So it's just hours until my novella Torment is released by Damnation Books! The e-book version will be available from 12.01am March 1st (Pacific Standard Time in the US) at variable pricing (at 12.01am it will be free and steadily increase until it reaches full price). The print version will be available in about a week's time.
Synopsis:
Jessica Newman’s tragic childhood has come back to haunt her. Her father, a Catholic deacon she hasn’t seen since he was found not guilty of her mother’s death during an exorcism ritual, has turned up dead in Scotland, with a wound to the head.
Forced to take her family to Scotland and deal with her father’s estate―a derelict mansion in the Grampian Mountains. Jessica begins to question her mother’s death and what role her father played in it.
The house and its dark basement―could provide more answers than she bargained for.
To entice you below is an excerpt - a terrifying scene where Jessica and her husband encounter the first of many horror in the bowels of her late father's home Enjoy!
The basement stairs vanished into a dense darkness and
Jessica felt a slight breeze of cold air on her face. Instinct screamed
at her not to go down the stairs, but David took a step closer into
the doorway.
“Alex?” he cried into the darkness.
Nothing.
“Alex, are you down there?” Jessica called.
There was only the dark looking back at them. David put his
foot on the top step. Jessica gripped his arm and when David
turned he was startled by the fear in his wife’s eyes.
“Don’t!” she begged him.
“Alex might be down there!” David reasoned. “He could be
hurt.”
Dark memories of twenty-five years ago bled into Jessica’s
mind; she was sitting in that hallway in Boston, listening to her
mother’s screams. The same fear was in her heart again.
“We should call the police,” she told David.
“I’m going down there,” he replied, desperate. “Are you
coming?”
Before Jessica could respond, David proceeded down the
steps, the darkness devouring him as if he’d dived into an oil slick.
Jessica was left alone to stare at the darkness.
“David?” she called.
Jessica moved down the stairs one at a time. With each successive
footstep, she was lost deeper into the darkness. She waved
her hands in front of her, reaching for anything to connect her
back to the real world. She prayed she would touch David. She
prayed her son was safe, anywhere else other than down here.
“David? Alex?” she called again, her voice echoless in the black
basement.
“Here,” David finally replied. Jessica knew by the jerkiness of
his voice that he was shaking.
She followed the sound and gradually the darkness receded
to shadow and then a mottled grey light, like the sun struggling
through fog. Jessica saw David staring into it. She too looked into
it, eager to determine its source.
Jessica stood next to David and he grabbed her hand and
squeezed it, a physical warning to his wife. Ever since they’d met,
she’d known David to be composed and calm, but for the first time
she could feel a terrible tremble of fear in his grip. Suddenly she
knew why.
A boy was tied up in the center of the room. He was naked,
with thick ropes around his wrists, ankles and neck, bonds so
tight they had stripped his white skin red raw. The marks paled
in comparison to the others that riddled his body; bruises, cuts,
scratches, welts and burns―a sickening montage of violence.
The boy looked lost in the glow, like he wasn’t really there at
all. Jessica’s maternal instinct kicked in; she wanted to rush to
him and cut his bonds and mend his wounds, but the little girl
inside told her to run and hide.
Slowly, the boy lifted his head and smiled at them, a string of
bloody saliva sliding from his bottom lip to the floor.
“Alex isn’t here right now,” the boy said, his voice distinctly
Scottish, resonated around them.
