Macabre: The Rose Miller Trilogy, #2

By Erik Handy

"TIME TO GO HOME, FRANNIE."

 

Fran didn't want to return to the old homestead. Too many awful memories. Or in her case, blank spaces in her mind.

 

However, her brother's invitation is difficult to ignore. Fran hasn't seen him in years. A reunion might jog her memory.

 

It might kill her, too.

 

Erik Handy, the author of The Mummy Kills The Brides, unleashes the next level of horror with Macabre! You'll never see the surprise ending - and neither will Fran!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erik Handy
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9798215113219

Erik Handy

Erik Handy grew up on a steady diet of professional wrestling, bad horror movies that went straight to video, and comic books. There were also a lot of video games thrown in the mix. He currently absorbs silence and fish tacos.

Book preview

Read the Full Dark Series from the beginning!

1. The Hell of the Dead Saga

Hell of the Dead

Hell of the Dead 2

Hell of the Dead 3

Hell of the Dead 4

––––––––

2. The Rose Miller Trilogy

She Never Dies

Macabre

She Never Dies: Part 2

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3. The Malice Below

4. The Creeping City

5. Terror Rising

6. Rot House

7. Full Dark

1

Southern Georgia. 1978.

Three in the car. Tom drove. Tom always drove. Tom wasn’t short for Thomas and he never went by Tommy.

Whole lot of nothing out here, George remarked.

Fran in the passenger seat said, That’s why I left.

That’s not the only reason, she thought, but no one needed to know. Tom didn’t know and they had been together for a year now. Fran left the important details of her past, the few she could dredge up from the swamp in her head, out of her story. It was her story after all. Memories made up a monster called history and that monster was peacefully asleep.

Unlike George.

Why’d your brother stay? George said.

Fran didn’t answer.

Someone had to.

No one had to.

I don’t know.

Yes, I do.

The past . . . those people . . . what they did . . . outlines in the ether. Fading, fading.

Why did you leave, Fran? George said.

George would not shut up. Fran regretted Tom inviting his roommate, but having someone go with them seemed like a good idea. There was no way she would have returned to the old homestead by herself. In fact, when Fran told Tom her brother asked her to visit – via a terse letter – Tom was adamant about taking her. It was a six-hour drive, made painfully longer with George in tow. It was too long for a young woman to be on her own. A lot of weirdos on the road, Tom had told her. They hadn’t come across any. Maybe George would repel all the nut-jobs.

Why did your brother want you to visit? George said. Fran already told him, but he always had to run his mouth. Maybe he feared forgetting what his voice sounded like.

Fat chance of that happening, Fran said to herself. She cracked a grin, the first since receiving her brother’s invitation.

Tom noticed and reached out for her hand.

He wants me to see if there’s anything I want before he sells the house, Fran said for the umpteenth time. I doubt there is though. I took everything I wanted when I left.

Which wasn’t much. Her clothes filled one second-hand suitcase. Everything else, a few books she hadn’t read since she was a child and other odds and ends one collects during their youth, filled a milk crate.

Fading, fading.

Did she exist before she left home? She and her brother went to school with other children. A half-hour drive one way kept them connected with their peers, but home . . . home felt like another planet. Safe, sometimes, but always out of sync with the times. They had no television, no radio. There was a family piano, but no one played. Mother spent her days cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the house while Father worked the field. They never went to church. How did they pass the time?

How are we passing the time now? George’s idle chatter. Tom’s stoic presence. My . . . who am I? What have I done? Worked my way out of a dead-end town to find myself in another dead-end town. I’m a college student. I’m Tom’s girl. What else am I? Who am I exactly?

When was the last time you saw him? Tom asked.

When I left home, Fran said. A couple of years. I haven’t heard from him until now.

I wonder why he’s selling the house, Tom said.

Maybe he’s ready to move on, Fran said. After my parents died, I had to leave. Sometimes, a person has to move on. Howard didn’t have moving in his bones.

Howard.

Howard rarely left the house, Fran continued. I thought he was mourning at the time. Maybe he was. I don’t know.

Maybe he was too lazy to get a job, George said.

George, Tom said. Really?

George may be right, Fran said. Howard never really opened up to me.

Tom, George said, straightening up in his seat. Slow down.

I see her, Tom said.

Slow down, man.

No.

She might need a ride.

They sped by the chick on the side of the road at a cool forty-five. Her back was to them. She didn’t have her thumb sticking out.

She’s ignoring the weirdos on the road, Fran mused.

What the hell is she doing out here in the middle of nowhere? George said.

Waiting for you, Tom replied.

You see her legs? George said. Those were the whitest chicken legs I’ve ever seen.

Tom laughed. You’re something else.

No, I’m serious. They’re burned into my retinas. I still see them when I close my eyes.

Fran closed hers and wished she could say the same.

2

Jane stepped around the bush. Did I hear a car go by? It was the first either of them had spoken since stopping to piss. Only a few minutes, but long enough for their voices to sound new and strange.

Marie picked up her satchel. Yeah.

You didn’t flag it down?

I didn’t know you wanted me to.

Jane shot her some daggers. Her plump cheeks were beet-red. I’m done walking.

Marie took a deep breath, one of many since they left their one-room apartment a few days ago. The idea of a road trip sounded great after Gwen left. To get away from some bad memories, yeah, that was a great idea. Jane was hit harder, but that was because she knew the woman longer. Marie could have taken or left Gwen, if that was the troll’s real name. Gwen had a lot of stories that didn’t jive. Like how she lived on an Indian reservation in her youth, but a later story she told revealed she was a military brat who constantly shuffled from base to base with dear dad. A person’s adolescence didn’t last forever, but Gwen’s seemed to stretch tauter with each tale. But somehow Gwen fooled the normally rational Jane. How though? The sex wasn’t that good. Gwen was a fumbler, never knowing how to hold a breast, usually letting it fall from her stubby fingers.

Marie shivered.

You all right? Jane asked.

Gwen’s stubby fingers zigzagged across Marie’s tiny, brown nipples. Marie was glad Gwen just upped and disappeared without so much as a fuck you. Did she find another sucker?

Marie looked over at Jane and yearned to feel something for the one she stuck around for. Jane knew how to pleasure her. Her tongue whipped Marie into a frenzy. That wide, wet muscle worked wonders.

It was also inside that troll, Marie said to herself. Her taste . . . .

Marie gagged before dry heaving.

Jane put a sweaty hand on