Developmental

By Emily Fox-Douglas

A new mother watches shadows transform into something more while she sits awake with her young son.

 

As Rudy grows older, she frets about his development challenges and his silent world.

 

But her deepest dread centres on the enigmatic and menacing figure lurking at the garden's edge.

 

This ominous man's haunting calls resonate with Rudy, drawing him closer to the garden gate—a portal to a foreboding realm unknown. Inexplicably drawn to this otherworldly danger, Rudy teeters on the precipice between two worlds, while his mother's desperation to protect him reaches a fever pitch.

 

Supernatural thriller from Emily Fox-Douglas

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macabre Minima
• Release date: Aug 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223580119

Book preview

Developmental

Emily Fox-Douglas

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Macabre Minima

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Copyright

DEVELOPMENTAL is

Copyright © 2023 EMILY FOX-DOUGLAS

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First published in Australia in August 2023 by Macabre Minima

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The author retains the copyright of the works featured in this publication.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this production may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

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Edited by Jodi Christensen

Formatting by Ben Thomas

Cover design by Dawn Burdett

Contents

1.Prologue

2.7 Months

3.14 months

4.21 months

5.24 Months

6.28 Months

7.35 months, one week

Emily Fox-Douglas

Macabre Minima

Coming Soon

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Prologue

In the weeks after Rudy was born, I lay awake, drenched in postpartum sweat, hearing the howling of wolves in my ears. Night after night, they circle closer to the broken, white pickets surrounding our chipped-paint lavender cottage. The sounds of their teeth snapping outside the window leave me gasping and running to his bassinet. I nurse him most nights, clutching his body to my breast in tight-fisted desperation, staring at the shadowed backyard.

I didn’t tell Riya immediately about the dark, canine shadows that call out to me from just beyond the yard. They stay close to the fence line, skulking and amorphous. It is easy to write them off as a trick of the eye—sleep deprivation demons of the newly minted mother—until the streetlights catch the metal glint in their eyes. A flash of silver iris, like a lighthouse bulb spinning before blinking out into the dark, churning sea.

I think about my mother and the days before she left us at my grandmother’s house and didn’t come back for a very long time. I think about the way she pulled the drywall off in neat chunks, meticulously checking each piece as if she were a jeweler spying for imperfections, turning each section with careful precision before placing it in a crumpled Revco shopping bag.

This is where they put the bugs, she would tell us when we asked her what she was doing. That’s how they can hear you, everything you say, everything you do. Her eyes shone with the glittering emerald of what I