Shadowed Things - Stories of Murder, Mayhem, and Monsters

By Billie Sue Mosiman

A collection of stories involving murder and monsters, from the real world and the unreal, the mayhem that waits in the shadows.

25,000 words of dark fiction by Edgar and Stoker Nominated Billie Sue Mosiman, author of more than 50 books.

From a story about a man who has lost his memory and when he finds it, discovers just how bad he really is--to a boy who sees a shadow man, there's five different dark fiction stories here for every taste.

BASTARD
They called him a "bastard" but why, and what did that mean? Just how bad was he?

OUT OF THE SKY
From the sky came what people first thought were meteorites. It turned out there was more in the fireballs than just hot iron ore.

HELL & BRIMSTONE
She had the power of fire and if she could ever control it she might have a new life.

RABBIT HUNTER
He lived with his mother and brother in Arizona and all he was good at was hunting rabbits. Would they just leave him alone?

SHADOWED THINGS
The boy believed there was a shadow man menacing his nights. On his tenth birthday he found out just how real it was.

BONUS: An excerpt from the novel, MOON LAKE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Billie Sue Mosiman
• Release date: Jun 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781513068848

Billie Sue Mosiman

Billie Sue Mosiman published 13 novels with New York major publishers and recently published BANISHED, her latest novel. She was nominated for the Edgar Award and was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, both for her novels. Since 2011 she's had more than 50 e-books made available on online bookstores. She’s the author of at least 150 published short stories that were in various magazines and anthologies. Her latest stories will be in BETTER WEIRD edited by Paul F. Olson from Cemetery Dance, a tribute anthology to David Silva, a story in the anthology ALLEGORIES OF THE TAROT edited by Annetta Ribken, and another story in William Cook’s FRESH FEAR. She’s an active member of HWA and International Thriller Writers. Blog: http://www.peculiarwriter.blogspot.com Twitter: @billiemosiman Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/billie.s.mosiman Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/texasdolly47 Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Billie-Sue-Mosiman

Book preview

Shadowed Things - Stories of Murder, Mayhem, and Monsters

by Billie Sue Mosiman

Published by Billie Sue Mosiman, 2013.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

SHADOWED THINGS - STORIES OF MURDER, MAYHEM, AND MONSTERS

First edition. June 10, 2013.

Copyright © 2013 Billie Sue Mosiman.

Written by Billie Sue Mosiman.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Bastard was first published in MIRAGES, an anthology edited by Trent Zelazny. | Bastard | By | Billie Sue Mosiman

OUT OF THE SKY | By | Billie Sue Mosiman

HELL & BRIMSTONE | By | Billie Sue Mosiman

RABBIT HUNTER | By

First published as Willie Was a Good Boy in the magazine, BLONDE ON BLONDE, Houston, Texas, 1988.

SHADOWED THINGS | by | Billie Sue Mosiman

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this collection, please leave a short review. Other stories and novels by Billie Sue Mosiman, author of more than 50 e-books, can be found at any online bookstore. Her blog, featuring a writer's memoir, is at The Peculiar Life of a Writer.  Follow her on Twitter @billiemosiman.

Bastard was first published in MIRAGES, an anthology edited by Trent Zelazny.

Bastard

By

Billie Sue Mosiman

––––––––

He walked down the street at midnight. What street, what midnight, he had no idea. He was as lost as a man snared in a nightmare.

He knew a couple of things. He had a long history of drug abuse. And he had some kind of mental illness. What kind eluded him. It might be OCD or bi-polar, but he didn't think it was both.

Funny he could remember the drugs—except his veins were zinging like a taut electric wire and that was a by-God pretty good indication—but stranger still was remembering he was sick. Especially since he didn't even know his name. The illness was like a hook sunk deep in his brain, a thing that wasn't going away; it was just festering and rusting and building up a fleshy pink wall around it to keep it there embedded forever.

He stopped at a corner and stood reading the street signs. He was at the corner of Barkley and Coralee. He was in a city and it had to be in a temperate climate because there were palms and heaps of flowers in the middle island running down the center of the four-lane Coralee. Was he in Florida or California? Hell, he could be in goddamn Puerto Rico or Spain for all he knew. No, not Spain, the street signs wouldn't have sounded English.

He turned, walking along a sidewalk down Coralee. Traffic was light. He could smell the brine of sea on a light breeze, but was it the Gulf, the Atlantic, or the Pacific?

He stopped in his tracks, frozen. Bastard. The word rose up in his brain like a rearing dragon. Who had called him that? He knew, someway, it was an epithet used against him. He walked on, slower, trying to get his mind to work. What was the last thing he remembered?

Now his head began to throb. He reached back and felt the back of his head, felt how moist and matted his hair was against the pads of his fingers. He withdrew his hand and in car light and a glow from a full overhead moon he saw how dark his fingers now appeared. Blood. Bleeding.

Deaf. Dumb. Crazy. Hit in the head. And he was a bastard to someone.

He saw a silver diner a block ahead and made for it. He could wash up, get some coffee, try to remember...

The neon sign for the diner was cursive, the name of the place CHA-CHA-BANG, each word a different color—green, red, blue. He climbed two steps and slipped inside, checking around for a men's room where he could clean up. It was close, just to his right, and he went that direction before he saw he had walked right into the middle of a stick-up.

Hey, where the hell you going? Get back here!

He turned to see who had shouted and saw the couple with guns. A man, in his twenties, a ballcap turned around backward on his shaved head. A woman, same age, short chopped Goth black hair and multiple piercings that dangled silver from her nose, ears, lips, and eyebrows. The guns were bad ass weapons, looked like black semi-automatic Rugers.

Get over here now.

He went slouching forward, feeling so put-upon and pissed off he could have taken a swing at the bad girl because she was nearest him, but she turned the gun on him and his anger went down twenty steps into I-don’t-want-to-die-don't-kill-me.

Sit the hell down. That was the man.

He took a booth, watching them with growing resentment. He saw his hands on the tabletop and they were smeared with his own blood. He only wanted to clean up, for Christ's sake. He felt anger again, something like a rocket going off in his head, that he didn't know who he was, where he was, or what had happened to him. Then this. This two-bit hold-up by a couple of tweakers.

That reminded him of drugs. The drugs he depended upon to keep him sane. The other drugs he took to find a little insanity out at the edges of his life so he could even bear to live it. What did he want? What did he need? He cycled street drugs through his mind and none of them made him light up. What was he addicted to anyway, damn it?

Hand over the money out of that register and do it now. The man had stepped toward the counter and the hand holding his gun was shaking. The woman behind the counter looked like she had been hit by a truck. Her face was falling apart and tears were streaming down the planes of her pinched, white cheeks. She got the register open and scrabbled through the compartments, pulling out bills. She handed them over.

The girl took the gun off him and joined her companion, stuffing the money in the pockets of a fake black leather jacket. The two of them backed away, moving toward the door.

Stay in here and don't follow us and everything’s cool.

They were out the door and the diner broke into pandemonium. The woman at the register fainted, falling to the floor behind the counter. The cook came barreling out from behind the serving window waving a cleaver. Two men in a booth down from him stood and started hurrying to the door. A young waitress deliberately walked to his booth and sank down across from him. My god, she said.

Yeah, wow. He didn't know what to say. It happened so fast and then was over in a blink. He wasn't really sure he'd been involved in watching the robbery.

Not such a great time for you to come in for Key lime, was it?

Pardon me?

She looked at him and then saw the blood on his hand. What happened? Are you all right?

Not really. My head is bleeding. I... I can’t seem to remember who I am or where I am.

Oh, Baby, you're Rory Tonnet, and you're in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. You really don't remember?

So I come in here often and you know me. That's really good. Do you know where I live?

She hesitated, watching the cook help Madge to her feet behind the counter. She said to him, Call the cops, Joe.

I got it, he said, carefully settling Madge on a