by J P Barnett
“I don’t—I’m not sure,” Miriam stammered. “Hopefully.”
A rumble echoed across the beach, and the crowd parted for a red four-wheeler with a stretcher on the back. Finally!
Miriam backed away, tapping Tanner on the shoulder to encourage him to do the same. The lifeguards took over, rushing to secure Emma to the stretcher before zooming her down the beach along with her friend. They paid no attention to Miriam and Tanner.
Miriam collapsed to the sand, dropping her head between her legs to catch her breath.
Tanner sat beside her, his hand on her back. “Nice job, Mir.”
She didn’t want adulation. Not for this. Maybe she had saved a life today, but if she could believe her own eyes, something dangerous lurked beneath the waves. Her body begged her to relax. To let the adrenaline fade away. But her mind used it to fuel a fire that burned inside of her. Her father had trained her to hunt monsters.
Maybe she’d just found one.
“Mir!” Macy cried, tumbling over toward her. “Holy crap. Don’t do stuff like that! Are you ok?”
Macy wrapped her arms around Miriam’s shoulders and squeezed.
“I’m fine.” Miriam nodded, the salt water dripping off her mousy brown hair. “But I’m counting that as meeting someone new.”
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Acknowledgements
Whenever you read this part of the book (for those few who do), it always starts with basically the same sentiment—writing and publishing a book is hard! Way harder than it sounds. I’d like to thank the team at Evolved Publishing for getting this across the finish line. I couldn’t have done it without the help of Mike Robinson, Richard Tran, and Dave Lane (aka Lane Diamond).
To my mom, who took up the mantle of my very first champion, even when my stories made no sense.
To my wife, who didn’t laugh too hard when I told her I wanted to focus on writing a book. Her support made it all possible.
To my cat, Havok, because he always listened when I read him my rough drafts.
To my grandmother, who always gave me unfettered access to her collection of Time Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown series, allowing me to warp my mind with modern day fairy tales of scary monsters.
To my high school English teacher, Mrs. Hart. Though I always fancied writing, it was she who convinced me that I could be good at it.
To my beta readers—Allison, Tex, Mistie—thanks for helping me hone in on what the book eventually became.
To all the people who influenced the characters: Steve, Denise, William, Holly, Jason, Dub, Cody. You might not see yourself in these pages, but some kernel of you made it in.
And lastly, to Glen Rose, Texas—the real Rose Valley. Growing up in such a small town is a special gift, and I will always be grateful for all the unique experiences it afforded me.
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About the Author
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J.P. Barnett grew up in a tiny Texas town where the list of possible vocations failed to include published author. In second grade, he worked harder than any other student to deliver a story about a tiger cub who singlehandedly saved the U.S. Military, earning him a shiny gold star and a lifelong appreciation of telling a good story.
Fast forwarding through decades of schooling and a career as a software engineer, J.P. Barnett stepped away from it all to get back to his first real passion. Years of sitting at a keyboard gifted him with some benefit, though, including blazing fast typing hands and a full tank of creativity.
As a child, J.P. consumed any book he could get his hands on. The likes of Stephen King, Michael Crichton, and Dean Koontz paved the bookshelves of his childhood, providing a plethora of fantastical and terrifying tales that he read way too early in life. Though the effect these books had on his psyche could be called into question, these masters of storytelling managed to warp his mind in just the perfect way to spin a fun yarn or two.
J.P. currently resides in San Antonio with his wife and hellion of a cat, both of whom look at him dubiously with some frequency.
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More from Evolved Publishing
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A famed horror author is on the verge of his magnum opus—a labyrinthine cryptogram that details the end of days.
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One stormy afternoon in Berkshire, in the year 1348, the townspeople gathered to witness the end of Vivian Noose—a pregnant woman accused by the church of holding Lucifer’s child within her.
Kitty Dossle, age four, looked on from a distance as she hung from the arm of her young mother, Maze Dossle. Kitty clutched a tattered, hay-stuffed cloth doll in her hand, a gift from one of her mother’s male suitors.
Maze Dossle, a wretched-looking prostitute, offered men the kind of oral satisfaction they might not get at home. Suitors in want of a getaway from their everyday marital lives called on her by the dozens. She’d been beautiful once, with a sort of natural beauty that shone through her stringy hair and ragged clothing. She’d been tomboyish and innocent, capable of kicking ass and breaking hearts at the same time.
Maze had reacted to her hard-working parents’ inability to focus on raising her by venturing out with her peers into a world that gave her a sense of self and attention. First-love bloomed with sixteen-year-old Cagin Vince, two years older than Maze. A month after their courtship, reality slapped them both in the face: she was pregnant.
Despising the idea of societal embarrassment, her young male counterpart attempted to murder her by beating her unconscious, leaving her with welts and scars.
Maze managed to survive the ordeal with baby intact, after which her parents tossed her out onto the streets in the dead of winter to fend for herself and her unborn child. Although embarrassment and shame had been a part of her parents’ motivation, financially, they couldn’t bear another hungry mouth.
“Mommy?” Kitty said.
“What do you want, little girl?”
“She’s pregnant, isn’t she?” Kitty pointed to Vivian Noose, the day’s entertainment.
“Yes, she is.” Maze looked on as the men set the branches ablaze.
“Mommy, I don’t want Christie to see.”
“Cover her eyes, then, little girl,” Maze responded in an aggravated tone.
At the stake, Vivian Noose began to plead and scream for help.
The townspeople spit at her and cursed her name. They threw stones as the blaze licked around her feet.
“Go back to hell where you came from.”
“You wicked wench!”
“No one cares of your suffering.”
“Die, you filthy serpent of Satan.”
On and on the crowd taunted, while the flesh of Vivian Noose’s body began to peel, forming bubbly reddish blisters under her skin. As tears rolled down her face, evaporating in the intense heat, she looked upon the crowd. Everything seemed to slow as her skin melted from her body to reveal the painful sight of her meaty flesh.
As she died, the crowd suddenly became quiet.
Kitty swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat.
An ominous sensation swept in, aggressively grabbing hold of each member of the gathered townspeople.
Within seconds of Vivian Noose’s passing, her charred eyelids snapped open, and she lifted her head to look upon the crowd. Her eyes, burning coals, glittered white. A voice spoke through her, using her as its vessel. It sounded ferocious—direct and full of fury.
“I thank you, for your hatred fuels me so. Damnation befalls this land and upon you. No matter the distance you travel, I will be your end. So say it, the shepherd.”
In a flash, the town’s population—presiding pastors, children, elders, and common folk—began to shake and contort in the seizure that swept through them.
All except for Kitty, who watched in terror.
Abruptly, stillness fell.
The mob looked upon this hideous image with sudden empathy. “So say it, the flock,” the crowd shouted in unison.
As one, they snapped out of this wicked trance, seeming to know nothing of what had happened, looking upon the still-smoldering body of Vivian Noose in the ominous silence.
Frightened, Kitty dropped Christie to the ground, wrapped her arms tightly around her mother’s neck, and cried.
Vivian Noose’s stomach ripped open and a baby jackal fell forth, its eyes glowing red and its fangs razor-sharp.
Screams rang out as the crowd began to pull away in fear.
Maze, too, began to back away, pulling Kitty with her.
The jackal threw its head to the sky and let out a blood-curdling shriek that sent the fear of God through the mob. When the howling stopped, the jackal gazed through the flames at the doll lying on the ground.
Unobserved by the other onlookers, who were focused on the sudden appearance of the jackal, the stitched-cloth eyes of the doll began glowing red. Kitty thought its features grew more beautiful, cleaner, refined, and far more advanced than any creation of the time. Upon the end of the doll’s morbid metamorphosis, its eyes slowly faded back to normal.
Within seconds, the jackal fell dead in the flames.
Suddenly, Kitty broke away from her mother and ran forward.
Maze screamed for her to come back, fearing the church would believe her daughter to be in league with the beast.
Kitty snatched the doll off the ground just before her mother caught her and pulled her away, kicking and screaming. Kitty glanced over her shoulder at the doll dragged along behind her, and shivered at its newly formed, wicked smile.
Author Gregory Stillingsworth, immersed in his latest novel, tapped away at his typewriter in the domain of his home office, which sat on the second floor of his glamorous house in rural Michigan. Here, in his private home-away-from-home, he found the personal comfort that encouraged his drive to push every over-stressed cell in his brain to endure hour after hour of creative work.
Drops of sweat rolled down his forehead and poised at the tip of his nose. In the heat of his creation, he ignored the sweat. Here, in his most private moments, he needed to be alone, a solitary artist pushing his fingers to strike words onto his canvas, creating a world that, right now, existed only within his storytelling mind. Later, he would worry about the fan letters received through his agent. For now, the world belonged solely to him, and he remained, as always, jealously possessive of his creation.
In this world of computer files and electronic transmissions, Gregory used Buford—a typewriter. This magical machine upon which he worked so diligently allowed him to do as he pleased. In this setting, at this task, he felt no less than a god.
In his element, Gregory allowed himself to be driven by what his heart commanded: the love and affection toward his work, the passion for his characters, the admiration of places to which he might journey through his stories, and the honesty and truth that so effectively spoke through fiction. His love for his work occasionally revealed the jealous heart of a dragon, both loving and fiercely protective.
He leaned forward and rushed toward the conclusion of another masterpiece. Words flew onto the page, and when he looked them over later, every letter would be crisp and stark against the whiteness of the paper. That was important to him. He valued paper—paper upon which no ink would smear, no matter how many times he shuffled through to admire a phrase here, a sentence there, or a character as he or she evolved through the pages. Quality was of the essence, and Gregory would work with no less.
He pulled the sheet out of the typewriter and checked it carefully, praying there were no errors, however minor. No pages would leave his hands until he’d corrected all errors. Only then would he place his John Hancock upon the delivery form. This paper, so insignificant without the words that currently raced across the page, represented Gregory’s livelihood in an astronomical manner. He obsessively checked and rechecked the type to be sure not a single flaw marred the snowy perfection of the stock and the crisp blackness of his words.
Finished with the page, he sat back a moment and wiped the sweat from his nose. He patted Buford—beaten and scarred by years of use—fondly. People sometimes asked him why he still cranked out his words on a typewriter after becoming a grossly successful author of seventy-three books. Certainly, he had money to spare, but give up Buford? Unthinkable.
He took a short break, and noticed the stack of dusty old journals sitting on a lower shelf. He walked through the maze of the odds-and-ends, objects he had collected over the years to trigger ideas and stories, to the shelf, and picked up the last hand-written journal. He sat down on a creaky antique chair and leafed through the pages.
Diary Entry #465
As I write, my whispery gabble leads the pencil in my hand as the motoring muscles that rope around my carpals, metacarpals, and phalanges, which draw their strength from the brachioradialis, forearm flexors, and the brachialis, struggle to keep up with my thoughts. This race is forever humorous. I feel a burning sensation as my fingers grip the pencil with zeal.
I drown myself in my thoughts regularly, for my thoughts hum through me like the soothing sounds of the bulbul.
The smell of crushed lead bleeds from the number-two pencil as my hand grasps it, guided by my angelic, developing literary mind. Its remnants glide upon the unorthodox—medieval by comparison—recycled paper within my diary, affectionately known as my “morbid book.” Writing seems to come easily for me. I’m what some would call a “thinker”—a heavy one at that—as labeled by my parents. But let’s not talk of my relations and their forever harsh opinions of me. Thoughts and story ideas seem to bounce through my mind like cotton balls, dancing around within a windy tunnel. Fascinating, these thoughts—fascinating, and utterly marvelous!
Writing is my destiny. I’m going to become a great writer. I’m going to shock the world with a story that will capture the true essence of fear and horror. I will bend the fabric of time and force another dimension of reality to rear its ugly head, to the utter amazement and heavily concentrated fascinations of civilized minds. I will fascinate with my approach. I will build a following to rival that of great leaders and fearless generals from a time when one who lived by the sword fell also by that sharp edge, cast by an opposing warrior. My thoughts will prove themselves worthy with every letter, phrase, sentence, and paragraph. My thoughts will prove themselves worthy.
Worthy, I say. Worthy, indeed.
From what fathoms do these thoughts come? That question I cannot answer, yet I can’t help but speculate. I was but three years of age when these thoughts began
to dance through my head and, with great clarity, I comprehended every facet.
Strangely, as far back as my birth, the darkness never frightened me. There were times throughout the night I could have sworn that my room, as well as the outskirts of our home, was consumed by shadowy figures whispering my name. As they looked over me with seeming vengeance, I felt a calming comfort in the darkness around these shadowy things.
Oddly, I found it soothing and enriching. I found it compelling, with a pull that opened my mind to a world in the form of a large lock, with me the only key.
Writing is my destiny!
Diary Entry #466
Literature of the Twentieth Century had its share of ups and downs. Twenty-three publishers rejected “Dr. Seuss”; Richard Hooker’s “Mash” was rejected by twenty-one; “Kon-Tiki” by Thor Heyerdahl, twenty; “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” by Richard Bach, eighteen; and Patrick Dennis’s “Auntie Mame,” seventeen.
I feel that what these storytellers experienced, I never will, for I was born an artist of the written word, not a developing pawn in literature. I was conceived as this Messiah of the literary tapestry. With my painstaking, unerring study in this field, I will surpass all in my path, and topple my would-be peers.
Writing is my destiny!
Gregory grinned as the sudden memory of his fourteenth birthday slipped into his mind. He had been writing in this very journal when his bedroom doors had swung open.
His parents stood in the doorway. “Can’t you put that pencil down for a minute, boy? Your mother and I got you something we know you’ll like.”
Gregory protested. “You guys, I’m not a kid anymore. I don’t need anything but your love and affection.”
The masculine voice rumbled again from the doorway. “You smartass. Take this before I break my foot off in your tail. You might be fourteen now, but you’re still under our roof.”
