Resurrection: The Tatterdemon Trilogy, #2

By Steve Vernon

The pot has begun to boil.

In 1691 the town of Crossfall taught the witch Thessaly how to die. They beat her, they shot her, they hung her - but nothing worked. When they finally tried to bury her alive Thessaly set the field against them. The first man died as a gust of wind harrowed the meat from his bones. A root,flung like a dirty javelin, cut a second man down. Many more deaths followed. The Preacher Fell impaled the witch upon her very own broom but she dragged him down into the field to wait for three more centuries.

Three hundred years later Maddy Harker will murder her bullying husband Vic. She will bury him in the field as she buried her abusive father years before that. The very same field where the revenant spirit of Thessaly Cross lies waiting.

In three days Vic will rise again - a thing of dirt, bone and hatred.

Men will call him the Tatterdemon.

And hell - and Thessaly - will follow.

Volume Two of the creepiest scarecrow novel you will ever read.

**************

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT STEVE VERNON

"The genre needs new blood and Steve Vernon is quite a transfusion." –Edward Lee, author of FLESH GOTHIC and CITY INFERNAL

"If Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson and Robert Bloch had a three-way sex romp in a hot tub, and then a team of scientists came in and filtered out the water and mixed the leftover DNA into a test tube, the resulting genetic experiment would most likely grow up into Steve Vernon." - Bookgasm 

"Steve Vernon is something of an anomaly in the world of horror literature. He's one of the freshest new voices in the genre although his career has spanned twenty years. Writing with a rare swagger and confidence, Steve Vernon can lead his readers through an entire gamut of emotions from outright fear and repulsion to pity and laughter." - Cemetery Dance 

"Armed with a bizarre sense of humor, a huge amount of originality, a flair for taking risks and a strong grasp of characterization - Steve's got the chops for sure." - Dark Discoveries 

"Steve Vernon was born to write. He's the real deal and we're lucky to have him." - Richard Chizmar 

My Mom thinks I'm pretty cool, too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Vernon
• Release date: Sep 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536530926

Steve Vernon

Everybody always wants a peek at the man behind the curtain. They all want to see just exactly what makes an author tick.Which ticks me off just a little bit - but what good is a lifetime if you can't ride out the peeve and ill-feeling and grin through it all. Hi! I am Steve Vernon and I'd love to scare you. Along the way I'll try to entertain you and I guarantee a giggle as well.If you want to picture me just think of that old dude at the campfire spinning out ghost stories and weird adventures and the grand epic saga of how Thud the Second stepped out of his cave with nothing more than a rock in his fist and slew the mighty saber-toothed tiger.If I listed all of the books I've written I'd most likely bore you - and I am allergic to boring so I will not bore you any further. Go and read some of my books. I promise I sound a whole lot better in print than in real life. Heck, I'll even brush my teeth and comb my hair if you think that will help any.For more up-to-date info please follow my blog at:http://stevevernonstoryteller.wordpress.com/And follow me at Twitter:@StephenVernonyours in storytelling,Steve Vernon

Book preview

THE TATTERDEMON TRILOGY

BOOK TWO - RESURRECTION

By Steve Vernon

Cover Art: Keri Knutson

ISBN-13:  978-1-927765-01-2

First Edition – April 23, 2013

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher and author do not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-person web sites or their content.

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DEDICATION

To My Wife Belinda – I’m nothing but a scarecrow in a lonely field without you.

(Note: This is the SECOND volume in a three volume novel. You ought to have read REVENANT: VOLUME ONE OF THE TATTERDEMON TRILOGY before you start reading this. If you really want to save a little time, trouble and money you ought to look for THE TATTERDEMON OMNIBUS, which is all three books in one volume)

CHAPTER SIX - Lily Sees Something Blue

* 1 *

LILY MILTON STOOD BEFORE three full length mirrors screwed on to the bathroom walls of her trailer. She didn’t like her trailer. She didn’t like the aluminum of it, or the way it refused to rust or change. She didn’t like the way it breathed at night, like a harmonica playing itself.

It was too damn closed in for her liking. 

There were windows all around her. It felt like she was living in a damn peep show. She didn’t like that feeling. It was kind of funny, her being bothered by that after all those years of people staring.

You would think she’d be used to being looked at, the way she used to be.

Three mirrors wide.

She hadn’t used the third mirror for three years now. Her fasting and walking were whittling her down. She left the mirror up to remind her how far she could sink, if she let herself go. 

It was one of Lily’s three quiet secrets.

It wasn’t much of a secret, as secrets went. There wasn’t a soul in town didn’t know Lily was once large enough to give Captain Ahab a reason to live for. The fact was, she’d once weighed in at close to six hundred pounds.

A lot of that weight was paint. Nearly eighty percent of her body was covered in tattoos. The Great Wall of China, surrounded by a half dozen samurai and three long dragons, wound from her left shoulder down to the small of her back. Her left arm was given to a gangly Quixote and Sancho Panza charging gamely at three skeletal windmills. Her breasts bore a pair of veiny octopi dragging down a four masted schooner on her left and an aircraft carrier on her right. The other arm carried Adam and Eve uprooted from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

This was Lily’s world, her geography, and her landmarks. Planted between each monument were a half thousand designs ranging from a Cree Indian in full wardress to a tiny Statue of Liberty. Once they had been everything to her, but her world had folded its tent. 

Now she was shrinking.

The great collapsing universe, that was Lily Milton, all right.

For half her life Lily toured with the Eastern Dream Traveling Carnival and Freak Show. She was their star act, now retired, these six years past. She remembered the way the crowds had stared at her, like she was a goddess. It was the one part of the carnival she truly missed.

Her tattoos were a gift from her lover, Raoul. Sweet tiny Raoul, a sideshow dwarf, not bigger than a nubbin, born with a man sized prick and a heart as large as a circus tent. She could still feel him, climbing atop her like a flea in heat and filling her the way no man ever before him would.

Even the tattoos were a sign of his love. 

It took him nearly ten years to paint the canvas of her flesh. He had vowed to cover her body completely and to one day see her picture immortalized as a six page centerfold in the Guinness Book of Records.

A chicken bone had ended it, her crossroads a forked tang of calcium and gristle caught in little Raoul’s throat. Lily had reacted without thought; inadvertently Heimliching Raoul to death, breaking one of his ribs and driving it like an ivory stake into his tiny beautiful heart.

This was Lily’s second darkest secret.

What she’d done with Raoul after she had Heimliched him to death was her third secret.

The chicken hadn’t filled her and she was scared that there’d be trouble with the law if they found his body. So she disposed of the body as quietly as possible. It had taken three bottles of Southern Cross Barbecue Sauce, and a premium sized bag of charcoal, but she’d choked the last of him down.

Since killing and eating Raoul she had lost all taste for public life. She’d retired from the carnival. She had parked her trailer in the first town she came to. She blamed the fat for his death, and had vowed to lose it.

It was funny, in a way. She’d grown fat for him. To give him more canvas to paint. Now he was gone, though she carried his memory. A tiny white crucifix, carved from his pelvic bone. She wore it like a promise about her soft girdled neck. 

Her weight was vanishing, as well. She’d sworn that the grave they dug for her when she finally walked over that river Jordan that she would be no larger than Raoul himself. In fact, it was her deepest hope to diet down to nothing. She hoped to find him under all that fat, like a baby waiting to be reborn.

She hadn’t counted on the stretching of her skin. It had never quite found its original shape. Her epidermis sagged like a tattered sail cloth. She stayed inside, for fear a gust of wind might sail her off like a runaway kite.

The room began to swim. 

Hell.

A vision was coming in. 

She closed her eyes and let the vision take her. 

They usually came by night, but there were no rules to this gift of hers.

She relaxed. She felt a great weight about her and atop her, surrounding and smothering her. She saw cool blue dread hanging over Crossfall and drifting towards her trailer, like a giant blue amoeba. She saw a pair of stilts, scissoring towards her.

Her eyelids flew open.

She caught a glimpse of pale blue eyes, staring through the window at her.

Damn it!

Those pale eyes were no vision. 

She knew who it was, damn him.

She grabbed her favorite Smurf printed beach blanket and she headed straight for the door - a great blue whale carrying herself on the momentum of her huge cosmic tsunamic force.

* 2 *

Marvin Pusser was built way past thin. His skin sucked close to the bone and stayed there. He’d been born with lots of teeth, for grinning; lots of eye, for staring; and a pinched in nose, just perfect for poking into other people’s business.

And