The final cover for Bloodstone has been released, and it’s a stunner. Featuring review quotes from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Horror World, and blurbs from Brian Keene, Mort Castle, Rick Hautala, Tim Lebbon and Douglas Clegg, along with a haunting cover image, it should certainly catch readers’ attention!

Huge thanks are due to Clean Feet Design, and the art department at Five Star, headed up by Eddie Vincent. They are true and dedicated experts at their craft, and captured my thoughts perfectly.

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“Kenyon’s horror debut evokes an atmosphere of small-town claustrophobia–with a final twist worthy of V.C. Andrews, this tale of classic horror belongs in large libraries.”

- LIBRARY JOURNAL

“Kenyon’s horror debut evokes an atmosphere of small-town claustrophobia…with a final twist worthy of V.C. Andrews, this tale of classic horror belongs in large libraries.”
- Library Journal

“[Kenyon is] challenging such authors as Stephen King and Anne Rice for the spooky heavyweight title–a tale of well-paced terror that ends with a satisfying bump in the night.”

– SHIELD & DIAMOND MAGAZINE

“A dark thrill ride, layered in an atmosphere of dreamlike unease and disturbing imagery…characters that are so three-dimensional they threaten to step off the page…a debut that will live on in your nightmares long after you’ve finished it.”

- HORROR WORLD

“A dark thrill ride, layered in an atmosphere of dreamlike unease and disturbing imagery… characters that are so three-dimensional they threaten to step off the page…a debut that will live on in your nightmares long after you’ve finished it.”
- Horror World

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AN EX-CON on the run from his own shattered past…
A WOMAN taken against her will…
A YOUNG MAN consumed by rage…
AND A TOWN on the edge of darkness.

In White Falls, a horrifying truth is about to be uncovered that will unleash an ancient evil. Some secrets should remain buried…

A recovering alcoholic on the run from his past, all Billy Smith wants is to be left alone. But the visions that torture his every living moment will not let him rest. Commanded by the voices in his head to commit acts of violence he does not understand, he kidnaps a prostitute known only as Angel and heads north to a bucolic little New England town called White Falls.

There, the two strangers try to blend in while they struggle to understand the bizarre circumstances that have brought them together. But in this town all is not what it seems. Something monstrous has taken root in White Falls, and has waited centuries for the right time to awaken.

As the town draws closer to its Spring Festival, psyches begin to unravel and violence erupts. Nobody is safe from the madness that spreads from neighbor to neighbor, kin to kin. As Billy Smith and Angel hurtle headlong towards their ultimate destiny, they find themselves in the grip of a power much greater than they can imagine.

The fate of the living ultimately rests on the back of one man.

For the dead are watching . . . and they are hungry.

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On a cloudless night in April an ancient gray Volkswagen drifted through the outskirts of a town called Holy Hill, South Carolina, before pulling into the Sleepy Inn parking lot. The two people inside the car had seen many such towns over the past few days, and many such motels. They parked near the manager’s office.

“I’ll just get us a room,” the man said to the woman driving. She was pretty and thin but too pale. “Remember,” he said, “I’ll be able to see you from the window. Don’t try anything stupid. I don’t want to cuff you again.”

The woman nodded. She knew enough about that. Last time the handcuffs were too tight and had cut cruelly into her flesh. She rubbed her wrist absently, touching the dark-blue bruises that marked their passage.

The man opened the passenger door and got out, flakes of rust fluttering to the ground, then reached back in and pulled the keys from the ignition. Then he closed the door with a thunk and walked quickly to the office.

He was such a tall man, almost as thin as me, the woman thought. She could see his head and shoulders through the grime-smeared window, and she could see the top half of another man’s head. He had thick, white hair and looked like someone’s grandfather.

She started to shiver uncontrollably. Help me, she pleaded silently to the old man. Oh please, help . . .

* * * * *

“. . . a room for me and my wife,” the man was saying. He stood at the counter facing the manager of the motel. The manager had a deeply lined country face and his hands were large and chapped, and he cupped them together on the counter like two lifeless birds.

“Just the one night?”

“We’ll be leaving early.”

“We got single rooms with twin beds. You can push ‘em together if you want.”

“That’s fine,” the man said. He stole a quick glance out the window. “Twin beds are just fine.”

The manager reached for a key from the rack behind his head and then opened the dog-eared register on the counter. A brand-new computer monitor and keyboard sat nearby gathering dust. “Sign in here. Out by ten tomorrow or you’ll be paying for another night whether you stay or not. There’s a breakfast place down the road where you can get a cup of joe. Opens up early.”

The man took up a pen, hesitated just a moment and signed, Mr. and Mrs. Claude Barnes.
“Okay, Mr. Barnes,” the manager said. “Room twenty-three, just two doors down—”

“Do you have anything toward the end of the motel?” the man interrupted. Then, seeing the look on the manager’s face, he continued, “my wife is a light sleeper. If there’s anything farther away from the road . . .”

The manager nodded. “Sure. I’ll put you in room four.” He took another key down from the rack.

The man took the key and left the office, his palms sweaty and his blood thumping. He could see as he stepped back into the parking lot that the woman hadn’t moved from the driver’s seat. He slid a hand in his coat pocket and fingered the handcuffs, feeling their weight, their substance. The metal was cool and slippery. He couldn’t possibly watch the woman all the time. He would have to begin to trust her eventually. He was tired, so very tired. They had been on the road for two days straight, driving through the night.

He walked around the car and opened the driver’s side door. The woman looked up at him like a dog that had been kicked. It made him sick to see her looking at him like that. “Get out,” he said roughly, and stepped back. She stood up and he couldn’t help noticing her flinch as he reached out to close the door. He knew he would have to cuff her later, and it made him angry. He didn’t like getting angry but couldn’t seem to help it. He’d never been good with women, had never been able to understand them. She was scared and there was nothing he could do to change that now.

A cold wind had come up, the kind that brings tears. It ruffled their hair and tore at their clothes as they walked quickly across the mostly empty parking lot, and brought a smell of leaves and cold mud, dead things lying in watery ground.

The man fumbled the key into the door lock and turned it. The motel room was dark and hot. He felt around on the wall until he found the light switch, and then he closed the door quickly behind them. The room looked like it had last been remodeled sometime in the 1960s; water-stained wallpaper, lamps with pale green shades, landscape prints in chipped frames and faded pastel colors. He smelled pine-scented cleaner and stale sweat, a room that cried out to be opened up to the wind and stripped to the bare boards.

He sat down heavily on the nearest bed, feeling it sag under him. The springs poked at him like little bony fingers. He wanted a hot shower but didn’t dare take one yet.

She was staring at the twin beds. “Will you handcuff me again tonight?”

“Damn it,” he said softly, the fight slipping away from him at once. “Don’t talk to me about that. Not now.”

The woman had turned her eyes on him. “I won’t run. I promise.”

“Yes you will,” he said. “I would.”

“I didn’t run away just now. I saw you in there through the window. I could have gotten away any time. I could have screamed for help. That man would have helped me. He looked like a nice guy.”

“I would have had to kill him,” he said quietly. “Do you want that?”

“You couldn’t kill him!” she said, her voice rising in pitch. “You don’t have the guts. Fucking coward.”

The man looked at her for a moment and shook his head. “I’m sorry. Really I am. But you’ve got to understand—”

“I don’t understand anything!” the woman shouted suddenly, forcefully, the words torn from her throat. Her hands had curled into fists; tears welled up behind bruise-colored lids. She struggled out of the light jacket he had given her and threw it onto the floor, then pulled her white haltertop over her slender neck and head. She ripped at her skirt until it gave and fell around her ankles, and she stood trembling in front of him in lace bra and panties, her chest flushing red.

“Go ahead.” She stared at him, her eyes wild. “Rape me if that’s what you want. Come on, you son of a bitch. Get it over with, why don’t you?”

“I’m not going to touch you.”

“Can’t get it up? Always trying to push women around when there’s nothing between your legs? I know you. I know who you are.”

“Shut up.”

“Fuck you! Coward!”

The last shriek of words hung in the air and drifted away to silence. He remained still on the bed, watching her face, wondering if anyone had heard. A vein in her throat jumped. She was so thin, he thought, but beautiful. A strange thing to be thinking now but he couldn’t help it. This was the first time since he had taken her that she had put up a fight, and it was about time.

“Come here,” he said, and added, “please.” He patted the mattress beside him and waited.
She shook her head. But then she sat. He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew the handcuffs, and she sighed as he touched her arm, letting out a single, choked sob. He closed one of the cuffs on the cross bar at the head of the bed and the other on her wrist. Then he stood up from the mattress and gathered her things from the floor. “Cover yourself,” he said.

Then he went into the bathroom and closed the door, leaning his head against the slippery wood. The woman was quiet in the other room. Was he crazy, taking her like this? The thought had crept into his head lately; he had begun to think of it as a real possibility. Slowly, he undressed and climbed under the scalding spray, letting his head hang down, letting the needles of water wash away the dirt from his skin. Wash away the guilt.

* * * * *

Twenty minutes later he left the bathroom and found the woman asleep on the mattress. She had not dressed. He stood looking down at her a moment, watching her sleep. Needle marks and bruises dotted her arm. Tears streaked her face.

Maybe he was crazy, after all. The thought did not afford him any comfort, nor did it change things much. It did not stop the images that kept churning through his head, did not stop the voices. Real or not, they were there, clamoring to be heard. They wouldn’t stop until he had done what they asked him to do.

He turned out the light and quietly climbed in between the sheets on the other bed. Lying in the blackness, listening to the sound of the cars on the road, he realized he only knew her first name. Angel. Surely that wasn’t her real name. Nothing but a stage name, like the dancers in Las Vegas used to keep the crazies out of their backyards. She knew where they were going and something of what they had to do, even if she wouldn’t admit it. But that didn’t make it any easier.

“I’m sorry, Angel,” he whispered softly, but her breathing did not change, and he was sure she hadn’t heard. He closed his eyes in the darkness, and prayed the dreams would not come again tonight.

Read the opening to part one: Past Haunts

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I’m sitting on the couch in my living room, laptop balanced on my knees. The sound of the shower drifts in from the first floor bathroom, along with the Beach Boy’s “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” from the shower radio. Among the splashing sounds come the voices of my daughters; the four year old’s high, happy laughter, the eleven year old’s voice a bit deeper, stronger, a little wiser. My older daughter treats her sister like a princess to be pampered, calling her sweetheart as she helps shampoo her hair.

They are in the shower together because it is now our only bathroom, and there is no tub. Last weekend I took a sledgehammer to the upstairs bathroom and back bedroom. Now it is a tangled mess of dangling wires, nubs of shattered lathe and piles of insulation.

Our little one is too small to shower on her own, and our oldest, because she loves her sister (and her parents), has agreed to help out. She has already showered once today, but the four year old has syrup in her hair and sauce on her nose. She hasn’t seen a bar of soap since Friday. Back to school tomorrow. Time to get clean.

I’ve just come in from a trip to the grocery store with the four year old to get supplies for the week. An hour and a half of jogging up and down the aisles, keeping one eye on the shelves and another on the little girl who keeps yanking things off of them. “Can we buy this one, Daddy? How about this? This one?” When we returned home I juggled putting items away while she pulled them right back out, delighted all over again in what she had found.

I am exhausted. I feel it deep in my bones. This Sunday began even earlier than usual. My wife got up at 6 a.m. to take a friend to the airport, while I tried to sneak in some writing time on the laptop before the kids found me, and before the chorus of breakfast and demands for playtime invaded my private thoughts.

We’ve been to the movies once today (Chicken Little); watched another on DVD (Robots); after the first movie and before the second, while the four year old took her nap, I lugged all the yard furniture into the garage, installed a lock to keep the doors from banging in the wind, packed up the transformer for the ground lights, and cleaned up a few stray pieces of the demolition project I’d tossed out the second-floor window a few days before. The dumpster gets picked up tomorrow morning. Anything not in for the ride will be left behind, bits and pieces to be discovered like an archeological find after the snow melts in the spring.

Already my brain is buzzing with a million other things to do. Update the website, get another new page or two written, tweak that ad for the newsletter, polish up a short story, read a few pages of a book I need to review. Then there’s work tomorrow, meetings and deadlines, phone calls and emails to write. Somehow we have to move ahead with the backroom project I started last week–make sure the dumpster gets picked up, juggle the carpenters and plumber and electrician, scheduling everyone so they don’t run into each other or fall through the open floor joists. We won’t be at home, so we have to make sure every instruction is clear.

The project needed to be done. We’d been living for the past three years with a second floor bathroom about five by seven feet, with a slanted floor, leaky pipes and a light switch that worked only when it felt inspired. But all this is enough to make my head throb. I can feel myself slowly simmering inside. A cough that has been lingering for the past few days feels like it might develop into something nasty, and my body is filled with a sledgehammer’s aches and pains. Why do we do it to ourselves, I wonder. I don’t need all this. Why not just let things go, just a little? Crack open a beer and flip on an episode of CSI? Why do we fight so hard to be always moving, always trying to cram in one more thing before we fall into bed for a few hours of restless sleep?

I hear the girls again as the shower turns off. The little one giggles as her sister towels down her hair. My wife smiles at me over the screen of her laptop. Green Day’s on the radio now; “When September Ends.” The little one starts singing along, and her sister joins in before the hair dryer drowns them both out.

My wife smiles at me, stretches her toes out to touch mine. Our dueling laptop keys pause as we recognize this fleeting moment, one of those rare suspended seconds when you see your life spread out like a fresh canvas, when you know the love that is always there, but too often buried deep beneath the remains of the day.

Then the four year old comes running in like a miniature bulldog, flinging her still-wet hair, shouting about her snack, and wanting to play for just one more minute; our oldest calls out that there’s water on the floor, and that her sister tried to bite her when she wouldn’t give her the hair dryer. The living room looks like it’s been ransacked by a gang of thieves. The moment is over. But I’m able to smile again.

I might miss a deadline tomorrow, and my story might not get done. I don’t know about the updates to the site, and I’m not sure if the electrician will show up or not. But I do know, once again, why we do this: we push ourselves to make everything as perfect as we can for our loved ones. But sometimes we lose sight of them in the process. And that’s a shame.

I’m ready to take on tomorrow. I’m going to tackle each and every thing on my list, one at a time. But first, I’m going to go read my little girl a story. Because this, this is my life.

This is why I do what I do.

PART ONE: PAST HAUNTS

If a man die, shall he live again?
All the days of my service I would wait,
Till my release should come.
-Job 14:14

August 20th, 1726.

Regards,
Frederick

Read Chapter One
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