Sacrifice
Mar 17 '06
The Bottom Line To learn how you can purchase an autographed copy of SACRIFICE, e-mail me at horrorfied@earthlink.net. To learn more about me and my writing, visit http://www.maceyshouseofhorror.com
WARNING! The following contains scenes from an R-rated horror novel. Reader discretion is advised.
Introduction
You may or may not have learned from my bio that I had a horror novel published two years ago. The name of it is SACRIFICE, and it was published by Amber Quill Press. To self-market, as we writers are encouraged to do by small publishing houses, Amber Quill Press allows me to display the book’s blurb (back cover summary), a teaser (excerpt), prologue, first chapter, and any reviews. So for me, that means a little shameless self-promotion here, and for you, some free reading and hopefully, encouragement to pick up the book. If you like what you see here, you can e-mail me at horrorfied@earthlink.net to purchase an autographed copy, which comes with a complimentary bookmarker.
Please excuse any weird spacing in this version. It is nearly impossible to copy and paste from MS Word to the Internet without encountering a few spacing issues. These problems are NOT part of the book. Thank you for your understanding and patience.
Without further ado, here’s SACRIFICE…
Blurb
In a small southern town called Grimshaw, fourteen-year-old Angel Fallow lives in misery. Her Bible-quoting stepfather beats her if she dares break his fanatical rules. Her mother is cold and distant. Angel's only outlet is trips to the woods for secret, forbidden meetings with classmate Peter St. Thomas, her best and only friend.
Angel has always believed that her natural father died right after her birth. So when she learns he actually disappeared and was presumed dead, she's instilled with hopes of finding him and a chance at a normal life. When Angel and Peter begin searching for Angel's father, they discover two forces more powerful than any they ever imagined possible—the light of a beautiful first love, and the darkness that has caused so many of Grimshaw's children to suddenly die or disappear. As their relationship deepens, they unearth evidence of a local Satanist cult, its sacrifices of innocent children, and its horrifying connection to Angel's father. That same cult conducts its gruesome rituals with children who fit their physical profile, within the same woods where they meet. And they realize their discovery could cost them everything—including their lives...
Teaser
…Feeling confused, threatened, and in general, upset all over again, Angel began to run toward home, a fresh geyser of tears erupting down her face.
When the house came into view, she spotted Grandma rocking in a chair on the front porch. As sick as Grandma had been, Angel had expected her to be in bed. Certainly, she hadn't anticipated having to face her before she even got in the house. If she didn't get real cool real quick, she knew Grandma would pick up on something being wrong. Slowing to a walk, she sniffled, took a few deep breaths, and rubbed her hands across her cheeks to wipe away her tears.
"You're back early today, child." Angel nodded and climbed the steps. Grandma caught sight of her face. "And you're awfully flushed."
"It's just from running home to try to get out of the rain."
"Then why the dreary face?" Grandma leaned forward. "You're upset over what was in that box, aren't you?"
"No, Grandma. Peter forgot to bring my father's stuff, is all. And he's in trouble with his folks, so he had to go home early and can't come back today." It was a partial truth, anyway.
Grandma raised a wary eyebrow. "You're sure he really forgot and can't come back? Or do you think maybe he left everything at home deliberately? To try to do what's best for you and protect you, like I am?"
The same idea had crossed Angel's mind. But she was too upset and exhausted to think about that anymore, much less discuss it. In fact, she wanted nothing more than to peel off her wet clothes, soak in a bath, and cry. Shrugging, she placed her hand on the doorknob.
Grandma sighed. "I suppose it doesn't matter much one way or the other. Least it won't if I decide to come forward with what I know. That's what I'm thinking about doing."
Angel whirled around. "You mean you're going to tell me what's in that box? What you've been hiding?"
"I'm not sure I'm going to tell you directly. It's something that would be very hard for me to say to you. What I mean is I am thinking of going to others, others who can do something about it. It'll cost me everything. But I'm an old woman. I don't have much longer to live now. At least I can die knowing I tried to do the right thing. Besides, maybe it could actually help you somehow, too."
That statement made Angel believe more than ever that her father was still alive. She decided to try one further plea. "You know, Grandma, by this time tomorrow, I will have found out the truth from Peter—at least most of it. So why don't you go ahead and tell me what you know and how it could help me?"
"No more questions, child. I'm just thinking about this. I haven't decided for sure."
During the conversation, Angel's eyes fell upon the grove of trees across the road. That's when she spotted something black among the leafy green foliage. The top of it narrowed into a point, like the top of a hood. Then it moved. A person.
She pointed across the road. "Grandma, look!"
"What, child?"
"Don't you see…?" The shape had disappeared.
"See what, Angel?"
"Someone was out there, Grandma." Her voice trembled. "I think they were watching us."
Prologue
This is the story of how the town of Grimshaw sold its soul to the Devil.
What happened in Grimshaw could have happened—-and still could happen—-in virtually any small American town. Yet it happened in Grimshaw perhaps because the town was enduring extreme hardship at the time, which naturally causes weakness in man.
* * *
1973
A deep recession was sweeping the United States. That recession especially devastated small towns like Grimshaw, which offered its peoples few industries and sources of income. The majority of the sparse sources of income in Grimshaw—factories, warehouses,restaurants, cafés, and various mom-and-pop businesses—closed their doors forever, leaving most of Grimshaw unemployed.
A rural town in the Deep South, Grimshaw was able to fall back on farming—-until a drought followed the recession. Grimshaw, the smallest town in the affected region, the town with the fewest businesses open, the town that relied most heavily on farming, suffered the most. Day after day, farmers lugged buckets of water to their thirsty fields, only to have their crops mock them by withering and browning into premature deaths.
Weeks extended into months. The drought and recession went on...and on...and on...
With no end in sight to the tribulations, with money and even food scarce, Grimshaw’s population began to die out along with the economy and crops. Some who lived through it moved, a few abandoning their homes and property. Others couldn't leave due to lack of education, finances, personal strength, or various other inhibitors. Thus, they were stuck in Grimshaw to suffer and await the end of the drought, the recession, or themselves.
The hearts of those remaining overflowed with dark, bitter pain. They were starving. They were thirsty. They were weary. They were angry. Most of all, they were desperate.
The most desperate of all was a farmer named John Weekly. Nine years before, when John and his high school sweetheart Gay were seventeen, they had dropped out of school to get married. Over the next seven years, they had three children. Together, the family lived a life that was humble yet full of love and happiness. That love and happiness ended during the latter part of John and Gay's eighth year of marriage, when Gay died due to complications in childbirth.
Gay had given birth to twin boys. That left John the widowed father of five at only twenty-five years of age. Just weeks after Gay's death came the recession, followed by the drought. The factory where John worked closed, and the crops on his farm began to die. As a single parent, he found it harder and harder to care physically and financially for his children. He had no living relatives to help, and his friends and neighbors had too many troubles of their own to offer aid. Like his own old tractor, worn and rusted from too much weather and use, John Weekly’s spirit simply “broke down”—broke down worse than the spirit of anyone else in Grimshaw.
That is probably why he was chosen.
It happened on a Friday night, when John was in the modestly furnished bedroom he had shared with Gay. It was late, so John wore his usual sleepwear of a sleeveless undershirt and boxers. He looked at his reflection in the dusty, cracked mirror of the bureau and shook his head. His skin was pale and his body gaunt from lack of nourishment, for he had been eating a little less so his children could have a little more. The hard times that year had marked him with worry lines and patches of premature gray in his thinning, brown hair. Appalled by his
reflection, he switched on his bedside lamp and switched off his overhead light, trying not to face the shell of a man he had become.
John slumped onto the bed. On the nightstand lay a folded piece of paper and a framed photo of Gay, smiling and beautiful, taken just before she died. John picked up her photo and longingly poured over it. God, how he missed her, how he needed her now! In a way, though, he was glad she wasn’t around to suffer through these hard times, to see how they had left him unable to support his family. He dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief to stop the tears that threatened to seep through his lids.
That was it. Looking at Gay's photo and thinking about her hurt too much. John put down the picture, picked up the paper, and unfolded it. Printed across the top were the words,“Mortgage Foreclosure, Final Notice.” He shook his head again. So now he’d not only lost his wife, his job, and his crops, he was going to lose his home and land, too. Where would that leave his family?
“Daddy?”
John raised his eyes from the mortgage notice. His oldest daughter, eight-year-old Sarah, stood gazing at him from outside the open doorway. She was the only of the five children who had her late mother's blonde hair and blue eyes, but her facial features were almost identical to John's. He had once been quite proud of his daughter's face being so like his own. Now, seeing that similarity hurt him, for Sarah's countenance had recently taken on the pale, sickly color that he'd just observed in himself.
John asked, “What're you doing up, hon?”
"I'm hungry,” Sarah replied. “Everybody is. The twins are crying and pointing at their tummies and saying ‘hun-ry, hun-ry.’ And Gaylette and John Jr. are in my room, saying they can’t sleep 'cause their tummies are growling.”
“Oh,” John said distractedly, returning his attention to the mortgage notice. “There's a loaf of bread in the breadbox.”
“Nuh-uh. That's gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yeah. We ate it all at dinner.”
“Any crackers in the cabinet? Fruit in the fridge? Canned soup or vegetables in the pantry?”
Sarah answered each question with a shake of her head. “There's nothing in the house to eat.” Her features brightened with an idea.“Hey, let's get some vegetables out of the garden!”
“There ain't none. The drought’s killed the whole push of them.”
“Oh.”
An awkward silence followed. Sarah lowered her eyes in the same defeated expression that John had also observed on his own face a minute before. It pained his soul. He tried to say something comforting. "I'll go into town tomorrow and get a few things. For now, why don't you have a glass of water, and get one for your brothers and sister, too? It'll make y'all feel full.”
His statement had the opposite effect. Sarah contorted her features and said resentfully, “I already did. We're still hungry!" Scowling, she pivoted and disappeared from the doorway.
John maintained his composure long enough to put the mortgage notice on the nightstand, crawl under the covers, and switch off the lamp. But once he flipped onto his side, facing away from the door and the extinguished light, he allowed his tears to flow. He cried for his
land, for his children, for his late wife. Mostly, though, he cried for himself.
“John.”
At first, his name was spoken so faintly, so unexpectedly, that he assumed he had imagined it and kept crying.
“John,” it repeated, low and gravelly, with a hissing undertone.
The third time the voice sounded, John knew for sure it was real, because he heard it speak an entire sentence: “I can make it all better, John.”
John’s lids flew open. He bolted upright in bed. “Who’s there?”he called, groping for the switch to his bedside lamp.
The voice came again, now angry. “Don’t turn on that light!”
John dropped his hand but demanded, “Who are you?”
Calm once more, it replied, “I am known by various names. The Prince of Darkness, the Antichrist, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Satan—”
“Aw, horse sh1t!” John sputtered. He reached for the lamp a second time.
The voice became deeper, louder, and more forceful. “I said, don't turn on that light!
John searched the darkness. His heart began to pound. Just beyond the foot of his bed, in the corner between the bureau and the bedroom door, two red eyes flashed on like lights. They glowed bright as fire. Down the middle of each eye, where a pupil should have been, there
was instead a black, snake-like slit.
Now more afraid than he’d ever been in his life, John squeezed his eyes shut so he could no longer see the bestial ones blazing back at him. He began murmuring,“Oh please, don’t hurt me, please don’t let him hurt me, Jesus—”
“Jesus?” The voice broke into loud, hysterical cackling. “What has He done for you lately?”
“Huh?” Awestruck, John opened his lids.
“Brought you this endless recession? Given you this drought that has killed your crops and those of your friends and neighbors? Stolen your wife and the mother of your children? Left you and your family to starve to death? Fat lot of good He's been to you.”
It paused, and then, seeing that John was listening, repeated, “I can make it all better, John. I can give you back your home, your land, your job. I can make your crops grow once more, and ensure that you and your children never go hungry again. I can make it so that you, your
friends—-the entire town of Grimshaw—-prosper.”
It paused once more. John timidly whispered, “How?”
“Simple. I do something for you, you do something for me. I give you your lives back, and you give life back to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will repay me through sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice? What sort of sacrifice?”
“Life sacrifice. Sacrifices of pure minds and hearts, of pure bodies and souls. Sacrifices of blood.”
“You mean, like animals or somethin'?”
“Yes, sometimes goats and rams and such,” the voice replied. “Other times, I will require the sacrifice of a child.”
“What?!” John cried. “We’d have to kill children?”
“Heed my words, John. The whole town is perishing. What
difference will a few children here and there make if it will save so many others from oblivion?”
John was reaching for the bedside light yet a third time when he realized that, sadly, this sounded like a logical proposition. He hesitated. “Children from where?”
“Children from Grimshaw only, of course. It would be foolish to do otherwise. If you venture outside town for your sacrifices, you will attract more attention and likely get caught.”
John could scarcely believe the grotesque proposition. Nor that he was considering it. As his stomach began to rumble, though, he heard himself ask, “Which ones? Just any of them?”
“Oh no, not just any. Those with what some mortals have called ‘angelic features.’” Seeing that John didn’t understand, it added, “Features like those of your daughter Sarah.”
“No.” John began to shake his head. “You can’t mean you expect me to…”
“It would set a good example, a convincing example for the rest, if your own daughter were the first to be given to me.”
John clenched his hands, ready to leap off the bed and pound the demon with his fists. “You ain’t layin’ a finger on my daughter!”
“No, I won’t,” it confirmed. “You will. You will sacrifice her to me.”
“No!” John cried, appalled. “I can’t—-I won’t —kill my own daughter!”
“What’s the difference?” the voice asked coolly. “You have more mouths than you can feed now, anyway. Besides, you’ve got two girls, and I’m asking for only one. She won’t be able to offer you nearly as much help as your boys in tending your fields, which will grow in abundance if you bow to me.”
John had heard enough. He couldn’t believe he had listened to as much as he had. “You’re an abomination!”
The voice began to race. “She’s only going to die anyway of malnutrition or disease! They all will! Or you can give her to me and save…”
John cut off the voice, yelling, “An abomination against humanity, Christ, and everything that I believe in, and I want you out of here, now!” With that, he switched on the lamp.
When the light fell upon the monstrous apparition behind the red glowing eyes, John began to scream. Like an amalgamated animal, it had a gigantic dragon’s head, complete with pointed ears, an alligator-like snout, and long, sharp fangs. Its body and neck were the shape of a
serpent's, the body piled on the floor in lengthy, thick coils, the neck arched upward, like that of a snake about to strike. The entire head and body were covered in scales, and the scales were black with soot, as if
the creature had just come out of fire.
Sarah heard John screaming and came running through the hall, crying,“Daddy! Daddy!”
Before Sarah could enter the room and see the thing in the corner, the bulb in John’s lamp burst. His bedroom door slammed shut. The knob spun as Sarah struggled with the door, which had somehow locked from the inside.
John absorbed all of this in the split second before the thing's colossal mouth opened and roared, “I TOLD YOU—”
With John still screaming, the creature thrust forward its snake-like neck, over the foot of the bed and toward his face.
“—-DON’T TURN ON THAT LIGHT!”
As the creature spoke, huge flames shot from its mouth and hit John directly in the eyes. He snapped his lids shut, but their thin flesh was inadequate protection. His screaming never ceased, but only grew louder, his cries of terror becoming cries of pain. The fire ate away at
his lids and corneas, melting them into a fleshy mass of goo and sealing his eyes shut forever.
The fire stopped. In two audible snaps, the creature clamped shut its jaws and retracted its head. John clapped his hands over his eyes, fell backward, and rolled in a ball about the bed, howling and writhing.
“Fool!” the voice cried. “Where was your God then?” When John continued to squirm and cry, the voice went on, “If you want your life back, then go forth within the next three days and tell others what you have witnessed. Approach only a few people whom you are certain you
can trust, people without flapping jaws and loose tongues. And remember, keep it within Grimshaw only. Form an alliance of people in my name. Together, you shall journey forth into the Grimshaw woods and seek an obscure place in which to convene in secret, out of range of prying eyes and ears. A place where even the bravest, savviest, most
adventurous soul is unlikely to venture.”
With great pain, John whined, “Then what?”
“That is all for now. Soon, I will designate a man to show you the way. He will lead you in my name. In the meantime, simply go about your daily routines. Make sure you keep doing so even after your leader is revealed. The more ordinary and unchanged that things appear, the more inconspicuous your activities will be.”
* * *
Monday morning found one of John’s buddies, Reggie Sayers, who looked a lot like Goober from The Andy Griffith Show and was about as stupid, too, sitting at the bar inside The Feed Trough, Grimshaw’s one remaining café. John’s other three buddies, Doyle Fell, Tim Bowers,
and Sam Farmer, sat on each side of Reggie.
Between chews and spits of smokeless tobacco, Reggie concluded the latest story he’d heard about John. “A freak accident Friday night, I hear! Burnt John’s face real bad! Don’t know for sure what happened. Don’t think nobody does. Hear it was a kitchen fire or something. Now
I’ll tell you what: John’s oldest baby Sarah’s gonna be livin’ with a rich uncle to take a little pressure off of poor John because that accident just plain left him with more than he can handle, what with five kids and
all, I hear.” Reggie paused to spit a stream of tobacco into a Dixie cup.
“John ain’t got no living brothers or sisters,” remarked Tim. “So reckon that must be on Gay’s side.”
“No, that can’t be, either,” said Doyle. “When we were little, Gay's family and my family lived next door to each other, and Gay and I played together every day. She was an only child.” He scoffed,“Reggie, it sounds like you ‘hear’ wrong.”
“Nuh-uh!” insisted Reggie. “I’ll tell you what, I know it’s true because I live next door to Beauford Hicks, and his baby Kathy Sue's best friends with Sarah. Sarah stayed the weekend with the Hicks while John was getting all doctored up at Woodland County General, and I heard John and Sarah both talking to Beauford about it when John come to pick Sarah up Sunday. There they was, all standing around Beauford’s old truck when I heard it.” Reggie smirked at Doyle. “Shows what you know, Mr. Smart-@ss-I-Grad-je-ated-Val-a-victoria-So-I'm-Better-Than-The-Rest-Of-Y'all-Dumb-Old-Rednecks.”
Sam put in, “Why’s Sarah got to go? Ain’t John going to get back on his feet eventually?”
“Nope,” said Reggie. “He’s damaged for g-o-o-o-o-d. See, that fire got his eyes. Now I hear he’s blind as a bat.”
The café door opened behind them. “You hear wrong.”
The four men turned and found John leaning on a walking stick in the doorway. The skin immediately surrounding his eyes was red and charred. His eyelids were a deeper red, having taken on an almost brownish tint. They were closed and still, like they would be if he were soundly sleeping, but were far too grotesque for him to actually appear at peace. The bottoms of the shriveled lids had melted into the skin beneath his eyes and sealed themselves shut. Everyone could tell that, even after the layers of dried blood, blackened scabs, and pieces of charred flesh healed, John would never be able to open his eyes again.
Yet as the rain at last began to pour around him, John insisted, “I was blind, but now I see.”
* * *
Grimshaw, 1975
A group of people dressed in identical black hoods and cloaks circled Ansel, who stood next to the campfire in the circle’s center, his hands in the air. Four other cloaked figures surrounded him, each pointing guns at his head.
Just hours ago, Ansel had been driving to the Sheriff's Office to deliver valuable evidence of the existence and criminal activity of this bloodthirsty cult. His brakes had gone out, and he’d crashed his pickup into a roadside tree. One of the men holding a gun on him, George, had
“happened along” and picked him up. Ansel had willingly gotten into George's truck, and during the ride, confided to George what he'd learned about the cult. He had thought he could trust his best friend...
They took the 10”x 13”manila envelope that held Ansel's evidence and tossed it into the fire. Helplessly watching the flames devour the envelope, Ansel silently thanked God it didn’t hold the only evidence of what he knew. Although now he wasn’t so sure he’d live to tell
another soul where the rest of it was.
He knew his life was in the cult’s hands. Still, he could not hide his disgust with them, especially George. “How can you be a part of this? You who supposedly work by day to save animals, yet slaughter them by night! And children! Let’s not forget you slaughter children, too!
You have a child of your own, for God’s sake! How would you feel if he were used as a sacrifice?”
“Honored,” replied George.
Ansel spat in his face. “You sick bastard!”
George pulled out a handkerchief and calmly wiped his face. “Look around, Ansel. You might be surprised how many people you know—-or thought you knew—-who share the same sentiments.”
During the previous evenings when Ansel had witnessed the cult performing gruesome rituals, distance and darkness had prevented him from seeing the faces behind the hoods. While Ansel had suspected a few Grimshaw citizens might be involved, he had presumed the cult was made up mostly of strangers who convened in the Grimshaw woods because of its seclusion. The idea of the participants actually being people he'd known throughout his entire twenty-five years of life...that had seemed too horrifying to be possible. Nonetheless, when one after the other dropped their hoods, Ansel learned that George was right; all of them were from Grimshaw.
The cult members included his mailman, local farmers, teachers, morticians, doctors, and even clergymen and officers of Grimshaw's county, Woodland! No wonder the Woodland County cops hadn't wanted to talk to him about what he knew! With each hood that dropped, Ansel's jaw also dropped, farther and farther.
George remarked, “Consider the recent achievements of all of the people you see here, Ansel.”
Indeed, Ansel realized these people had experienced a variety of unexpected successes in the last two years, just after the recession and drought had ended. For several of them, the gains had been economic; their incomes had surged, mostly via their supplemental farming. Others, such as the county officers, had been hired or promoted into positions of prestige, authority—-power. And a few of them, who previously had not fit in well anywhere because they were different from “normal” society, had recently found social acceptance among all of Grimshaw’s community groups. Even George had received a promotion at work, and his farm was flourishing more than ever.
George went on, “We are all reaping the everlasting rewards that allegiance to Satan brings. Wouldn’t you like to reap those rewards, Ansel? Don’t you find yourself wanting something more out of life, financially, vocationally, physically, socially?”
“No,”Ansel replied with firm sincerity. “Even in hard times like the ones two years ago, a body can do well enough on his own, or with God's help as opposed to Satan's.” When George snickered, Ansel retorted,“I’m living proof! I survived all right, and I'm not greedy for anything else. I have everything I want now.”
“You are the typical blind Christian fool,” George said. “You think you are blessed with everything, when really you have nothing.”
George nodded at the cult members still wearing hoods. Again the hoods began to drop, one by one. Each face was hauntingly more familiar to Ansel than the last.
After the final hood fell, Ansel shook his head and said softly, “My God, how could you?” Then he looked at them and yelled, "Any of you?”
From deeper within the wooded shadows, another cloaked figure, this one gigantic, stepped forward, carrying a machete. Everyone turned expectantly toward the figure. George and the other men inside the circle kept their guns pointed at Ansel, but the rest of the cult members fell to their knees, as if some sort of god had entered their presence. Their leader.
“You have only two choices, Ansel,” George said. “You can either choose the oh-so-noble and self-righteous road less-traveled and die at our hands with nothing, as a few men and women before you already have. Or you can choose the golden, traveled road of alliance with Satan, a path to a better life.”
Ansel looked at the townspeople, George, and the approaching leader. Mostly he looked at the newest face that had been revealed to him. A silent tear ran out of his eye. “Oh God, no,” he said in a whisper of fading faith.
The leader closed in. His fiery breath burned down upon Ansel’s upturned face. For the first time, Ansel could see the shadowed countenance beneath the hood but did not recognize the man. Yet his face was so sinister, so frightening and evil, Ansel could have sworn he
wasn't a man at all, but the Devil himself.
And Ansel did swear that this wasn’t a man when the being’s pupils narrowed into tiny slits, and his eyes began to glow red.
“Join us,” the leader ordered. He raised the machete. “Or even God can’t save you now!”
Chapter 1
Journey Through Hell
Grimshaw, June 1989
In the face of the darkness that awaited her, Angel Fallow trembled. Something already told her she would never make it.
The midnight sky was pitch black except for the pallor of the full moon, its white light bathing Angel’s blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin in a corpse-like glow. Standing there, scarcely daring to breathe, Angel thought, I’m dead. I’m so dead.
What lay before her was an all-too-familiar part of both her nocturnal and living nightmares. There stood the rotting, wooden gate, and beyond the gate, the black, massive house loomed before her.
Angel tried to swallow the lump that had formed within her throat; she might as well have tried to swallow her own pounding heart. Her shaking, sweaty hand squeezed the heart-shaped locket that hung around her neck, as if that might give her the strength and courage she needed to pass on. She did not want to walk through that gate, did not
want to enter that black hole to Hell. But she had no choice.
Angel trudged up the dirt path and tiptoed onto the wooden porch. It greeted her with its usual groan, warning her to watch her step. She gripped the doorknob. The icy brass chilled her bony hand. Shivering, she turned the knob, and the door creaked open. Angel stuck her head through the doorway. The inside of the house was black and cold. Like a grave. Taking a final breath, she stepped inside.
Just before she closed the door, she remembered to check her shoes. She reached down and touched them. They were caked with fresh mud. Thank God she had caught that—-her stepfather would have killed her.
Placing one hand on the side of the doorway to balance herself, she used her other hand to remove her shoes, almost toppling into the dark house. She set the shoes on the porch and closed the door. Immediately, blackness buried her.
With stiffened arms extended in front of her, she groped her way across the living room and to the swinging kitchen door. It flapped open at her nudge, and after she entered, flapped closed behind her. Again she blindly reached forward, and her fingers touched the deep freezer. Running one hand along its icy top, she walked over the cold kitchen tile, brushed past the equally cold refrigerator, and stopped in front of the next door. The ultimate, most challenging obstacle lay in front of her—-the hall.
The second she opened the door, the hall’s heat bombarded her. Though the cool June night gave the other rooms a discomfiting chill, the hall was phenomenally hotter tonight than the rest of the house. It was as hot as...as hot as...
Hell, something inside her finished. The hall is as hot as Hell.
Two closed doors stood on the left side of the hall, one closed and one open door on the right, and a fifth closed door at the far end. The only light came from a small lamp on a table, located alongside the door at the hall’s far end. With its red shade, the lamp bathed the hall in
an odd, red-orange light—like firelight.
Perspiration drenched Angel’s skin and clothing as she crept down the hall. It grew more and more uncomfortable to her, and the light and the door seemed far away. Oh God, she was burning up! She was having trouble breathing, was afraid she would pass out before she could make it to the end. She couldn’t take it any longer. She had to get out of this hall now.
Too miserable to care anymore whether she was quiet, Angel broke into a run. Down the seemingly endless hall she sped toward the light. Her fingers touched the knob of the door at the very end—her room, her sanctuary, her golden gate. When she flung open the door and started to dash inside the room, her foot became entangled in the white cloth covering the table...
CRASH!
Angel gaped down at the lamp, too stunned at first to be frightened. The light went out, and the lamp’s white base shattered into seven pieces, leaving only the red shade intact. A light flashed on beneath the crack of the nearest door, which swung open, awakening Angel from her
reverie. Knowing what to expect but avoiding the inevitable, she kicked free of the tablecloth, shut her bedroom door behind her, locked it, leaned backwards against it, even as those foreboding footsteps thundered up the hall, closer and closer.
The doorknob twisted, then jerked and rattled. The door violently vibrated from the opposite side. Heavy fists pounded on it, shaking it even more.
“Angel, open this door!”
She slid to the floor, trying to wipe away her irrepressible torrents of tears. She had promised herself she wouldn't cry this time, wouldn't let him see her break. Yet nothing had even happened, and here she was, sobbing pathetically.
“Angel! Open this goddamned door right now!”
“No!” she cried, burying her face in her arms and sobbing harder.
She heard the footsteps retreating. Maybe he had given up. Maybe, just this once, she had won.
“Angel,” her mother gently called from outside the door. “I think you’d better open the door.”
“No, Mother! He’s going away, giving up! If I come out now...”
“He’s gone to the barn for the ax. He says he’s going to break the door down.”
Angel shook her head in disbelief. She should have known better—-he always won. Always.
Angrily, she flung open the door. Her mother, Cecilia Beasle, stood before her. The forty-year-old woman’s short, skinny frame was clad in a nightshirt with horizontal, black-and-white stripes. Cecilia's shoulder-length, formerly blonde hair now showed traces of premature gray and fell across her forehead and eyes, hiding the upper half of her face. Refusing to look at Angel, she instead held her hands over her eyes and murmured, “I don’t know why we all can’t just get along...”
Deep disgust welled within Angel. She knew she was wrong to feel that way about her own mother. But she couldn't help it; she loved her mother only as much as she felt obligated to, no deeper than what came from the knowledge that Cecilia was her biological mother, and she should love her for that reason. No matter how much Angel tried to
muster stronger feelings, she couldn’t, since Cecilia almost always acted like this—-weak, passive, cowardly. She rarely stood up for or against anything—herself, her daughter, her husband. Definitely not against him.
“Why do you let this happen to me, Mother?” Angel demanded. “You could get me out of this, get us out of this!”
“How?” her mother whined like a child, keeping her hands over her eyes.
“How should I know? You’re supposed to be the adult, not me! You could do something! ” When her mother didn’t respond, Angel’s young mind struggled to devise a solution. “Like, you could…you could leave him!”
“And then what?” Her mother lifted her head from her hands but shifted her eyes away from Angel’s. “What would you and Grandma and I do for money? How could I make enough at the sewing factory to pay her medical bills and support us, too? We’re financially cared for
here. We’ve got it made. So the least you could do is follow a few simple rules made with your safety and best interests in mind. Things would be so much easier on all of us, mostly on you, if you would just
listen to your father...”
Angel had begun to feel guilty about the mean things she'd just said and thought. But the conclusion of Cecilia’s speech blew that guilt out of the water and replaced it with heightened resentment. “He's not my father! He's my stepfather, and I hate him! I hate his guts, and I wish he was dead!”
A hand flew across her cheek, so fast and hard it knocked her to the floor. She had not heard her stepfather come in.
Angel placed one hand on her cheek and used the other to push herself to her hands and knees. She quaked before Lance Beasle, who towered above her. His waistline and long legs were thin, but he was by no means small in build. Barefoot, the thirty-six-year-old man stood
6ֺ”. His chest was wide and firm, the kind most men can get only by working out. Beneath the sleeves of his bulky black bathrobe, which hid his arms and feet, Angel could see his bulging biceps. His flaming red hair, which hung in thick, straight strands that touched the bottom of his neck, was mussed from sleep. He was awake now, though. His coal-colored eyes burned into her with fury and loathing, and he held the ax just inches above her head.
Angel was 5㤒”, unusually tall for a fourteen-year-old girl. Still, she was over half-a-foot shorter than Lance. His body was so much larger, heavier, and muscular than her own thin frame. He could throw her, crush her, or kill her in a flash if he really wanted to.
“Lance, please!” Cecilia begged. “She didn’t really mean it, she...”
“Oh, she meant it, all right,” Lance spat. The ax hit the floor with the ominous thud of a judge’s gavel, and Lance pronounced his sentence. “Bring me my belt, Cecelia!”
She didn’t respond, but instead picked up the ax and just stared at it, as if she wanted to do something with it but didn’t quite know what or how without guidance.
Lance bellowed, “Now, woman!”
Cecilia bowed her head and shuffled through the doorway to her and Lance’s bedroom. She placed the ax on the floor and kneeled next to the bed, searching.
Angel sighed. Her mother had made another one of her typical feeble efforts at defending her, then as usual, ended up submitting to the higher power.
“And you,” Lance hissed at Angel. “You filthy piece of white trash! Pick your whining little self up off the floor, and go get your Bible!”
Angel sighed. Cecilia had once told her that when Lance was very young, he was a minister in his hometown. Angel occasionally wished he’d become one in Grimshaw, too. If he had, maybe he’d have somebody to preach at besides her, and maybe he wouldn't...
Angel’s mother rejoined them, the belt in hand. Lance snatched it and raised it in the air. “Don’t make me tell you again, girl!”
Lance swung the belt like a whip. Angel rolled sideways. The belt missed her body by less than a quarter of an inch and smacked the spot on the floor where she had been lying. She bounded to her feet, dashed into her room, and ran back with the Bible. She stood in front of him, holding it up for him to see.
Lance took another swing. This time, the belt hit her—hard—and she fell to the floor. She dropped the Bible and hugged herself, howling in pain. Lance raised the belt to hit her again.
Without thinking about what she was doing, Angel unfurled from her self-embrace, snatched the Bible, and hurled it at Lance. It struck him in the stomach, hard enough to evoke from him a tiny “ummph.” You beat me with it, you jerk, Angel thought, so how about I beat you with it for a change?
Lance’s mouth dropped, and his eyes met hers, his expression a mixture of rage and, largely, shock. Angel felt even more shocked than he looked. She'd never done anything like that before. She stared at the hand that had thrown the Bible and briefly wondered if it had been
temporarily possessed by an evil spirit. An evil spirit that made wicked, sinful girls like her disrespect their elders and do things to get hit.
Figuring Lance’s first reaction would be to beat her with the belt, Angel reflexively scooted backward. Instead, Lance swooped down, picked up the Bible, and threw it back at her. It thudded against her chest, next to her heart. A dull ache rose in her budding left breast’s soft flesh. She clutched herself and whimpered.
His eyes cold and unemotional, Lance barked, “Genesis 3:13. Read it.”
Angel reached for the Bible and flipped to the verse. She stared at it blankly.
“Read it aloud!” Lance yelled.
Angel began to read, her voice barely above a whisper. “‘And the Lord God said unto the woman, “What is this that thou hast done?” And the woman said, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”’”
“What?” asked Lance. “What did the woman say?”
“‘The serpent beguiled…’”
“I can’t hear you!” Lance raised the belt and cracked it like a horsewhip across her back. “Speak up, woman!”
“‘The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat!#146” Angel screamed.
“You are a sinner! Just like Eve, you’re a sinful woman, partaking of forbidden fruit! Confess! Where were you tonight?”
“In the woods,” Angel sobbed.
Lance paused in his lashings. Lowering his voice to a normal tone yet speaking through clenched teeth, he demanded,“How many times have I told you about that? It worries your mother and me to death when you're out alone at night in the woods. That's so—-” Lance raised
the belt again. Angel cowered. Instead of hitting her, though, Lance only gestured wildly and went on with forced restraint. “—-dangerous for you, for any young girl like you. You can’t imagine all of the bad people you could run into, or the bad things that could happen. Our
rules are to protect you, because we care about you and what happens to you. Don’t you understand that?”
Hugging herself in pain, Angel scowled at Lance. He was ticked. If she pushed him, she knew she would really get it. Then again, she was going to get it anyway. “No, I don't understand!” she snapped. “Who or what do you think could possibly be dangerous in the Grimshaw
woods, out in the middle of nowhere? And how can it be so bad that I deserve getting the crap beaten out of me every time I'm out there after dark?”
Angel herself wasn’t sure where that had come from, either. Like her mother, she rarely dared to stand up to Lance. Yet she’d done it twice in less than ten minutes. She couldn’t believe it. Secretly, she felt proud.
But even as her heart surged with that pride, she knew she would pay for her actions. Pay dearly...
Lance gaped and got all red-face, again flustered by her defiance. At last, he recovered enough to slap the belt across the side of her rump. In his stupor, however, he didn’t hit her as hard as he usually did.
The hit's decreased power, along with Angel's temporary rush from her retaliation, enabled her to withstand the blow without a flinch, and to keep her eyes glued on Lance in a resentful stare.
Seeing that Angel had won the battle, Lance fired from a different angle. “You weren’t alone. Yeah, that’s it. You were with a boy, weren’t you? You were performing a sordid and sinful act with some boy!”
He’d hit a vulnerable spot. “No!” Angel objected, her bravery and fight fading. “I was just playing outside...”
“What kind of fool do you take me for?” Lance stuck his finger in her face. “Fourteen-year-olds don’t just play!”
“But I was! I...I promise! I just lost track of the time, I—-”
“Nevertheless, you disobeyed me by staying out after dark. In that way you have sinned, and you must be punished. Get on your knees and pray for forgiveness.”
Angel painstakingly pulled herself to her knees.
“Repeat after me...forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned!”
WHAP! went the belt across her arms. “Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned!”
“Keep lust from contaminating my mind and body!”
WHAP! across her thighs. “Keep lust from contaminating my mind and body!”
“Make my soul eternally pure!”
WHAP! across her back. “Make my soul eternally pure,” she wheezed, falling to the floor.
She lay in a ball, too weak to move, feeling like she might pass out. She rolled her eyes upward, her vision blurred beneath her half-closed lids. Lance still towered above. His shadow covered her like a looming cloud that would forever hang over her head.
Oh, please, no more. She would rather die than be hit with that belt one more time.
Fortunately, Lance was finished with her. He headed for his room. Cecilia followed, as usual leaving Angel to suffer alone. As they left, Lance said to his wife, “I worry about that girl of yours, Cecilia.”
“Why, Lance? Angel’s a good girl. Really, she is.”
“Maybe.” Lance lowered his voice. “But she’s too damn pretty for her own good.” The door shut.
Physical and emotional pain paralyzed Angel. So she lay on the floor, still as a corpse. Perhaps she would just lie there forever. She closed her eyes and prayed, this time for real, this time for death.
Footsteps approached. An icy hand touched her.
“No!” she cried, shrinking away.
“Angel, it’s me.”
She raised her head. Through her blurred, half-opened eyes, she made out the fuzzy, small form of her grandmother standing before her in the darkness. Grandma’s long, white hair hung down her white
nightgown as she leaned forward and extended her ancient, withered hand. Angel took it, no longer finding it cold and frightening, but warm and reassuring. Something about Grandma’s touch made her pain, the hall, the heat, Lance, and the countless other unpleasant things in her life fade away.
Dazed, Angel allowed herself to be pulled to her feet and guided along the hall and into her grandma's room. The room was simply furnished with a single bed, bureau, and small vanity table with an attached mirror and a pullout chair.
Grandma was a devout Catholic. Before her health had begun to fail, she had attended mass regularly at St. Mary's of Sommerville and had worked on various community and charity projects with nuns, priests, and other affiliates of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, she had decorated the modest room with various religious paraphernalia that gave it a warm, inviting atmosphere. A crucifix dangled on the inside doorknob, and a bright painting of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus hung above the bed’s head. Tiny porcelain figurines of Mary and Jesus adorned the bureau top and dressing table, surrounded by small, burning candles that bathed the room in a soft glow. A string of rosary beads hung across the right-hand corner of the mirror. Grandma wore those beads wherever she went. Sadly, these days she hardly felt well enough to go anywhere.
The one thing in the room that Angel didn't like to look at was one of Grandma’s large, white porcelain figurines of Mary. The statue gave Angel the creeps simply because it looked just like one from an edited-for-television horror movie that had scared her to death.
She had started watching the movie late one night when she couldn't sleep. Of course, Lance didn’t permit anything other than network television and general audience programming in their home; cable TV and restricted films were foreign luxuries Angel had heard about only through word-of-mouth and TV commercials. They had a VCR, but the good rentals were limited to Lance and Cecilia; Angel
couldn’t rent anything except animated or educational movies. Even among the network programming, Lance and her mother strictly limited her choices. The only things they allowed Angel to watch were select game shows and sitcoms, children’s programming, educational and religious programming, and old reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard, which Lance permitted only because it was his favorite TV show. Something like a scary movie was especially taboo. That was why Angel was so highly intrigued by scary movies, and she secretly watched the edited-for-TV ones whenever she could.
The scary movie in which she had seen the statue had had something to do with supernatural evil; she believed it was the Devil. In the movie, a Catholic priest was praying before the statue when suddenly, several bloody, oblong extensions had appeared on it. The biggest of them were on Mary’s breasts and private areas and jutted out, horrible and ugly. It scared Angel so much that she cried out.
Of course, that awoke Lance, who stormed into the living room and discovered what she was watching. He'd beaten Angel’s behind a few times with his bare hand, told her the scare she'd gotten was God's way of punishing her for watching secular television, then sent her to bed.
Maybe Lance was right. To this day, she couldn’t look at the statue in Grandma’s room without her mind’s eye seeing those ugly, bloody red things appear again. Staring at the statue now, she shuddered.
Thankfully, Grandma interrupted her thoughts. “Sit down,” she said, gently pushing her into a chair that faced away from the statue.
Angel did, grateful to turn her back on the visual reminder of the desecrated statue.
Grandma opened the bottle of rubbing alcohol she kept on the dresser for those way-too-frequent beatings and doused a cotton ball with the liquid. Whether it was twilight or midnight, whether she was well or ill, Grandma rose without complaint to all of these brutal occasions. Angel supposed that was part of why she felt closer to Grandma than she ever had to her own mother.
Angel had never seen much of her maternal grandmother before she came to live with them five years ago, when Angel was nine and Grandma was sixty-nine. That year, Grandma had suffered a heart attack, back injury, and other problems, so Angel’s mother and Lance had stuck her in a nursing home. Soon after, they discovered the home's facilities were dirty, the employee turnover rate was high, and the staff was abusive to the patients. A few months later, when Angel, Cecilia, and Lance went to visit Grandma, Cecilia had invited the woman to live with them.
Apparently, Cecilia hadn't asked Lance's permission, because he threw a hissy fit. Angel, who had been asked to leave the room, had eavesdropped. She had forgotten most of what she’d overheard, other than Lance’s huffing and puffing and raising Cain. The closing dialogue, however, still lingered in her memory.
Grandma had said, “After everything I’ve done for you—-both of you, Lance—-I think this is the least you can do.”
Surprisingly, Cecilia maintained her ground with Lance. “She's right. She could have left us to the wolves once, but she didn't.”
Angel didn't know if they had been talking about money or what. Whatever the case, Grandma and Cecilia’s remarks decided the whole thing. Grandma had lived with them every since.
Afterward, Angel and her grandmother had gotten to know each other for the first time, rapidly developing a close relationship, both as grandmother and granddaughter and as friends. Angel felt close to only two people in the entire world. Grandma was one of them; Peter St. Thomas was the other.
But nobody else could ever know about Peter.
Angel winced as Grandma applied the alcohol-soaked cotton ball to her skin. To take her mind off the stinging, she opened her heart-shaped locket, which contained two old, tiny photographs, one inside each half of the heart. The left half held a headshot of her mother, taken long before her long, blonde hair started graying and worry lines began creasing random areas of her face. The photographer had managed to capture a smile brighter and happier than Angel could ever recollect seeing her mother display. It often amazed her how young, carefree, and beautiful Cecilia looked in that picture.
Currently, the right side of the locket captivated Angel, which housed the headshot she had studied so many times before. She could see herself in her father. Of course, his hair was much sandier than hers, really more brown with blonde highlights, and his eyes were a violet, deeper shade of blue than her own baby blues. His eyes and face, young and innocent yet intelligent, mirrored Angel's, as did his wide, luminous smile—-the few times Angel did smile, anyway. His set, rugged jaw contrasted with his innocent expression, giving him an essence of the strong will and quiet contemplation that Angel knew to be dominant in her personality. In the depth of his countenance, she perceived omniscience and a great inner strength, both of which she knew she lacked but wished to someday acquire.
“Grandma, what was my father like?”
Grandma paused at her task and smiled in nostalgia. “He was very, very tall and fair, like you. He was strong, energetic, full of life. When the going got tough, he got tough, and everyone could depend on him to be there when they needed him. He also had a sensitive and caring side. Also like you, he loved animals and enjoyed being out in nature, in particular, the woods. He loved his friends and family even more and would do anything for them. He was also very religious. He tried his best to do everything the Bible said and was extremely devoted to God.
”
Angel groaned. “Like Lance?”
“Oh, no, not in the slightest. He viewed God and religion in a much...softer way than your stepfather. Oh, your daddy was a wonderful man. I was so happy the day he married your mother, for I felt his heart was good, and he would be good for her.”
“Better than Lance?”
“Lance is a good provider,” Grandma said hastily. She resumed dabbing Angel’s skin with the cotton ball.
“Big deal,” Angel muttered. “Who cares if a person's a good provider if he's a total jerk to the people he lives with?”
“Now, Angel, living with Lance isn't impossible. You've just got to learn to follow his rules, a few of which are pretty reasonable. Like staying out of the woods at night and being home by dark.”
“I feel safe enough out there.”
Grandma poured alcohol on another cotton ball and applied it to Angel's skin. “Why? Because of Peter? Were you with him tonight?”
Angel winced, this time more from the questions than the sting of the alcohol. Her grandmother was the only person whom she had told about Peter. “Yes, Grandma. But Peter's my friend, my best friend.”My only friend, she told herself. “We haven't committed any sins, like
Lance would think.”
“Sweetheart, I know you're an angel, just like your name.”Grandma's countenance glazed over with deep thought. Coming to a realization, she muttered, “That's why he's so hard on you."
Angel whirled around. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing,” she replied, turning away.
“No, no, Grandma. That doesn't make sense. If he wants me to be good, and I'm being good, then why—-”
“It's way past your bedtime.” Grandma opened her bedroom door. “Good night.”
Still puzzled, but knowing that asking more questions was useless, Angel said “good night” and stepped into the hall as Grandma closed the bedroom door behind her.
For whatever reason, the inexplicable heat she’d felt earlier had disappeared, and the hall had returned to its normal temperature. Shrugging, Angel crossed the hall to the linen-and-laundry closet and retrieved a fresh towel. Then she entered the bathroom. She took a couple of aspirin, brushed her teeth, and showered while continuing to ponder Grandma’s words, but she couldn't figure out what they meant.
The soothing warm water numbed Angel's pains into dull aches. Between that and the aspirin, she'd feel almost like nothing had happened, for tonight, anyway. Tomorrow would be a different story; the day after a beating was always the most physically painful. And by tomorrow, of course, there would be bruises. Big, ugly ones—-red, blue, black, and purple.
After Angel had finished showering and begun drying herself, she got too hot, just like she had in the hall. She even started to perspire. This time, she assumed it was just the steam from the shower. She switched on the overhead vent and resumed drying herself. Still, the
bathroom didn't cool down. If anything, it grew only hotter. Next, Angel turned on the sink, filled a paper bathroom rinsing cup with cold water, drank it all, and repeated the process. That didn't help, either.
Then she contemplated doing something strictly forbidden by Lance--opening a window while undressed...
“It’s all right to open a window to cool off if you're fully clothed. But never while any part of your body other than your head and limbs is unclothed. If you do, a man who is happening by might see your naked private parts. Or worse, he might try to touch them. Any woman
who allows her naked private parts to be viewed, or especially to be touched, by a man to whom she is not married is a strumpet and sinner in the eyes of the Lord, and may well burn in hell forever..."
But the bathroom was so hot, she was tempted to risk it. Besides, Lance had gone to bed. And it was late. Who would see her? Who would know?
Except for Peter, maybe, she thought with a giggle.
About a week or two ago, she and Peter had been lying by the brook in the woods and talking, just like they often did. Somehow or another, the subject of Lance's rules came up, and Angel told Peter about the window rule and Lance’s rationale.
Peter spent the next several minutes doubled over, laughing himself into near tears. He soon got Angel laughing about it, too.
After their laughter subsided enough for them to speak, he winked at her, and with a sidelong, sly grin, joked, “Maybe sometimes when you’re sure you won’t get caught, you should try breaking that rule. Just for the hell of it.”
Angel laughed. While Peter often suggested doing things “just for the hell of it,” it never really was “just for the hell of it”—-there was always an ulterior motive. “Why?”
Winking again and widening his sidelong grin, Peter replied, “'Cause just for the hell of it, I might break old Lance's rule. I might sneak over to your house one night, peep through your window at your 'unclothed body,’ and make a dishonest woman out of you.”
Amused and simultaneously embarrassed, Angel laughed harder and lightly punched Peter on the arm. “That'll never happen.”
“Why not? Are you saying I wouldn't dare? Or that you wouldn't?”
“Neither. I'm saying you can't break the rule because you're not a man.” She broke into hysterics.
“Hey, I am, too!” He laughed, returning her light punch. “I'll be fifteen in four months, you know.”
“Oooh, excuse me, Mister Big, Whopping, Fifteen-in-Four-Months, Sir.” Angel began to laugh harder. With that, they began rolling over one another in an all-out tickling match.
Of course, Angel knew Peter had only been teasing her. Ever since that day, though, a tiny part of herself that she tried to ignore wondered what would happen if Peter actually dropped by and snuck a peek through her window. Especially if she were naked. In fact, she'd actually left the window open a few times and watched for him to pop up from behind a nearby tree or bush. Of course, it had never happened. But then again, she had never been bold enough any of those times to leave a single part of her body unclothed, other than her head and limbs, of course.
Angel double-checked to make sure the bathroom door was locked, then parted the curtains and lifted the window. Fresh, cool air whistled in, tickling her clammy skin with an invigorating chill. Sighing in relief, Angel sat on the side of the tub and dried herself as she basked in the brisk air.
Then, just as suddenly as the bathroom had cooled, it grew hot again. The heat was as engulfing as it had been in the hall. Angel gasped for breath. Why was this happening...again?
At almost the same moment, a creepy-crawly feeling slithered up and down her body. It was the same sensation she got at school when girls whispered mean comments about her in the locker room during P.E., or boys cracked jokes about her developing figure.
It was the feeling of probing eyes. Someone was watching her.
End of Chapter 1
Reviews
“I literarily finished the book in two days. Like a puppet master, Ms. Wuesthoff kept me turning those pages and played with my mind as I was filled with a whirlpool of unsettling emotions—hopelessness, fear, outrage, sadness, and above all, terror. Oozing with suspense, this is a powerful and horrifying story that will linger in my thoughts and disturb my dreams for months to come. Indeed, Ms. Wuesthoff will likely become a name to be reckoned with in the horror genre.”--Mayra Calvani, author of Dark Hunger and The Last Dinosaur, and reviewer for Blether Book Reviews , BeWrite, and the Horror Authors Network.
"Murder, secrets, and a town that sold its soul combine in author Macey Wuesthoff’s newest novel "Sacrifice". Not a big fan of the horror genre, I found myself unable to stop reading. I had to know what happened. Had to know who was behind the cult, had to know if Angel and Peter would be saved. Ms. Wuesthoff takes vivid, well-fleshed out characters, adds a fast paced, tightly woven plot and gives readers a spectacular ride. One that forces them to think, sends shivers up their spine, and makes them bite their nails in worry. "Sacrifice" is an amazing novel by a very talented author. Very highly recommended.--Sharyn McGinty, In the Library Reviews
"Ms. Wuesthoff's debut novel brings a fresh new voice to the horror genre. She has a pitch perfect ear for dialogue and sees inside the psyche of the young adult. This is a chilling tale in which good does not always win, but there is still a spiritual element that gives hope. This story is essential for our times, when too many people seem to be making 'deals with the devil' with disastrous results that effect many innocents. A sequel is planned, and I will be looking forward to this and other future books by this talented new writer." -- Roberta Austen, Murder and Mayhem Book Club
"['Sacrifice'] is amazing! The suspense is gripping, and the story itself is spine tingling. It was so believable, I literally got chills! Not to mention an explosive ending that will leave you gasping, wishing it was not over. I will most definitely be watching for more from this author. This book comes highly recommended."-- Shelina Emery, Myshelf.com
"SACRIFICE is a good story. Author Macey Baggett Wuesthoff has a handle on her characters. Angel is particularly well-drawn, a protagonist worth caring about. The tale’s suspense hinges on an outcome that is truly in doubt, a departure from the pattern of most horror novels. I enjoyed the read."--Brian Kaufman, Round Table Reviews
Rated 5 Unicorns out of 5 possible: "It will no doubt, give the reader a deep shiver and scare to find evil lurking in this small town. Wuesthoff survives the test of time, and [shows] the distinguishing mark of a true artist, in that 'Sacrifice' retains its gothic/horror from its first chapter. This classic tale of good vs. evil is a sheer delight if for no other reason than to get really spooked. It's a great read on a cold, rainy night; the atmosphere will heighten the pleasure. On a steamy summer night, it forces the reader to close the windows and lock the doors. Whatever the season, 'Sacrifice' amplifies every otherwise unnoticed slight creak in the cluster of trees outside and the silenced whispers in a mild breeze. And, as Wuesthoff forces [this tension] in virtually every chapter, her reader at some point has to set the book down and come up for air--and a safety check!
Ms. Wuesthoff's first novel brings a creative and innovative voice to the horror genre. She writes intriguing dialogue, and gripping scenes, and prevailing within this disturbing story, there is a deep, spiritual sense that gives the reader some optimism and faith. Filled with suspense, intrigue, creeping terror, and a dash of the macabre, this is a compelling and shocking story that you will not be able to put down. This is a slick, fast-paced suspenseful story with deftly-drawn characters that must face the demons in their own lives to conquer that which claims the children of Grimshaw’s souls.
The suspense and romance is riveting, and the storytelling is chilling. Not to mention a heart stopping ending that will leave you breathless. This book comes highly recommended. I have only one last thing to say to Ms. Baggett-Wuesthoff: 'BRILLIANT! Look out Stephen King, there’s a new horror writer on the block!'"--Sherry Hall Mauro, Reviewer for Enchanted in Romance and Senior Editor-and-Chief of Dark Angel Publishing
"It's horror; it's suspense; it's a page-turner worthy of a Stephen King fan."--Michelle Rupe Eubanks, The Times Daily, 9-20-04
"The twists and turns as main character Angel Fallow embarks on her personal odyssey, only to find herself locked in a battle for her life, keeps the reader riveted from the first page to the last. We believe this break-out novel will lead to Wuesthoff becoming the hottest new voice in the genre of horror." Laura Abbott, Author Liaison and Managing Editor, Amber Quill Press, as quoted in The Times Daily, 9-20-04
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Epinions.com ID:
maceywuesthoff
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Member: Macey Wuesthoff
Location: Altamonte Springs, FL, U.S.A.
Reviews written: 28
Trusted by: 13 members
About Me:
Purchase my novel (http://amberquill.com/Sacrifice.html). View free excerpts at http://www.maceyshouseofhorror.com
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