Novel Excerpt

An Excerpt From The Autumndale Manifesto

The crooked shadow drifted through him. His insides seized and his vision spun. The shadow stopped over Emma’s shoulder and lingered behind her like a menacing thunderhead. Emma kept her head down, oblivious. She leaned closer to the flower bed. Her faint auburn hair flowed in a dance of innocence against time’s gale. The crooked shadow began to grow. Adam’s heart rattled against his ribs and his mouth flooded with the taste of electricity. Flashes of brilliant white burned his eyes and a concussive wave of needle stings pummeled his arms. The shadow came alive.

Scuffed work boots grew like vile weeds out of the dirt. A pair of potato sack jeans appeared, releasing an untamed gut over their constricted waistline. A stained checkered shirt hugged the creature’s soft upper half and a green trucker’s cap crowned its greasy skull. Adam’s breath stopped. A glistening meat cleaver appeared in the monster’s hand. The creature stood behind Emma with its mouth ajar. Its eyes snarled.  Adam screamed and charged at his uncle.

Uncle Hank let out a guttural shriek and raised the cleaver. Emma continued stroking the unborn flowers. The cleaver swung down. Emma’s inhuman wail rattled the barn doors.

Adam tripped and fell into the dirt. The cold morning light turned red. His gaze locked onto the unreachable slaughter before him. The cleaver pumped up and swung again, then again, gaining the rhythm of a rusted piston thrust back to life. Full crescendo. Adam winced and yelled and screamed and cried. He could not move.

The butchery ended in seconds. The past faded and the darkening forest returned. Adam watched pieces of Emma’s hacked torso sink like dying lanterns into the dusty barnyard path.

 “Hank!” Adam screamed. “Hank!” He screamed the name again and again. The word lost its meaning. It became a dry hack in his throat.

Julian remained standing at the opposite edge of the stream. He heard Adam’s deranged screams echo in the distance. He could not move. The numb sensation in his legs had grown into cascading waves of searing pain. He turned on the flashlight at the back of his phone. The white plastic beam cut into the trees across the water, robbing them of the last hints of twilight. He felt an urge to make a call. Only the emergency number showed. He put the phone away and let the darkness swallow him.