Edward M. Erdelac's Blog, page 7

William Crain, A Father of African American Horror Cinema

Here’s a link to an article I did about William Crain, the director of Blacula and Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde for Ginger Nuts of Horror.

https://gingernutsofhorror.com/features/two-from-william-crain-a-founding-father-of-african-american-horror-cinema-by-edward-m-erdelac?fbclid=IwAR3EE0GgxbpWExN0aOYi5eQA1U7ne1F2684KkdeVQN9wfxWe5IiQSlIADuk

The Colors Of A Rainbow To One Born Blind in Tales From Arkham Sanitarium

Up for preorder from Dark Regions Press is Tales From Arkham Sanitarium.

There are things man was not meant to know and knowledge that burns those that learn it. As H.P. Lovecraft himself once said, “We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall…go mad from the revelation…” Knowing too much, getting a glimpse of the truth behind the curtain we call reality, casting aside the bliss of ignorance and succumbing to the insanity that follows in the pursuit of damnable truths, is at the core of many of the stories of the Cthulhu Mythos. Insanity is central to Lovecraftian horror, so there is no wonder that in his witch-cursed and legend-haunted town of Arkham, a cathedral devoted to mending broken minds was raised. Arkham Sanitarium. Where the screams and cries of the damned are commonplace. Where those that have seen the faces of cosmic entities gibber with regret over their curiosity. Where men and women are cosigned to never ending purgatory for knowing too much. The machinations of the Old Ones are beyond the mental capacity of mankind, and these are the tales of those who learned that too late.

This is one I’ve been waiting for. Peep the lineup!

The Crying Man by Tim Waggoner

Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation by William Meikle

Malformed Articulation by W. H. Pugmire

Bit by Bit by Don Webb

Let me Talk to Sarah by Christine Morgan

The Hunger by Peter Rawlik

The Colors Of A Rainbow To One Born Blind by Edward M. Erdelac

The River and the Room by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

Veteran of the Future Wars by Orrin Grey

Folie et déraison by Nick Mamatas

Red Hook by Glynn Owen Barrass

Clicks by Stephen Mark Rainey

…& My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You by Edward Morris

Forbidden Fruit by Cody Goodfellow

Stained Glass by Jeffrey Thomas

Some good friends and great writers! I’m particularly honored to be sharing a TOC with the last offerings from the late great Joe Pulver and Willum Pugmire, two deservedly respected Lovecraftians whom I admired, and were just all around good folks to boot.

My story, The Colors Of A Rainbow To One Born Blind is one of my own personal favorite Lovecraftian offerings, about a shooting at Miskatonic University.

Here’s an excerpt….

He walks the crowded halls of Misktatonic U between classes, mind blazing brightly as a taper with unthinkable thoughts. His life is a fast dwindling wick. The light behind his eyes casts the other students with long shadows.

He avoids those shadows, shuddering when he must pass through them, knowing each is a dogged, stalking menace, ready to turn at any moment in suicidal rebellion on its originator.

The librarian taught him that, whispering in the lonely rasp of turning pages and the venerable book smell of almond, vanilla, and grass, scratching in the late night cathode flicker of his dark room.

He watches his own shadow very closely, and keeps a flashlight in his pocket as insurance against the black ghost which trails and mimics his every step. He stops and turns suddenly in an attempt to catch it moving independently.

He hasn’t caught it yet, not in plain sight, but he knows that the observer effect applies. The very act of studying the shadow alters its appearance, helps it hide its true nature.

His witless schoolmates know nothing of their danger. They are unaware of the things which wait with the patience of a hunter crouched in the dark, angled recesses, unaware of those things which hunt between the blinks of the unquantifiable observer. They are ignorant of how facilely the doors to tenebrous realms may be unlocked, ignorant of the ring of keys residing on their own campus, every hide bound book, every crumbling scroll under glass more deadly than any of the guns in his knapsack. The Miskatonic library is an arsenal of mass destruction tended by buffoons, as benighted to the destructive potential of their charges as the average beer swilling fraternity point guard is to the half-conscious woman who sighs beneath him.

‘Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Make You Free.’  – John. 8:32.

The motto above the doors of the hated library mocks him as he passes it on the quadrangle. The twittering of the chickadees among the chestnut boughs is indistinguishable in his thrumming ears from the chatter of the lounging students. It all mocks him, unbearably oblivious in the pregnant shadow thrown across the commons by the library’s clock tower. The laughter of the coeds is the lowing of cattle in the slaughter chute.

The clock tower above the library stands like an antenna, poised to broadcast terrible truths out into the fragile world of dripping ice that all he had ever known and once loved inhabits.

Love.

What is love, and who is he to think of it? But for the love of his late father he has been denied it all his life. Women have ever shunned him, turning their sweet faces away to share in the petty glories of dull, unworthy boys who make meaningless playground games the focus of their existence, and who will one day grow like overfed bulls into dull, unworthy men.

But they will not get the chance.

Preorder here –

https://darkregions.com/collections/all-products/products/tales-from-arkham-sanitarium-edited-by-brian-m-sammons-preorder?fbclid=IwAR1012H9XNWjU9kzbD6_D2k32Pcbg9ZLEeVws29Wg6yDpZrWatrUK0cip1g&variant=33348203053109

CONQUER: Calm, Cool, Collected…

In 1976 Harlem, he’s the cat you call when your hair stands up….

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December 22nd will see the release of my collection CONQUER, featuring my occult detective character John Conquer, a cross between John Shaft and Brother Voodoo. The Conquer stories are my homage to the blaxploitation horror movies of the 70’s – bona fide classics like Blacula, JD’s Revenge, and Sugar Hill as well as the novels of Ernest Tidyman.

Three previously appeared in the pages of Occult Detective Quarterly – Conquer Comes Calling, Conquer Comes Correct, and Conquer Gets Crowned. In these stories Conquer faces off against a Hoodoo hitman, solves the mystery of a skinned and decapitated gorilla lying in the Bronx, and investigates a creature stalking graffiti taggers in the NYC subways.

Included in this collection are four previously unpublished stories – the short introductory story, Who The Hell Is John Conquer? Conquer And The Queen of Crown Heights, and Keep Cool, Conquer. The e-version includes an exclusive preview of Conquer: Fear Of A Black Cat, the full length novel coming next year.

Here’s Who The Hell Is John Conquer in its entirety.

The zebra striped walls had heard Billie Holiday sing You’re My Thrill in their mutual heyday, and Coltrane had blown Giant Steps once to a packed house. James Baldwin had celebrated his birthday here, on the anniversary of the riot kicked off by Margie Polite and Officer Collins in 1943, and Alex Haley had interviewed Malcolm at one of the tables only ten years ago.

Now the dingy, tiled dance floor was crowded with cheap red pleather seats and scarred, liquor stained tables. The stage stood empty and absurd on a Wednesday afternoon, the heavy air filled with Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic cranking out of an ugly old Wurlitzer Zodiac parked in a corner. The machine hadn’t seen a new record since Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book, and as Isaac’s platter wound down, Superstition came on to prove it.

Each table was an island, and bore a squat, ugly candle in a textured glass holder, glowing like an irradiated pineapple in the thick fog of swirling bar smoke. The dark patrons gathered as though around campfires, when they leaned back in their chairs, as indiscernible as nocturnal fauna, the glint of their watches and jewelry, the glow of their cigarette ends were like the shine of predatory eyes in the dark.

The owner shoved some of the table aside and brought in a three piece on Fridays and Saturdays, but nobody much felt like dancing during the week anymore.

Behind the bar was an old man in a purple bowling shirt, who’d bussed tables at Baldwin’s birthday party and would tell you way too much of what he knew about him and Bayard Rustin if you were foolish enough to get him going. On the business end of the bar there perched a broad-shouldered, stoic cat in an oxblood leather coat, and a young brother in blue jeans and a t-shirt pawing at the stack of business cards next to the register while he waited for his beer, reading each one and replacing them in disarray, to the old man’s annoyance.

“Who in the hell is John Conquer?” the young customer chuckled.

“Boy, give me that,” the old bartender said, snatching the red and gold business card from the young man’s hand and putting it back on the stack. “Where you breeze in from?”

“Center Point, Alabama.”

“Cen-ter Point, A-la-bama!” the bartender announced, loudly.

There were whistles and jeers from the men in the dimness, all except the quiet one on the newcomer’s left, sipping Black Label and smoking a Kool.

“Hey, you know how you know you in a hotel in Center Point, Alabama?” the bartender asked the room. “When you call the desk and say ‘I got a leak in the sink’ and they answer ‘well, go ahead.’”

There were a couple of laughs.

The newcomer shook his head.

“Well, Country, you need to be told,” the old man said, fixing his sights back on his young captive audience. “You in New York City now. This is the center of the world. The very best and very worst of everything, right here. This is the crossroads of eyes and ears and hearts and souls. It is nineteen hundred seventy six and we in a time of bankers and gangsters, liars and fools, con men and kings. You livin’ with the ghouls and ghosts, wizards and witches of the real N-Y-C now.”

And when he said those letters, he jabbed each one at the newcomer on the end of his finger.

“OK,” said the new man. “But who is John Conquer?”

“Let me finish,” the old man snapped, sliding him his beer in a smudged glass. “In the heart of this city you got the red bricks of Harlem. The home of the boogie woogie rumble, dig? God put Harlem on the map to give colored folks a place to go in a snowstorm, and He put John Conquer in Harlem with a shovel to keep back all that white the Devil throws our way.”

“How come it says on that card he a detective and he stay in the East Village, then?”

“He’s a detective, yes. Elliot Ness, Sherlock Holmes, Batman, and Charlie Chan ain’t got nothin’ on him. You don’t need to stay in Harlem to be of Harlem. Do Nina Simone live in Harlem? Do Sammy Davis Jr.? Lena Horne? Sugar Ray Robinson?”

“Sugar Ray Robinson’s from Georgia,” said the Alabaman, sipping his beer.

“His ass is from Georgia, but his heart belongs to Harlem. You stay here a little while, ‘Bama, maybe you understand some day. Now where was I?”

“In Harlem. With a shovel,” said the Alabaman dryly.

The old man poured himself a cold one and nodded.

“Maybe his ancestor was St. Malo, or Gaspar Yanga, or Dutty Bookman, or maybe the blood of all of ‘em and more soaked so long and so deep in the earth that John Conquer sprouted up from it. But he come to us armed with love and laughter, the son of Voodoo Queens and two-headed Hoodoo doctors, so tall he gets his hair cut in Heaven and his shoes shined in Hell.”

“Hoodoo,” the Alabaman grumbled. “Ain’t no such thing as no hoodoo.”

The old man looked like he would spit his beer across the bar top.

“Ain’t no such….? ‘Bama, what do you know about it? They is Hoodoo, they is Voodoo, and they’s other things besides. Plat-Eyes and haints, demons and saints. And when the Devil hisself comes knockin’ at your door, boy, that’s when you call John Conquer. Ask Big Bob!” he said, pointing suddenly to a bespectacled figure huddled with a beer in the dim corner booth, who raised his hand at the sound of his name. “Big Bob was DJ at the Empire Roller Disco in Crown Heights the night John Conquer rexed with a fine ass big-tittied vampire out in the middle of the floor till the sun come up and she crumbled to dust in front of everybody. Ain’t that so, Big Bob?”

Big Bob nodded, unsmiling in the candlelight, and there were words of assent all around the bar.

“Shit, man!” The old man said, and spat on the floor. “I seen John Conquer kill a werewolf in the street right outside that door with the silver hood ornament on his brand new Cadillac.”

“Yup! I seen that too!” someone called out.

The old man’s blood was up now, and he testified like a preacher, the other denizens of the bar affirming like a congregation between each testimony.

 “And didn’t he kung fu Frankenstein off the marquee of the Apollo, and bust him to pieces with John Henry’s hammer? And didn’t he come out the Victoria showing of Cleopatra Jones with the actual Cleopatra on his arm? He went fishin’ at the Meer and hooked the Creature From The Black Lagoon and thew him back ‘cause he was too small! John Conquer beat the Devil at spades in front of St. Andrew’s church and then went up 125th with the ghosts of Malcolm X and Dr. King! He played ball with Dr. J in Rucker Park and he let him win! He put Superman in a full Nelson and made that honky buy him lunch at Sylvia’s!”

By now the bar was in a fit of laughter again, and the Alabaman was laughing along.

The dude in the oxblood coat had had enough, though. He got up, slapped down his money, and said;

“Bullshit.”

“Say what, blood?” the old bartender said, sweeping his money off the bar.

“First off, that wasn’t no vampire that night at the Empire. Second, silver don’t do shit to werewolves,” he said, slapping his pack of Kools and sliding one out. “That’s just the movies.”

“How the hell you know that?”

“Cause I’m John Conquer,” he said, lighting another Kool as he went out the door, the bell jangling. “And if I had me a brand new Cadillac I wouldn’t be drinkin’ here, blood.”


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PYJWC4M/ref=sr_1_4?crid=16CBFXYG0U4KW&dchild=1&keywords=erdelac&qid=1607404583&sprefix=erdelac%2Caps%2C263&sr=8-4

Scream, My Halloween Movie Repertoire, Scream!

OK ghoulie gang, it’s my favorite time of the year again! The bare branches are scraping the night skies, the pumpkins are in bloom, and there’s a crinkly carpet of red, gold, and yellow underfoot. And oh yes, Mr. Cochran, you bet your candy corns everybody’s got their masks. More so than ever.

Time for the marathon! Not just thirty one first time watch horror movies, but as many as I can fit in. So come along as I find the time to plunk my butt on the old scary sofa and pin my eyes to the booooooob tube.

Day #1 – Scream 3 – So I had previously seen Scream 1 and 2. This year, watching the whole series with my eldest daughter. First time seeing part 3. We’re on location in Los Angeles, the meta-levels five feet high and rising as we tour the set of Stab 3, the latest slasher flick in the series based on the Woodsboro killings of the first two movies. Irrepressible Deputy Dewey is on board as a consultant, ostensibly keeping an eye on Sidney, who has gone into isolation after the rampage at Windsor College in the previous installment and a series of anonymous prank calls. When the cast starts dying in the same order as their real-life counterparts, LA detective Kincaid joins forces with Dewey, Sid, and mercenary reporter Gale to unmask the latest Ghostface killer. The trilogy ending (until Scream 4) twist isn’t bad, but the reduced budget is really showing on this one. Still, I’m invested in the characters and they carry it. Bonus points for Sid wearing Derek’s frat necklace from the last movie through this one.

Scream 4 – In this improbably entertaining sequel, Craven ups the blood and madness significantly. Sidney returns to Woodsboro riding the tide of a best selling memoir of her horrific experiences. Dewey is now sheriff, and still married to Gale, who, looking for a comeback and jealous of Sid’s newfound success, teams up with a couple of the local high school cinema club nerds to suss out a new Ghostface killer stalking the local teens. New faces to the series Rory Culkin and especially Emma Roberts as Sidney’s cousin Jill give really entertaining performances. Always good to see Anthony Anderson too. The meta is strong with this one, the kills are brutal and interesting, and the opening Stab cameos are a hoot. Good soundtrack too. Sadly, Wes Craven’s last outing as a director, but he went out on a high note.

Day #2 – The Little Shop of Horrors (1960). The unique crossbred plant of an amateur botanist causes a stir in a low rent floral shop in LA’s skid row district. Its peculiar diet leads to a serious of local disappearances. Of course I had seen the musical 80’s version numerous times (both the upbeat theatrical cut and the downers extended version), but I’d never seen Roger Corman’s original, only been vaguely aware that Jack Nicholson was in it (he plays the Bill Murray role of the sadist in the dentist’s office from the remake). The movie is populated with an ensemble cast of bizarre, broadly comedic characters. Dick Miller (of Gremlins and a host of other appearances), a regular customer of Mr. Mushnick’s floral shop, habitually eats flowers with a helping of seasoning, and hurries home because ‘the wife’s having begonias tonight.’ Hapless protagonist Seymour (Jonathan Haze) lives with his crazed and highly medicated mother (Myrtle Vain), who seems to keep nothing but medicine in the house in terms of food and drink, and serves chow mein noodles with epsom salt and TCM herbs. The cops, Sgt. Joe Fink (Wally Campo) and Officer Frank Stoolie (Jack Warford), are flat-affect-no-inflection Dragnet spoofs (at one point placidly commenting “How are the kids?” “Lost one. Playin’ with matches.” “Tough break.”). Somehow this lends the whole grainy black and white enterprise a feverish, nightmarish air. Characters act in the name of dream logic, and feel less human and more like stand-ins. It’s genuinely funny, but also genuinely disturbing at times, particularly when the plant buds open at the end.

Antebellum – Spoilers in this one. Sometimes being a history nerd undermines your entertainment. In this case, I figured out the central twist of Antebellum about fifteen or twenty minutes in when the torch bearing Confederates traipsed around shouting a Nazi German slogan (with clear allusions to the tiki torch fiasco in South Carolina). Told out of order, we’re presented with the horrors of slave life on a small cotton plantation guarded by a group of Confederate soldiers. Right off there were little hints that this wasn’t what was going on. Why are soldiers concerned with slaves? Why were there so many slaves on this little patch of cotton? Why do they cremate the slaves and why is the cotton burned? I couldn’t tell if this was inaccuracy, limited budget, or deliberate (of course, later we learn it is deliberate), so that kinda took me out of it for a little bit. The big hand tip is when the slaves are ordered to whistle a Negro work tune and choose Lift Every Voice and Sing (and later Always And Forever). Then a ringing cellphone brings us to the present (actually a flashback) showing how Janelle Monae wound up in this fix. Here the movie lost me a bit more, only because I couldn’t relate as well to the characters. They were a bit too bougie for me. Yet, their daily lives are peppered with a number of subtle racial confrontations – a dismissive concierge, a thoughtless waitress, a mysterious correspondent who peppers her conversation with undermining racial digs (you’re so articulate!) and a racist talk show guest, which, I can see is a commentary on the fact that although they’re successful, they’re still subjected to this strange and pervasive white ego at all times. Antebellum tries to show the viewer how the past informs the present and how outmoded dogma still manages to survive in modern day, like a masked maniac unable to die. I just wish the execution was a little better. The villains aren’t memorable, and besides Monae, we really don’t know what’s going on with the other captives either. Gabourey Sidibe is a hurricane and always welcome, and though I kinda disliked her character it was also refreshing to see her in a confident, self-actualized role for a change. Some striking imagery (Monae in the Union officer coat on the horse with her hatchet, dreds flying is particularly indelible), but never quite feels like it earns it for some reason.

Day #3 – The Skull – An occult scholar and collector (Peter Cushing) purchases the skull of the Marquis de Sade and skull-related shenanigans ensue. Always good to see Cushing and Christopher Lee together (Lee plays a friendly rival from whom the skull was originally stolen), but this Amicus possession flick is so low key it doesn’t really blip above a flat line. I really dig the ‘skull vision’ POV, even though the dastardly Marquis is looking out his own nose hole for some reason.

Vampires Vs. The Bronx – A trio of West Indian kids discover the shadowy real estate company spearheading the gentrification of their beloved Bronx neighborhood is a front for a group of bloodsucking vampires looking to establish new hunting grounds. Maybe the metaphor is on the nose, but I liked the concept, and there’s plenty of clever vampire references in this for me to love. The evil company is The Murnau Corporation (its logo a woodcut of Vlad Tepis). The bodega owner shows the kids ‘Blade’ to kick off their anti-vampire training, and they go the rest of the movie calling them suckheads. It’s low budget, and it overstays its welcome, but I really enjoyed the first half, and I like Shea Wigham as an oily familiar (though his character turn’s a little weird). Method Man plays a Catholic priest and Zoe Saldana shows up. Best line: “I’m Haitian! My grandma’s been preparing me for this my whole life!”

Jeff Carter’s We Bleed Orange and Black: 31 Fun-Sized Tales for Halloween

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The premise of Jeff Carter’s new collection We Bleed Orange and Black: 31 Fun-Sized Tales for Halloween stems from the author’s all-encompassing passion for the Halloween season, which, in the course of our friendship, I’ve come to know and appreciate firsthand. The book is like a plastic pumpkin bucket with a sign that says Take One and one of those green rubber hands that snaps up and grabs you as you close your fingers around a Zagnut. It’s sincere as a van Pelt pumpkin patch and drips with October love like a jack ‘o lantern drooling black and orange wax in the wee hours of All Hallow’s Eve. If you’ve got a modicum of the same appreciation Jeff has for the holiday, you’re going to find something to love in this.

I asked Jeff a buncha questions. Here they are, with his answers. You know the deal.

1. You personally appreciate every aspect of Halloween, and there are a number of stories in the book where you offer a remarkably diverse series of interpretations of the holiday, native, foreign, even, in one of my favorite offerings, extraterrestrial.  What’s your favorite non-American Halloween tradition?

My favorite might be Bon Odori, a huge group dance held at Japanese Obon festivals where the dead are invited to dance with the living. I’ve had the opportunity to participate a few times (one time with you!)

2. In the same vein, I know we share a fondness for cryptozoology and obscure critters from folklore, but in one story where Busta Rhymes, the Mothman, and Sasquatch are judges on a kind of ‘American’s Next Top Monster Costume’ show, you really surpassed me. I was agog at the monsters you pulled out of your hat. Had you been itching to depict any of these for a while, or did you discover them in researching for this. Which was your favorite among the contestants in the story?

The ‘Fearsome Critters’ from American Folktales have been a blind-spot of mine for a while and I’ve been looking for a way to play with them. Many of the monsters that hail from the logging camps of Appalachia are silly tall-tales, but my favorite would be the saddest creature – The Squonk, a critter so awkward and ugly that if it’s ever spotted it dissolves in its own tears.

3. You wear your ghoulies on your sleeve in this one in terms of exploring the personal origins of your own love for Halloween, so I won’t have you repeat it here. It’s right there in the excerpt from The Year Without Halloween and the story of the werewolf in the Halloween costume contest (which…I’m pretty sure I was present at the gathering that inspired this one). Give me the best Halloween costume you ever wore, and your favorite Halloween experience.

My most ambitious costume ever was an expandable two-story high carnival-style Grim Reaper.

I intentionally make it hard to choose a favorite Halloween experience by packing every October with as much fun as possible. Therefore, I will simply reach back to my blurry recollections of childhood running through the dark streets with my friends, inhaling the fumes of bad latex masks and letting the night stretch out before us like a moveable feast of candy and adventure.

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4. Christmas has its TV and movie classics. What about Halloween?

To avoid any angry mobs, I’ll give an honest answer: I loved every ‘Halloween episode’ of my regular childhood shows. I like the Great Pumpkin as much as the next kid, but it felt more special when Halloween took over an episode of MacGuyver or Quantum Leap. 

5. Who was the ambassador of Halloween when you were a kid? Like, in Chicagoland, we had Rich Koz, the Son of Svengoolie, and as a kid who sat in front of the TV a lot, watching his monster show around Halloween was a big deal. Did you have anybody like that?

Commander U.S.A. was our beloved Horror host for ‘Groovy Movies’, and every Saturday afternoon became Halloween when he and his pal Lefty were on.

6. This has been covered elsewhere (and I think at least one of these is answered in your A,B,C’s of Halloween in the book), but not here. What’s your favorite and least favorite Halloween candy?

Favorite: Mini-Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups (especially the modern dark chocolate kind)

Least favorite: Necco Wafers, hands down. Those brittle, chalky discs of plastic are like some cheap stale mint you’d find under the floor mats of an old family station wagon in a junkyard. I once lost a bet and my friend made me eat five entire rolls.

7.  In the face of Covid-19 and social distancing, it’s a great time for masks but possibly not a great time to go door to door for candy or bob for apples. What do you think Halloween’s going to look like this year (and in subsequent years, till this pandemic comes under control)?   

This is a developing story, of course, but according to a recent poll I saw many parents are still planning to celebrate and/or take their kids trick-or-treating. I’ve seen people planning clotheslines of individual goody bags, long tubes to slide candy down, and my favorite ‘#YeetTheTreat’.

For myself, I’ve considered a ‘Candy-pult’ and a rack with dozens of piñatas.

Ultimately, I think the focus will be on home decorating, scary movies and hopefully some ghost stories.

Stay tuned after this commercial break for the lightning round!

WE BLEED ORANGE & BLACK – 31 Fun-sized Tales for Halloween 

Available for Pre-Order Now – 

https://www.amazon.com/Bleed-Orange-Black-Fun-sized-Halloween/dp/B08FP25HZ4/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=jeff+carter+orange&qid=1599161059&sr=8-2

Kindle: 99 cents

Print: $5.50

Kindle Unlimited: Free

Release Date: October 6, 2020

Free Giveaway in October – 10/7, 10/8, 10/9 and 10/12, 10/13

Review copies available upon request.

And we’re back, boos and ghouls, with the lightning round…

8. Most Dangerous candy? Jaw-breakers
9. Weirdest candy? Wax whistles and juice bottles
10. Childhood Dream costume? Cylon from Original Battlestar Galactica
11. Adult Dream costume? Ghost Rider with convincing flaming skull

12. Haunted house or Hay Ride? Hay Ride
13. Universal Horror Nights or Disney? HHN (Disney has never been in my Halloween Budget)
14. Your Worst Costume? Disco Zombie with curly wig, liquid latex makeup and vintage polyester shirt and pants. It was a great costume until I got caught in the pouring cold rain.
15. Freehand pumpkin or patterns? Freehand
16. Ever seen a ghost? Not that I know of
17. Eff, Marry, Kill: Vampires, Werewolves, or Zombies? This is why polygamy was invented.
18. Safest pandemic costume: Boy in the Bubble
19. Riskiest pandemic costume: Kissing Booth
20. Jason or Michael? Jason

21. Blade or Ash? Again, polygamy.
22. True Crime or fake crime? Fiction, please.
23. Grey Aliens or Xenomorphs? Xenomorphs
24. Are humans the real monsters? Not if actual monsters are on the rampage
25. Cutesy Horror? I like every flavor of scary. Halloween is for everyone. That said, it’s exposure to the real stuff that scars kids and turns them into horror fans.
26. East Coast or West Coast? East Coast has the leaves and cider. West Coast has a lot of creative people who blow it out with great costumes, makeup, haunts and theater. It’s a tie.
27. What might Halloween look like in the future? In the near future we may lose the associations of hot cider, sweaters and fall leaves because autumn will be just too damned hot. Costume technology will advance for those who want built-in AC, but otherwise I expect skimpy costumes to be the norm. Waterparks will get Halloween makeovers in the fall, so buy stock in The Creature from the Black Lagoon now.
28. Come back as a Spooky Scary Skeleton? Honestly, it seems like a lot of work.
29. Jack-O’lanterns: Pumpkins or turnips? I carved my first turnip last year and it was really fun, so now I do both!
30. Worst horror movie cliché? Person dragged away from camera.

31. Halloween or Hallowe’en? In my heart there is always a comma in Hallowe’en

WE BLEED ORANGE & BLACK – 31 Fun-sized Tales for Halloween 

Available for Pre-Order Now – https://bit.ly/WeBleed

Kindle: 99 cents

Print: $5.50

Kindle Unlimited: Free

Release Date: October 6, 2020

Free Giveaway in October – 10/7, 10/8, 10/9 and 10/12, 10/13

Review copies available upon request

Social

Seek out more of Jeff’s work at JeffCCarter.com / Facebook & Twitter: @carterwroteit                 

Amazon Author Page & Good Reads: Jeff C. Carter / Instagram: @Jeffc.carter  

‘Express’ In Midnight In The Pentagram from Silver Shamrock Publishing

Silver Shamrock Publishing has put out a star-studded occult horror anthology, Midnight In The Pentagram, featuring –

Wesley Southard & Somer Canon

Catherine Cavendish

Glen Krisch & Mark Steensland

Rob E. Boley

Ronald Kelly

Brian Keene

Graham Masterton

Tim Curran

James Newman

Todd Keisling

Jason Parent

Stephanie Ellis

Chad Lutzke

Tim Meyer

Tony Tremblay

Laurel Hightower

Kenneth W. Cain

J.G. Faherty

William Meikle

Shannon Felton

Owl Goingback

Wesley Southard

Charlotte Platt

Cameron Ulam

Brian Moreland

Armand Rosamilia

Kenneth McKinley

Azzurra Nox

John Quick

Allan Leverone

Mark Steensland

P.D. Cacek

Mark Towse

Amanda Hard

Stephanie Ellis

Robert E. Dunn

Allan Leverone

Gord Rollo

And yeah, me.

My contribution, ‘Express,’ was directly inspired by my watching the Dutch horror movie ‘The Lift’ last year during my annual October horror movie marathon.

Basically it concerns an office building security guard whose suspicions are aroused by an irate bookstore owner’s eccentric behavior.

Here’s an excerpt. Link to buy is below.

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Manning the day security desk in the lobby of The Sturgill Building mainly consisted of pointing out the directory sign to visitors and keeping the panhandlers from harassing the suits on their smoke breaks. It was a cushy gig. Most people knew where they were going when they came through the revolving door, and the stinginess of the corporate types was known far and wide among the downtown tramps, so all but the most addlebrained beggars knew it was useless to hit them up, and stuck to the park and the tenderhearted out of towners.

Dion Wilkes had been here six years now. He’d started on nights. At first the change had been jarring. You could doze through most of the night shift if you set an alarm to remind you when to get up and do your checks, and you could let the bums sleep in the doorways as long as they were packed up and gone by the time the cleaning crew left in the morning.

His promotion to days had been a hassle at first; not as many opportunities to screw around. But he soon learned the perks. No rounds to check, so you could actually plunk your butt in the chair and never move till quitting time. Sure some Fridays he got called upstairs to escort somebody out the front door for the last time. That kind of sucked. They always let them go on a Friday or before a holiday break. He didn’t know the psychology behind that. He had heard it softened the blow, but the people he walked out always seemed on the verge of crying, like they were bewildered refugees staggering away from the site of a bombing, clutching their boxes of personal items, family photos and the kind of goofy toys and knickknacks office workers decorated their cubes with to fly some desperate personal flag of individuality, something to fool themselves into thinking they were anything but what they were.

Dion didn’t keep anything on his desk. He brought his coffee in a thermos and took it home at the end of his shift. He didn’t leave anything of himself in this joint, aside from a fart in his chair and the occasional booger rubbed off surreptitiously under the desk.

But those final Friday dead man walks were as rare as the panhandlers during office hours.

End of the month was Dion’s least favorite time, and today of course, his relief had called in sick. He was pulling a double.

The top floors of the building were occupied by C.D. Holdings, one of those big name companies you heard about on the news whose names popped up all over the place, on car dealerships, baseball stadiums, construction sites, and protest signs.

What they actually did, Dion couldn’t say. They made a lot of people miserable, for sure, because every end of the month a recurring cast of sad looking people wandered up to his desk and asked to speak to somebody about their rent or their mortgage or their business loan. These he’d send to the directory. They would drift over there, blink at the placard, and invariably take the express elevator that bypassed the intervening floors and went directly to C.D. Holdings’ corporate offices up on fourteen, usually after meandering back to his desk to confirm which elevator they were supposed to take.

Some of them clutched thick manila envelopes stuffed with cash or yellow folders bursting with reams of receipts and wrinkled checks. When he called up to C.D., the snooty, attractive receptionist with a head full of race car red hair that didn’t fool anybody, the one who click clacked past his desk every morning and evening and never said hello, and seemed to take personal offense at the sound of Dion’s voice, would tell him to keep whatever offering the sad sacks brought at the security desk and she’d send somebody down to get it at lunch time.

He got to know their faces if not their names; the jittery old Korean lady trying to hold onto her late husband’s corner grocery, the skinny hipster in the ratty scarf who’d had a bad experience once and now didn’t trust his rent check to the mail, the overweight mother in the tube top with a tattoo of a the name ‘Bruce’ in cursive over the arch of her left breast, dragging her frenzied toddler by the wrist, there to tearfully ask somebody in charge for more time.

Only one of these did Dion memorize the name of, and that was Dr. Verman Kind, the owner of The Mystic Scion Bookstore downtown.

Dion didn’t know what Kind was a doctor of. It surely wasn’t medicine, or if it was, he’d go see a vet before he’d step foot in any office of his. Kind was a compact little German man of indeterminate age, Dion guessed somewhere between forty five and sixty, pale, without a scrap of visible body hair. He squinted up at you with beady, bloodshot eyes from behind a pair of square Ben Franklin-type glasses, and spluttered demands in his thick war criminal accent. He dressed like one of those steampunk nerds, always in a black bowler and three piece suit with striped pants and a voluminous black velvet cape (so big, maybe it counted as a cloak) over a silky, brocaded vest and a shirt Dion expected a pirate would run you through to the hilt for. He carried a black case, and always walked swinging a shiny black cane with a fancy silver star-shaped handle.

Always, except for today.

Today, Dr. Kind came through the door (never the revolving door), with a little black terrier scurrying ahead of him on a silver leash.

Dr. Kind’s relationship with C.D. Holdings was tempestuous, and Dion knew the details of his drama by heart because Kind repeated it to him every month, angrily punctuating his narrative with repeated, sharp raps of his cane on Dion’s desk.

Somehow, several months ago, C.D. Holdings had acquired ownership of the building his weirdo occult bookshop had occupied for a number of decades, and they had raised his rent beyond ‘agreeable rates,’ no doubt with the intention of pushing him out so they could level the place and install some garish, soulless monolith like The Sturgill Building itself.

Every month since, Dr. Kind had come to renegotiate the terms of his lease with the powers that be, and every month he emerged from the express elevator loudly and flamboyantly declaring his hatred of C.D. Holdings and its moronic administrators in expressive curses both German and English.

For once though, Kind did not accost Dion at his post, but made straight for the express elevator.

“Hey Dr. Kind!” called Dion, in his authoritarian voice, which was basically an imitation of his father. He stood up as Kind walked by. “What’s with the dog?”

Doc Panda Interview

Hey y’all, I’ve been interviewed over on Aurelio Rico Lopez III’s FB group, Doc Panda, so head over there and listen to me talk about my favorite subject.

Merkabah Rider: Once Upon A Time In The Weird West is once again available.

Hey all, the reissue of the final Merkabah Rider book, Merkabah Rider: Once Upon A Time In The Weird West, is now available.

Tails of Terror from Golden Goblin Press

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Another Golden Goblin Press Lovecraftian anthology, this one concerning the exploits of H.P.’s favorite animal companions, felines and featuring

Derpyfoot by Christine Morgan
The Cat in the Pall by Pete Rawlik
Ghost Story by Brian M. Sammons
Palest of Humans by Don Webb
Bats in the Belfry by William Meikle
Satisfaction Brought Him Back by Glynn Owen Barrass
The Bastet Society by Sam Stone
The Veil of Dreams by Stephen Mark Rainey
The Quest of Pumpkin the Brave by Oscar Rios
The Cats of the Rue d’Auseil by Neil Baker
The Knowledge of the Lost Master by Andi Newton
The Ruins of an Endless City by Lee Clark Zumpe
A Glint in the Eyes by D.A. Madigan
A Field Guide to Wanderlust Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
In the End there is a Drain by Tim Waggoner





My story, Brown Jenkins’ Reckoning, is a follow up to Dreams In The Witch House, and posits the ultimate fate of its most infamous character.

Told from the point of view of the cats of Arkham, who have taken note of an uptick in activity and viciousness by the local rats, all centering on the abandoned Witch House. my story follows a stray cat, a master of the ninth incarnation who proposes to the dream council at Ulthar a plan to defeat the malevolent entity behind the incursions.

I had fun with this one. I like cats. I like dogs too, I’m not one of those people who has to choose. But as I can’t fathom picking up after a dog and I like having companions who don’t need me around twenty four seven, I like cats more.

Here’s an excerpt.

As some men dream of Dylath-Leen and the marble walls of lost Sarnath, all cats dream of Ulthar, the little cobblestone village on the winding River Skai where no cat may be harmed.

The dreaming cats of Arkham met in Ulthar at the old temple on the hill, in the little stone amphitheater-shrine whose top tier was arranged with graven images of the Elder Gods of Earth. The clowder seated itself before the greening brass statues of their patrons, Uldar, and the cat-headed goddess Bast, to discuss the depradations of the rats of Arkham, which had, for unknown reasons, intensified as of late.

The old priest Atal filled the stone bowls of the twelve respected master cats of the ninth incarnation with cream.

One of the housecats, a regal Maine coon spoke;

“The rats are on the offensive. Many new holes gnawed in the homes of man, particularly in French Hill. Food stolen. There are even little bites on the limbs of the sleeping children.”

Children sometimes wandered into the Dreamlands in their carefree slumber, and it was the duty of cats to guide them out again, to keep them safe from the various minions of the Outer God Nyarlathotep, who would steal them for vile ends. This oath of child-herding extended into the waking world.  It was a matter quite serious to the cats, particularly those fortunate to have human homes.

“Why are the mousers not curbing this behavior?” demanded a haughty, fat orange housecat.

“If it is the rats doing these things,” said one of the alley cats, a mangy tabby of the fifth generation, “then they are moving by avenues we cannot tell. The humans have not been idle. They’ve been blowing poison down into the rat nests for weeks. Most of the warrens have emptied into the hills west of town.”

“It’s not a rat,” said a voice from the shoulder of the statue of Bast. “Though I’d be amazed if any fat bellied housecat could hear a rat lapping from his milk bowl in the kitchen over the sound of their own complacent purring.”

A rough looking tomcat, nip-eared, broad shouldered, the color of pipe smoke with white socks, jumped down from his high perch on the statue and went to the center of the shrine. He bore some limp, bleeding shape in his teeth, which he deposited on the floor for all to see.

It was a rat, and it had been subjected to such tortures as only a half-feral alley cat can devise.  The tomcat laid one paw on its back.

This tomcat was notorious across the neighborhoods of Arkham as a scrapper and a night yowler, a scavenging rover who had sired kittens as far away as Innsmouth.  He was also grudgingly recognized as the best mouser in the Miskatonic Valley.

Yet he was also a master of the ninth incarnation, the only one among the alley cats. Only a master could drag the dream avatar of another creature all the way to Ulthar. By their ninth and final incarnation, most cats, having lived several lifetimes of adventures, were content to settle into extended retirement like pampered mandarins, safely exploring their future Dreamland abode from the comfort of some warm human house where they could safely sleep all day, undisturbed in a forgotten hutch.

Not so, this tomcat. His behavior befuddled the other masters, for he had not attended a clowder in the Dreamlands in recent memory. In the waking world, he slashed the knuckles of hands that sought to stroke him, and pissed on proffered bedding. He would rather lie dead in a road than on his back in a soft lap. No one knew where he slept.

Beneath his paw, the mangled rat twitched. The cats licked their chops at its squeal, tasting fear.

“Tell them,” the tomcat hissed.

“Brown Jenkin!” squeaked the rat.

The cats stirred uneasily. The reputation of the creature called Brown Jenkin, the prowling monster rat with the heads and hands of a man, vile familiar to the witch Keziah Mason, servant of the Outer Dark, was well known. Keziah and Brown Jenkin, fugitives of the Salem trials, had haunted Arkham from the upper rooms of the Stinking House on the corner of Pickman and Parsonage for three hundred years, stealing out in the dead of night to snatch children to bleed on the altars of the Old Ones.

“The witch is dead, and her pet with her,” said the Maine coon dismissively.

This was true. The violet witch light had not been seen in the upper windows of the Stinking House for many months. Even the old landlord had at last abandoned it.

“You’re wrong,” wheezed the rat, sounding slightly pleased, even in his pathetic state, to know more than the cats. “Brown Jenkin lives!”

“Tell them the rest,” urged the tomcat, spreading his claws.

 

Store

By Unknown Hands In Shadows Of An Inner Darkness from Golden Goblin Press

I’m pleased to be appearing in another Golden Goblin Press anthology.

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When the dark and malevolent forces of the Cthulhu Mythos gaze upon mankind’s inhumanity towards his fellow man, it casts a long and dark shadow from our own inner darkness. These seven stories explore such shadows, with tales of all-too-familiar evils further darkened by the corruption of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Shadows of an Inner Darkness: Stories of the Struggle Against Eldritch Horrors & Our Own Inhumanity – Edited by Brian Sammons

The Parkland Experiments by William Meikle—When a Doctor begins performing chemical and surgical eugenics experiments on prisoners at Parkland Correctional Facility, the results take an unexpected and otherworldly turn, resulting in horrific consequences.

Carrion Crows by Peter Rawlik—In the aftermath of a terrible hurricane, John Crow is pressed into service with a work gang to recover the dead and bury them in mass graves. The terrible experience changes him, quite literally, forever.

A Ghastly Industry by Lee Clark Zumpe—A couple fleeing from a lynch mob in central Florida takes unlikely refuge in a moldering manor. However, they land in the middle of a family dispute between a desperate young man and his ancient undying grandmother.

The Last Appointment by Oscar Rios—An Arkam doctor is kidnapped after performing an illegal medical procedure on a terribly deformed man from the shunned town of Innsmouth. His patient’s family has some questions and his life depends on the answers.

Man of the House by Christine Morgan—A fabulously wealthy man rules over a houseful of his female relations. He controls their fortunes and keeps them prisoners to his abhorrent desires. But it’s a New Age; women have the vote now, and the time has come for a change.

Heart Mountain by Glynn Owen Barrass —With Executive Order 9066, young Aiko and her family are forcibly taken to Heart Mountain, a detention camp for Japanese Americans. There she discovers a hidden diary and learns the camp has been used before.

My offering, By Unknown Hands, tells the story of a pair of murderous conmen in 1920’s Oklahoma duping and murdering Osage Indians out of their oil rights.

It’s inspired by the actual Osage Indian killings, most recently depicted in David Grann’s Killers Of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and The Birth of The FBI.

Grann’s book details the far reaching and long running conspiracy by Anglo businessmen and officials to undermine Native rights to lucrative oil wells discovered beneath their treaty allotted land, previously thought worthless.

Sometimes I write out of catharsis, and after that infuriating read, I needed it. Of course, using the tools of Lovecraft (and Zealia Bishop), I can put those who escaped justice in the path of the inevitable. Sometimes the apathetic forces that inhabit the Outer Dark do justice by accident. In this case, I tied history to the Mythos via what was previously set forth in the posthumously published The Mound.

Here’s an excerpt.

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I never set out to kill no Indians. It was just something I fell into.

After the war, I came back to Tulsa County to find my old maw dead and gone, and our Sooner land sold off to the oil company. I don’t know who they paid for it, but it wasn’t me. The house was just gone, which explains why none of my letters were ever answered.

I worked for a while as a wildcatter, but that got to feeling too much like being back in the Army. Most jobs did, when you got right down to it. I had brought home a deep unease with me that I just couldn’t shed. Thunder made me jump inside, and open spaces made me fret. I had little patience for men, women, and beasts. Though I had cropped my hair short since I was a boy, it was like somehow they could smell the Indian in me. Maybe it was all that sun from working outside. I left a lot of them bleeding.

In late summer ’21 I drifted west, headed for California, but got tripped up by the Osage Hills and wound up on a ranch on the west edge of the big Indian reservation, manning a 500 gallon copper still for a fellow named Henry Grammer, the world steer roping champion and the biggest bootlegger around.

There were some rough customers among Grammer’s bunch, many who had been bank and train robbers in their day.

One of them, a wind-burned older fellow with nickel blue eyes and an easy manner named Casey Matheson approached me one day while I sat smoking under the blackjack.

“Where are you from, boy?” he asked.

“Berryhill,” I answered, “and leave out that ‘boy’ talk.”

There was threat in that, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“You ain’t no moonshiner,” he went on. “What’d you do before?”

“All kinds of things.”

“You was in the Army though.”

“How’d you know that?”

“You just got that look about you. Makin’ shine don’t fit your pistol, does it?”

“Nothing much does anymore,” I said, tossing my butt away.

“I bet you don’t like sleepin’ in that bunkhouse neither.”

All Grammer’s employees slept in the ranch bunkhouse off the main house, cowboy and moonshiner alike. It was drafty, and the Negro handyman was stingy with caulk, boards, and nails.

“You see that car over there?” Casey said, pointing to a grey Bearcat I had seen about the place once in a while. “That’s a thirty nine hundred dollar automobile, and I got it for a day’s work.”

“Running shine?”

He laughed.

“Hell no. Killin’ Indians.”

He watched me for a minute, gauging my reaction. I tensed for a fight, but said nothing.

“You know how to drive?” he asked.

I did.

“You wanna take a ride?”

It beat squatting over the still.

My hands shuddered on the wheel till we left the gravel drive behind and hit the pavement. I opened her up and whipped those 6-cylinders to galloping, leaving the blackjack hills behind. I hadn’t moved this fast in years. The wind blew over me, roaring in my ears, and those big empty plains of bluestem and spiderwort flew past. I lost my hat, but I didn’t care.

After a bit, Casey waved for me to pull over so he could be heard.

He lit a cigarette, offered me one. I saw he was missing the last two fingers on his left hand.

“Meanin’ no offense, but you got some Indian in you, don’t you?”

I took the cigarette, stared at him. I had a great-grandfather on my mother’s side who was Choctaw.

“Berryhill,” the old man mused, when I didn’t say anything. “What’re you? Quarter Cherokee?”

“Eighth Choc,” I allowed, waiting to see if I’d have to lay him out.

He nodded and waved his cigarette across the big empty prairie, trailing smoke.

“We’re on the Osage reservation now. You notice anything?”

I put my foot on the running board and looked. I could see far, to the towns northeast; to Fairfax and Grey Horse. In between were clunking derricks, laboring like giant metal picks rising and falling on the earth.

“Just oil.”

“That’s right,” said Casey, grinning. “That’s sharp. Most folks’d say ‘nothing.’ Government shuffled these Indians around, stuck ‘em on the barest, rockiest patch of nothing they could find. Only they didn’t figure on what was underneath it. Devil’s tar. Lakes and lakes of it. The Underground Reservation. And the lawyers fixed it so every full-blooded member of the Osage tribe got headrights. Six hundred and fifty seven acres, every man, woman, and child, and mineral rights for leasin’ to the oil companies.” He spat. “Devil must’ve been runnin’ the government back then. Come on, Buckwheat, let’s go into Pawhuska. I wanna show you something.”

We drove thirty minutes along the state highway into the county seat. You could swear we were in Kansas City by the amount of cars going up and down the paved streets. It seemed like every sedan we passed had a white or a Negro driver and an Indian riding in back. The sidewalks were lined with suited Indian men in clean white Stetsons and tall silk hats, some of them trailing blanketed squaws, others with wives in full length beaver coats, their crow black plaits dangling down from under stylish, sequined cloche hats like real St. Louis ladies.

“Just look at ‘em,” Casey growled. “Struttin’ about like red roosters. And every one of ‘em’s got a price on their head. Head downtown.”

We passed a big brown brick building with a tall, wide elm next to it. Stretched out below in the shade was a passel of Indians and well-dressed white men. There was an auctioneer in a skimmer and shirt sleeves calling out rapid fire to the crowd. Parked out front were rows of limousines, the uniformed chauffeurs smoking and chatting.

“Tribal Council House. That there’s the Million Dollar Elm,” said Casey, chin on his elbow, propped on the door of the car. “Better fruit than any apple tree you ever saw. Today it’s ripe. Today’s the day the oil men come out to buy leases. Look at ‘em. Thousands…millions of dollars changing hands. Old John Paul Getty himself’s been under that tree.”

We drove by, continuing down into the residential neighborhood. The old man pointed to the sprawling mansions, two story brick houses with papooses rolling in the green grass yards.

“Look at all they got!” Casey fairly hissed beside me. “Tell me, what’d the Yankees give the Chocs, Buckwheat? Hell, what’d they give you for catchin’ Hun bullets? You got a house like that back in Berryhill?”

Not even when I’d had a house. It had been a drafty two room cabin and maw had brought the pigs in to keep ‘em from freezing in the winter.

I pulled over outside of town. You could still hear the cars guzzling up and down main street.

“You don’t need to sell me,” I said. After driving all this way, seeing all this, I didn’t cotton to going back to the bunkhouse. “How does killin’ ‘em make you any money?”

“You know what a blood quantum is?” said the old man.

How much Indian blood a fella had. I nodded.

“State evaluates every Indian, appoints a white guardian to anybody full or even quarter blood. Basically it’s a check-signer, usually a lawyer, whose job is to keep ‘em spendin’ their money responsibly. Guardian gets a monthly percentage, usually a hundred bucks or so. Sometimes they got ten or twelve Indians to look after. Lotta places for money to slip through. And they make a deal with the white merchants, to overcharge the Osage and split the difference. If you can get in that system, shit, Buckwheat, you’re set for life.”

“And if you can’t?” Because it was plain this old train robber wasn’t part of that system.

“Oh,” Casey said, grinning, “I got friends who are in it. Bankers, merchants, a rancher. Rich folks. And rich folks is hungrier even than you and me. They’ll pay more than we ever seen just to get a little more of what they got. See, tribal members can’t sell to nobody out of the tribe. Headrights is inherited. So if you bump off a rich buck, any kin he might have, marry his woman…”

“I dunno,” I said. “Seems complicated.”

“It is. But I don’t do the figurin and I don’t do the goddamned marryin.’” He reached into the side pocket of the door and pulled out a broom-handled Mauser. He leered at me like it was his peter. “I still do just fine.”

Well, I didn’t want to go back to that drafty goddamn bunkhouse.



Pick up a copy of Shadows Of An Inner Darkness here – https://www.goldengoblinpress.com/store/#!/Shadows-of-an-Inner-Darkness-Print-Format/p/196568586/category=14026709