Welcome! Today’s post is an excerpt from my debut novel The Death of Laszlo Breyer, set for Halloween release for your Amazon Kindle device/app! (This post was updated April 2021. The book is out now! Link after the excerpt!) Alcoholic ex-detective Jack Talbot is accused of stealing the remains of his dead wife’s killer, but when new killings start, he has to find out who is passing themselves off as lycanthrope psychopath Laszlo Breyer, before the copycat exacts his bloody revenge and kills those closest to Jack. In this excerpt, David saw something unusual on his CCTV cameras and their dog, Freddy, is missing. He is preparing himself to go outside and look.
David tramped downstairs re-tightening the belt on his dressing gown. In the kitchen he rifled through his drawer, ignored the ball of string and screwdrivers and WD-40 and assortment of light bulbs and grabbed the torch. Outside, the wind whipped up again. He looked down at the torch, unsure of the last time he’d used it and flicked it on, off, then on again. Gripping the cold barrel, he stood by the back door. From upstairs came a click and warm, welcoming light cascaded from the landing. ‘What’s going on?’ David’s grip released on the torch and fastened again just in time to stop it falling to the floor. He breathed deeply, ‘He’s gone... again.’ ‘What?’ David sighed, ‘He’s gone again. Your beloved Freddy.’ ‘Well go out and find him.’ ‘What do you think I’m doing?’ he snapped. ‘Go back to bed.’ He heard muttering as the light went off and then the only sound in the house was again the sound of that biting wind. David stared longingly upstairs in the direction of his warm bed, then turned back to the door. He did the maths. It would take ten seconds, maybe fifteen, to get outside, round the corner and to the back of the property. Once there, he would check the rope which tied Freddy. If it was chewed through (again) it was nothing serious, just another escape attempt. He could come back inside, go back to the nice, warm bed upstairs, and start looking for him tomorrow. Thirty seconds. Max. And if it wasn’t an escape attempt? He frowned. Deep down he sensed that this was different from the other times that Freddy had escaped; that the scene on the monitor was somehow wrong. He couldn’t swear to it, but he thought he’d seen a shadow on screen as he entered the study. He drew another deep breath, turned the key in the door, and opened it. Once outside, the bitter wind snatched at his dressing gown as he strode to the rear of the house. Five seconds. The silver torch beam twinkled on the snowy ground a few feet ahead of him. As he rounded the corner the harsh security light flooded his tired eyes. Ten seconds. He shielded them, before turning his attention to the kennel and rope. He kneeled to inspect the rope when, above the wind, came a sound from the trees. He span, half falling against the house, and trained the torchlight into the dense greenness of the conifers. ‘Freddy?’ The wind died to a whisper. In the distance a car door slammed shut and he thought about calling out to the neighbour for help. But what would he say? That his dog was missing? ‘Fred?’ He stood now and gingerly stepped towards the trees, bobbing and leaning to get a view through the branches, his heart racing. Then he heard it. A low growl. The pounding heartbeat rose in his ears again as the torch settled on a pair of glowing eyes. ‘Fred. Stop fucking about,’ he shouted, unable to control the quiver in his voice. As he stepped back he noticed footprints leading into the trees. Too big for Freddy’s? His mind was at the point of contemplating the patch where whatever it was stopped walking into the trees and started to be dragged Please not Freddy when, between the gusts of wind, the growl rose. David dropped the torch. He turned and sprinted for the door. Behind him, he heard the trees part. His shadow shrank in the fallen torchlight only to be swallowed by something huge. He stumbled around the corner and leapt at the kitchen door expecting to feel the cold grip of death at any moment… The Death of Laszlo Breyer is available now on Amazon in ebook and paperback. If you’d like more info on new releases, or almost daily posts on horror and the unexplained, head to my Facebook page... If you have a friend who’s into horror books, or just great stories, then please share this with them!
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Welcome!
In this blog I'll be bringing to you short tales of things that go bump in the night, true stories of weird and unexplained events, and the real-life news of all things odd and macabre, and entertain you along the way. Categories
All
Archives
October 2023
|