by John Everson
Praise for John Everson
"Violet Eyes is old-school horror in collision with bleeding-edge science fiction. This is Michael Crichton meets Stephen King. It's a killer!"
– Jonathan Maberry,
New York Times bestselling author of Fire & Ash
"John Everson delivers the one-two punch of emotional intensity and skilled storytelling."
– Scott Nicholson,
author of Liquid Fear
"A master of twisted imagery, Everson doesn't shy away from graphic gore; NightWhere is an erotic horrorfest you won't be able to put down!"
– Lucy Taylor,
Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Safety of Unknown Cities
"Robert Bloch lives! John Everson's The Pumpkin Man is a lean, mean, supernatural thriller in the best tradition of Bloch and Matheson. The story of a grieving daughter prying open the shriveled gourds of her past, Everson's book yanks the reader along by the nape of the neck – and also, unexpectedly, by the heart – into a dark territory best traveled in a well-lighted room, with a guard on duty. Great stuff!"
– Jay Bonansinga,
National bestselling author of Perfect Victim
"John Everson brings something new and edgy to the genre. It's like reading a killer rock record."
– Paperback Horror
A thoroughly engaging tale, Siren weaves through two centuries of history to turn a relatively obscure mythological creature into a highly sensual modern antagonist. Everson's excellent prose and vivid storytelling riff on the depths of obsession and sexual addiction. Oh, and did I mention sex? Lots of it."
– Brinke Stevens,
horror movie actress
"From its subtly metaphoric opening line to its shattering final sequence (I'm talking the kind of ending that only the best horror/dark fantasy writers can pull off, the kind of ending that makes the finale of Pet Sematary look almost like a Bugs Bunny cartoon), John Everson's The 13th is the first out-and-out horror novel in a long while to actually scare the **** out of me while reading it. It's stylish, extremely well-written, filled with richly-drawn characterizations, and boasts a labyrinthine plot worthy of Umberto Eco. Trust me -- this one will fry your nerves and break your heart." --5-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Gary A. Braunbeck, author of Coffin County and Far Dark Fields "
– Gary A. Braunbeck,
author of Far Dark Fields
"A double-barreled shotgun blast of macabre entertainment. THE 13th is an expert amalgamation of grotesquerie, eroticism, mystery, and pitch-black occult horror that no fan of the genre can miss."
– Edward Lee,
author of Brides of the Impaler and The Golem
Books by
John Everson
NOVELS:
Covenant
Sacrifice
The 13th
Siren
The Pumpkin Man
NightWhere
Violet Eyes
NOVELETTES:
Failure
Violet Lagoon
SHORT FICTION COLLECTIONS:
Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions
Vigilantes of Love
Needles & Sins
Creeptych
Deadly Nightlusts: A Collection of Forbidden Magic
Christmas Tales
For More Information Visit:
www.johneverson.com
Copyright Information
VIOLET LAGOON
Story and copyright ©2010 by John Everson.
Dark Arts edition cover art and Preface copyright ©2013 by John Everson.
Violet Lagoon was originally issued as part of the three-story collection Creeptych in the Delirium Books hardcover chapbook series. The chapbook was signed and numbered, limited to 150 copies. An e-book edition was originally issued in 2010 by Darkside Digital.
Except for fair use for purposes of review, the reproduction of material from within this book for the purposes of personal or corporate profit, by photographic, digital, or other methods of electronic storage and retrieval, is prohibited. This book consists of works of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
For more information on this and other John Everson titles, please visit www.johneverson.com
Dark Arts Books e-Book Edition, September 2013
www.darkartsbooks.com
Dedication
For Charlotte's kids...
Table of Contents
Praise
Books By John Everson
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
VIOLET LAGOON:
I. Setting Sail
II. The Island
III. A Path Through The Shadows
IV. In The Air
V. Gool
VI. The Outdoors
VII. Time To Go
VIII. At Home
ABOUT:
About The Author
Preface
ack in 2008, in the midst of working on my third novel, The 13th, I wrote the first outline for the book that would eventually become my seventh novel, Violet Eyes. When I pitched the idea to my editor, Don D’Auria, he thought it would make a “very creepy book,” but had two concerns:
1) Leisure Books, my publisher at the time, already had a couple of recent “spider” books on the roster, from Sarah Pinborough, and he didn’t want to overload the line with eight-legged tales, and
2) the prologue as I’d outlined it, in his words, “would be mighty long.”
We agreed that I would hold off on digging into Violet Eyes for a book or two until the dust from Sarah’s novels had settled, and instead I began to work on Siren as my next project.
But Violet Eyes didn’t leave my head. And a year or so later, as I was talking with Delirium Books about doing a short bug-themed collection to reboot their hardcover chapbook series, I came up with the idea of turning the outlined prologue of that unwritten novel into a standalone short story.
Turned out... Don was right.
The story I wanted to tell was pretty involved for a prologue. But “Violet Lagoon” did make for a great novelette capper to a little book called Creeptych. When that three-story collection came out from Delirium in 2010, I wasn't sure if that was it for my spiders. I didn’t know if I would ever get the opportunity to write the full novel, but I was happy that a good story had come out of that novel’s outline, anyway. And then a few months later, when Leisure Books began to fall apart and cancelled their mass market paperback line (right after Siren was released!), I really thought “Violet Lagoon” might be the last anyone would see of my spider novel. Who else was I going to write a book like that for?
Fast forward another couple years, and Don D’Auria was in the midst of building a new horror line at Samhain, as the ashes of Leisure Books still were cooling. He agreed that the time was ripe to write that spider book... but when I sat down to do it, I realized that his concern of four years earlier still held. “Violet Lagoon,” as originally written, had grown too large to simply pick up and serve as a novel’s opening prologue. So I ended up trimming it and splicing pieces of it in as flashback scenes throughout the novel that I finally wrote last year.
I still like “Violet Lagoon” in its original form though, and I thought readers might like to see it this way either before or after reading Violet Eyes. Here’s how it all began.
Beware the bite...
I. Setting Sail
ou’re sure Jess is coming?” Billy asked pointedly. “You didn’t scare her off with that Blue Lagoon shit?”
Mark shook his head and grinned. “My gal ain’t shy. S
he’ll be here.”
Casey nodded and popped the top on a Lite. She took a swig and then gave Billy a long kiss. When it broke, her boyfriend could barely hide a gasp. “Wow…” he said. “I could get drunk on that!”
“Jess was all into it,” Casey smiled. “Just like me. We could all use a total break from reality.”
“Well, I’d like to start that break this week,” Billy grumbled, toying with the “Captain’s wheel” of the speedboat. “I only borrowed this for three days you know.”
“We’ll get it back in time,” Mark promised. “Knowing your clients, I think you could get away with being a little late if it came to it.”
“Knowing my clients, I could be at the bottom of the bay if it’s back an hour late,” Billy answered. “Anyway, I’m reformed.”
Mark pointed to the red cooler sitting in the rear of the craft and grinned. “And I suppose you’ll tell me that there’s no secret compartment filled with Mexico’s finest beneath the false floor right about there?”
“I said reformed, not no fun,” Billy said. “And how do you know so much about drug smuggling, hmmm?”
“Well for starters, I’ve been your friend since Freshman year.”
Casey laughed and ran her hand up Mark’s shoulder. “Hey that’s right…You know, I bet you could give me a lot of good dirt on our friend here. For instance, that girl he was seeing last semester, Beth? Did he ever…”
Just then, the slim blur of a brunette came running down the dock yelling, “OK, OK, I’m late! You can make me walk the plank later. But look what I got!”
From a bulging canvass bag, Jess pulled out a few scraps of tan fabric, cut with irregular triangles. One piece was clearly meant as a loincloth, the other could have been a bikini top. Both looked like stage costumes meant for extremely scantily clad prehistoric island dwellers.
“I am not wearing that,” Billy proclaimed, as Mark reached out an arm and helped her climb into the boat.
“Of course not, silly! That’s for Casey.” She reached into her sack and pulled an almost equally small loincloth and tossed it in his lap. “This one’s for you.”
Mark cocked an eyebrow and looked skeptically at her. “I know we said ‘Blue Lagoon’ and all, but do you really think we’re all going to parade around in these?”
“Well not here,” she grinned, waving at the dock, crowded with sailboats and speedboats and people milling about. It was a gorgeous summer Friday morning, and plenty of people were playing hooky and heading out to sea. On many of the decks, small groups of people were kicked back in easy chairs, taking in the sun, drinking beer for brunch and talking with friends. “But Billy promised that nobody goes to this island, it’s off the map. Totally empty. So if we’re going to ‘get away from it all’ and play Blue Lagoon for the weekend, let’s do it. We can change once we’re out near the island.”
“I don’t think you girls will stay in those outfits for long, anyway,” Billy said with an evil grin. Then he turned the key in the ignition and the motor sputtered to life. “All hands on deck,” he called, and after releasing the dock ties, they slowly began to move out into the crystal blue ocean.
II. The Island
illy McAllister drove the boat borrowed from one of his former “customers” due south, navigating between various small keys, some of which were barely larger than a dune of sand with a frosting of scrub grass.
He was really looking forward to this weekend, and not just for the obvious, expected benefits. After being busted for drug peddling and spending a couple years out of circulation, he’d decided to clean up his act and go back to the U of Miami to earn his botany degree. He wanted to erase all of the black marks of his last couple years of high school, and aborted first couple years of college from his mind. This Blue Lagoon trip celebrated the end of his first term back, and things were really starting to look up. He still had some connections with the people of his past, hence the boat, but he didn’t deal. And people had finally stopped asking him to.
Now he had Casey, who he liked to say, put the "blo" in blonde (though he never said it to her face). And more importantly, semester finals had ended for all of them yesterday afternoon, and Billy felt good about his scores. This weekend, he really had a good reason to party. While it had played him poorly in the end, his checkered past had given him the ability to play tour guide for his friends. If he got nothing else out of three years of serving as the pickup man for shipments of pot, he now had a cartographer’s knowledge of all the lesser known keys south of Florida. And the one they were heading to had once been a favorite spot, since it was large enough to boast trees and an expansive beach, but remote enough to be unfrequented. In all the times he’d stopped there, he’d never seen evidence of another human being. He and his connection may have been the only two ever to set foot on the island, for all he knew.
“Are we there yet?” Mark whined.
Billy turned to look at his friend and saw that Mark was busy staring at the girls, who’d stripped down to bikinis to lounge on the deck. “Like you care right now,” he answered, laughing. “But yeah, actually, we’re just about there. See that?”
He pointed to long strip of sand just to their right. It was one of the larger keys they’d seen in the past half hour; its center held a thick copse of palms and other trees, and while areas of the shore were obscured by scrub grass and silver-green bushes, there were long strips of the beach that looked white and inviting.
“This is the place?” Casey asked. “It looks perfect! Do you think we can find some coconut shells? Jess’s costumes would be better with coconuts…”
“I don’t do coconuts,” Jess answered. “Too heavy.”
“Actually, I was thinking for the guys.”
“Like a codpiece?”
“Dream on,” Billy interrupted the girls’ musings. “But you might want to get off the deck while you’re doing it. I’m pulling us in to shore.”
“Where do we tie up?” Mark asked.
“There should still be a portable dock over there,” Billy answered. “We drop anchor and roll it out. If it’s not there anymore… then we all swim!”
A few minutes later, Billy dove into the water and in just a few powerful strokes was into the shallow water near the beach. He disappeared around a copse of bushes, reappearing a few minutes later with a thumbs-up signal and a rope in hand. The thin wooden slat dock rolled out into the water on large rusted metal wheels. The piece that stayed on the island was anchored by chains to two shafts of metal buried deep in the ground. Billy maneuvered the dock to the deepest part of the beach drop off, and then swam back to the boat to guide them in.
Minutes later, and they were all standing on the beach. Casey surveyed the shore, hands on her hips, the posture making her well-tanned cleavage more than obvious as she slowly turned a 360. “Nice place, Billy,” she finally said.
“That’s what I was thinking,” he answered, his eyes fixed obviously on her breasts.
A tan sliver of fabric hit him in the chest. “Suit up, horndog,” Jess said. She tossed another at Mark.
“You first,” Billy dared, and Jess shrugged. “All talk, no action,” she laughed, and without pause, turned her back to the guys and untied her store bought bikini, let it drop to the sand and then slipped on the scanty homemade bikini top. Then she dropped her bottoms, giving them all a clear view of the white triangle that remained untanned on her ass, as she pulled up the thin triangles attached to a leather string. When she tied it tight, her tan lines were still clearly revealed.
“You’re gonna burn your butt,” Mark warned.
“I brought lotion,” Jess answered. “I might even let you put it on me.”
“I won’t need any,” Casey taunted, and performed the same quick change routine as Jess, her bronze back and ass clearly demonstrating that she spent a lot of time in the sun. And apparently most of it in the nude.
“You ever study with a tan like that?” Mark asked.
Jess put a finger to
her boyfriend’s chin and turned his eyes to meet hers. “Watch this way,” she warned.
“Sure,” Casey laughed. “What do you think I do while I’m tanning?”
“Boy’s turn,” Jess announced as Casey turned around, now displaying even more bare skin than her previous bikini had allowed.
Billy shrugged at Mark and the two turned away and dropped their shorts, quickly stepping into costume.
“Aw, look Jess,” Casey taunted. “They’re shy.”
“You two are asking for it,” Mark said, turned back to them. He shifted a little uncomfortably in his new island g-string. It hung loosely between his legs, and didn’t hide the fact that he was more than a little aroused by the situation.
“And they’ll get it. Plenty,” Billy promised. “But first we need to pick a camp site and get setup.”
“Let’s stay near the boat,” Casey suggested. “We could setup right over there at the tree line?”
“Works for me,” Billy said, and Mark shrugged acceptance. Jess hopped back into the boat and tossed her heavy pack to Mark. Billy stepped past her and grabbed a tent bag, and the two walked up the shifting sand to a spot sheltered between two huge palm trees. “Wish I had a hammock,” Mark observed.
They got to work setting up the first tent, while the girls brought some of the smaller gear from the boat and piled it nearby.
Mark popped in the main pole at the same moment as Jess screamed.
