An eerie Monday excerpt from the paranormal horror novel
By Jennifer Harlow
The gray of the sky stretches on forever, infecting even the air with its oppressive gloom. It’s hard to breathe, hard to even move without the gravel on the drive cutting into my bare feet as I stroll up the drive toward my home. The still air stirs as if my body slices through it like a knife. It doesn’t want me here, the house, the property. Its fear, its melancholia attempts to repel me like a magnet of the same charge. I continue against it, the house decaying with each step, paint chipping then falling like snow all around me. Vines and kudzu snake around the once white columns now yellowing, like tentacles of a Kraken strangling the thick, sturdy structure until they groan and crack. Until windows shatter and rafters crumble. I continue on, past the hanging oak branch with ravens sitting wing to wing, their beady eyes and heads revolving with me as I persist. The alligator sitting on the dead grass opens its long snout to bare its teeth. I ignore it, I ignore all, even the crimson trail my bleeding feet leave in my wake. Nothing matters. Nothing else matters…
But him.
He waits at the top of the stairs of the porch, the decaying debris narrowly missing him as if he’s sheltered by an unseen force. He doesn’t notice. As the house disintegrates around him, his eyes never leave me, not for a moment. Oh, he’s as beautiful as he was in the photo, golden hair haloed not by the sun but by his own ethereal, vital glow. That brilliant smile never dimming. I pad up the cracked steps to the porch, to him, leaving bloody footprints on the blue paint. As I take the final step up, our eyes meet. The intense longing and love that passes between us makes me weak in the knees, but if I fall I know he’ll catch me. He’ll always catch me. Tears spring from his eyes as he hesitantly lifts up his thin hand to my face. His icy hand caresses my cheek, giving me goosebumps over every inch of my flesh.
“Finally,” he chokes out.”
Crimson Vale
Lust…Murder…Madness…
Welcome to Crimson Vale.
It’s a dream come true. A vast inheritance. A beautiful mansion in the heart of the small town South. A seductive, mysterious, literal man of her dreams offering true, pure love. Ravaged in both body and mind, Jane Harrow leaps into that living dream with abandon.
Despite the voices.
Despite the visions.
Despite the warnings from both the living and the dead.
Because what Jane doesn’t know is nothing and no one are what they seem. Because demons from the past are patient. Because dreams can quickly turn into living nightmares, especially in…
Crimson Vale
Get Crimson Vale from your preferred e-tailer.
Jennifer Harlow
spent her restless childhood fighting with her three brothers and scaring the heck out of herself with horror movies and books.
She grew up to earn a degree at the University of Virginia, which she put to use as a radio DJ, crisis hotline volunteer, bookseller, lab assistant, wedding coordinator, graphic designer, and government investigator.
Currently she calls Atlanta home, but that restless itch is ever present. In her free time, she continues to scare the beejepers out of herself watching scary movies and opening her credit card bills. She is the author over twelve books, an Independent Publisher’s Award, and was interviewed on NPR.
For the soundtrack to her books and other goodies visit her at www.jenniferharlowbooks.com.
