Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    October Tales: Seven Creepy Tales
    October Tales: Seven Creepy Tales
    October Tales: Seven Creepy Tales
    Ebook81 pages42 minutes

    October Tales: Seven Creepy Tales

    By Steve Vernon

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The leaves are falling.

    You can smell that long-dying aroma of Autumn in the air. Kids are talking trick or treat and the leaves are already screaming at you in red and yellow and deep golden rust as they prepare for one final parachute down into the dirt.

    The tombstones are talking amongst themselves and winter is hiding just around the corner.

    It is the time of the year when people draw around the wood stove and the campfire and whisper stories of death and omens and ghosts and things that don't even have a name.

    These are some of the creepiest October stories that I have ever written.

    Why not pick up a copy today?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSteve Vernon
    Release dateAug 27, 2016
    ISBN9781536531244
    October Tales: Seven Creepy Tales
    Author

    Steve Vernon

    Everybody always wants a peek at the man behind the curtain. They all want to see just exactly what makes an author tick.Which ticks me off just a little bit - but what good is a lifetime if you can't ride out the peeve and ill-feeling and grin through it all. Hi! I am Steve Vernon and I'd love to scare you. Along the way I'll try to entertain you and I guarantee a giggle as well.If you want to picture me just think of that old dude at the campfire spinning out ghost stories and weird adventures and the grand epic saga of how Thud the Second stepped out of his cave with nothing more than a rock in his fist and slew the mighty saber-toothed tiger.If I listed all of the books I've written I'd most likely bore you - and I am allergic to boring so I will not bore you any further. Go and read some of my books. I promise I sound a whole lot better in print than in real life. Heck, I'll even brush my teeth and comb my hair if you think that will help any.For more up-to-date info please follow my blog at:http://stevevernonstoryteller.wordpress.com/And follow me at Twitter:@StephenVernonyours in storytelling,Steve Vernon

    Read more from Steve Vernon

    Related to October Tales

    Related ebooks

    Horror Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Life On The Line

      Sep 30, 2021

      Life On The Line
      4 min read

    • Article

      Global Horror Market

      Feb 4, 2021

      US small press Silver Shamrock Publishing is open for submission of unagented original horror and dark fiction novels and novellas. Editor Ken McKinley is interested in seeing ‘unique spins on classic horror tropes’, ranging from ghost stories and ha

      1 min read

    • Article

      Like 'Goosebumps?' Here's Another 30 Years' Worth Of Horror For Kids

      Aug 12, 2018

      From the late '60s to the rise of Harry Potter in the late '90s, horror fiction had a hold on young readers, and there was something to scare everyone, from realistic thrillers to possessed dummies.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Stoker Winners

      Jul 1, 2021

      The Horror Writers Association has announced the winners of the 2020 Bram Stoker Awards. The winners were: Superior Achievement in a Novel: The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones; First Novel, The Fourth Whore, EV Knight; Young Adult Novel, Clow

      1 min read

    • Article

      Bouki the Hyena

      May 8, 2019

      Bouki the Hyena
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Problem with My Dachshund

      Dec 11, 2019

      The Problem with My Dachshund
      10 min read

    • Article

      Harrow Lake

      Jun 17, 2020

      RELEASED 9 JULY 320 pages | Paperback/ebook/ audiobook Author Kat Ellis Publisher Penguin Books Author Kat Ellis Publisher Penguin Books Harrow Lake taps neatly into nostalgic hooks, and one of its key strengths is in creating a very believable histo

      1 min read

    • Article

      Paul Tremblay

      Jun 17, 2020

      IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY BIGGEST FEARS that I would live to see the end of everything,” says Paul Tremblay, speaking to SFX from his Massachusetts home in the middle of lockdown. It’s a singularly peculiar time, and a peculiar interview for him to

      3 min read

    • Article

      Dark Side To Buffy?

      Feb 18, 2021

      Dark Side To Buffy?
      2 min read

    • Article

      Walk On The Shadyside

      Jun 16, 2021

      Walk On The Shadyside
      5 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: June 2018

      Jun 5, 2018

      Here are six notable books of poetry publishing in June. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes “I wanted to have my form and explode it too,” said Wanda Coleman of sonnets. Hayes names her with gratitude in this book. Ath

      5 min read

    • Article

      Little Billy Goat Brave

      Jun 5, 2019

      Little Billy Goat Brave
      3 min read

    • Article

      Leading Lights Of Horror

      Jun 4, 2020

      The Horror Writers Association (HWA) 2019 Bram Stoker Awards for ‘superior achievements’ in the genre have been awarded as follows: Superior Achievement in a Novel, Coyote Rage, Owl Goingback; First Novel, The Bone Weaver’s Orchard, Sarah Read; Young

      1 min read

    • Article

      Prue’s Farewell

      May 19, 2021

      Prue’s Farewell
      2 min read

    • Article

      Are You Lonesome Tonight?

      Aug 8, 2019

      Are You Lonesome Tonight?
      6 min read

    • Article

      Gothic Revival

      Oct 1, 2020

      Gothic Revival
      9 min read

    • Article

      80 Who Killed Claude Kendall? The Mystery Murder Of Charles Fort’s Publisher

      Dec 3, 2020

      Millions of Americans celebrated Thanksgiving in the comfort of their homes on 25 November 1937, but for one man fate reserved a different outcome. That same night, in a room on the eighth floor of a New York hotel, Claude Kendall was brutally beaten

      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for October Tales

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      October Tales - Steve Vernon

      Introduction

      THE LEAVES ARE FALLING outside of my window. I like to watch them fall. Don’t you?

      Sometimes they remind me of happy little hang gliders parachuting gleefully down towards the dirt.

      Other times they remind me of people trapped in a burning building. They hang onto their lives as the autumnal spark kindles their bright juicy high-chlorophyll green into the candle-colored shouts of red and yellow and a sort of dying rusty gold. I can see them trembling in the breeze hanging onto the twig ends and praying for a few more minutes of life before their grip fails and they plummet on a wind inspired by the pathetic fluttering of angel wings before they crash into the dirt to rot back down into the mulch that they first sprung up out of.

      So what have you learned from this?

      Well, for starters, writers really need to have their heads examined.

      Still, October is my favorite time of year and Halloween is my VERY favorite holiday. I’m going to tell you just why that is at the end of this book – unless maybe you start reading from the back – which is an awfully hard trick to manage when you are dealing with e-books.

      The following six stories are not NECESSARILY about Halloween – but they all share that single common element – namely a creepy and dark feeling of autumn coming on. So, stop hanging onto that there tree branch and just let go and let the autumnal breeze whisper you down to dirt below.

      If you enjoyed this book I’d REALLY recommend you hunting up a copy of my big fat scarecrow novel, THE TATTERDEMON OMNIBUS.

      CATCALL

      NOBODY REALLY KNEW how long the old Funnel mansion had stood empty, waiting up there high on Carpenter’s Hill like a child’s forgotten lunch box, any more than anybody knew how long that old gray cat had squatted in behind the screen of the front porch window.

      All we knew was that somebody must be feeding it, because every now and then we would look in from the hedge on the far side of the yard and see the cat nibbling daintily on what looked to be raw hamburger.

      Guts, proclaimed Jeremy Hooter, making a thick juicy swizzling noise with his lips and tongue pressed against his stainless steel braces. It’s guts, is what it is.

      Great big gobs of owl guts, amplified Charlie Roundbert.

      Charlie Roundbert was only half of Jeremy’s size and age, but he might as well have been Jeremy’s shadow. The two boys stuck together just that closely and yet as far as I knew the two of them never had anything nice to say to each other.

      Owl guts, Charlie repeated.

      We all took up the chant except Jeremy, who didn’t think it was funny at all.

      Owl guts, owl guts, owl guts.

      Owl was what we always called Jeremy, because of his last name.

      It didn’t help that Jeremy wore a pair of glasses that made coke bottle bottoms look like microscope slides.

      The glasses always reminded me of Dr. Cyclops. You know the guy from the movies? It always looked to me like Jeremy was staring at us through a microscope, like we were some kind of alien bacteria from Planet X.

      I had a microscope given to me on my tenth birthday, not one of those little bitty plastic toys they sell with the chemistry sets you order from the Christmas catalogue, but a big old-fashioned kind that my Dad found in a basement he had been paid to empty. The basement had belonged to old Doc Hawcomber, and when the doctor saw the microscope he told my dad to go ahead and take it, he had a new one he used anyways. My dad always said that the microscope was probably contaminated with all kinds of plagues and diseases and he was likely being ten kinds of an idiot giving it to a kid like me.

      I told my dad not to worry. Germs didn’t stick to dead things like microscopes and houses. Germs stuck to people. Germs needed meat to feed on, and he probably shouldn’t worry so much.

      I knew he wasn’t being all that serious anyways. He was my dad, and the only person I had in this world, next to my dog Riley. The only difference was that Dad was real. Riley had been real as well, but he was only imaginary now since the timber truck ran over him.

      I knew my dad liked to worry about me, like it was his hobby or something, and I loved him for this worry, imaginary or not.

      I got Riley from my mom when I was two. Riley was a big black Labrador retriever, with feet as big as snow shoes in the pictures we have of him.

      We don’t have too many pictures of Mom, because it was my Mom’s camera, and Dad never felt all that comfortable using it. He’s got his own camera now, and he uses it whenever he can.

      Riley was my dog, and he would play fetch with me with a worn out baseball from the time the sun got up in the morning until the time it crawled back into bed. He was killed when I was eight, because of a ball I had misthrown. It bounced out into the roadway and Riley followed the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1