“Childhood Nightmares: Under the Bed”
from Sirens Call
Publications
What creeps and crawls, and stalks the dark hallways
of a child’s overactive imagination in the wee hours of the night? Twelve
different authors offer us a taste of what might be lurking in the deepest
recesses of a child’s nightmare ridden world - each a unique take on a story of
horror spun from their own minds.
Those whispered tales of monsters hiding under the
bed, or of the demons lurking in the shadowy corner where we dare not glance
for fear that seeing them will make them all too real. Oh, how the innocent
landscape of a child’s imagination lends fertile soil to horrors ready to be
sown on the slightest of sounds; the tales and the terror they wreak on our
youthful minds never quite leaves us.
We asked the authors in this collection to reach into
the forgotten recesses of their twisted minds and share with us the tales of
nightmares that can only thrive in the hidden corners of a child’s imaginings;
the bogeyman under the bed, the outlandishly fiendish creature lurking in the
dark, the slight murmur of sound coming from the hall… did you close the door
completely?
Explore the myriad terrors that only a child can twist
from nothing into some ‘thing’ in the span of a single rapid breath. Do you
dare delve into your own memories? Perhaps you’ll start sleeping with the
lights on again...
Tell
us, who is Under the Bed?
Contributing Authors: Colin F. Barnes, Nina D'Arcangela, Phil
Hickes, Amber Keller,
Kim Krodel, Lisamarie Lamb, John McIlveen, Kate
Monroe, Brandon Scott,
Joshua Skye, Julianne Snow, and Jack Wallen
Look for
‘Childhood Nightmares: Under the Bed’ at:
Smashwords.com (Kindle,
Nook, Kobo, Sony, PDF)
Print
book: Amazon.com, CreateSpace.com
A
small sampling of the excerpts from “Childhood Nightmares: Under the
Bed”,
and a link to a downloadable preview featuring
all twelve authors:
‘Excess Baggage’ - Lisamarie Lamb
“And now Nigel could see someone. A small, round man in a pair of
white trousers and a deep blue shirt, sweat circles staining his underarms, his
stomach straining the buttons running down his chest, down his stomach. The
man’s curly dark hair rippled in the sunlight as he bobbed his head up and
down. He was peering out of a small gap between two houses. He was smiling,
beckoning to Nigel; and when Nigel moved towards him his smile became a grin,
all teeth and harmless joviality.
Nigel went to the man against his better judgment. He went against
his worst judgment, feeling strangely calm about it all, despite thinking he
had wandered far too far, into a bad area. Into the sort of area a tourist
shouldn’t go. And he had been caught. He felt rather stupid about the whole
thing, and rather sad about leaving Maggie and Bob. But there was a certain
inevitability about it all.
Even if Nigel couldn’t quite remember why…”
‘Baby Teeth’ - Kim Krodel
“She
adds every tooth she gets to her disgusting smile. But the screws keep growing out of her
gums. She never runs out of space for
more teeth.”
“Why does she want them?”
Brian’s voice was small. His eyes
bugged, as if the skeletons stacked in God’s closet were tumbling out at his
feet.
“For biting, Dummy. She likes
to eat little kids.” Cal grinned as he
spoke. "If she bites you with her
screws, your skin gets stuck to 'em, so she likes teeth better; so she doesn't
have to floss so much."
“No, she doesn’t. She’s
nice—she gives presents! Mom said!”
“That’s what Mom wants you to think.
Otherwise you’d freak out about it.”
Brian blinked, staring and processing; weighing his brother’s words
against those he had gathered from adults.
“See this?” Cal rolled up a
pant leg to reveal a jagged run of lumpy, silver skin. “She bit me hard the first tooth I lost
‘cause I didn’t know what was coming. Now
I’m big enough to fight her off.” Calvin
posed like a weight-lifter…”
‘Madeleine’ - Julianne Snow
“Mommy.”
Nothing.
“Mommy?”
Still nothing. No tell-tale shuffling sound of socked feet on the
hardwood floor.
“MOMMY!”
Nothing… Where was she? How could she have not heard?
“MMOOOMMMMMYY!”
With tears streaming down her cherubic face, Stella wondered if her
dream had come true. As she debated running the short distance over the oaken
surface to her parent’s room, she listened intently for the sounds of her mother’s
imminent stirring.
Finally.
Stella heard the soft sounds of her mother’s footfalls in the
hallway. She was coming.
More tears welled up in her young throat.
As her door burst open, she was surprised to see the form of her
sister in the light of the hallway, a smell pervading the room unlike anything
she had ever smelled before. Burnt. Wet…”
Please visit the Sirens Call Publications
web site for an extended preview available for download.
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