Hush Little Baby

By Sean Kerr

Sian and Andy have good lives, loyal friends, a beautiful home and a loving family. To everyone else, they are the perfect couple, the doting husband, and the successful wife. But every family has secrets, and Sian and Andy’s are about to realise that nothing stays hidden forever. Some secrets are just dying to get out.

At what point does a career become more important than your life, than the one you love, than your own sanity? Sian is about to find out because she keeps seeing things, dark monstrous shapes that hide in her bed, that lurk in every corner, and no-one will believe her. Even her own mother thinks she has lost her mind. To make matters worse, Andy thinks her hallucinations are caused by guilt, a guilt that is slowly devouring their perfect relationship.

After a blazing row, Sian is left alone in a house that feels hostile and dangerous. As darkness falls, she must face her guilt in the form of a horror more profound and more terrifying than her worst nightmares.

Disclaimer: This contains sensitive content and should be avoided if you are easily offended.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eXtasy Books Inc
• Release date: Dec 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781487409210

Sean Kerr

Hi everyone, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Sean Kerr, and I am a 47-year-old gay man living in Cardiff, Wales with my husband of 28 years, Derek. We have two cats, Rita and Harry, and a host of tropical fish.By day, I am an Interior designer, and I have had a shop, Home Zone, in Cardiff with my amazing business partner, Jayne for eleven and a half years. It has and continues to be a struggle. The recession hit a few years after we opened, and it has been challenging, to say the least. I consider myself to be lucky though because the shop pays me a wage, and I have been lucky enough to furnish my house with lovely things because of it, and I really do have some spectacular curtains lol.I worked on building sites for years, and I used the money earned from that to put myself through college, specialist paint techniques etc. I trained in fine art, and then I went out and painted murals on client’s walls, and created Roman Bathrooms and fantasy hand painted bedrooms, all the rage back in the late eighties and nineties. I then became an Interior Designer for a large DIY chain, and that is where I met Jayne, my business partner, and the rest is history.By night I am an Author, and I am very proud to be an author for Extasy Books. It took me some years to get to this point. I spent a very long time trying to get an agent because I thought it was the right thing to do, and after a heck of a lot of refusals, I nearly gave up. I came so close to hitting the delete button on Dead Camp 1 because I thought I did not stand a chance. At the very last moment, I decided to have a go at approaching a few publishers directly, and I sent the manuscript to six. Within two weeks, I had offers of publication from three! Let’s just say that there may have been tears lol. It was my chance, at last, to become a part of a world that I have always loved and admired from a distance, and it is one of the very best things that has ever happened to me.Dead Camp is the first series I ever wrote, and then there is my short novella called Hush Little Baby. Dead Camp is my take on the Vampire genre, a Paranormal Romance series that is set against a backdrop of World War 2. However, the series uses key moments from History to tell one enormous saga, and I have loved every single moment of writing it. There will be five books in the Dead Camp series.Hush is a pure horror story with more than a nod towards such classic programmes as The Twilight Zone and Tales of The Unexpected. The project happened just after I completed Dead Camp 3 and it is a story that I had to get out of my system. It’s definitely a different beast to my Vampire saga, and I hope it will make you go to bed with the lights on lol!Dead Camp 5 is the last book in the series. I will feel very sad to leave it behind. Yet, at the same time, I am so proud of this saga which has been such an important part of my life for the last couple of years. I love writing, so very much. It has always been my dream, and the wonderful Extasy Books has made my dream come true, and it is a world that I am totally in love with. It is a world I hope to be a part of for a very long time to come.

Book preview

Never take your life for granted or something may just take your life.

Sian and Andy have good lives, loyal friends, a beautiful home and a loving family. To everyone else, they are the perfect couple, the doting husband, and the successful wife. But every family has secrets, and Sian and Andy’s are about to realise that nothing stays hidden forever. Some secrets are just dying to get out.

At what point does a career become more important than your life, than the one you love, than your own sanity? Sian is about to find out because she keeps seeing things, dark monstrous shapes that hide in her bed, that lurk in every corner, and no one will believe her. Even her own mother thinks she has lost her mind. To make matters worse, Andy thinks her hallucinations are caused by guilt, a guilt that is slowly devouring their perfect relationship.

After a blazing row, Sian is left alone in a house that feels hostile and dangerous. As darkness falls, she must face her guilt in the form of a horror more profound and more terrifying than her worst nightmares.

Disclaimer: This contains sensitive content and should be avoided if you are easily offended.

The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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

Hush Little Baby

Copyright © 2016 Sean Kerr

ISBN: 978-1-4874-0921-0

Cover art by Valerie Tibbs

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

Published by eXtasy Books Inc or

Devine Destinies, an imprint of eXtasy Books Inc

Look for us online at:

www.eXtasybooks.com or www.devinedestinies.com

Smashwords Edition

Hush Little Baby

By

Sean Kerr

Dedication

To my husband Derek, to my best friends Chris, Craig, Christian, Jayne, to my wonderful mother and father, who all believed I could do it, and gave me the courage to try.

Books would be nothing without readers, and it is to you I dedicate this book, because, without you, they would just be words on paper. So to you, I say thank you.

There is a huge list of amazing people I would like to thank for their support and kindness, and for making me so welcome in their wonderful world. Maggie Lane, Ronnica Bourgeois, Patricia Strehle, Leah Negron, Lori Ferry, Janice Birnie, Sta’Ce Wilson, Brandyo Newton, Pat Jay, Robin Lawless, Ian Cadena, Cassandra Riley, Debra Blomberg, Lorraine Kay, Petra Andrea, Drew Lily, Kathy Morris, Charlotte Anderson, Rhonda Tactor, Jennifer Byars, Stephanie Bonsall, Faye Kennedy, Tounorris Walker. There are so many names and I cannot list them all, but to you, I give my heart and my thanks, because you have helped to make this the most amazing experience of my life and I will always be eternally grateful to you.

Chapter One

Everything glowed pink. The walls flushed rose petal pink, the plush wool carpet blossomed a soft baby pink, the duvet cover over the bed screamed Barbie pink. Even the heart-shaped night light plugged into a power socket glowed a warm, womb-like pink. Fluffy teddy bears festooned an old-fashioned fireplace, while purple and blue gingham bunting dangled intestinally from the ceiling. Beneath a small window, dressed with pink Barbie curtains, sat a small white desk littered with crayons and paper.

A child’s toy lay on top of the paper, Operation Game, its small, crudely rendered body parts scattered across the desk. For a split second, the nose glowed red, the harsh buzzer cutting across the stillborn night.

A small white cat lay curled up in the corner of the bed, but as tiny feet stirred the bedclothes beneath Barbie, the cat uncurled and slipped off the edge of the bed. One of the teddy bear’s heads swivelled around stiffly, its black beady eyes following the cat as it skulked across the room.

* * * *

Pale blue eyes snapped open, glittering in the half-light. Her pale white hand disentangled itself from beneath the bedclothes to flick back a stray lock of blonde hair from the little Princess’ face. She was a pretty little thing, with pale, milky, porcelain-like skin that accentuated the clarity of her pale blue eyes. With a stifled yawn, she swung her small delicate body over the edge of the bed, her toes scrunching into the pink pile of the carpet as she allowed her white nightdress to fall over her ankles.

Half dazed, sleep still heavy upon her eyes, the little Princess dragged herself toward the bedroom door and pulled on the handle, spilling sickly pink light out into the dark landing beyond. Muffled voices laughed downstairs and she smiled to herself. She liked to hear her mummy and daddy having a good time. The house seemed to lack much laughter of late, it felt dark to her, lonely somehow.

The bathroom exploded in a frenzy of harsh white light, making her squint as she hitched up her nightdress and sat on the toilet. The cold of the seat against her bared flesh came as a shock and she squealed slightly. To her left lay the bath, a white plastic shower curtain was drawn across its length while to her right sat the sink. Above the sink hung a mirrored cabinet, one of its doors open to reveal a host of face creams and toothbrushes inside. For some reason, the sight of the open door in the otherwise neat little room irritated the little Princess, and she made a mental note to close it, to make it just the way mummy liked it.

Something dark moved across the marble effect lino beneath her feet, a spider, scuttling toward her naked toes with alarming speed. The tinkling stopped and she lifted her feet, a slight yelp of horror bursting from her lips as the spider hit the base of the toilet. The spider’s repulsive legs had felt their way around the porcelain before it darted away, squeezing itself through a gap between the wall and the bath panel. Her eyes searched the area thoroughly to make sure it had gone before she dared to lower her feet back to the floor.

The sound of running water mingled with the gentle flush of the toilet as the little Princes swilled her tiny hands in the sink. She wiped her hands on her nightdress then reached up to push the cabinet door closed, standing on tip toes so that her fingers barely reached the bottom of the door. It was just enough to set the door moving on its soft close hinges and satisfied, she turned away.

* * * *

As the cabinet door slowly closed, it reflected the bath and a dark silhouette that stood behind the shower curtain. The figure darted forward, the crude profile of a face pressed into the flimsy plastic and its mouth sucked in the material just as the light blinked out to plunge the small room into darkness.

* * * *

The pink glow of her bedroom looked so inviting, but the door next to her room, her mummy’s room, stood open, an enticing rectangle of black that she could not resist. She chewed on her fingernail nervously as she reached into the room with her other hand, groping in the dark until