All Hallows' Eve

By Nicholas John

This Halloween, Hell hath no fury like a witch scorned. When a teen love-traingle ends badly, revenge, death and destruction turns a seemingly utopian community into Hell on Earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicholas John
• Release date: Oct 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370903658

Book preview

All Hallows’ Eve

by

Nicholas John

Nightmares on Helm Street were a rarity – and why wouldn’t they be… here on this perfect, idyllic suburban cul-de-sac, where children had wonderful lives with no worries to bother them and carry forward into the subconscious of sleep?

Friday the 13ths on Helm Street were revelled-in like every other Friday.

Good, clean-living residents who buzzed with that, ‘Friday Feeling’ looking forward to free time to spend at their hobbies and with family and friends – decent people, good neighbours in a perfect community, living for the weekend, looking forward to two days off work or out of school.

The closest thing to a chainsaw massacre was the constant weekend buzzing of lawnmowers as the perfectly manicured lawns were cut in a happy neighbourhood that actually had white picket fences, and even tonight, Halloween Night, was wholesome, bright and family-orientated.

Eve thought it disappointingly benign.

She remembered, ‘Guising’, when children and adults alike had dressed as terrifyingly as possible, to ward off evil spirits that genuinely scared them.

None of the small children were dressed as monsters. Gone were those literary classics brought to life in wonderful celluloid – no Dracula, Frankenstein – not even a hastily-fashioned mummy, constructed by a desperate parent who had forgotten the holiday and been force to wrap their child head-to-toe in bandages from their home’s First Aid Box.

Nor were there any of the 80’s or 90’s icons. No children wearing hockey masks, or dark brown fedoras and black and green hooped jumpers. There were no elongated, bright white ghost faces and red-paint soaked plastic carving knives.

Instead there were boys dressed as cowboys, astronauts, football players, Robin Hood, characters from contemporary Children’s movies and television shows. Eve despaired at the girls, dressed so prettily as Princesses, Fairies and… Fairy Princesses.

Where has the horror gone?

Eve Whistler sang a bitter-sweet song that reflected her melancholy merriment as she watched them from the dusty attic room that had served as her bedroom, classroom, bathroom and prison for the past eight days.

The attic was large, the same size as the house below it but with the advantage of not having been segregated into individual rooms; there were no luxuries despite the size however, Eve’s existence was a secret, and so despite her parents move into the new property being a clandestine, night time operation, Eve had been afforded