Cursed Kin

From the new Dime Novel series NIGHT TERRORS by Luke Eddies, comes a story of NIGHTMARISH HORROR that will CHILL YOU TO THE BONE.

The mists that haunted DeSalle at night were heavy with the scent of rot. They drifted along the dirt like the ghosts of forgotten floods, swirling around horse carcasses on the ground, pouring into deep footprints left behind by monsters. Just outside of Moses Poultry, a man as thick as a tree trunk stared at the old chicken farm with narrowed eyes, breathing loudly enough from his mouth to spook a flock of crows into scattering.

This was it, alright. The place Daddy’s brother lived, along with his smug son and untamed granddaughter. The man couldn’t help but smile at the thought of what he’d soon do to them all. He’d always tried to respect Daddy’s wishes and act like that branch of the Moses family didn’t exist, but Daddy was gone now, dead as a doornail after last week’s unfortunate incident with the hogs.

“I’m gonna kill ‘em, Daddy,” Jed Moses whispered as he snuck into the loft of the barn. “I’m gonna make ‘em pay for what they did to our family.”

From the new Dime Novel series NIGHT TERRORS by Luke Eddies, comes a story of NIGHTMARISH HORROR that will CHILL YOU TO THE BONE.

“Wake up, rednecks.” The voice was deep as a canyon. “It’s slaughter o’clock.”

William came to first, then Pappy, their chins slowly lifting away from their chests. They were sitting in chairs that faced each other, bound with fraying rope that cut into their skin. The angry knots on the back of their heads from where they’d been hit throbbed and bled.

“Shit,” William grumbled. “Weren’t no need to get this fancy with it, whoever you are.” His voice stopped short as he recognized his captor. “Jed?”

“That’s right, Willie.” The man slipped a grotesque mask made of crudely broken sticks over his face. “Say hello to your cousin. How d’you like the new me?”

“Jed Moses.” Pappy’s eyebrows pulled together, his lips curling up into a sneer. “You ain’t dead yet?”

“No thanks to you, Pappy.” Jed spit the name as though it tasted like poison. “You know, Daddy told me you tried to have me killed as a pup before he shunned you. So I thought I’d kill your pup. Only fair.”

“Where’s Millie?” William demanded.

“Oh,” Jed answered with a laugh. “She’s dead.”

From the new Dime Novel series NIGHT TERRORS by Luke Eddies, comes a story of NIGHTMARISH HORROR that will CHILL YOU TO THE BONE.

“Poppycock,” William said with a forced chuckle. “No way in hell could you have gotten the drop on my Millie.”

Jed tilted his head silently to the side, almost as if in amusement, and William couldn’t help but wonder what face Jed was making beneath his terrible mask.

Pappy’s face stayed frozen in a silent scowl.

“No way in hell, huh?” Jed stepped up behind William’s chair before dramatically turning it toward the wall. “What do you have to say about this, then?”

There, nailed to the barn wall before him, was the corpse of what was unmistakably a red-headed young woman. Her face was so terribly smashed in that William couldn’t even recognize his daughter. The howl that escaped him made Jed shiver in delight. Pappy refused to look, even after Jed turned his chair too.

“You’ll be joining her soon enough,” Jed promised, raising a hammer over Pappy’s head.

From the new Dime Novel series NIGHT TERRORS by Luke Eddies, comes a story of NIGHTMARISH HORROR that will CHILL YOU TO THE BONE.

“Does your daddy know you’re here?” Pappy demanded, ignoring the hammer.

“Daddy’s dead,” Jed said. “I pushed him into the hog pen.”

“Course you did,” Pappy said. “I warned him about you. He thought keeping you chained up would keep you from killing anyone else, but now look.”

“After I kill you, I’ll inherit this place as a rightful heir,” Jed said, annoyed at the lack of fear. It wasn’t nearly as fun that way. “I could kill all I wanted in a sick place like this.”

“You think you’re one of us?” a new voice said from behind them. A figure emerged, and William’s face grew bright with pride. It was a smirking Millie Moses, her crossbow raised.

“You’ll never be a redneck,” Millie finished. “You ain’t nothin’ but a goddamned hillbilly. Couldn’t even kill the right redhead.”

And with that, she shot a bolt directly through Jed’s throat. The hammer fell from his hands, and he sunk to his knees with an enraged gargle. They left him like that, offering their kin no help as he bled out into the dirt.

From the new Dime Novel series NIGHT TERRORS by Luke Eddies, comes a story of NIGHTMARISH HORROR that will CHILL YOU TO THE BONE.

Just past midnight, a hunter hid in a cornfield in DeSalle, waiting for a pack of hellhounds to pass. After they were gone, he stood, relieved to have escaped a grisly end. He went to leave, his feet crunching softly on the fallen stalks, but paused when he thought he heard footsteps behind him.

When he stopped, the footsteps stopped. When he started to run, so did they. “Who goes there?” he yelled in a panic, fumbling to reload his rifle. When the hunter tried to hop the wooden fence at the edge of the cornfield, he tripped and fell, his teeth cutting all the way through his tongue as his jaw hit the ground.

A monstrous man stepped into the moonlight. The hunter barely had time to notice that the man’s face appeared to be impaled with sticks (or was that a mask?) before an axe was brought down on his head, ending everything.

“It’s just me,” the killer said. His voice was garbled, damaged. He knelt and cut off the dead hunter’s ear before looping it on a string he kept tied around his neck. “Cousin Jed.”