Creatures

By Billie Sue Mosiman

CREATURES includes three short stories about a werewolf, a zombie, and a fallen angel--creatures from the mind of the Edgar and Stoker Nominated author of more than 50 books.

The 3-story collection consists of THE SCREAM, THE LONELY WALK, and ANGELIQUE.

THE SCREAM-A young boy on a farm is bitten by a creature he calls a Thing and months later becomes a werewolf. People are going to scream.

THE LONELY WALK-A novelette of a man who leaves home to get help for his family and falls prey to zombies. Now he can never go home again.

ANGELIQUE-An evil fallen angel inhabits the human body of a little girl and she needs help to survive in the world--she needs Nisroc, the angel who can help her destroy the world.

Three tales of terror from Bram Stoker Nominated Billie Sue Mosiman, author of more than 50 books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Billie Sue Mosiman
• Release date: Jun 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781513073699

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

THE SCREAM

––––––––

by

––––––––

Billie Sue Mosiman

Copyright @ Billie Sue Mosiman, 2012

The wound would not heal.

Joey leaned the hoe against the barn wall to adjust the bandage covering his right forearm. He frowned, worried at how dirty the strips of torn sheet had become from this day's work in the field. If the wound got infected any worse, what would happen to him?

Shadows indicating the approach of evening slouched in the corners and rafters of the big open hay-strewn building. It was October, a month when the light failed early. Joey had been attacked in June, during a late hour of darkness as he came from across the field after finishing a long day's tilling.

They wouldn't believe it had been an animal. They thought he had snagged himself again on the barbed wire fence during crossing from the back field to the front. They called him clumsy and a fool, and no, they would not put in a gate they could ill afford for his convenience. They called him worse names than that, but he tried to forget them because the words hurt too much if he kept them in his mind.

If Joey had told them it was not the fence, it was not an animal he had ever seen, something less wolf than macabre beast, more human than gorilla, they would have ridiculed him mercilessly. They might even have sent him away. They threatened him often enough for him to believe them.

Yet no scoring of the flesh from barbed wire had lingered. Instead a throbbing pain and a sulfurous stink came slowly creeping into him that lasted six months now. He tried everything to cure himself. They didn't believe in doctors and would not take him to one. Here at the end of the twentieth century they lived as if they were firmly entrenched in the nineteenth. He had to make do with a poultice of black greasy salve used as medication for the cows and mules. For pain he sneaked an occasional aspirin from his mother's purse. Not that the aspirin helped. The pain kept growing, a tiny incremental bit day by day, until he realized nothing his parents had in the house was going to stop it.

Still the wound festered, turning blue around the bite marks, now threading red streaks up the inside of his biceps toward his shoulder. It ached all the time. He expected it would kill him—a thought that skittered fretfully in and out of his thoughts a dozen times a day as he tried to get through his work.

Did you chop the weeds between your mama's winter greens or have you been daydreaming in the barn for hours?

Joey started. In the open doorway stood the menacing silhouette of his father. In his father's hand Joey could make out the leather horse whip, his father's constant companion used for whipping his son, flinging snakes from beneath the house, frightening cows, swatting flies, and any other action meant to control his world.

I hoed the garden, he said. And he milked the cows, fed them their hay, saw after the mean-spirited hogs that he hated with a passion, and watered the fall sweet potato crop.

His father went through the list nevertheless, questioning him closely about the chores. He was not allowed into the house until everything was done.

Why didn't Evie ever have to help out, Joey wondered sullenly. She was big as he was now, and despite all her weight, just as strong. But, no, Evie was their darling. His sister put on a good show in their presence, while behind their backs she tortured him every chance she got. Called him dowder-head and pinched his earlobes and poured sand in his food. Now there was a monster no one could have imagined.

All right, clean up at the pump. Come inside, supper's getting cold.

His father pivoted and left him alone in the barn with the dark coming on and the fears of his wound nagging for attention. Joey could hear the sound of the whip striking at a pants leg fading as his father moved across the yard.

He shivered with fear and with self-pity.

#

The attack had occurred June sixth. Must have been nine o'clock with the days so long Joey fell into bed from fatigue as soon as he entered the house those days. He had not an inkling of premonition something watched, waiting for a strategic time to ambush him. His tired mind could take in little more than the lonely call of a whippoorwill he heard from the woods and the thankful evening breeze that was beginning to dry his sweat.

He shut off the engine of the old Massey-Ferguson tractor and climbed wearily down at the end of the last row, moonlight full shimmering across the flat symmetrically-tilled land. In the morning he'd have to climb aboard old Massey again and finish the field, or his father would, of course, be