Vampires come in all shapes and sizes...

Day five of my Ten Excerpts in Ten Days brings us to my story, Interview With The Barber. A mainstay of the dark fantasy and horror tales through the centuries has been the legend of the vampire -- immortals who feed on human blood to maintain their own lives.

We've seen evil vampires, funny vampires, even sparkly vampires, but I daresay you've not seen one like Robert Presley. And you can read the full tale Interview With The Barber in my collection THE ALCHEMIST & OTHER DARK TALES, on sale now for just 99 cents.

And now, from Interview With The Barber...
*****

I decided the only way to figure out what was going on was to do a little spying. I drove by the shop Friday night long after Presley had closed and gone home. I checked around the building in the dark with my cheap key chain flashlight and found two small windows in the back, completely hidden by two overgrown bushes.

The next night – Presley keeps his shop open late on Saturdays – I parked at an abandoned grocery store a mile down the road and walked to his shop as dusk fell. It was dark by the time I reached his place, so I snuck between a few cars parked in the lot then slipped around the building. I ducked in between the bushes and peered through the windows.

For the next hour I watched Presley cutting away, a seemingly permanent half-smile on his face, his mouth moving with his idle barbershop conversation. I couldn't hear him, but I was sure he was telling more of his jokes and stories, relating the town gossip some of his customers from earlier in the day had told him.

Another half-hour passed and there were just two people left with Presley – an old gruff of a man with a bushy gray beard, dressed in dirty overalls, was climbing into the barber's chair and a younger man, probably my age, was sitting in the waiting section flipping through a magazine.

The old guy sat in the chair, Presley decked him out in the barber's apron and started cutting away at his hair, his mouth moving in what was no doubt a monotonous litany of meaningless chit-chat. I prepared to leave, disgusted with myself for having wasted the evening. Then it happened.

Presley stepped away from the old guy, put his clippers and comb on the shelf and then stepped back to the chair. The old man never moved. The young guy sat still, the magazine slipping from his hands to the floor. He made no move to retrieve it.

Presley stood with his arms by his sides. His mouth twitched, his whole face convulsed. His mouth stretched wider than humanly possible, his lower lip peeled back, and two giant insect-like mandibles protruded through his gums, growing upward over his top lip, giving his lower face a bug-like appearance.

Presley leaned over the old man, moved the beard aside and slid the two mandibles through the man's skin, into his neck. I lost track of time, watching as Presley drank the man’s blood. He stood, pulled a tissue from his pocket, dabbed a little blood from the man's neck and let the man's beard fall back into place. He stepped toward the young man in the waiting chair. I wanted to scream, to smash through the windows and warn the man, but I watched. Somehow, I had the presence of mind to glance at my watch this time, just as Presley began draining the blood from his second victim. When he finished I looked at the watch again – it seemed as if he had been there long enough to drain the man dry, but he had been drinking the victim's blood for less than ten minutes.

Presley again pulled the tissue from his pocket, dabbed at the man's neck, then bent over, picked up the magazine and placed it in the man's hands. Presley walked back to his shelf, picked up his hair-cutting utensils and turned back to the room. When he did his face had returned to normal – the round, full, flushed face of a man who had just fed. He walked to the bearded man, began snipping at his hair, his mouth moving again, no doubt with more gossip. A minute later the bearded man was talking, the young man flipping the magazine pages.

I sat on the cool, barren patch of dirt under the bush, not sure what to do.

What could I do? No one would believe me if I tried to tell what I'd seen. I had to confront Presley. Tell him I knew what he was. I would do it Monday.

I slept little that night and the next. I was nervous about confronting him, afraid to fall asleep, some little fear deep inside me said he already knew what I had seen, that he'd burst through the door to my apartment any moment. He never did, but by Monday I was exhausted from thinking, and worrying, about it all weekend. It took all the concentration I could muster to get through the day.

After work I drove to Presley's barbershop. Standing outside the door I checked through my coat pockets for what must have been the fiftieth time to make sure I had everything. I took a deep breath, opened the door and stepped in. He was sitting in his own barber’s chair, alone, looking as if he expected my visit.

“Back so soon? I must not be cuttin’ your hair short enough.” He chuckled as he spoke, a laugh that once seemed a simple country chortle. Now my skin crawled at the sound.

“I’m not here for a haircut,” I said, my mouth dry, my voice quivering.

Presley stood, stepped to the side of the chair and patted the brown vinyl cover.

“Climb on up and–”

“No!” I screamed, cutting him off in mid-sentence.

He grew quiet. I paused, not sure what to do next. Presley stepped back in front of his chair, slowly sat down and smiled broadly.

“Well, then, what can I do for you?” he asked.

I waited, still not sure what to say. I jerked my hand from my coat pocket, a small crucifix held clenched in my fist.

“I know what you are,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper. I stretched my arm in front of me and stepped toward Presley. “I know what you are,” I repeated, my voice stronger.

The smile faded from Presley’s face. He stared at me, a blank stare like that of a corpse with its eyes still open. The shop grew quieter. Even the traffic from the highway outside faded, the only sound that of my breathing.

Presley burst out laughing. Not the country-boy chuckle I’d come to know over the past several weeks, but a hard-edged soulless laugh.

The sound startled me. I flinched, then stiffened in a show of false bravado.

Presley laughed harder, tears welling in his eyes. He reached out and brought his hand down over top of the crucifix, pulling it from my hand. “And just what do you think I am?”

*****
To read the rest of Interview with the Barber, and to get the entire collection THE ALCHEMIST & OTHER DARK TALES, for just 99 cents, for your Kindle go here. To download to your Nook go here.

Finally - Dark Secret of Warren Home available for your reading chills

I’m nearly two days late (and always a dollar short) with this posting, but THE DARK SECRET OF WARREN HOUSE, the fourth story in my Nine Weeks of Halloween Horror series, is now live at Amazon.com.

Here’s the little book blurb I’ve posted at Amazon: Kevin Franks has been fascinated – no, obsessed – with a large vacant home at the edge of Warrentown ever since moving to the small North Carolina town. Everyone has a different story about the structure, but two things he learns is that Warren House is ancient, perhaps the earliest structure built in the 300-year-old town, and the townspeople believe it is the center of their existence.

Kevin is thrilled when he is invited to attend a Yuletide Gathering at the home and has a chance, hopefully, to get some answers about the house and why it is so important to the folks who live in Warrentown. He also has a fantasy come true when librarian Marcia Jones reciprocates a long-simmering flame he’s carried for her. Together, they learn an awful, ancient secret about Warren House, and that knowledge may carry an eternal price.

Warren House is a thrilling tale of dark secrets and ancient evil. It is the fourth story in the Nine Weeks of Halloween Horror series.

And here’s what a few readers have said about WARREN HOUSE: "Very cool haunted house story…is Shirley Jackson meets Lovecraft…very entertaining read."

"Plays out like a Twilight Zone episode."

"This felt a lot like a gothic ghost story. It would have been good if it was just a ghost story. But the introduction of something else living in the house was a nice twist that made the story truly original."

Of course, the first three stories in the series, SUMMER’S END, PATRON SAINT, and THE JOURNAL, are all still live, and each of the stories is available for 99 cents.

A few readers have been downloading the stories, and that traffic seems to have picked up over the past week or so. One even wrote me to say how much he enjoyed THE JOURNAL, and another left a 4-star review in which he called parts of THE JOURNAL sadistic—but in a good way, of course.

If you haven’t downloaded any of the stories yet, now that the weather is turning cool and autumn is here, this would be a perfect day, or evening, for a creepy read. And while I like all of the stories, if I had to offer you just one or two, I’d suggest downloading either THE JOURNAL or PATRON SAINT. Of course, any of them will give you more than a few chills.

John Peters is author of the murder mystery romance novel CLAIMING MOON, available now for download to your Kindle. Don’t have a Kindle? No sweat – you can download a free Kindle reading app right here.

Cool weather, shorter days, and some scary stories

Ah, it’s finally here. The cool weather – our high yesterday was 72, 74 today, and last night the temperature dropped to a very autumn-like 52 – making it feel as if fall has officially arrived, even if the calendar says we have a few days of summer.

Yesterday while doing a bit of grocery shopping I even saw a big Halloween display, complete with life-size skeleton in one chair, and a skull that’s twice the size of Herman Munster’s head in another spot. There’s a field near my house, one I pass every day on my way to and from work, and it’s now dotted with hundreds – maybe thousands – of pumpkins nearing harvest time.

Yep, summer’s over and autumn is upon us, and it’s now really feeling like time for a few scary stories. I’m a day late posting this, but THE JOURNAL, my second release in the NINE WEEKS OF HALLOWEEN series, is now live and ready for you to download at Amazon.com.

I’m sure writers can identify with this next statement, heck, I suppose everyone can to some degree. I’d like to think that everything I write – the short stories, the novels, the novellas – are all great, a figurative home run if I may slip into baseball terminology for a few minutes.

The truth, for me and probably most folks who write for a living, is that sometimes I’m a little more on my game than others. A few of my stories, going back to the baseball descriptions, might be considered strike-outs, and those I generally discard and no one ever sees them. I probably put a lot of singles and doubles out there – and there’s not a thing wrong with those, because there have been quite a few baseball players over the years who have made a Hall of Fame career out of these.

Every once in a while, though, I know I’ve hit a home run. Back when I played baseball and softball, generally I could tell when I hit the ball if that thing was going to clear the fence. It’s just a feel you have, when the sweet spot on the bat hits the ball at the perfect place in your swing.

I’ve had a few stories like that, and this week’s release, THE JOURNAL, is one. If it’s not a homer, it’s at least bouncing off the top of the wall for a triple.

I’ve got a couple more such stories coming out over the NINE WEEKS OF HALLOWEEN, and I hope you download and enjoy them all. But, if you’re only going to get three or four of my stories, this one needs to be one of those.

If you haven’t already, you can pick up last week’s story, SUMMER’S END, which is an appropriate title given we really are at the end of summer. Only thing for the folks in SUMMER’S END, that’s not all that is coming to a close.

And if you haven’t yet purchased it, check out my novel, CLAIMING MOON. It’s got a serial killer unlike any other, a fair amount of romance, and in the end a bit of supernatural horror.

That ought to stock up your reading needs for the next few days. Drop me a line to tell me what think.

Line-up announced for Nine Weeks of Halloween Horror

The calendar keeps moving right along, and that means we’re just two weeks away from the launch of my series NINE WEEKS OF HALLOWEEN HORROR.

For those of you who missed my last post (if you really want to check it out, it’s just below this one – scroll on down) I’ll be releasing a series of creepy little tales each Sunday from Sept. 2 until Oct. 28 in celebration of Halloween. The stories will be available at Amazon.com for download to your Kindle (and if you don’t have a Kindle, you can get a FREE Kindle reading app for you PC, Mac, or mobile device right here).

Now, as promised, the list of stories coming up in NINE WEEKS OF HALLOWEEN HORROR. I’ve included a few comments from folks who have seen the first four tales. To keep the blog from going on too long, I’ll hold back on reader comments on the final tales for a few weeks.

SUMMER’S END (Coming Sept. 2). I’m not going to tell you much about this, other than to say sometimes monsters come in all shapes. What a couple of folks have said about SUMMER’S END: “I'll get straight to the point -- I loved this … this is a great … tale.” “…reminiscent of The Cask of the Amontillado…”

THE JOURNAL (Coming Sept. 9). Ever wonder if we have any real control over our lives, or if it’s already written and we merely follow along? What a few readers have said: “Well written and original, if somewhat twisted…” “What a creepy tale. Poe? Better or at least as good as King.” “I hadn’t planned to read it today, but it grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.” “This is one hell of a story!”

PATRON SAINT (Coming Sept. 16). A killer with a dark obsession, a victim with a darker secret. Readers’ take: “The only bad thing that I can say about this story is that it made my teeth tremble and I would want to give a health warning to any reader before they read this.” “Teeth – yikes. I was hooked by this story.” “Great stuff, got me hooked from the start and never let go.”

WARREN HOUSE (Coming Sept. 23). An ancient home holds an unshakable power over a town, and a couple of newcomers find there is more than Southern hospitality behind the welcome they receive. Readers’ say: “Very cool haunted house story…Shirley Jackson meets Lovecraft…very entertaining read.” “Plays out like a Twilight Zone episode.” “Good, old-fashioned story-telling.”

THE CHOSEN, RETURN OF THE MESSIAH, and THE HEARSE (Coming Sept. 30). That’s right, folks, three tales this week. Because they’re all on the short side, I want to make sure you have enough to keep you reading for a while.

THE CHOSEN: What is a parent’s greatest fear? RETURN OF THE MESSIAH: The New Testament and the Mayan Empire both had it right. THE HEARSE: Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

WITCH HOUSE (Coming Oct. 7). A bit of friendly hazing for freshmen on the high school football team turns tragic. Sometimes the horror is of our own making.

ANYTHING FOR THE CAUSE (Coming Oct. 14). With eternity on the line, how far will a few religious zealots go for their cause?

FOR WANT OF A GHOST (Coming Oct. 21). When a magazine editor promises to find local ghost stories for a Halloween issue, he soon uncovers more than he bargained for.

A MOTHER’S LOVE (Coming Oct 28). How far will a mother go to save her child?

I hope you find a few – maybe even all – of those stories intriguing. Halloween is my favorite time of year in many ways, and horror was really my first love when I began writing. I’m excited about publishing these stories, and if you like horror (who doesn’t at this time of year?) I think you’re going to enjoy them.

Until then, check out my debut novel CLAIMING MOON. It’s available for download at Amazon.com. If you don’t have a Kindle, that’s okay. You can get a free Kindle app that lets you read any Kindle story on your PC, Mac, or mobile device right here.

Mid-August portends Halloween Horror?

Beware the ides of August.

Okay, that doesn’t quite have the ring of Shakespeare’s Ides of March, but we are at the mid-point of August. Around where I live the weather’s already begun changing a bit – it’s still hot during the days, but the heat isn’t as oppressive and the nights are cool enough to turn off the AC and open the windows.

Soon, the lazy warmth of August will give way to September, with the first fall-like days on tap, and then we’ll have the cooler, crisper days of October. Before we know it, the ridges and mountains around where I live will erupt in vibrant reds and yellows and oranges, then the leaves will fade and the streets will fill with little ones – and maybe a few big ones – dressed as ghosts and goblins, demons and Mitt Romneys.

While my writing of late has centered more around murder and suspense, romance tinged with a bit of eroticism, I was born into the literary world as a horror writer, learning much of my craft while writing about bad things that often are not of this world.

Well, that’s not entirely true. What I strove for was to tell what I hoped were compelling stories, with ever-improving writing, with horror as the backdrop in which the story exists. In other words, I didn’t write “go boo” stuff for the sake of being scary. I wanted to write good, strong stories that took place within a world where things weren’t exactly as they should be.

I think that training helped me learn to create life-like characters, with situations built around human drama, rather than relying on the clichés and tropes of a given genre.

Despite having moved away from horror in much of my writing, this time of year I begin to think about autumn and cool breezy nights and scary stories.

And I still have the urge to write horror. Which brings me to what I think is an exciting announcement.

Nine of my horror tales will be published in a weekly series called NINE WEEKS OF HALLOWEEN HORROR. Beginning on Sunday, Sept. 2, and for the next eight Sundays afterward, one of my horror stories will be published on Amazon.com and available for download to your Kindle.

So get ready for a few chills and thrills – cannibalism, a killer with an obsessive compulsion (and a victim with a dark secret), an ancient home in search of new blood, a small town that strangely is devoid of any ghost stories, some religious zealots who’ve lost perspective – all of that and more will be available in my series NINE WEEKS OF HALLOWEEN HORROR.

More information coming, including a full list of stories and maybe a couple of sample covers, this Sunday, Aug. 19.

See you then.

John Peters is the author of the paranormal romantic thriller CLAIMING MOON, available for download to your Kindle now. Don’t have a Kindle? Get a free Kindle app for your PC, Mac, or mobile device right here.