Unfortunately, the way home isn't as clear-cut as he'd hoped and he's forced to turn to Aria, his GPS, for an alternate route. However, Aria has something far more sinister in mind...

    Compelled by curiosity, he approaches the door, and, standing before the entrance feels the unmistakable sensation of a small hand creeping into his own, 'as if a child had taken hold of it'.Intrigued by the encounter, he determines to learn more, and discovers that the owner's grandson had drowned tragically many years before. At first unperturbed by the odd experience, Snow begins to be plagued by haunting dreams, panic attacks, and more frequent visits from the small hand which become increasingly threatening and sinister ...

    You may not survive the visit.

    They take walks in the park together, visit county fairs, museums, and zoos, and eat together overlooking the lake. Some might say the father is a little too accommodating given the lack of discipline when the child loses his temper in public. Some might say he spoils his son by allowing him to set his own bedtimes and eat candy whenever he wants. Some might say that such leniency is starting to take its toll on the father, given how his health has declined.What no one knows is that Phil is a prisoner, and that up until a few weeks ago and a chance encounter at a grocery store, he had never seen the child before in his life.

    Fragments of conversations, snapshots of memories were all she could scramble together.But, suddenly, none of it mattered.A stranger.A warning.And the hunt is on.Now Sal and her friends are in a battle like no other. Death and terror lurk around every corner. Can they defy the odds and live to fight another day?Or will they fall like so many before?Is it all a nightmare or is it for real? One thing is for sure, it’s relentless.

    A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda—a successful architect in a happy marriage—finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane? Described as “a new kind of psychological thriller” by George Pelecanos and “this year's scariest novel” by Time Out New York, Come Closer has become a modern classic “with a kick that will stay with the reader for days afterward” (The Dallas Morning News).

    A new homeowner discovers her property comes with a deadly addition. And dark forces stalk a troop of innocent boy scouts when they spend the night on a haunted aircraft carrier…Scare Street delves into the darkness to bring you a new collection of spine-tingling terror. This diabolical tome is bursting with thirteen sinister stories of supernatural horror, featuring ghastly ghosts, cold-blooded killers, and fiendish visions torn from your worst fears.Just be careful you don’t lose track of time as you meander through this shadowy landscape of dreams and nightmares. Because once the sun sets, something waits for you in the darkness of night.And if it finds you, you may never see daylight again…This bone-chilling supernatural collection contains:1. Cool Air by Peter Cronsberry2. The Presentation by Tarphy W. Horn3. The Homeowner's Guide to Sanity by K. M. McKenzie4. Retrospective: Florne's Ghost by Emil Pellim5. 7734 by Ryan Benson6. Aisle 3 by Rosie O'Carroll7. Pumpkin Patch by C. B. Channell8. The Third Father by A. M. Todd9. Troop 94’s Last Scouting Trip by Karl Melton10. Play It, Win It, Kill It by J. M. White11. Satan's Town by Bob Johnston12. Everything as It Was by Warren Benedetto13. Summer Camp by Ron Ripley

    Time’s slipping away, doc ... ”Emergency Room Physician Brent Cummings is harboring secrets he’d rather leave in the shadows of his past. But, when he finds a dead woman in a foggy park, all his skeletons come tumbling out of the closet.In a deadly race against time, Brent attempts to alter the future so that he might finally let go of the past.Will he heed the warning in the fog, or will fate prove more dependable than the good doctor?

    When he awakens to the bleating of his family's sheep being slaughtered, he learns that something is stalking this isolated corner of the reservation, a predator unlike any he has encountered before, one that attacks with alarming stealth and ferocity.Only his grandfather knows what lurks outside in the darkness, but a stroke has left him unable to communicate, forcing Sani to embark upon a journey into the distant past to discover the horrible truth. And he's running out of time. There's no sign of an end to the killing and already he's found claw marks and strange footprints around his home.Sani must decipher the clues hidden a millennium ago by the Anasazi before their mysterious disappearance if he's to have any hope of surviving the impending confrontation with an ancient enemy that has already hunted his bloodline to the brink of extinction.

    Now, with some of their co-workers dead, the hostages are being slaughtered one-by-one, and if they want to survive the night, they'll have to escape... The Cage.

    The day before they depart, the girls are given a party by Julie’s mother, Sharon, and her stepfather, Greg. Sharon seems nervous at the prospect of the girls taking off for parts unknown, but Greg sees no harm in the adventure. The girls set off and after driving through the morning, they stop at a small town diner for a bite to eat...and you can never imagine what happens next.

    . . and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero’s island of roiling vapor that seems animated by a mind of its own in Aloft.On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails—splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. Rain explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world.In Loaded, a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for the gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning.

    Slow-burn, character-driven horror at its finest. Addie O'Dell knows her life is in desperate need of change. Living at home with her spiteful mother, working a dead-end job, and entertaining an equally dead-end relationship--it's only a matter of time before she self-destructs. It's just... ...she's not sure being kidnapped was quite the intervention she was looking for. In a strange room, she awakens to the sounds of screams nearby. The door is locked, and no one answers when she calls. All she finds is a single envelope on the desk beside her bed. Adelaide, it reads. Inside lies a dangerous letter. A dangerous promise. It’s a danger as old as evil, and far more alluring. Irresistible. Because no matter the cost, when there’s hope on the table… it’s only human to reach for it. The doctor will see you now...

     After the loss of his parents, young Jack Thatch first met Stella as a child—this cryptic little girl of eight with dark hair and darker eyes, sitting alone on a bench in the cemetery clutching her favorite book. Gone moments later, the brief encounter would spark an obsession. She'd creep into his thoughts, his every waking moment, until he finally finds her again exactly one year later, sitting upon the same bench, only to disappear again soon after. The body of a man found in an alley, every inch of his flesh horribly burned, yet his clothing completely untouched. For Detective Faustino Brier, this wasn't the first, and he knew it wouldn't be the last. It was no different from the others. He'd find another just like it one year from today. August 9, to be exact. Isolated and locked away from the world in a shadowy lab, a little boy known only as Subject "D" waits, grows, learns. He's permitted to speak to no one. He has never known the touch of another. Harboring a power so horrific, those in control will never allow him beyond their walls. All of them linked in ways unimaginable.

    And when a face in the mirror confronts her with a dire warning, she realizes her life is at risk. Has she awakened a curse—or been struck by madness? “Queen Joanna” presents a haunting twist on the legend of Bloody Mary. This short story originally appeared in the From the Indie Side anthology.