Dan & Andy's Scary-oke Holiday

By Katherine Silva

Dan & Andy's Scary-oke Holiday takes place at the last bastion in Cardend, NH: The Howling Owl Bar. Stranded by an invading forest that has surrounded their favorited watering hole, Dan and Andy spend their weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas surviving on whatever is left in the kitchen and in the kegs, contented to wait for help to arr

• Language: English
• Publisher: Strange Wilds Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9798218127961

Katherine Silva

Katherine Silva is a Maine horror author, a connoisseur of coffee, and victim of cat shenanigans. She is a two-time Maine Literary Award finalist for speculative fiction and a member of the Horror Writers of Maine, The Horror Writers Association, and New England Horror Writers Association. Katherine is also editor-in-chief of Strange Wilds Press and Dark Taiga Creative Writing Consultations. Her latest works, ORCHARDS, HALLOWED OBLIVION and DAN & ANDY'S SCARY-OKE HOLIDAY, are all novelettes within THE WILD DARK universe and are now available wherever books are sold. A sequel to THE WILD DARK is due out in August 2023.

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OTHER BOOKS BY KATHERINE SILVA

THE WILD OBLIVION SERIES

THE WILD DARK

ORCHARDS

HALLOWED OBLIVION

THE MONSTRUM CHRONICLES

VOX: BOOK ONE

AEQUITAS: BOOK TWO

MEMENTO MORI: BOOK THREE

STAND ALONE WORKS

THE COLLECTION: A NOVELLA

NIGHT TIME, DOTTED LINE

Dan & Andy’s

SCARY-OKE

Holiday

by

KATHERINE SILVA

Strange Wilds Press

Copyright © December 2022 by Katherine Silva

ISBN-13: 979-8-218-12796-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages.

This book is a work of fiction. Anything that bears resemblance to real people, places, or events is coincidental and unintentional.

Content warning: This book contains alcohol, assault, attempted murder, blood, death, depression, gore, profanity, and violence

Published by Strange Wilds Press

E-book first edition: December 22nd, 2022

Cover design by Katherine Silva

www.katherinesilvaauthor.com

Cover photos courtesy of Pexels and Unsplash

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

-Bob Marley

November 28th

MIDNIGHT

Dan drank his PBR and watched the old Gregory Peck film on the television in the top corner of the bar as chaos erupted around him. He wasn’t quite sure what was happening but had noted that some of the locals he usually shared a beer with were running around with a bit more haste this evening. One of them had even told him he should think about changing the channel to the local news.

Good to know, Dan said when Keenan Devins ran out of the bar with his pint in hand. He’d had to get home to the wife and kids to check and make sure they were okay…and stay hydrated along the way, Dan guessed.

His own wife, Alicia, was visiting her sister in Buffalo this week. He was sure she was fine. No need to jump to hysterics. After all, if he went home, chances were he’d just get called in to the ranger station for some menial reason and that…he just wasn’t going to do.

Because it was his twenty-fifth anniversary of working there, God damnit. He deserved one day off in a sea of triple shifts, emergency shifts, covering shifts, organizing shifts, and…well, all of it.

Plus, it was a double-celebration day to boot.

That day was also his best friend, Andy Marušić’s, birthday.

Dan had waited for close to an hour for his friend to arrive. Andy was a part of the Pemigewasset Valley Search and Rescue team and they often worked hand in hand, seeking hikers who had lost sight of the trail. Their plans that night were to drink themselves silly at the bar, head back to Dan’s cabin on the lake and then drive the boat out bass fishing early in the morning before things froze over for the season

Dan figured Andy might have gotten stuck in traffic. Perhaps someone at SAR had begged him to come in and help with something. Andy was a stand-up guy. All someone needed to do was say something nice to him and he’d do them favors until the cows came home. Dan believed this made Andy a gullible person but that was neither here nor there.

It took some time before Dan realized that the bar had cleared out and when he did, a surge of uneasiness hit him. Whatever was happening was probably worse than he’d thought. Even the bartender, Ford, had vanished. The only company Dan had was the backlit bar with the fancy green and red undershelf lighting, the big neon beer pint that glowed on the bricks above him and the fake, ornament riddled tree in the corner. He hated that tree. It wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet.

With the sound of Metallica’s For Whom The Bell Tolls blasting from the jukebox in the corner, Dan got down off the stool and brought his can of PBR to the window to look out. There was no one on the street. That wasn’t uncommon in a town as small as Cardend. But this was Saturday night at the Howling Owl. Not