monopoly in progress. Just after the war there was the murder of Amos Stone by his three children, wearing Halloween masks, aged seven, five, and four, who then went on to murder one another, leaving a knife-induced bloodbath. In 1951 there was the brand-new Sullivan house which went up in flames on its first All Hallows Eve, was rebuilt, and burned down again the following Halloween. And then again. (The plot was left fallow after that.) These and other similar stories are covered in the first two volumes of this history.

  There were, and continue to be, many tales of Samhain, the Celtic Lord of Death and master of Halloween, and many so-called ‘Sam Sightings.’ It has been said that Samhain somehow owns Orangefield, had claimed it before man of any kind – native American or Englishman – had laid plough to the land. There occurred, during the writing of this history, the case of Hattie Ivers, and many others, who have claimed direct confrontation with Samhain.

  And then there was perhaps the worst thing that ever happened in Orangefield, which concerned in part my own father, as well as the Pumpkin Boy, the children’s book writer Peter Kerlan, the police detective Bill Grant, as well as the three chosen by Samhain himself….

  – Thomas Robert Reynolds, Jr.

  Occult Practices in Orangefield and Chicawa County, New York, Volume Three

  Part One

  “Something’s Coming”

  Chapter One

  Too warm for October.

  Staring out through the open door of his house, Peter Kerlan loosened the top two buttons of his flannel shirt, then finished the job, leaving the shirt open to reveal a gray athletic tee-shirt underneath. Across the street the Meyer kids were re-arranging their newly purchased pumpkins on their front stoop – first the bigger of the three on the top step, then the middle step, then the lower. They were jacketless, and the youngest was dressed in shorts. Their lawn was covered, as was Kerlan’s, with brilliantly colored leaves: yellow, orange, a dry brown. The neighborhood trees were mostly shorn, showing the skeleton fingers of their branches; the sky was a sharp deep blue. Everything said Halloween was coming – except for the temperature.

  Jeez, it’s almost hot!

  Behind him, out through the sliding screen door that led to the back yard, Peter could hear Ginny moving around, making an attempt at early Sunday gardening.

  Maybe it’s cold after all.

  He opened the front screen door, retrieved the morning newspaper he had come for, and turned back into the house, unfolding the paper as he went.

  In the kitchen, he sat down at the breakfast table and studied the front page.

  The usual assortment of local mayhem – a robbery, vandalism at the junior high school, a teacher at that same school suspended for drug use.

  In the back, Ginny cursed angrily; there was the sound of something being knocked against something else.

  “Peter!” she called out.

  He pretended not to hear her for a moment, then answered, “I’m eating breakfast!” and began to study the paper much more closely then it deserved.

  On the second page, more local mayhem, along with the weather – sunny and unseasonably warm for at least the next three days – as well as a capsule listing of the rest of the news, which he scanned with near boredom.

  Something caught his eye, and he gave an involuntary shiver as he turned to the page indicated next to the summary and found the headline:

  Hornets Attack Preschoolers

  Another shiver caught him as he noted the picture embedded in the story – a man clothed in mosquito netting and a pith helmet holding up the remains of a huge papery nest; one side of the structure was caved in and within he could make out the clumped remains of dead insects –

  Again he gave an involuntary shiver, but went on to the story:

  (Orangefield, Special to the Herald, Oct. 7) Scores of preschoolers were treated today for stings after a small group of the children inadvertently stirred up a hornets’ nest which had been constructed in a hollow log. The nest, which contained hundreds of angry hornets, was disturbed when a kick ball rolled into it. When one of the children went to retrieve the ball, the insects, according to witnesses, “attacked and kept attacking.”

  Twenty eight children in all were treated for stings, and the Klingerman Pre School was closed for the rest of the day.<
br />
  The nest was removed by local beekeeper Floyd Willims, who said this kind of attack is very common. “The nests are mature this time of year, and can hold up to five hundred drones, along with the Queen. Actually, new drones are maturing all the time, and can do so until well into fall. With the warm weather this year, their season is extended, for another few weeks at least. The first real cold snap will kill them off.”

  Willims continued, “Everyone thinks that yellow jackets are bees, but they’re not. They’re hornets, and can get pretty mean when the nest is threatened. At the end of the season, next year’s Queens will leave the nest, and winter in a safe spot, before laying eggs and starting the whole process over again with a new nest.”

  As of last night, none of the hornet stings had proved dangerous, and Klingerman Preschool will reopen tomorrow.

  Peter finished the story, looked at the picture again – the bee keeper holding the dead nest up with a triumphant grin on his face – and gave a third involuntary shiver.

  Ugh.

  At that moment Ginny appeared at the back sliding door, staring in through the screen. He looked up at her angry face.

  “I can’t get that damned shed door open!” she announced. “Can you help me please?”

  “After I finish my breakfast–”

  Huffing a breath, she turned and stormed off.

  “Aren’t you going to eat with me?” he called after her, hoping she wouldn’t turn around.

  She stopped and came back. “Not when you talk to me with that tone in your voice.”

  “What tone?” he protested, already knowing that today’s version of ‘the fight’ was coming.

  She turned and gave him a stare – her huge dark eyes as flat as stones. She was as beautiful as she had ever been, with her close cropped blonde hair and anything but boyish looks. “Are we going to start again?”

  “Only if you want to,” he said.

  “I never want to. But I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

  “How much more of what?”

  She stalked off, leaving the door open. After a moment, Peter threw down the paper and followed her, closing the sliding screen door behind him and dismounting the steps of the small deck. She was in front of the garden shed, a narrow, four foot deep, one story-high structure attached to the house to the right of his basement office window.

 

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