Mister Nightmare & Sister Dream: American Gothic, #4

By M. Benjamin Naves

AMERICAN GOTHIC: Pages have been mysteriously found from the desk of Professor Kurtis J. Faust, editor of the Grimwood Hangman. These pages contain stories of whom all have taken place in or near Grimwood County, Long Island; a place filled with as many fears, as there are secrets.

Mister Nightmare & Sister Dream: A criminal finds redemption in the most unlikely of places--within his own dreams. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: American Gothic
• Release date: Dec 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393499480

Book preview

Historia Vitae

Beyond the cracked sidewalk, and the telephone pole with layers of flyers in a rainbow of colors, and the patch of dry brown grass there stood a ten-foot high concrete block wall, caked with dozens of coats of paint. There was a small shrine at the foot of it, with burnt out candles and dead flowers and a few soggy teddy bears. One word of graffiti filled the wall, red letters on a gold background: Rejoice!

Rejoice? I said aloud.

I didn’t mean to say it, for someone to hear me or even answer me, but answer they did.

Yes, my boy, the voice said from behind my head. Rejoice! Praise! Sing hallelujah! Why not? For your eternal reward is nothing more than a skip and a jump away from entering a place that is only imagined by the sick and dying — the meek and fearless.

I turned around to see a man dressed in pastoral robes — white collar around the neck, and all. He also wore a brown fedora that was perched to one side, which covered a deformity — he was missing an eye, he was also missing part of his face. But it wasn’t gruesome, just more shocking to see at first glance, like how you would expect something to be there, but, instead, you wouldn’t. I looked to the side and saw a reverend — a persona, I came to regret — an individual, strap with a bright platinum pistol attached to his hip. I believe it was a Magnum 45 — the same Clint Eastwood used in those movies in the seventies, but I couldn’t be certain. Everything was grey.

If you came here to kill me, just do it already, and get it over with, I said looking at the platinum revolver at the misshapen man’s hip.

Relax, he replied. His hands propped up, like some helpless marionette — palms facing