I am excited to share the latest book by my friend Michael Swanson. Check out my review of his first novel in this series, The Angel Baby.
A
new novel by the best-selling author of the Houston
Literary
Award Reader's Favorite, 'The Angel Baby.'
On
her way to the beach for spring break, Tanny Guidry stops at a
"haunted" sanitarium to learn if all the terrifying stories
online about the Laularie Parish Sanitarium are true. More
frightening than the spirits of the dead she encounters, is the
presence her entry into the sanitarium has awakened within her.
Attacked by a gang who rob those foolish enough to enter the
sanitarium, the presence within her proves more frightening and more
deadly than all the terrors that haunt the sanitarium.
Arriving
in Galveston, Tanny and her roommate head to the beach. That evening,
eager to hook up with the young men they met at the beach, thegirls
go to The Voodoo Lounge. For over a century, the Voodoo Lounge served
as a brothel, and like veritably all of Galveston, it has a dark
history Tanny now possesses the power to see. Later that night, while
tagging along on a ghost tour exploring Galveston's notorious Post
Office Street, Tanny's presence stirring up the spirits all around
makes the Ghostman of Galveston's tour the most terrifying night of
his life
On
her own the next day enjoying the party scene along The Strand,
passing by an antique shop, Tanny feels compelled to purchase a
porcelain doll. While leaving the store, she notices an old
photograph of an angel atop a crypt at Galveston's Old City Cemetery.
While seeking out the angel, the one gang member who survived has
followed her. When he attacks Tanny amongst the tombstones, she turns
the tables impaling him upon the spikes of the fence surrounding the
angel's crypt.
An
assistant DA who knew Tanny's father sees the story on the news.
Coming to her aid, Callie brings Tanny to her home in Houston's
historic Heights. There, she and an old ghost-hunting friend of
Tanny's father reveal the truth about the death of her father who
died while battling a demon described as, The Angel of Evil. More
frightening than learning about her father's involvement with voodoo
and his terrible death, is discovering The Angel of Evil is now
hell-bent on possessing Tanny's soul.
Buy
Links
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Angel-Evil-Michael-Swanson-ebook/dp/B0CH81RWHK
Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1443770
Barnes
and
Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1144010762?ean=2940167321120
Excerpt
"Ray!"
The return of Callie's impatience was a very-real presence in the
room. "You're stalling again. Just go ahead and play the damn
thing."
Clearly reluctant yet resigned, Ray nodded. Quickly
plugging the adaptor cables leading from his laptop into the camera,
he set it down on the table but still didn't press Play. "Okay,
I've set the counter to the place where I believe Noel and I were
just entering the hallway. There were these scratching noises coming
from one of the bedrooms and--"
"Ray!" Callie only
needed to bark his name to compel Ray to press the Play button. At
the sound of the click, moving as quickly as if he'd just lit the
short fuse of a powerful explosive, Ray raced over to take up a place
behind the safety of the couch.
Every eye was upon the screen. Even
the doll appeared to be watching, yet there was only the sound of a
soft whirring coming from the camera. All at once, the grid of camera
images vanished. Yet as seconds ticked past, there was nothing but
black.
"Does anyone else hear that ticking sound?" Her hand
down in her lap, Callie had lifted up her index finger and was
swaying it back and forth. "It sounds like a clock. Tick-tock.
Tick-tock. Where the hell is that coming from? Is that on the tape?"
A brilliant flash of white caused Sloan and Callie to blink and sit
back at the same instant. Just as quickly as the screen flashed, it
went black again. Then spreading across from the bottom, slashes of
grainy static zigzagging from side to side up the screen revealed
jagged slices of what appeared to be a doorway framing pitch black
within.
There was a crackly sound of a voice that clearly wasn't
Ray's. "What the hell is that, Ray? Are you seein' what I'm
seein'? I've seen me some movin' shadows and crap like that. But,
God's honest truth, Ray, I ain't never seen any shit like this!"
"That's my daddy's voice!" Leaning down to place her cheek
next to the doll's, Taneesha's squeal of excitement was like that of
a small child. "That's my daddy!"
Perhaps the reason
neither Callie nor Ray confirmed it for her was that it was then the
static vanished and the video finally came into clear view.
Illuminated in the twin pools of light shining down from Ray and
Noel's headlamps, reaching up from under a door were a pair of
gray-white fingers ravenously scratching, picking and flicking away
shards of wood from along the bottom of the door.
The sound of Ray's
voice not here and now but over fifteen-years-ago came next. "Noel,
it might be that there really is someone in there."
No longer
with his arm around Taneesha but sitting all the way up on the edge
of the couch, Sloan shot out his hand pointing at the screen. "Damn!
Will ya look at that! Now that right there's some crazy-ass shit! I
don't know if those are claws or the fingers of a child!"
Gray
and filthy, what appeared to be the fingers of a corpse that had dug
its way free of the grave, the chipped and blackened fingernails were
reaching out and picking ravenously along the bottom of the door,
scatting shards and chips of wood all over the well-worn wood floor.
"Sweet Jesus!" Callie was sitting up all the way forward on
the edge of the couch. "I've heard you describe this before,
Ray. But seeing it with my own eyes, oh my God, it does look like
there's someone really in there. Someone trying to claw their way
out."
"That's not somebody who's in there; it's that
'thing' that's in there." The unease in the hush of Ray's voice
as real as the fingers tearing at the door, the distinctive Creole
flavor of Noel's New Orleans accent presented a stark contrast to
Ray's voice. "Come on, bro! We cain't just standout 'round out
here lookin' at it. This kinda shit is exactly what we've been
lookin' for. You and I got no choice but to open that door and find
out just what the hell's in there. I'm ready if you're ready. You
fling open the door, and I'll catch its scary ass on my camera."
Displayed across the entire screen covering most of Callie's wall,
like twin spotlights shining down upon a stage, the beams from each
man's headlamps illuminated the fingers ripping wood from the door.
Adding to the insanity of the surreal scene the two men were seeing
with their eyes and recording with their cameras, even the slightest
move of Ray or Noel's head caused the light from their headlamps to
cast moving shadows this way and that around the fingers. The video
couldn't show the men holding the cameras, or anything of what was
behind them, but there existed an unmistakable sense of the presence
of where they were. In the air was that dirty, sour and musty stink
found in old and rundown houses. Here in the hallway of this squalid
rent house, freezing cold and absolutely pitch black all around,
everything except that which was illuminated within the lights from
Ray and Noel's headlamps disappeared off into utter darkness.
Those
fingers kept reaching out, ravenously tearing at the wood. Yet the
sound recorded by the camera of the fingernails scraping and tearing
was even more terrifying than the insanity of seeing the fingers of a
corpse come to life.
Noel's hands slipped into view, one holding an
EMF meter and the other a camera, which was surely the one sitting
out on the table and plugged into the laptop. "Whatcha waitin'
for? We gotta do it now! Come on, Ray! Open that damn door b'fore it
goes away!"
In the light of his headlamp, Ray's big ham of a
hand appeared as he reached out towards the door. When he gripped the
doorknob, the fingers below instantly ceased their ripping at the
wood and withdrew back up under the door. Caught up in the moment of
Ray's hesitation, the tension of everyone watching the video raged
off the scale. Taneesha was sitting back with her doll perched
attentively on her lap, while to either side Sloan and Callie were
sitting up on the very edge of their seats. Behind them, Ray was
gripping the backrest with both hands, yet leaning as far back away
from the screen as he possibly could.
Perhaps it was through a
connection with Taneesha as she watched in silence, or it might be
the power of Ray's memories as he experienced his worst nightmare
coming to life all over again. But the sense of the reality of what
Ray and Noel were recording with their cameras had grown so
overwhelming, both Callie and Sloan were experiencing flashes of the
thoughts racing through the minds of the two men outside that door.
Everything from just another empty room to an actual shit-your-pants
terror held the potential of being behind that door. Yet deep down,
despite the frigid air, the sobbing and the organ dirge, which had
drawn Ray and Noel into this hallway, after so many years of
frustration, all these two ghost hunters expected to find behind that
door was an empty bedroom with filthy walls and broken down
furniture.
They could see Ray's fingers tighten, then slowly and
carefully twist the knob. Pausing for just the span of a single
heartbeat, in the blink of an eye, Ray yanked the door wide open.
There it was. Standing right out in the open by the foot of a broken
down bed. Not shrinking away or fading into the shadows, but glaring
at the two men crowded shoulder-to-shoulder together into the doorway
with all the rage of a rabid animal.
"Dagmar!" From
somewhere within another world, what sounded like Taneesha's voice
cried out, "That's Dagmar!"
Perhaps it was simply the shock
of what they were seeing, but in these seconds as the video continued
to play, time seemed to freeze and hold its breath. No more than
three feet tall, the thing standing at the foot of that busted up
twin bed appeared to have once been a little girl. Grim and ghastly,
her skin a sickly and grayish-white, it wasn't any vaporous mist or
quickly fleeting shadow here and then gone. Possessed of actual
physical form, the naked body of what might once have been a little
girl appeared solid and real to the touch. Real or not, there was no
question but that the thing standing at the foot of that bed was
dead. Within that frigid room, the soured air reeked of rot and
decay. Visible up above her head, unseen up under the bed, and up in
every corner of the room, clouds of tiny, gray moths swarmed in and
out of the shadows.
Lording over the filth and the foul stink, not a
misty phantom caught only out of the corner of the eye, the Angel of
Evil stood waiting for them. Without a beating heart, or a breath in
the lungs to utter a single word, the spider was daring the flies to
come closer, to cross the threshold of their own free will, to take
that one...single...fatal...step in through the doorway.
Yes, come
inside...just a little bit closer.
Ray and Noel both stood their
ground, not making a move to enter the room, yet not turning and
running. As the bits of gray in the air began to swarm more and more
wildly, there held a momentary impasse in which the reality of what
the two men were experiencing began to sink into the people watching
the video play out. Dead, alive, whatever it was or had been, this
was real. Her skin filthy and scarred, she appeared as if she had
somehow broken free of her coffin and dug herself out of the grave.
The worst of it was her face. It wasn't the hollows of her cheeks or
the black of her lips; it was those awful eyes, yellow and streaked
with blood they burned with a murderous rage. Yet strangely, the hair
framing that frightful face was sweet ringlets of strawberry blonde
curls. Standing before them entirely naked, the prurient details of
her child's body shockingly exposed, starkly raw, horrifically
pornographic.
Still holding onto the doorknob behind him, Ray's hand
finally fell away. Bringing up his EMF meter perhaps as a reflex, he
didn't even look at the needle pegged sideways off the scale on the
little green screen.
"Ray? Hey, Ray?" Noel's hiss shattered
the silence. "Whatta we do now?"
Unable to take his eyes
off its face, both fifteen years ago, as well as here and
now, Ray couldn't find his voice to answer.
Like people in a small
boat with no hope of escape in those last seconds before a storm
unleashes its fury, everyone on both sides of the screen could feel
the power of what was about to happen coming on. Glaring up at them
off the tops of its eyes with her chin pressed almost down to her
bare, naked chest, within those awful, yellow eyes burned the evil
intent of a rabid animal. Clenched into fists of stone down at the
side of her thighs were those filthy fingers, the same ones they'd
seen reaching out from under the door just moments ago. Every rib
across both sides of her chest and her breastbone clearly visible
beneath her grey and leathery skin, she appeared to be breathing,
perhaps even panting, waiting, just waiting for her prey to make the
mistake of coming just that little step closer.
Yes, come in. Step
inside...come closer...just another...step.
Up on the screen, Ray's
voice whispered, "Let's go in. Let's try to communicate with
it."
"Communicate! Are you fuckin' kiddin' me?" Ray
didn't need to see Noel shaking his head. "You cain't be seein'
the same shit I'm seein'?"
Noel also didn't need to see Ray
swallow to feel the dry parch of his own mouth all the way down to
his throat.
Though Taneesha was smiling, Sloan and Callie both
appeared stricken, sitting all the way forward up on the very edge of
the couch with their eyes wide and their mouths hanging open. The
nakedness of the thing stood as an affront to everything natural. Not
just dirty but filthy from head to toe, more corpse than child,
despite the vicious scars covering seemingly every inch of skin,
surely the cause of its death had been starvation. Little more than a
skeleton enshrouded in leathery, gray skin, the stark exposure of the
bones of her hips and pelvis drew Ray's unwilling eyes down to a
sight best left unseen.
Suddenly, it raised up its arms, spreading
out her palms as if beseeching the men in the doorway for help. The
stream of moths rising up from below the bed was merging with those
above, swirling all about her in a frightful frenzy. From somewhere
within the air came the sound of sobbing, seducing the men in the
doorway to enter with the anguished cries of a child.
Ray attempted
to squeeze past Noel, but Noel held firm, keeping the bigger man
wedged in the doorway and not allowing him to step into the room.
"What the Sam-hell is wrong with you?" Ray growled. "She's
in pain."
"She ain't in no goddamned pain." The
resolve carried in Noel's voice came as a clear warning. "That
thing is dead, an' it's tryin' to trick us. Just listen. That cryin'
ain't comin' from her. Listen close an' you can hear it! It ain't her
that's cryin'. She's tryin' to trick us with the sound of the things
she does to people. What we're hearin' are the cries of her victims
whisperin' in our ears."
At that moment, Dagmar's eyes moved,
focusing the full fire of her wrath upon Noel. The skin of her face
drawing back and contorting in rage, her lips opened in a vicious
snarl revealing broken and rotten teeth with an even blacker tongue
within.
The instant it rushed the door, it was Noel that saved them.
Catching Ray off balance and pulling him back with him, Noel slammed
the door shut. Half a heartbeat later there came a crash of elbows
and knees impacting the door, then the most terrifying screaming and
clawing, both men clinging to the doorknob desperate to keep the door
shut at any cost.
"Don't let her out!" Leaping to her feet
and standing ready to defend herself, Callie screamed at the screen,
"For God's sake! Don't let it the fuck out!"
Appearing
seemingly from out of nowhere, Ray wasn't just on the screen gripping
the doorknob in both hands and bracing with his knee up against the
doorframe but here at the table. Having raced around from behind the
couch, he mashed down on the Stop button, and in and instant the
screen went black.
"Holy shit!" On the verge of rising up
beside Callie, Sloan had grabbed up his crutch from where he'd left
it leaning on the side of the couch. "Was that shit for real?"
Beads of sweat dripped down off Ray's forehead and his shirt was
sticking to his skin. Standing with his back to the screen, the big
man was drawing each breath as heavily as if he'd just run for his
life. "That..." his face grim and gray, Ray had to pause to
time his words between breaths. "Is... as real..." he cleared
his throat, "...as real as it gets."
Seemingly sucked into
the back of the couch, Sloan slumped back and let his crutch fall
against the armrest. "I ain't never seen nothin' like that
b'fore. I seen me some crazy-ass shit in that sanitarium, but...but...but that!" He stretched out his arm shaking a finger at the
screen. "That wasn't crazy! It was insane!"
Still standing
ready to defend herself with her fists clenched, Callie's breathing
was heaving as rapidly as if she'd just outrun Ray. Of the four in
the room, Taneesha alone appeared unaffected. Holding her doll
sitting up on her lap and clutched tightly to her, she had such a
blank and distant expression on her face.
"I'm sorry to have to
do this to everyone." His finger already pressing the rewind
button, as the camera whirred Ray reached up and wiped away the sweat
from his forehead. "But now, I'm afraid we're going to have to
watch it all over again."
About
the Author
Born
and raised in Houston, Texas, Michael Swanson is the author of a
number of Horror, Sci-fi and Adventure novels and short stories,
including the Sci-Fi bestseller Farlight and the 2021 Houston
Literary Awards Finalist, The Angel Baby. He also writes adult
romance and erotica under the pen name M. Millswan. Amongst novels
such as, Tabu, The Awakening of Anna Leigh, Lady
Luck, OMG! I'm Naked in School!, his classically romantic
erotic short story, Snap Shot has over two million readers and
has been called, "A Masterpiece of Erotic Fiction." An avid
blues guitarist, whitewater kayaker and scuba diver, after retiring
at an early age from a successful career of international printing
sales based from an office he founded in Mexico City, he built, owned
and operated an extreme sports whitewater lodge in Costa Rica,
catering to adventure sports enthusiasts from around the world. Now
residing in Virginia, he writes full- time.
Facebook
Link: https://www.facebook.com/michael.swanson.7549/
Linkedin
Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miswanson/
