Hanged Men, Haunts and Horrors
By Rhea Rose
()
About this ebook
Welcome to the third collection of Keyboard Books, an imprint of RainWood Press. In this collection, Keyboard Books offers four short scary tales which star a ghost, a monster, an insect and a fairytale gone wrong, all from the field of speculative fiction. Keyboard Books is dedicated to science fiction, fantasy, horror, ghosts, superheroes, and anything strange. These short stories speculate beyond the ordinary.
Between these virtual pages, you’ll find fitness-conscious Goldilocks who’s taken up running in the woods, a family-owned pumpkin farm with a spider problem, a ghost and a physicist visiting on Christmas Eve, and a horrid little creature that lives in a wall and won’t go away. Four timeless scary stories make up this set from Keyboard Books. At the end of this compendium, you’ll find the author’s biography and a little more about Keyboard Books. Thank you for going down into the basement—alone, to read these tales by candlelight.
Rhea Rose
Rhea is a Vancouver, BC writer known best for her short stories and many of those are posted here at Smashwords. I'm mainly a short story writer and a writer of poetry although lately, I've made a foray into novel writing. I've been nominated 3 times for the Canadian Aurora award, twice for short stories, once for poetry, also nominated for a Rhysling award for poetry. I've made the preliminary nominations for a Nebula award (did I mention I like to write "Science Fiction?") I've also made Ellen Datlow's honourable mention list 3 times for horror. Here at Smashwords, you'll find my shorts that have been traditionally published but those rights have now come back to me and I republish the stories here. As well, you'll find short stories that are published here for the very first time. These stories are ones that editors loved, held for tons of time, shortlisted, longlisted and then decided the piece couldn't fit the theme or some other aspect of their needs. Those are very frustrating times for a writer, but the beauty of Indie publishing is that you can publish them at some point and get them out to your readers. When posting my work at Smashwords I try to show diversity in writing and select stories that I think are relevant, and might surprise the reader; a good story will usually be relevant until the end of time. The work I post here has been worked on quite a bit so hopefully, it satisfies the reader. My wish: I'd love to have more reviews from readers and stars. Those are so important to writers. That's how we know that there's anyone out there...
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Book preview
Hanged Men, Haunts and Horrors - Rhea Rose
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the third in the Keyboard Books collection, an imprint of RainWood Press. In this collection Keyboard Books offers four short tales from future past and future present, all from the field of speculative fiction. Keyboard Books are dedicated to science fiction, fantasy, horror, ghost stories, superheroes and more. These short stories speculate beyond the ordinary.
Between these virtual pages you’ll find fitness conscious Goldilocks who’s taken up running in the woods, a family-owned pumpkin farm with a spider problem, a ghost and a physicist visit on Christmas eve, and a horrid little creature who lives in a wall that will not go away. Four timeless scary stories make up this set from Keyboard Books. At the end of this compendium, you’ll find the author’s biography and a little more about Keyboard Books. Thank you for going down into the basement—alone, to read your stories.
Press Enter,
Rhea Rose
Introduction
The Adventures of Dorea Tress
Summer Silk
Strange and Charmed
The Wall
Excerpt, Jack Sprott, Continuum Cop
Author’s Bio
Keyboard Books electronic edition published by Smashwords for RainWood Press, 2015, 2017.
For more information about RainWood Press, please visit our website at http://rheaerose.weebly.com/
Covers by Keyboard Books:
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. These stories are works of fiction.
All works Copyright © 2015, 2017
"The Adventures of Dorea Tress" originally published in Dead North; Canadian Zombie Fiction anthology, 2013.
The Wall
originally published in Tesseracts Seventeen, 2013.
Strange and Charmed
first published by Smashwords for Keyboard Books, 2015.
‘Summer Silk’ originally published in Tesseracts Ten co-edited by Robert Charles Wilson, 2007.
Sources for cover and interior Illustrations
Pixabay.com
Shutterstock.com
Dreamstime.com
Stock.xchange.com
Deviantart.com
Keyboard Books an imprint of RainWood Press
The Adventure’s of Dorea Tress
I was only a child when baby bear bit me. That’s the part of the story they never tell. He bit me right on the knuckle, tore my delicate flesh clean away as if it were pale tissue, exposing the white pearly bone beneath. That bite hurt like a hundred hell fires, and I bled for days from that wound. Back then I was a star, a golden child on a movie set, I ran from the film shoot into the dark, green woods and got lost.
It took the searchers three days to find me curled up in the roots of a large tree. They had to enlist an old Salish chief to track me. Ricky Joe was an elder, a chief and a shaman, a rare combination and he’d grown up in this area where the woods and riverbanks were riddled with trails. He’d told the reporters that he could find a yellow haired fish in a dark, green sea, but he would have to use magic.
And he did.
Legend has it that an ancient Salish family had once lived in these woods, a mother and father, two daughters and a small son. The youngest daughter often misbehaved and played bad tricks on her sister and brother. Over time her misbehaviour escalated. Her parents tried to punish her misdeeds in the hope that she would learn to respect her family, instead she ate her little brother. She tried to eat her sister but only managed to bite her. She ate her mother and then began to eat the animals in the woods. Her father took her sister away and abandoned Little-Daughter to the forest.
I remember the day Ricky Joe found me. His face appeared from the tangle of sticks and leaves in front of me, floated in toward me like a large, papery leaf, fallen from a tree. His silver white hair hung from his shoulders like strands of white shoelaces, shining in the little spots of sunlight between the trees. His teeth where perfect, a mouth full of little white beach shells, and he smiled down at me and said, Come out little yellow hair. These woods aren’t friendly. This tree has been kind, but soon its roots won’t let you go.
He gave me his hand, and it was leathery, big and warm. Take my paw,
he said, laughing, And don’t bite me.
He pulled me gently from the roots. He told me he was over a hundred years old as he carried me down the trail. He called me Little-Daughter.
****
After awhile I was sent to see Dr. Bruno. My therapist.
Dr. Bruno says that Ricky Joe never really existed, that I’d made it all up, and that I hadn’t run very far that fateful day before one of the movie people found me and took me to the hospital. Dr.