11:47 Small Slices of Horror: Small Slices of Horror

By John Hennessy

Horror is most chillingly served by those who KNOW you.

A psychological horror collection to turn your mind inside out.

The YA-Horror awarding winning author John Hennessy offers a spine-tingling compilation of short stories created solely to keep a reader up late at night.

From the creator of the Dark Winter trilogy, A Tale of Vampires and the award winning psychological horror series Haunted Minds comes a new and terrifying short story collection.

John Hennessy is in terrifying top form in these short stories, taking readers down a seemingly gentle start in the opening titular story '11:47'.

A simple Lift turns macabre when it opens its doors, never mind closing them. A joyride becomes a ride in terror in 'Ghost Train', along with three more stories that will keep you awake until daybreak. Enter a nightmarish mindscape of unrelenting horror, psychological twists and turns with shocking revelations that could only come from the creator of the award winning Haunted Minds series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Hennessy
• Release date: Apr 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386788812

John Hennessy

Born in 1988, John Hennessy became entranced by the world of fantasy and sci-fi at a young age, playing video games and reading books for many long nights/early mornings. He started writing his debut novel Life Descending during his junior year of High School in 2005. He wanted to write something different for fantasy readers, something without any stock copy/paste characters, supreme evil lords, who you never see and who are just evil because they are evil. A story without class-defined skills, mana potions, and the usual D&D adventure group out on the same old quest. He wanted to write a new story that gets away from the stale fantasies with farmer boys, blacksmith apprentices, and peasants who turn world heroes. Oh yeah, and he really wanted to get away from stories with prophecies and 'chosen ones.'After he graduated from Western Washington University in 2011, he hired Sara Stamey, the editing/publishing professor at Western, edit Life Descending (The Cry of Havoc, Book 1), finally releasing his debut after six years of crafting, learning, rewriting, and absorbing caffeine as fuel so he could stay awake at the keyboard. Life Descending has since been praised by reviewers, even earning a finalist spot in ForeWord Magazine's 2011 Book of the Year Awards. Darkness Devouring (The Cry of Havoc, Book 2) has since been released in late 2012.In 2012 he released At the End (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) as a self-published book. Having spent all his cash on Life Descending (sadly without return), the book went unedited by a professional editor. Despite this major flaw, At the End was well received by most. In February 2013, Permuted Press approached him with an offer to re-release At the End and publish the rest of the trilogy. A second edition of At the End (fully edited!) is forthcoming 2013.John now lives in the Rose Lands of Portland, Oregon, with his wife Katherine, their furry feline Phoebe, and their two budgies Lola and Pablo. He is now at work finishing The Road to Extinction Trilogy. Visit his website at: http://www.johnhennessy.net

Book preview

11:47:

Small Slices of Horror Vol. 1

––––––––

Horror is most chillingly served by those who KNOW you.

A psychological horror collection to turn your mind inside out.

The YA-Horror awarding winning author John Hennessy offers a spine-tingling compilation of short stories created solely to keep a reader up late at night.

From the creator of the Dark Winter trilogy, A Tale of Vampires and the award-winning psychological horror series Haunted Minds comes a new and terrifying short story collection.

John Hennessy is in terrifying top form in these short stories, taking readers down a seemingly gentle start in the opening titular story '11:47'.

A simple lift turns macabre when it opens its doors, never mind closing them. A joyride becomes a ride in terror in 'Ghost Train', along with three more stories that will keep you awake until daybreak. Enter a nightmarish mindscape of unrelenting horror, psychological twists and turns with shocking revelations that could only come from the creator of the award-winning Haunted Minds series.

***

What other reviewers said:-

"Fantastic collection of stories that make you think about the people that surround you. . ."

- K. A. Y.

Definitely recommend(ed) for a quick, enjoyable, creepy change of pace. Held my attention from the first to the last.

- B. Rose

A true gem.

- K. S.

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© 2017-2020

John Hennessy

Table of Contents

Contents

11:47:......................................................................................................................................

Small Slices of Horror Vol. 1............................................................................................

John Hennessy

Table of Contents

Foreword by the Author

11:47

The Lift

Ghost Train

Well, I think that’s the point, isn’t it? To be scared a little?...............................

Just An Illusion

Dead Pretty

The Hit

By the same Author.............................................................................................................

Forthcoming Releases........................................................................................................

Finally.....................................................................................................................................

Keep up to date at JohnHennessyBooks.com..............................................................

Foreword by the Author

One of my earliest reading memories was of devouring short story collections by the likes of Ruth-Manning Sanders and M.R. James.

But as a young child, I also had visual experiences. I would watch Tales of the Unexpected¸ which was a post-watershed programme on ITV, mostly featuring stories originally written by Roald Dahl. They were frightening, unusual, and utterly compelling to watch. As someone who had a difficult relationship with bees when I was growing up, Royal Jelly was particularly torturous to watch, and as an adult, it’s still uncomfortable enough in its genius for me to read.

I think the style of writing a short story demands that the author is in possession of certain skills. Like most of the stories I create, the ideas will have been whirring around for a long time. Some stories of course will be newer than others. But I have never liked to start something and not complete it. That does not mean I would stick slavishly to an idea that was not working.

However, with 11:47 – Small Slices of Horror Vol. I, I tried to do something a little different from my longer horror or fantasy stories. I wanted to jam pack this collection with a whole variety of themes, meaning that if one story did not appeal to a particular reader, another one probably would.

The other important distinction to make is that I attempted to set these stories in the real world as much as I could. That meant I would not be writing about vampires or witches necessarily, unless it meant it was plausible and had a chance of coming true. For some readers, that last sentence may seem like a hell of a stretch, but that doesn’t mean it is not true or plausible in and of itself.

Like the collection’s title implies, I wrote 11:47 first. I also wanted the length of the book to have a reasonable amount of titles in it. Whilst I think ten is okay, twenty might be too long, at least for one collection, so there will be another collection of short stories released in the future. I already have the title for that, and it is not a sequel either, so don’t expect it to be called 11:48.

As to my favourite from this collection, it’s a toss up between Just An Illusion or Ghost Train. But as writers we tend to bleed every word we commit to our books. It’s not being over dramatic to state that either. We really do our best. So when it comes to the stories in this collection, they all mean something to me in their own way.

John Hennessy, September 2015 - April 2017

11:47

Where late-night calls bring anything but comfort.

Author notes: We’ve all had them, those late-night, unexpected phone calls. You know the kind I mean. Some of them speak in an incoherent mumble; more disconcerting are those that just breathe down the phone. Others may say nothing at all and expect you to say something first. The problem is that a phone is just technology, and we should be able to choose to answer a call, or put the phone down if we don’t like what is happening at the other end. Sometimes it is innocent, and into today’s technology-driven age, computer generated calls happen all the time, to all kinds of people, all over the world.

Such calls should not be scary, and in the daytime hours, if we are honest, they are more irritating than anything else. But if you are not expecting a late-night call, and most of us are not, then the supposed innocent shrill of a telephone ringing becomes something more sinister. In this opening story to the collection, 11:47 in itself is just a point in time. But as the story reaches its conclusion, you may believe it is something else entirely. So it’s time to read the opening story. I’d gently advise you to switch your phone off now and unplug the handset. Things tend to happen to those who don’t follow well-meaning advice....

*

T

o outsiders, Rob Dillon looked like he had it all. A successful marriage, a high-flying career, two beautiful children, and more money than he could spend in his pocket. His wife Louise was successful in her own right, managing to juggle a career and family life at the same time. The children were doing well at school. Ashlee, their daughter, had made a seamless adjustment from junior school to high, and was topping each class with grades that would make any parent proud. Jamie, their son, was doing well too, though he was four years his sister’s junior.

Ashlee was eleven. Jamie was seven. They lived at home with Rob and Louise and everything was fine.

One night, when Ashlee and Jamie had gone to bed early, and Rob was away on a work assignment staying overnight in a hotel, the phone started ringing. For the Dillon household, this was more than unusual. It was late at night, and Louise was just going over some paperwork from her job. It was an important project and she had been unable to switch her mind off from it. Rob had sent her a text earlier in the day to say he would not be home for the night. Louise was glad to be able to focus on it without any further distraction.

All was not well at home; that was the reality. Louise was unable to concentrate on her work, so she turned the television on and started flipping through the channels. When nothing took her fancy she clicked the unit off. As the newsreaders voice began to fade, she heard her say, ‘Thanks for watching. It’s just gone a quarter to midnight, eleven-forty-seven in fact.....’

That was when the telephone started to ring. Louise had told Rob before to set the phone to night-time mode so that it would not wake the children or disturb themselves. With all the other hassles of modern life with a young family, Rob would forget sometimes. He had a lot on his mind, and Louise appreciated that, so when she heard it blaring out, she was initially annoyed with Rob, but then let it go. The indicator display on the phone confirmed that the time was indeed 11:47 pm.

Louise said hello, but no-one answered back. She assumed it was a wrong number or even one of those irritating computer-generated calls and thought no more about it.

She unplugged the television from the wall. Louise was almost OCD about unplugging things. The refrigerator was a given, but for everything else, you can bet it would be unplugged.

Louise had managed to avoid owning a mobile phone, much to Rob’s annoyance. He even played it another way, suggesting that Ashlee and Jamie would want a phone in a few years time –