Read the Unedited Prologue of My Next Novel!

My next (untitled) novel is a horrific nightmare of adrenaline and heart-wrenching emotion. Are you prepared to experience just a taste of the terror that awaits?

The POV will cycle between members of the Rose family with each changing chapter.

Prologue: Sins of the Father

Jackson Elliot Rose

Lightning severed through the skies like a blade through the tenderest of flesh. Isla Avaricia was awash in shadows and heavy rainfall. I could still see my dear friend Angelique standing on the docks, holding the gris-gris that I had returned to her mere moments before. Heartbroken and terrified, she watched me sail away for what would be the final time. It was true; I had betrayed her. I would be lying if I said that my heart did not feel the slightest tinge of guilt. It did not change anything, however. My wife already thought that I was insane, and just that very morning, my son told me that he hated me. For far too long I had put Nacre Cove and its hideous curse above my family and their needs. I just did not have the time nor the sanity to continue assisting my dear Angelique in her endeavors – as righteous as they were. That accursed island faded into the dark, billowing horizon behind me as I steered my boat through those black, haunted waters. Memories rushed back to me of how alive my hometown of Elysia, the heart of Isla Avaricia, once had been. As I had learned, while attracting a handful of colorful strangers, tragedies and real-life horror stories tend to chase sane people away. I had inherited the sins of my father as soon as his blackened heart finally stopped beating. It was hard to believe that I grew up thinking that he was something akin to a saint. Wandering through his shadowy mansion built from his secrets and lies, fearing the horrifying statues and masks he had collected throughout his years, I was completely in the dark – in far more ways than the literal. The sea was aflame with ire that night. It seemed as though Mother Nature was determined to force me back to my father's island. Perhaps I should have listened to her. Alas, I had already made up my mind – I was going home, and I was never coming back to Nacre Cove. Through the quick, fleeting flashes of lightning, I began to see a strange silhouette standing out on the waters before my cabin cruiser. It was jet black, with large horns sprouting from its head. I recognized this figure immediately, and a sick feeling appeared within my gut. It had followed me. Fighting the ocean's violent waves, I changed course. Avoiding the monstrous creature as it literally walked across the surface of the water, I took the long way back to Santa Catalina – the island where my home, and my beloved wife were waiting on me. After what seemed like an eternity, the entity stopped appearing before me, and I made it back to Avalon Bay. After docking my ship, I ran to the parking lot where I had left my car earlier in the night. My clothes were soon drenched from the heavy rainfall. I was so frightened and stuck within my own head that I didn't even notice how empty the streets were. Despite the storm, in a bustling tourist town like Avalon, this was incredibly strange. As I got into my car, what little sunlight remained began to slowly fade away. Within a few moments, I was surrounded by a thick, impenetrable darkness. Even though I could barely see the street before me, I began to drive. All I wanted was to be with my wife again. “Do you know what you're doing, Jackson?”, Angelique's words echoed back to me. I could see her in my mind's eye as we both stood there on the docks behind the resort. She was glaring at me in shock as I returned the protection spell to her. After staring at it for a moment in confusion, she flashed those brilliant green eyes back up to me and spoke in that enchanting Haitian accent. “If you return my gris-gris to me, you will be vulnerable. In choosing your family over Nacre Cove, you are actually putting them in danger. If you abandon this place, just like your father did, I'm afraid that I cannot guarantee your safety – or that of your wife and children.” Despite my appreciation for her friendship, I was entirely sick of her wicked voodoo, and the demons that haunted my father's past. Everything had changed so much since the tragedy of Nacre Cove, and it never seemed to settle. Lying to my son and daughter was beginning to make me feel ill. And although I had told my beloved Michelle bits and pieces of the truth, she believed me to be delusional, and had been pressuring me to seek therapy and medication. My life was in pieces, and I thought that by ignoring my father's sins, I would have been able to put it back together. Alas, I was dead wrong. As I drove through the thick, constant rain, that familiar chill crept around me like an icy straitjacket, thickening the air and causing my breath to become visible. As lightning struck before me, that inhumanly thin silhouette appeared within it, standing in the middle of the street and in my direct path. Immediately panicking, I swerved out of the way, narrowly dodging the shadowy enigma. The wheels of my car began to skid across the water in the road, causing me to lose control. After a violent and sudden jolt, which left me hanging over the steering wheel, everything grew silent and still. Within a few moments, I realized that the ringing in my ears was actually the horn of the car. My head had been resting on it, causing it to sound. Looking up, I saw that I had crashed my car into a large palm tree. Smoke was billowing out of the mangled hood before me, surrounding the entire area in a thick, dense cloud. As my shock began to fade, my gaze locked onto two horrifyingly familiar glowing red eyes in the rear-view mirror. “The Masked One.”, I whispered, already trembling as haunted memories shot throughout my mind. He had finally caught up to me. In silence, he tilted his head just before giggling like a child, in a voice that was as ancient as it was unnerving. “Giving up already?” His voice echoed eerily. “But the game is just starting.” My jaw was trembling, causing my teeth to chatter. As he laughed at my fear, I gazed upon his thinned, decayed flesh through his reflection, taking note of every maggot crawling through and every lump of flesh that was missing, revealing his ribs or the grayed organs within his gut. “I-I thought you couldn't leave.”, I managed. “I usually can't, but...”, he began, reaching up and taking a gentle hold of his mask with his long, slender fingers. “You've played the game for so long that I have developed a little attachment to you, my friend.” He then slowly pulled it up, revealing the horror that rested underneath. His face was gaunt. All that remained of his nose were two thin slits. Gums were pulled so far back above his long, browned teeth that I could not tell where they ended and his skin began. He looked as if he were grinning. Two large, empty black sockets where they should have been. The sounds of maggots happily munching on the remains of his brain began to assault my ears. “So I just wanted to show you the real me before you leave. After all, it's what's inside that counts.” Suddenly, his jaw unhinged as a shrill, demonic shriek poured out of him that seemed to cause the earth to shake beneath us. Almost immediately, a warm wetness began to trickle out of my pained, ringing ears as I struggled to cover them. Terrified and in pain, I ran out of my car and into the savage storm, eager to escape the Masked One's reach. My tennis shoes stomped through the puddles of rainwater as I sloppily darted down the street. Turning back, I saw the inhuman predator slowly floating after me, dragging his feet behind him. Each streetlight somehow exploded as soon as he passed underneath them, causing a trail of darkness to flow about within his wake. I ran all the way back to my house and struggled to unlock the door. That strange chill remained around me the entire way, but I was too terrified to look back. My cats, Isis and Ra, greeted me with unusual hisses. They must have sensed that something dark had attached itself to me – something that Angelique had tried in vain to warn me about. Remaining as quiet as I possibly could, in an attempt to not awaken and alarm my beloved wife, I closed and locked the door behind me. After this, I crept through the house and into the privacy of my study, leaving my cats to fight an invisible foe just before the locked front door. My study was exactly as I had left it: Angelique's journal, still open to the page that I had left it on, was resting atop my desk, and papers on my father's past business endeavors were still scattered about the floor. The last time I was in there, I was obsessing over the supernatural things that I had witnessed at Nacre Cove, and was desperately searching for answers. Nothing I found could ease my shock, however, and even years later, I was still trying to make sense of it all. Feeling my fear take me over, I gathered a blank sheet of paper and a pen from the desk drawer. I then sat within my chair, put on my reading glasses, and began to write out a will. The more ink that poured onto that paper, the clearer I could hear the Masked One's deep, guttural laughter echoing all around me. He had followed me home to kill me, and I knew this because he had done the exact same thing to my father years before. Once I signed my name at the bottom of the page, I placed the pen flat over the will and took a breath. I then retrieved Nacre Cove's skeleton key from my jacket pocket and placed it within the desk drawer. Feeling my heart beating against my ribs like mad, I slowly stood up. I could sense the Masked One behind me, lingering there within the air. In silence, I reached for Angelique's gris-gris, which I had always worn around my neck, only to suddenly remember that I had returned it to her. “You should have kept that.”, the demonic entity bellowed. His eerie voice was overlapped with another – one that sounded distinctly female, with a French accent. Before I could turn around to face him, I felt his ethereal hand slip into my back as if his very fingers, engulfed in hellfire, had melted away my very flesh. Like tendrils, they constricted around my heart, sending jolts of pain throbbing throughout my body as he squeezed it repeatedly, pumping the blood through my veins and forcing me to remain alive during the torture. I collapsed onto the floor of my study to the clapping of thunder outside. The last thing I saw was his grotesque form easing closer and closer as I struggled to crawl away. Everything faded to black as my very life began to seep out of me, and into his black, empty eye sockets. “Like father, like son.”, seethed the Masked One, claiming my immortal soul. “You lose.”

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