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  With blood and eye fluid leaking down his cheek, he spit out the piece of wood. He placed the rifle against his good eye and pulled the trigger, knowing his daughter was special and would be fine.

  Only he can stop the gates of Hell from opening wide.

  Damaged Souls

  © 2013 David Bernstein

  John Crawford wasn’t able to deal with the pain and took the easy way out. At least he thought he did. Instead, he’s been offered a deal by a nightmarish creature and given a second chance at life. But he’s no longer human. And he’s been assigned an impossible task. He must kill a demon before it opens the gates of Hell and brings about the apocalypse. If John succeeds, the human race will be safe and he can become human again. If he fails, mankind will perish and he will be lost for all eternity.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Damaged Souls:

  The demon ran through the woods of Black Rock Mountain, just outside of the small hamlet known as Salisbury Mills, a small town located in Upstate New York. The hell-fiend’s powers were weak. It had to use them to defend itself against the throng of villagers that were chasing after it.

  The demon had taken over the body of a local farmer, a sick and twisted man who enjoyed killing children. The human had been easy pickings, and perfect for the fiend. But the demon had lost control and was careless, killing too many, too close to home.

  The murder spree had been euphoric, its favorite body parts there for the taking. Oh, how it reveled in the pain of others. It had gained the attention of the townsfolk and its constable, a man with a keen nose for solving murder.

  The demon heard the villagers’ footfalls and the snapping of branches as the townspeople pursued it. With the Sinerth, the tome of suffering, in its possession and knowing its time would be up soon, the demon headed for the shack where it had brought its victims—the place it had built the ceremonial chamber.

  Bursting through the door, it only had minutes to hide the book. It stepped over the corpses it had acquired, the five bodies positioned to form a pentagram. The place was rank with the odor of blood, the metallic smell exciting the fiend. Seeing what it had almost accomplished—the bodies, the altar, the blood bowls—the demon cursed itself. It had been so close to fulfilling its duty.

  Opening the ancient tome, a book made from human and demon flesh, the fiend read a spell of resurrection. The fiend felt its power drain further, the spell a powerful one. Then using the blood in one of the sacrificial bowls, it splashed each corpse on the head and poured the remaining blood onto the page containing the spell. Black smoke sizzled from the parchment and rose into the air, spreading out like a swarm of agitated bees. The dark cloud broke into five separate funnels, then shot into each of the corpses’ mouths.

  “Come out, demon,” the town’s priest demanded.

  Torchlight flickered against the shack’s windows, through which the demon saw the angry mob. Standing beside the priest was the constable, a rugged and hardened man from the town. Most of the villagers carried farmers’ tools, axes, pitchforks and sickles, but a few had double-barrel shotguns.

  The demon couldn’t hope to survive, but the book would at least be safe until the creature returned. How ever long that might be, it did not know, but unlike this time, it wouldn’t have to wander the countryside looking for the tome. It would know where to go, having secured it properly, and would be able to go to work on its task and redeem itself, for surely its master would be furious at its failure.

  The dead bodies rose to their feet, standing before the demon, ready to do its bidding. Pointing to the door, it commanded the undead to attack the villagers and keep them at bay for as long as possible. The soulless things exited the shack, fear unknown to them.

  Gunshots rang out. Villagers screamed.

  With the townsfolk occupied, the demon had time to hide and secure the book. In the far corner of the building, it wrapped the tome in an enchanted cloth, a cloth that would help keep the book’s powers at bay, yet still allow the thing to be active.

  Next, the fiend pulled up a set of the floorboards and placed the book inside before replacing the planks of wood. With the book covered and out of its grasp, the demon grew even weaker, having used most of its strength to raise the dead.

  The gunshots had stopped.

  “Burn the unholy place,” one of the villagers yelled, and the entire crowd began chanting.

  “Burn! Burn! Burn!”

  The demon heard the thuds of the villagers’ torches as the flaming sticks collided against the shack’s walls and roof, hoping to turn the place into nothing more than a pile of ash. But the building wouldn’t burn—no, and the demon knew this—for the ancient tome protected its place of rest. Not wanting to take a chance that the villagers would venture inside, the demon ran outside, stopping a few feet from the lawman.

  The crowd went quiet.

  The priest began reading from the Good Book.

  The demon felt the man’s words pierce its flesh, like thousands of needles puncturing its skin. It was too weak to flee or fight, and the man was a true believer. At full strength it could have silenced him, ripped out his tongue and eaten it.

  Fighting through the pain, the demon laughed.

  Can two kids alone stop a monstrous evil?

  The Tree Man

  © 2014 David Bernstein

  Women and children have been mysteriously disappearing from Evan’s town. And now Evan may know why. He was climbing a tree in the woods when he saw a decrepit old man toss a helpless woman into the mouth of a hideous tree-like creature.

  Evan knows he can’t stop the man and the creature by himself, but he also knows no one will believe a kid with such a wild story. Only his best friend, Peter, can help him confront this terrifying evil. But if they aren’t careful, they will soon be missing too.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for The Tree Man:

  A decrepit-looking, elderly man, skin hanging from his bones like loose rubber bands, wearing a flannel shirt and shabby blue jeans, dragged the body of a screaming woman through the woods. The man’s appearance didn’t match his inhuman strength. The woman thrashed around, but the man marched on, unaffected. She was bloodied and full of gashes. Her cobalt-colored dress was shredded, exposing her hot-pink panties and bra. Many of her fingernails were missing, leaving only raw and exposed meat, but the few remaining were painted a brilliant scarlet.

  The man passed through thorn bushes, but never bled or gave the slightest suggestion that they bothered him.

  He approached a cultivated hayfield, halting just inside the tree line. Summer winds blew, swaying the lazy grains of hay in unison as if caught in a melodic trance.

  The field was rectangular in shape, extending like an airport runway to his left, before abruptly ending at the base of Black Rock Mountain. The forest picked up again a quarter mile across, the direction he was heading.

  The woman’s monotonous screams became audible pleadings. She wanted to negotiate, to strike a deal, but the man wouldn’t hear of it. He let go of her ankle, walked up to her teary-eyed face, and nonchalantly kicked her in the forehead. Her head jerked violently back and forth, as if spring-loaded, and she fell silent. Her long blonde hair, caked with briars, dirt, and leaves, lay over her face, covering it like a misplaced wig. If the man had wanted, he could have kicked her head clean off her shoulders. Grabbing an ankle, the man continued into the golden field.

  Baby-blue skies, dotted with white puffy clouds, stretched out for miles overhead. The scene would have been brochure worthy had the man not been present, like a cockroach creeping across a freshly made coconut cream pie. The hay seemed to separate a few feet ahead of him as if avoiding his touch. He didn’t belong where he was, but what was anyone to do about it?

  The sky began to darken, turning a navy blue, and the clouds grew smoky in hue.

  A hulking oak tree, appearing leafless and charred, as if struck repeatedly by lightning, stood by its lonesome fifty feet from where the forest began again.
/>   The man marched up to the monstrous oak, stopping a few feet from its base. He released the woman’s ankle, letting it flop to the ground. The sky darkened to a plum-colored hue, and the winds had all but died.

  Thirteen-year-old Evan McCormick had been up in a tree when he first heard the screaming. He froze, listening, his chest unmoving, a spark of panic mixed with curiosity entering his brain. He saw the old man exit the tree line and march across the field, the screaming, pleading sounds he heard coming from the woman. From that point on, Evan didn’t dare move. He remained seated on the branch, his fingers wrapped tightly around the tree’s bark, and watched as the old man approached the charred-looking tree.

  After releasing the woman, the old man backed away from the tree. He held his arms out wide like an opera singer bellowing a grand note. He swayed back and forth and began chanting something foreign. It seemed odd that the man could speak, having appeared zombielike until that moment.

  The tree began to sway, as if following the man’s movement; and not a hint of wind blew. The thinnest of the branches were stirring, twitching, and soon the thicker ones were moving too. The trunk twisted and the branches whipped about.

  The woman woke up and began screaming again, her words incoherent. The man stopped chanting and lowered his arms. One of the tree’s tentacles reached down toward her. The woman managed to get to her feet. She turned to flee, but the branch wrapped itself around her calf like a python, then the smaller twigs gripped her as a human hand would and lifted her from the ground. Her dress flipped upside down, revealing her pink-colored underwear in full. She screamed louder.

  The tree’s base bent awkwardly back as the woman soared high into the air. A large horizontal crack appeared in the tree trunk. It widened, then parted, revealing a mouth with numerous jagged teeth. It seemed to yawn, the inside a black abyss. The woman flailed about, trying to break free, but the tree added more of its tentacles to her leg. A growl emanated from the creature’s maw.

  The tree-thing lowered the prey to its mouth, but the woman braced herself, using her arms to keep from going in. The tree roared in protest, shoving the woman down with force. Her right arm slipped into the blackness, but her shoulder slammed against the side of the creature’s mouth, preventing her from entering any farther. The monster’s jaws closed, taking the woman’s arm. Blood gushed from the stump, covering the bark in glistening red. The tree growled and swung the wailing woman into the air before bringing her back down with whiplike speed. Her right side slammed into the tree’s waiting mouth. Its jaws slammed shut, taking a huge chunk of the woman’s hip and stomach. Blood exploded forth as she bellowed in agony.

  Another branch sailed down and collided with the woman’s back, breaking her in half—the wicked snap of bone echoing above all else. She fell silent. With her body bent backward and in the shape of the letter V, head and feet meeting, the creature began shoving the meal into its mouth.

  Witch Island

  David Bernstein

  A witch’s curse from beyond the grave!

  Witch Island used to be feared. Even the bravest would not dare go there. Legend said a witch had been burned alive at the stake, and upon her death she cursed the town. Terrified residents performed rituals to keep her spirit trapped on the island where she was buried.

  Now, over a hundred years later, a group of high school seniors have decided to forgo the local graduation parties and have a small gathering of their own—on Witch Island. They don’t fear the legends. They scoff at them. But the group will soon learn these particular legends are nothing to scoff at. And Witch Island will prove far worse than they could have ever imagined.

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

  Cincinnati OH 45249

  Witch Island

  Copyright © 2014 by David Bernstein

  ISBN: 978-1-61921-869-7

  Edited by Don D’Auria

  Cover by Scott Carpenter

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: June 2014

  www.samhainpublishing.com