L.I. Albemont's Blog

But Now They Rise Again is out!

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A.D. 1665. The Black Death, la mort negra, swept across Europe and Asia. The fear it evoked cannot be exaggerated. Husbands abandoned wives, wives their husbands, even children were left alone to die by parents terrified of infection. Hastily dug burial pits were scavenged by dogs and vermin, the dead lying exposed to the frightened gaze of passerby. Its horrifying and deadly progress led to the deaths of more than one-third of the population, wiping out entire families, entire villages, changing the face of Europe forever. But what if it was much, much worse?
Welcome to the Great Zombie Plague of London.

A Haunting to be produced by Tantor Media Audiobooks!

I am happy to announce that I have just signed a contract with Tantor Media giving them exclusive, world wide rights to produce the audiobook version of A Haunting. Look for it soon at your favorite audiobook retailer!

Deleted Scene

This is a postscript from The Living Dead series. It may have gone out in some versions but was pulled in a subsequent edit.

T he following tale was gleaned from a collection of curious stories discovered in Greece by Thomas Bruce, the Earl of Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803. It is not, of course, as famous as the pieces of the priceless, marble Parthenon frieze he also “collected” during the same time frame and which still reside (somewhat controversially) in the British Museum. Nevertheless, it is a peek into the myths of a lost world that pre-dated and perhaps foreshadowed our own beloved Western Civilization.

 

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote of an antediluvian, scientifically-advanced people known for their healing abilities. Originally dismissed as another Atlantis type myth, recent textual and archaeological evidence has come to light in Russia that seems to confirm at least some version of the story. Recounted below is a compilation of various fragmented accounts of the tale.

 “Now it came to pass that in the days before the Great Deluge a wise and learned people built a city of great renown, fairer than any city we know today, upon an island in the Mavri-Thalassa*. The people of this city, skilled healers, explored all of the known world for plants and minerals for their miraculous elixirs and poultices. They captured the venom of poisonous snakes for use in various curative decoctions. The ill journeyed hundreds of miles for treatment and the returned travelers spoke of withered limbs made whole, lepers made clean, and an elixir that alleviated all pain.

Snow-capped mountains ringed the city, leaving only a narrow passage through which ships were admitted by sentries at guard stations. Buildings with walls and roofs made of clear stone enclosed gardens where many strange and wonderful plants thrived, carefully tended by linen-clad acolytes.

But the learned people delved too deeply into arcane matters and in their pride and arrogance tried to make themselves immortal. They fell prey to an illness that destroyed their minds whilst leaving their once mortal bodies deathless. Travelers seeking treatment in the city at that time were never seen again or else returned with accounts of besieged townspeople hunted by deranged cannibals from whom they themselves barely escaped.

 Tales of the city soon faded into myth and legend. Herodotus tells us that, years later, explorers searching for the fabled city found an island in the midst of Mavir-Thalassa. Upon landing they found brutish creatures roaming a vast and once-beautiful city. Greatly outnumbered, the explorers fled and never returned.

Soon after, the gods grew weary of the wickedness of humanity and sent a Great Flood to cleanse the earth of man and his folly. The roaring, engulfing waters that covered the world swallowed the island and it never re-emerged.

The people of the region avoid swimming in the waters even now and parents frighten children with tales of monsters that emerge on moonless nights, searching for living prey.

*believed to be the Black Sea

Short zombie film

I don’t own this or have anything to do with its creation but thought it was a good film. It’s from Tropfest Australia. Enjoy!
Cargo

Novel under construction. See it here first.

Here is a rough draft of my latest (unfinished) novel. Still working on a title.
Prologue
London
A.D. 1665
 
A blazing star appeared for several weeks before the plague, passing directly over the city and so very near the houses it was plain it imported something peculiar and the apprehensions of the people were greatly increased.
-Journal of the Plague Year
The comet blazed across the heavens, trailing sparkling gas clouds and creating a spectacular show in the early evening sky. The clear weather brought people out into the gardens and lanes, enjoying the soft air and twinkling stars. Children clapped and cried out in wonder but older denizens cast worried glances at the fiery arrow scorching the London sky. Such sights foretold disastrous events and though they exclaimed they soon began to voice fear and consternation. No good would come of it.
Rumor had it that the plague had arisen again in Venice, brought there from the Levant in the late autumn of last year. That graceful floating city was awash with bloated corpses that rose and sank with the tides, its vast wharves a graveyard of ships that entombed putrefying bodies. The great Doge himself was said to have fled the town with all his family. Thick smoke from sulfur fires intended to cleanse the air filled the streets. Infected citizens were locked away in their own houses. Heavy chains drawn across the waterways bore wooden placards warning of death.
These containment measures were doomed to fail; soon tales of roving, murderous bands of- refugees? penitents? began to filter into outlying lands as towns set up special watches and homegrown militias to guard against their advance. The bands only increased in size after each purported attack and the tales grew more fantastic with the passing months. The refugees were insurrectionists, the refugees were mad, the refugees were cannibals and no one could stop them. Ghost ships, manned by nothing living, drifted on the high seas and foundered in harbors, spilling their dead into the briny waters. The plague leapt from Genoa to Marseilles to Le Havre.
The Bonnie Lass, a 200 ton, storm-battered merchant vessel, had sailed to London from the ports of Istanbul carrying more than just dates from Damascus and spices from fabled India. Unaware they had loaded Death onto their ship, the sailors happily anticipated spending their share of the voyage’s earnings, never imagining they could be dead and pitched overboard to a cold, watery grave by the time they reached the storm-tossed English Channel.
Sailing up the Thames and anchoring at Gravesend, most were too weak to board the skiff their shipmates launched under cover of darkness and were left behind, drowning in their own blood and phlegm. Many would rise to a different existence, unlike any they could have imagined. Those who made it off the ship before London port officials boarded and quarantined them all carried Death and more to their unsuspecting families.
Along the docks of Southwark and through Cheapside the plague slithered from taverns to boarding houses to chapels and took its first victims before anyone even knew it was among them. London began to die.
 
Chapter One
 
Two weeks later…
 
 
“The house was shut up and sealed properly as ordered, sir. All the family save the mistress were down with the sickness,” said Rolf Wence, watchman for the Shoreditch parish.
“And you say you have heard nothing since that first night? Were they well supplied with food beforehand?” asked Thomas Sand, practicing physician and resident of the parish.
“Aye, sir. They were well supplied. I was sure to send them a plague nurse as soon as I made the report. The mistress screeched something fierce when told they were under quarantine but the signs could not be mistaken. Proof of infection was clear. Two of the children had lain ill for near two days.”
“Would that they had lain somewhere other than Shoreditch. Six more families are now infested with it, with possibly more unreported. I have a house with rooms to let two lanes over and prospects are shying away from the area now,” grumbled the physician.
The parish council had dispatched the men to investigate a house shuttered by order of the council nearly two days ago. Neighbors reported since then there had been no communication from the family thus enclosed.
The street along which they walked was filthy with rotted food scraps and the contents of chamber pots tossed from windows above. Half-timbered buildings built precariously tall loomed over the broken cobbles, blocking out the sun in spots. Both men held vinegar-soaked handkerchiefs to their noses and paused frequently as large rats, naked tails twitching, skittered boldly across their path.
Gradually the streets grew wider and the teetering houses gave way to handsome brick manses set in goodly gardens and they soon stood before a house, stoutly locked and boarded from the outside and marked with the usual ruddy cross painted on the door. A willow, forlorn and weeping, hung over the roof, casting the pale brick into gloom. This was a prosperous area, the dwellings belonging to successful merchant and artisan families, many esteemed members of London guilds.
No smoke rose from any of the house’s several chimneys. Though probably a fancy, to the men the dwellings around it seemed to shrink away from the plague house. The street was deserted and eerily silent. A child’s shoe lay in the gutter, left behind by a fleeing family. Ruts from many wagon wheels marked the earth between the cobbles.
The watchman strode up to the door and rapped sharply on the door with his staff. No response. He walked around the side of the house and knocked on the locked shutters. The sound echoed along the silent lane.
Down the street a door opened and a linen-coiffed woman peered out. From another door emerged a man with two wide-eyed children. A portly man, wearing soft, leather boots and sporting a drooping set of mustaches strolled into view. Slowly, a small crowd gathered outside the plague house.
“Has anyone seen any of the family or given them food?” asked the physician.
“No, sirrah. We have not approached them. There was a great commotion the first night but since then we have heard nothing. The plague nurse the watchman sent could not get them to come to the door,” replied the woman in the mob cap.
“Then we must force the door. You, sir,” he spoke to the man with the moustaches, “Can you help?”
The gentleman agreed and soon the house stood open. The smell of death rolled out in a wave and most of the neighbors scrambled back to their homes, wishing to avoid contagion.
From the dark doorway a scratching, dragging sound drifted and an emaciated figure crawled forth. The eyes were no more than whitened orbs staring blindly as the clawed hands pulled along the ground, torn mouth stretched wide in what seemed desperate hunger. Skeins of gray hair barely covered the gray skull and hung lank about its face.

The Kirk is available on Amazon and Barnes&Noble!

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“The Kirk” is the page turning new horror thriller from best-selling author L.I. Albemont.

A picturesque town with a dark history is the setting for Albemont’s newest offering. Secrets lie beneath the prosaic surface of the small town of Falkirk. The bucolic beauty conceals an ancient evil that lurks in the quiet woods and lanes, an evil that feeds on murder and madness and fear.