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Category: Horror
Description: Moonlight casts a deadly shadow. Small town America. A baseball game on a warm July morning. A boy is running through the outfield. Suddenly, he slips and falls in a cascade of red. After he slides to a stop in a pool of blood and gore, he finds himself looking at a human head. He screams. The terror in tiny Blacksville, Pennsylvania, has begun.Can newspaper reporter John Reynolds discover who, or what, is killing the people of Blacksville? Will he be able to overcome the effects of his nervous breakdown? Can he trust those around him? Will they trust him? Has he found love in the little town? Will the killer take her? What Reynolds finds in reality is more terrifying than anything he imagined in his darkest moments. Will he survive? Excerpt: He was going full bore, concentrating totally on the ball, when his right foot slipped on something wet. He didn't go down on that step, but when his left foot struck the ground and slid, he was a goner. Tommie threw out his arms in front of him in an effort to break his fall, but they went out from under him and he slammed into the ground in a spray of red sending him skidding along on his belly.What had he fallen into? Whatever it was, it stunk. Cow shit? No, it didn't smell like that. He didn't have a reference for how this smelled. When he stopped sliding, Tommie opened his eyes and saw that he was covered in red."What is this?" he asked as he pushed himself up.He stopped when he saw it."No! It can't be!"He blinked his eyes, wiped his glasses and looked again. It was still there.Tommie tried to shout, but his voice failed him at first, then he screamed. He leaped up from the ground as if it were electrified and ran back toward the field, screaming the high-pitched screams of a boy who has not yet reached puberty.
eBook Publisher: Eternal Press/Damnation Books LLC/Damnation Books, 2011 2011
eBookwise Release Date: May 2011

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [426 KB]
Words: 89767
Reading time: 256-359 min.

Chapter One

The players on the Blacksville Rangers eleven-to twelve-year-olds' baseball team gathered in a circle Saturday, July 23, 2005, one arm extended into the circle of hands and each player's hand clasped over the top of the rest. They counted down and shouted, "Teamwork!" It was the way Coach Denny Barton started every game.

They weren't a good team, but it didn't matter because they tried hard and had fun. That's why they were there: to have fun. Denny told them that before every game and, well, it was something, wasn't it? What else could he say when he got stuck with the losers, or more politically correct, the less talented kids.

He hadn't been present during the draft. Somehow, they forgot to notify him of the time and place, so he had no say about who was assigned to his team. Joe Hancock, on the other hand, who was well connected, got to choose his players and to be sure, Joe didn't pick anyone he perceived as a loser. As a result, Joe's team was 5-0 and the Rangers were 0-5.

He spouted off their assignments and the kids took the field. Tommie Jones knew where he would be. Right field, same as always. He knew what playing right field meant as well as anybody. Maybe when you were a little kid and too dumb to realize the real score you might not know what right field meant, but not by age twelve. By now everybody knew.

It meant you sucked. Right field hardly got any action because there were so few lefties, so the safest place to put the real doofus was right field. That way he couldn't screw things up too badly.

If playing right field didn't make the point clearly enough, there was his spot in the batting order. Eighth, one spot ahead of Fat Freddie, who could turn a home run into a single because he moved so slowly.