The Immaculate Conception

By Matt Hults

In the late 1600s, under a clear night sky, alone in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the merchant vessel Immaculate sails toward the New World. In her hold are 100 Ashanti slaves bound for uncertain destinies. First Mate Eric Townsend struggles with his conscious at that fact. But things aboard the Immaculate are about to change; there will be changes of heart; changes of thinking; changes of the flesh. For something has been conceived from the hate and oppression of the slavers, and with it comes a new breed of terror that will be born into legend.
From the short story collection Darkest Hour by Matt Hults.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matt Hults
• Release date: Apr 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311569431

Book preview

The

Immaculate Conception

A sample story from the collection

DARKEST HOUR

Matt Hults

-Red Storm Press-

Copyright © 2014

The Immaculate Conception

Red Storm Press, LLC

Copyright © 2014

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of reprinted excerpts for the purpose of reviews. For more information, write to Red Storm Press: [e-mail]

Cover art by Matt Hults

Copyright © 2014 Matt Hults

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, events, dialog, and situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

FIRST EDITION

The Immaculate Conception, first appeared in The Beast Within, copyright © Matt Hults 2008

CONTENTS

The Immaculate Conception

Darkest Hour

About the Author

Husk Sample

The Immaculate Conception

The Middle Passage

1673

The ocean waters lay still as a corpse, the setting sun half submerged in a pool of its own blood on the horizon.

Onboard the Immaculate, the crew’s mood mirrored the stoic silence of the Atlantic. The scheduled revelry for the evening had passed without a single toast to reaching the halfway mark in their journey, and the freshly tapped keg sat forgotten at the base of the mid-mast. Rattled by the shock of what had just happened, the men remained mute while they stared at the naked blackamoor lying splayed near the foredeck, gazing soberly at the way her eviscerated body glinted in the twilight.

Eric knelt beside her, equally stunned. When he ascended above deck he’d been in high spirits, dressed smartly for the occasion. He never expected to find himself helping deliver a baby.

Captain Forester’s shouts for assistance still echoed in his mind, along with the girl’s screams of pain when the Captain ran his dagger across the skin of her abdomen. Eric grimaced at the memory. The smell of spilled blood had mixed with the sun-baked scent of the deck wood, and it took all of his might to hold down his gorge when he’d widened the wound with both hands so the Captain could extract the child. Now, with his crimson-stained shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows and one suspender hanging askew, he failed to recall the reason for celebrating in the first place.

He looked to the girl.

Like the other one hundred Ashanti aboard, she’d left Africa the way she’d been born, nude and unsure of her destiny. Though no older than his fourteen-year-old daughter back in England, the scars on her body testified to a lifetime of hardship and pain. The mere sight of them caused his stomach to roil with guilt.

Eric glanced to the crew. Their pale, sober faces gazed back, waiting for a direction.

Before standing, he took the dead girl’s hands in his own, finding warmth still lingered in her skin. He laid them over her breasts, keenly aware of the eyes on his back when he did. The gesture seemed woefully inadequate when compared to the sight of her belly, however, and after a brief search, he retrieved his topcoat from where he’d cast it aside and carefully laid it over her midsection. The material drooped inward over the gaping hole in her flesh, but at least it concealed her privates. He knew she never