Paperback & ebook, 143 Pages
April 6, 2021 by Burns and Lea Books
I drop to the ground from the final rung and stand still, chest heaving in the tunnel’s blackness. The sound of the gravel as my feet hit the floor is like a gunshot in the still, dark air. Dead air.
For a full minute, I wait, listening.
But there is nothing but the sound of my ragged breathing in the dark.
I clutch the lantern tighter... but think twice of lighting it. I knowthe way. I could draw the tunnels by heart, so long have I roamed them.
My tiny, bedraggled, nine-year-old self shuffles through mymemory. The first time I ever found the library.
My fingers trace the bumpy walls, waiting for the left to fallaway—my indication it is time to veer.
I sniff. My heartbeat doubles.
Violets. I smell violets—in this desolate, forgotten place. Like an olfactory mirage rising out of a miasma of dust, mold, and grime. Tears spring and bead on my bottom lashes.
I flatten both palms against the stones, breathing heavily. I cockmy head. Why am I crying? Devastation crushes my windpipe.Suddenly she appears. Vivid and bold in my memory, in anivory dress, hair as blue-black as a raven’s wing. My mother.Memories long buried break free. My mother crooning to me,rocking me near the hearth fire. My mother tucking blankets about my shoulders, then kissing my forehead.
My mother wore violets.
My head whips left and right in the dark, trying to locate thesmell’s origin.
I extract a match and strike it once, twice, thrice, till it finallyflares, flaming to life in my shaking fingers.
I am chasing Frost. I have truly lost my mind.
The smell is coming from the wall. I cock my head, blinking.My fingertips sting and burn as the match burns down, and Idrop it.
I scrabble for another, my heart racing so fast I must fight thevertigo to remain upright.
The lantern flares and I hoist it up. A number, 3, is scrawled onthe wall in red.
My mind flashes back to the words scrawled over my bed aftereach murder, “Help me, I know not what I do.”
I lean forward, so close my nose nearly touches the number. Theviolets emanate from it—as if a full, invisible vine snakes around the number’s curves.
I tentatively lift my hand and press it to the wall. “Momma. Areyou alive, Momma?”
Hardcover, Paperback & ebook, 300 Pages
February 4, 2019 by Burns and Lea Books
Life for Patient 29 is full of medicated day dreams of a life outside the walls of Soothing Hills Asylum. But fantasies are not all that consume her. A monster roams the halls of the sanitarium she reluctantly calls home and three girls have been found dead. The dead girls share one common thread . . . each was 29's cell mate. As the investigation gets under way, she retreats into her mind, listening to the voices that call to her. She is endowed with the cursed gift of perception. Through it, she hears messages carried upon the notes of music, discerns words hidden among the strokes of paintings, and minds pleadings for help from the corn field outside.
Could the key to the murders lie within 29's broken mind? Mason, an orderly, does not see 29 as a lunatic and as his belief in her grows so does her self-confidence. The possibility of one day leaving the asylum seems less and less like a fantasy. But the monster has other plans for her. Leaving will not be so easy, at least not while she is alive.
- One winner will receive a $20 Amazon gift card and an audiobook of HERE WALK THE DEAD
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