Murder and Mayhem at the “Bottom of the Hour”
At the end of June 2017, a co-worker of mine inherited enough money from the sale of his late mother’s house that he purchased a bright yellow Corvette in cash and decided to take the summer off. On his last day with the company, our entire team took him to lunch, after which, I was treated to a ride back to the office in the yellow Corvette. As we shot down an open stretch of highway, during which all the blood probably rushed from my face and my lunch threatened to resurface, an idea occurred to me. What if the car were haunted?
And no, I don’t mean possessed like Stephen King’s Christine.
Later that night, I sat down and scribbled out a quick outline about a young man named Victor who inherits enough money from the sale of his late parents’ property to escape city life and buy a house in the country. Of course, he’ll need a car. Buses don’t run out to the sticks.
Victor’s best friend, Toni, convinces him to buy a used but pristine Camaro. Its only flaw is that the dashboard clock is stuck at 1:30AM (hence the story’s title, “Bottom of the Hour”). Shortly after, our hero begins to experience disturbing visions of a man with a silver gun who consistently warns Victor that the car doesn’t belong to him.
At the same time, a beautiful woman named Erica moves into Victor’s apartment complex and the two hit it off immediately. Money, new car, new girlfriend. Things are looking up for our hero, until he discovers that everyone who rides in his Camaro ends up severely injured—or worse—shortly after.
And always at 1:30AM.
After Erica is attacked by an invisible entity in her apartment at that exact time, Victor enlists Toni’s help to investigate the history of the Camaro in the hopes of determining the identity of the man in his visions before he claims his next victim.
After two drafts of the story, I still felt there was something missing so I added two ingredients to increase the tension and give Victor a personal quirk. First, I took an idea from another story that I was working on at the time called “Death Knell” about a six-year-old boy who is “gifted” with the ability to hear death coming after surviving a car accident that killed his parents. I gave that ability and backstory to Victor instead.
Although he possesses this ability, Victor is not always able to intervene. As a result, he keeps what Toni calls “The Grim Reaper’s Scrapbook”—a binder full of obituaries of those people Victor could not save. It’s Victor’s subliminal way of punishing himself.
With those additional elements in place, “Bottom of the Hour” finally came together as a chilling paranormal mystery and I was delighted when editors JM Reinbold and Weldon Burge accepted the story for A PLAGUE OF SHADOWS—available now on Amazon!
