Marty resisted. Tapped into all the words written on his paper skin, drew power from them, especially the one written by Jennifer. His body began to shake with an incredible force. He drove his father backwards, into the wall. Rammed his fist down Daddy’s throat until it was arm-deep, then Marty released the paper arm from his shoulder. Daddy started choking. But Marty didn’t stop. He ripped off more pages, stuffing poem after poem into his father’s gullet, pressing them deep into his bowels.
Cerulean’s darkness oozed out of his father’s eyes, poured out of his body, and drifted through the open portal behind him. The demon’s hideous shadow hovered there, its angry tentacles whipping around its body. Daddy’s ghost appeared as a writhing black mist. He looked down at his dead body, then at Marty in disbelief. The tentacles wrapped around Vernon’s ghost. His arm stretched out from the wall, gripping Marty’s leg, trying to pull his son into that dimension of torture and carnage. Marty kicked the arm loose and stepped back.
The last of his father’s soul was pulled into the other realm. A horde of dark artists gripped him by the arms and shoulders. He yelled as they carried him to a tree, where they crucified him with hammers and nails. Marty’s father cried out in pain as the artists went to work flaying his skin.
Cerulean looked back at Marty with an expression that might have been disappointment. Then the portal closed. All around Marty the cell walls rebuilt, returning to solid brick.
Vernon Weaver’s corpse lay on his bed, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. His mouth stretched impossibly wide, his cheeks and throat engorged with wads of paper.
After shedding the last of his poems, Marty felt lighter. His ghostly body glowed a luminous white. Above him, a beautiful, bright light shimmered. He started floating upward, pulled gently by an unseen force. He crossed through the ceiling, passed through a cell above, through the roof. His soul rose higher and higher until the prison vanished beneath the clouds, and the most peaceful white light welcomed him.
Epilogue
In the years that followed, Jennifer became first a professor at St. Germaine College and then a highly acclaimed poet. She taught her students how to see the world through the lens of poetry. She shared what a wise man once told her, Poetry has an invisible power that transcends the soul.
Whenever she took walks in the campus garden, she felt Marty’s spirit nearby. He was the breeze that shook the blossoms from the trees, carpeting the path where she stepped. He choreographed the patterns of birds in the sky, the dance between two butterflies twining in the sunlight inches from her page as she wrote. Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she felt his breath on her skin.
She often reflected on the last day she’d seen him in the garden. It had truly been a miracle to witness his spirit wrapped in pages of poetry. You look as if God gift-wrapped one of His angels just for me, she had whispered. Marty had asked her to do him a favor before he crossed over. And with the intense love she had felt for him that day, she would have done anything.
Holding hands, they had snuck into the greenhouse where they could be alone. They kissed and held each other again. Then she slowly peeled his poems off his body, one by one, reading each of them, savoring the words from his heart, so filled with passion. That day she got to know the Marty that no one had ever known. The love poems dedicated to her had made her laugh and cry and regret the lifetime that stretched ahead of her, which now she wouldn’t be able to share with him. He let her keep her favorites. The rest of the writings that summed up Marty’s life, Jennifer had put into a box and mailed to his father.
She’d stood at that mailbox for the longest time, not ready to let go of him. But she had made a promise, so finally she pulled the handle back and let go and the box disappeared. She’d thought as she walked back to her car, tears in her eyes, that whatever magic had existed between them was over. But it wasn’t. Not completely.
She’d felt Marty present when her mother overdosed and the doctors couldn’t revive her, and again when Jennifer’s father died of a heart attack two months later.
After her two marriages ended, Marty’s presence lifted her out of darkness and helped her find the words to pour her soul back into her poetry. Her love for him remained a constant.
She sensed him watching over her until the sun at last set on her life. And when Jennifer finally crossed over from this world to the next, she was happy to see Marty waiting for her on the other side.
About the Author
Brian Moreland writes dark suspense, thrillers, and horror. His books include Dead of Winter, Shadows in the Mist, The Witching House, The Devil’s Woods, The Vagrants, Darkness Rising, Dark Needs, and coming Fall 2017, Dark Killers.
Brian loves hiking, world travel, and going on adventures. He’s been known to explore caves and rain forests from Australia and New Zealand to Costa Rica and Hawaii. He lives in Dallas, Texas where he is having fun writing new thrilling fiction.
Website: http://www.brianmoreland.com/
Follow on Twitter: @BrianMoreland
Like Brian’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/HorrorAuthorBrianMoreland
Brian’s blog: http://www.brianmoreland.blogspot.com
Fear wears many skins.
Deep within the Canadian wilderness, people have been disappearing for over a century. There is a place the locals call “the Devil’s Woods,” but to speak of it will only bring the devil to your door. It is a place so evil that even animals avoid it.
When their father’s expedition team goes missing, Kyle Elkheart and his brother and sister return to the abandoned Cree Indian reservation where they were born. Kyle can see ghosts that haunt the woods surrounding the village—and they seem to be trying to warn him. The search for their father will lead Kyle and his siblings to the dark heart of the legendary forest, where their mission will quickly become a fight for survival.
Some houses should be left alone.
In 1972, twenty-five people were brutally murdered in one of the bloodiest massacres in Texas history. The mystery of who committed the killings remains unsolved.
Forty years later, Sarah Donovan is dating an exciting man, Dean Stratton. Sarah’s scared of just about everything—heights, tight places, the dark—but today she must confront all her fears, as she joins Dean and another couple on an exploring adventure. The old abandoned Blevins House, the scene of the gruesome massacre, is rumored to be haunted.
The two couples are about to discover the mysterious house has been waiting all these years, craving fresh prey. And down in the cellar they will encounter a monstrous creature that hungers for more than just human flesh.
Beneath the city of Boston, evil is gathering.
While living under a bridge with the homeless, journalist Daniel Finley witnessed something that nearly cost him his sanity. After returning to normal life, he publishes a book about a mysterious group of vagrants who call themselves “the Seekers”. Are they a cult or something else? Now, Daniel is being stalked and everyone he loves is in danger.
Drake O’Malley, ruthless leader of an Irish-American mafia clan, has had his own run-ins with the vagrants. And Daniel Finley just might be the key to getting rid of Drake’s problems. But Daniel and the O’Malley Family are about to enter a living nightmare. Evil is rising from Boston’s abandoned subway tunnels. And its followers are preparing to shed blood on the street.
Every vice has a terrifying price...
In this collection of five tales of horror, award-winning author Brian Moreland explores the obsessions of desperate people who cross boundaries into dark places to fulfill their deepest needs.
The Dealer of Needs - Addicted to a dangerous new drug, vice cop Alex Decker searches the seedy side of Hollywood for a legendary dealer who can fulfill anyone’s needs.
Offspring - Driven to get what she wants most, New York journalist Cara Klein travels to the backwoods of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens to a mystical place where whatever you wish for comes true.
Holomorphs - A lonely man discovers
what happens when he goes deep into a new social media app where the “friends” aren’t who they seem to be.
Beast of Winter - In the remote wilderness of Manitoba, Canada, terror strikes the hearts of two hunters who encounter a deadly predator.
Chasing the Dragon - Nick Meyers searches Hong Kong’s underworld for his missing lover, a Chinese woman whose life was just as much a riddle as her disappearance.
Coming Fall 2017...
In this collection of five short stories, serial killers are on the loose and terrorizing innocent victims. This eBook will include two classic stories, as well as three new ones, including the terrifying thriller I’m Still Here.
Darkness Rising: A Novella of Extreme Horror and Suspense Page 12
