A New Story Most Thursdays
Thursday Stories goes Monster Horror!
Happy New Year, Friends and Neighbors, and welcome to Thursday Stories. Looking back over my herd of short stories, I realize that more than three dozen of the little rascals have appeared only in print. Some of you may have forked over the dough for this or that literary review, but I don’t expect everyone to buy all of the reviews all of the time. And so, drumroll please, I give you Thursday Stories. I’m not guaranteeing a new story every Thursday, but I will do my best until all the print-only tales have been set free.
You can find all of my stories and more at the Marco Etheridge Fiction Website:
This week’s edition of Thursday Stories features Far Below, a straight-up monster horror story about a young man, his ugly dog, and horrible subterranean monsters. This story first appeared in the anthology Dark Speculations from Little Red Bird, published in 2023. Now, without further ado, I give you another edition of Thursday Stories. I hope you enjoy it.
Far Below
by Marco Etheridge
The human captives fell into two groups: those clustered near the flickering oil lamp, and the smart ones who hid in the darkness of the fetid cage. The underground pen reeked of fear, despair, stale urine, and excrement. Seventeen-year-old Rodger knew better than to stand anywhere near the glowing lamp. He hunkered in the darkest corners, as far from the others as possible. Stupid to show yourself. Better to stay hidden. Growing up an orphan had taught him how to hide.
Rodger’s mama died when he was eleven. After they buried her, Rodger was more or less cared for by a string of redneck uncles and aunts, some blood kin, some not. He learned to stay quiet, stay out of reach, and make his own way to school.
When he was little, Mama told him there was no such thing as monsters. No bogeyman under his bed. But Mama was wrong. Monsters were real, a hundred times worse than any nightmare. And if Rodger’s luck ran out, he’d be joining his mama in the afterlife right quick, depending on who the ogre chose next.
Rodger trembled in the dark. Ogres, an abandoned mine full of ogres. Like the world wasn’t weird enough. No one knew where they came from, but that didn’t matter now. The first good look at an ogre was enough to make a fella piss his pants. All the ogres were ugly, but the big brute who had captured Rodger and the rest was the worst bastard of them all.
He was damn near ten feet tall, head big as a butcher’s block, and topped by a jungle of coarse, black hair. The ogre’s skin was mottled crimson and yellow, like paint only halfway stirred. The monster wore a dirty tunic belted with a leather strap that would have encircled three full-grown men. He stood on hairy legs thick as tree trunks. His horrible long arms were matted with black fur and filth. At the end of his deadly arms hung groping hands with furry knuckles, huge sausage fingers, and ragged fingernails.
The stupid prisoners who hovered in the light of the oil lamp gave the ogre a name. Called him Lummy. Short for that big lummox. Rodger didn’t see the sense in naming the hungry sonofabitch.
Not long ago, Rodger would’ve been hard put to imagine anything worse than being eaten alive. He knew better now. Sometimes the ogre wanted a little playtime before dinner. Woman or man, the ugly brute didn’t care which. If he was in the mood for games, Lummy tortured his victims before he made a meal of whatever was left. That’s why a smart fella stayed out of the light. Getting noticed was plain foolishness, and usually fatal.
The oil lamp was just another one of the ogre’s tricks; something to keep the captives close to the cage door. The lamp gave off a hopeless glow. The weaker prisoners gathered to it like moths to a porch light. Easier for Lummy to grab one of the helpless fools. Not that Lummy needed light to see them. The ogre’s baleful eyes were the size of saucers, just right for spotting helpless prey in that underground hell.
Rodger hid in the farthest reaches of that stinking cage. Keeping out of sight was vital. But he had more than himself to worry about. He had a secret tucked away inside his ragged coat.
The caged humans were puny compared to any of the ogres that infested the abandoned mine. It was their bad luck that Lummy was the biggest ogre of the lot. Rodger was the smallest topsider captive. He’d always been a runt. Seventeen, and he didn’t top five feet. Lummy was twice that tall and thicker than three humans.
But being small had its advantages. He wouldn’t be the ogre’s first choice for a meal. Plus, he was smart and quick, which served him better than size and strength. The strongest captive was no match for Lummy. Sonofabitch would need a rocket launcher to bring any ogre down. Short of that, the prisoners were doomed.
Early on, when a few of the humans were still strong, three of the biggest tried to fight Lummy. Rodger watched for the short time it lasted. It wasn’t much of a fight. A slaughter, more like. Those fellas wrenched sharp rocks from the wall. When Lummy came into the cage looking for a snack, they jumped the big ox, pounding at the ogre like cavemen.
Lummy didn’t hesitate. He snatched one poor bastard up by the leg. The ogre swung that man like a boy twirling a toy soldier. Mashed his head against the rock wall, smearing streaks of gray brain matter across the rough stone. Lummy wielded that headless corpse like a club. He beat the life out of those other fellas, laughing like a lunatic the whole time.
The ogre chuckled as he tossed those bloody corpses through the cage door like so much kindling wood. Then the bars clanged shut. That clang was all the eulogy those dead heroes ever got. Lummy got ahold of their feet and drug those lifeless bodies away. Two dead skulls bounced across the rock floor. That third poor man had no skull to bounce.
Those brave bastards kept Lummy fed for more than a week. He didn’t come to the cage once in all that time. The oil lamp burned down to nothing and flickered dead. Rodger sat two days in blackness, quiet as a mouse, listening to the others whimper.
Plenty of time to think in a filthy cage. Rodger brooded on how he’d ended up in this shithole. Ignorance mostly, some bad luck, and a summer gone to flame.
There’d been no snow that winter, and no spring rains. The ground dried hard and cracked. Some folks called it fake news. Others heeded the evacuation orders when the wildfires flared. The hardcore holdouts claimed no fire could drive them from their valley. Rodger stayed because he had nowhere else to go.
Fake news or not, the valley went up in a hellscape of fire. The only road out ceased to exist. Then the town blazed. Three hundred survivors trapped inside a shrinking ring of flames. It was the mayor or maybe his sidekick, the fat sheriff, who said they should run for the old mine. Those two made the ogres a good meal.
Then everyone scrambled down the mine shaft like a bunch of lemmings. Wasn’t long before the refugees figured out the mine wasn’t empty like they’d thought. By the time the townsfolk caught on to the monsters, it was too late. What little fighting there was ended almost before it started.
The ogres were hunters, and they weren’t stupid. The hungry monsters bided their time while fresh meat flooded down into their lair. Once those frightened folks were in deep, down to the third level of the mine, the ogres pounced.
Beams of light gleamed in the galleries and shafts as flashlights and lanterns bobbed this way and that. The fat sheriff and the fatter mayor yelled useless orders.
Then the first screams echoed through that black mine. Flashlight beams dodged every which way, illuminating huge shadows that moved like smoke. Lanterns clanged to the stone, followed by the thump of bodies. The fallen lights created glowing pools on the floor of the mine shaft. Monsters darted out of the blackness to snatch the fallen.
That’s when the sheriff started shooting at the lunging shadows. He maybe nicked one of the big bastards, but then a ricochet shot the mayor dead. A heartbeat later, everyone who had a gun was blasting away. Mostly, they shot each other, bullets pinging every which way. Guns roared, people screamed and fell, and the ogres appeared and disappeared like phantoms.
Them that weren’t snatched right off panicked and ran. Terrified humans bolted like rabbits, but running didn’t save them. Going down was a bad mistake, but with bullets flying and ogres hunting, the survivors took the only route they had.
They climbed lower and lower, dashed into blind galleries and dead-end shafts. They clumped in threes and fours, shut off their lights, and choked down their screams. Not one of them escaped. The ogres hunted them all down, then dragged them off to the cages.
That’s how Rodger came to be in a stinking cage with two dozen others, far below the burned-out valley. The original bunch had been whittled down to about fifteen poor souls. Lummy was always hungry.
Rodger breathed in the stench and fear of the cage. Nobody to blame but himself. He’d listened to the fools. Should have evacuated when he had the chance or stuck it out with the wildfires. Better to burn than be eaten alive.
The pitiful captives whispered empty rumors. They said the ogres hadn’t gotten everyone. Said there were a few brave souls still alive in some secret corner of that underground labyrinth. Rodger knew it was a lie. Even if the rumors were true, a few puny survivors weren’t going to rescue anybody from giant ogres.
Rodger had no illusions. They were all dead meat. Rescue was nothing but a stillborn hope on soon-to-be dead lips. Escape was their only chance, but there was no way out.
First, the cage was in a dead-end gallery deep in the mine. Solid rock on three sides, above and below, with close-set steel bars blocking the only exit. Two dozen men couldn’t shift those bars. They’d tried early on, when they still had some strength. Rodger hadn’t bothered to lend a hand. While the captives fought the bars, he saw the ogre peek around a corner, giggling into his huge paw like a giant toddler.
Rodger had the patience of a small prey animal. He watched from the darkness, and he waited. Lummy was enormous, but the big oaf had the brains of a hungry child. Smart in some ways and just plain stupid in others. The ogre sometimes left the cage door ajar while he was gloating over his next human meal. If a captive human was quick enough, small enough, and lucky, he might slip past that big sonofabitch and make a dash for it.
Getting clear of the nasty cage would be a feat, but then the real trouble would start. Rodger guessed they were five hundred feet below the surface. Beyond the steel bars, the old mine was a maze of galleries linked by rusted iron ladders. Hidden shafts gaped in the blackness. One false step would end in a fall hundreds of feet to bone-breaking rock.
Worse than that, Lummy wasn’t the only ogre prowling this underground hell. Alone at the back of the cage, Rodger remembered how the ogres pounced out of the darkness. Too many monsters to count in that screaming hell. Twenty monsters, a hundred, who could tell? What he knew for sure was that more ogres lurked in the mine shafts.
Escape meant threading a gauntlet of hungry ogres, each one twice his size and able to see in the dark. Even if he somehow made it out of the mine, topside had been burned to ashes. The whole idea was a fool’s errand from start to finish. He knew that for a fact, but there weren’t but two options. He could risk an escape, end up as some ogre’s supper, or maybe both. Rodger didn’t see any other way.
So, he bided his time. Hidden in the farthest black corner of the cage, he kept quiet as a mouse, but the fuzzy ball inside his jacket was prone to whimpering.
Lord knows why he grabbed the terrier pup on the way to the mine, but he’d done it. The poor thing scampered and yapped while the humans ran for safety with a wall of flames hot on their heels. No one gave a damn for one mangy mutt. Without thinking, Rodger reached down, scooped the little fella up, and stuffed him inside his jacket.
He’d listened to his heart instead of his brain. The mutt was an orphan, just like Rodger. Orphans had to stick together. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but that was before the ogres. It was damn sure a big thing now. The dog was likely to get Rodger killed.
He should have abandoned the puppy after the ogre tossed him into the cage. He meant to, told himself he had to do it, but each time the puppy ended up tucked back into Rodger’s jacket. He’d come to care for the mutt. Loneliness, weakness, whatever it was, he needed the dog, and the dog needed him. It was stupid to keep the damn thing, but he couldn’t bring himself to abandon it.
At first, the noise of the other prisoners covered the puppy’s barking. The captives screamed and wept. Their plaintive cries echoed off the stone walls until Rodger thought he would go crazy. As the days passed, hunger and fear took their toll. The humans grew apathetic. Screams of anger became moans of despair. Hungry and weak, the puppy’s barks gave way to an occasional soft whimper. So far, the ogre hadn’t noticed.
Rodger crept away from his hiding place only to gather food. He had to eat, and so did the puppy. The ogre fed the prisoners every few days, always the same foul grub. The big bastard shoved a pot through the cage door, then laughed his horrible laugh as the door clanged shut. Sometimes he stood beyond the bars, chuckling as the captives fought for a bowl of slop.
As soon as the coast was clear, the captives rushed for the foul gruel. The starving humans elbowed and shoved for a chance to fill a bowl and disappear before Lummy grabbed one of them.
The gruel was sickening, but the choice was eat it or die. Rodger choked down the lumpy oatmeal, chewed the gristly meat, and spat out the bits of bone. He didn’t want to know where the meat came from.
He shared his meager grub with the puppy. There was never enough. When Lummy slaughtered one of the captives, Rodger waited until the ogre carried his latest victim into the darkness. After the cage went quiet, Rodger crept into the pool of light. He gathered up any bits of meat or brain scattered on the rock floor. The puppy ate these ghastly scraps. Rodger stuck to the gruel.
There had been no reason for Rodger to save that puppy. He kept it alive when he should have looked after himself. In the end, it was the damn mutt gave him away, proof that no good deed goes unpunished.
Lummy was a sneaky bastard. The ogre moved like smoke when he wanted to. Rodger knew this, but he let his guard slip. The puppy was fussing and mewing, wiggling around trying to escape Rodger’s coat. Rodger crooned to the dog, singing snatches of old songs. Lummy heard the singing, hidden in the blackness beyond the bars. A rough voice echoed through the cage, a growl like gravel scraped over rock.
“What you doing there? What that sound?”
Fear choked Rodger’s throat, and the song died to a squeak. Stupid, stupid, stupid! The big sonofabitch had heard him. And Lummy could talk! Rodger shrank himself into a silent ball.
“I see you, little fella. You don’t hide from me. Come here or I snatch you good.”
Rodger knew he was good as dead. The puppy had killed him. Stripped of his last hope, he uncurled himself from the floor. Slinking along the wall, he crept towards the bars. He held his jacket tight to his bony chest. The other captives vanished into the darkness.
Rodger stopped short of the bars, out of the ogre’s reach. Horrified, he watched as the massive ogre shuffled out of the shadows. Lummy’s huge head appeared in the flickering light. Rodger willed himself not to look at the terrible monster, but his eyes betrayed him. Like a bird hypnotized by a snake, his terrified gaze was pulled from the floor. His eyes rose until he stared into the monster’s face, the last thing he ever wanted to see, and maybe the last thing he would ever see.
Lummy smiled, a leering horror of jagged fangs coated with foul saliva. Forgotten bits of meat dangled from the crevices between those cruel teeth. The gruesome mouth was half-buried under a black beard that curled down over his chest. Tangles of hair cast shadows over the monster’s terrible saucer eyes. The ogre pointed a sausage finger at Rodger.
“Ha! You just a little fella. Make that noise again.”
Rodger knew Lummy didn’t ask twice, but seeing the monster’s ugly face clamped his throat shut like a vice. Rodger couldn’t sing a note. He tried the next best thing. He hummed as loudly as he could, hoping it would distract the big sonofabitch.
As he hummed, Rodger worked a bit spit into his throat, enough to croak out a song. He sang whatever nonsense came into his head. At first, the monster stared at his performance, but then the ogre began to look restless. Rodger had to put on a better show, or he was dead. Then he remembered the sappy musicals his grandma had loved.
Rodger launched into a tortured medley of Broadway show tunes. He danced around, belting out a fragment of this stitched to a chorus of that, one arm sawing the air while the other clutched the puppy inside his coat.
It was a maniacal performance, but it brought a leering grin to the ogre’s hideous face. Rodger sang and danced until his head spun. He took an exaggerated stage bow and almost fell on his face.
Lummy banged the bars and roared with laughter. Rodger hoped the ogre’s ovation meant he would live a little longer, but he was wrong.
“You a funny little fella. I think you stop that bad noise now, or I eat you.”
Rodger saw the last seconds of his life ticking away with a frustrated ogre for an audience.
“Maybe I come inside. I show you a trick.”
With that, the ogre fumbled in the folds of his tunic, found the key, and the steel door grated open. Now there was no barrier between Rodger and the monster. Cold terror ran up Rodger’s spine. He stood frozen and helpless. Then the puppy wiggled under his coat, and Rodger almost pissed himself.
The ogre stepped inside the cage. The barred door hung wide open. Lummy reached out a massive paw, the last thing Rodger would ever see in this wasted life. Then a shadow darted into the feeble glow as one brave captive dashed for the door.
The ogre let out a deafening roar. The big oaf groped for the fleeing shadow and missed. The prisoner ducked under the monster’s massive hand and fled into the black corridor. Lummy spun around and gave chase.
Rodger gaped at the empty door, not believing what had just happened. His brain was frozen with fear, but his body did not hesitate.
In the next second, his legs were running. He shot past the bars and ran headlong into the rock face beyond. The collision stunned him. He grabbed at the rough stone to steady himself. Then human screams filled the darkness. Lummy had captured the escapee. Rodger spun in the opposite direction and sprinted away.
Primal fear screamed in his ears. Don’t fall. Keep running. Don’t fall. His heart pounded, and his lungs felt like they would explode. You’re never going to get another chance like this. Terror lent his limbs speed, and he ran blind and gasping, clutching the frantic puppy under his ragged jacket.
Rodger’s brain went numb, but his body charged on. Animal instinct guided him through the pitch dark the way a sighted adult guides a blind child. His feet pounded down passages cut from solid rock. The gallery turned and Rodger did not. He smashed into another rough wall, staggered, and somehow kept his feet. Adrenalin pushed him on, bruised, battered, and weak.
Then he saw a glimmer of light at the far end of the gallery. Hope flared in his brain and stopped him in his tracks. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, but when he opened them again, the light was still there. Pale clear light, faint, but real. The main shaft, a way to escape to the surface!
The possibility of freedom, the chance to breathe clean air. His heart galloped in his chest, pounding out two, three, four. Then a horrible roar echoed down the rock walls. And in the echoes, Rodger heard the thud of huge feet. The ogre was after him and closing fast.
Rodger dashed for the light. He ran as hard as he could, but long captivity and short rations had robbed him of his speed. Ragged gasps seared his lungs. The glimmer of light grew nearer, stronger, but the ogre was faster.
The light, almost there. Don’t fall, keep running.
Rodger turned to look over his shoulder, failed to see the end of the passage and the looming void of the open mine shaft. His skinny legs scuttled forward, too fast to stop himself. Then he was at the broken edge and the plunge to his death. Rough fingers clamped onto the nape of his neck and hoisted him into the air. His legs kept running above empty space.
“Ho-ho. One more step, you fall far. Good thing I catch you.”
The ogre held Rodger’s flailing body at arm’s length. Rodger dangled in thin air above a very long fall. He looked down, horrified, waiting for the sudden release and a screaming plunge into darkness. But the ogre held on. The monster bounced Roger like a doll. Hidden inside Rodger’s jacket, the wiggling puppy slid lower. Rodger clamped a hand to his waist and looked up.
The tiniest sliver of light filtered down from topside far above. Rodger saw the dim outline of the shaft rising away above his head. Lengths of rusting ladders climbed the rock walls. Below his feet, the black shaft fell away to nothing. An empty void beneath him and a crunching death at the bottom. Without wanting to, he stared into the ogre’s awful face.
The ogre leered at him with a jagged, malicious grin.
“You make lots of trouble. You want to go up top? I take you there. Or maybe I drop you. You fall long way. Scream and scream. You like that?”
Rodger tried to say no but couldn’t force the word out of his mouth.
“You climb on my back now. Hang on good or no more little fella. Long way down.”
Lummy half-hoisted, half-tossed Rodger onto his back. Rodger wrapped one hand into the rough cloth of the ogre’s tunic. With the other, he tried to scrunch the puppy up to the collar of his jacket so the little guy wouldn’t be crushed. Then the ogre began to climb, and Rodger held on for dear life. The puppy was on his own.
The ogre scaled the ladders at a steady pace, never slowing or wavering. Lummy was doing all the work, but Rodger’s breath came in short gasps. He clung to the ogre, awash in a foul stench even worse than his own. Rodger gagged on the putrid smell. His head reeled from the fear of falling. Somehow, he managed to keep his grip.
Rodger looked up. After weeks of blackness, the wash of light blinded him. Without warning, another ogre appeared out of one of the side galleries. The thing peered down at them. Rodger hid under the tangle of Lummy’s greasy black hair.
A thunderous roar filled the shaft. Rodger felt it rumble out of Lummy’s chest, a giant pipe organ of a roar. Echoes rolled up and down the shaft. Rodger dared a peek from his rank hiding place. The head of the strange ogre disappeared. Lummy chuckled to himself and kept climbing.
The daylight grew brighter as Lummy climbed higher. Rodger’s hands became aching claws. He knew he could not hold on much longer. He almost gave it up. Maybe a long, clean fall was better than whatever was about to happen. Just before his grip failed him, the ogre stepped from the last ladder rung and onto the blighted surface of the topside.
The world was covered in ash. Giant blackened matchsticks curled toward the bleak sky, all that remained of the green trees. A sorrowful wind chased miniature tornadoes of loose ash across the denuded landscape. Nothing was left unburned. All was desolate. The fires had consumed everything.
Lummy flung one hand out in disgust.
“Not good no more. All burned up. Nothing to eat up here. I think maybe I eat you now.”
With that, the ogre reached over his shoulder and grabbed Rodger by the scruff. Lummy threw him to the ground. Rodger landed in a cloud of ash. He rolled once and ended on his hands and knees, head hanging down. That’s when the puppy fell out of his jacket.
The puppy rolled onto the ashy ground, furious and hungry. Its fierce eyes searched for something to bark at and the first thing they saw was Lummy. The little terrier dissolved into a black-and-white blur of frenzied snarls, dodging back and forth in front of the hulking ogre, yapping for all it was worth.
Lummy appeared stunned by the tiny creature. He forgot all about Rodger. The ogre stared down at the tiny mutt as if transfixed. Then he started to laugh.
“Ho, ho, ho, that a funny little thing. What you be, little bit? Never see nothing like you.”
The ogre bent at the waist, leaning down as far as he could to get a better look at the snarling mutt. He pointed a big finger at the puppy and laughed even louder when the dog bared his fangs and snapped at him.
Rodger raised his head and tried to shake the ringing from his ears. His eyes focused on the hairy head of the ogre, bent down nearly to the ground. Still staring at the monster’s head, his hands groped blindly in the ash and dust. His fingers closed over something hard and cold. He lifted the thing, and the weight of it almost toppled him on his face.
A steel bar, as long as he was tall, flattened on one end and pointed on the other. Some discarded mining tool, forgotten and rusted. The weight of the bar pulled at his aching hand. The puppy kept up its ferocious barking as if incensed by the ogre’s laughter.
Rage coursed through Rodger’s small body. He lunged up onto one knee, then spun himself upright. He whirled himself in a tight circle, and the heavy bar flew out to the end of his arm like a spear.
The point of the bar disappeared into the ogre’s ear with a dull, wet thud. The bloody steel point reappeared out the other side of the monster’s skull. Lummy pitched face-first onto the ashy ground. The puppy scampered out of the way, still barking.
Two huge hands quivered, then clawed the ashy ground, pushing the ogre’s body upright. Somehow, Lummy raised himself to his full height. The ogre grabbed the steel bar with both hands as if he might pull it from his skull. His saucer eyes stared blank and empty.
Lummy staggered one step backward, then another. His third step carried him over the brink of the mine shaft. Then he was gone, falling and falling into the depths of the mine. Rodger heard the steel bar clanging against rusted ladders and the dull thud of the ogre’s dead body careening off the rock walls. The grotesque symphony faded to echoes and then to nothing. The only sound came from the little dog standing at the shaft’s edge, barking and snarling into the void.
Rodger staggered over to the dog and grabbed it by the scruff of the neck. The mutt gave a few more quick barks, then turned to lick Rodger’s face.
“Good job, little fella. You saved us. I suppose you deserve a name now. Fella, that’s what I’ll call you.”
The terrier yipped as if it understood.
Rodger looked down into the maw of the mine shaft, then raised his eyes to stare down the blasted valley. Here and there, he saw tiny fragments of green where new grass shoots peeked up through the gray ash. Those fragile scraps of life brought him a spark of hope.
“C’mon Fella, we’re going to town. Maybe some of it is still standing. What do you think? We need some supplies. Guns, for one thing. Big guns. Flashlights, batteries, whatever food we can find.”
The dog yipped again.
“Right, and dog food, too. We’ll put that on the top of the list.”
Rodger walked toward the ruined town. He held Fella in the crook of his arm. A small cloud of ash rose and hovered around his feet as man and dog disappeared into the desolate waste.
Fini
You can find Dark Speculations here:
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Speculations-Various-Shapes-Shadows/dp/1777192307/
That’s it for this week’s edition of Thursday Stories. More stories are coming your way. How will you know when a new story breaks? Glad you asked, Friends. Read On! Drumroll and… Meanwhile, don’t miss any upcoming stories. You can stay tuned for all the latest by following the MEF blog:
https://bro.uxw.mybluehost.me/whats-new-in-marcos-world-the-blog
And… if you desire more dark fiction, look no further than my collection The Wrong Name:
The Wrong Name
Stories from the darker edge
The Wrong Name – Stories from the Darker Edge, stories of the darkness that lies within us, and the occasional glimmer of hope that keeps us afloat in the shadows. Doppelgangers and crones, artificial and human intelligence gone wrong, murder, revenge, tragedies embraced, and fates narrowly avoided. Reluctant heroes tire of the chase and ghosts relive the past. Bodies must be disposed of, corpses arise, and dreams damned. Here is magick, for good or ill. Twenty-one tales of darkness, and the occasional glimmer of hope that keeps us afloat in the shadows. Welcome, Reader, to The Wrong Name.
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