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    Night is for Nightmares
    Night is for Nightmares
    Night is for Nightmares
    Ebook78 pages1 hour

    Night is for Nightmares

    By Leon De Kock

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    About this ebook

    Five twisty, turning short stories to keep you awake at night. Murders, ghosts, werewolves and witchery, it’s enough to make you peer into the dark corners, wonder about the neighbors, and, when all else fails, sleep with the lights on. Because you never know what lurks on the next page. . .

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLeon De Kock
    Release dateFeb 1, 2018
    ISBN9781370067350
    Night is for Nightmares
    Author

    Leon De Kock

    Leon de Kock was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on Friday the 13th, October 1972, the sixth child of Pierre and Sally de Kock.Although life seemed boring on the surface, Leon lived an adventurous young life through reading. Everything went, he started off innocently with Enid Blighton of Famous Five fame, rolled through the other greats of the day, devoured Agatha Christie and then got sucked into the darker, more intense novels of Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz and the likes. Currently his reading includes a lot more of the fantasy novels of authors such as Rowling, Pratchett and others.His story telling began at a young age, by high school he was telling full-length stories through epic poems, some of which would be incorporated into a book and published many, many years later.After completing school in 1990 Leon enrolled for an apprenticeship with the South African department of Post and Telecommunications. After qualifying as a technician he stayed in that job until 1997, when he moved to work in the field of information technology. During those years he played bass guitar in a variety of heavy metal bands, where he was also responsible for most of the lyrics, and managed to get two of his poems published in a magazine.The editor of the magazine said of his first poem it was 'Dead in the Marketplace'. It didn't stop said editor from publishing the poem though.By 2001 Leon was working as an IT technician on a major coal mine in the Mpumulanga province of South Africa. It was around this time that he started work on the epic apocalyptic novel, Hordes.By 2002 the bright lights of his hometown of Pretoria were calling, and he moved back, with no job and no clear course of the future. He found himself working as an estate agent, then moved into architecture, working as a draughtsman.He kept up work on Hordes, and also wrote a second novel, the fantasy horror Dream World. A six month hiatus from working life, caused by a broken tibia and fibula from taking a tumble off his dualsport motorbike while riding off-road in December of 2009 helped him to complete a lot of his unfinished writing.Both Hordes and Dream World were Indie published on Amazon Kindle in May 2012. This was followed in June of the same year by the fantasy Story of Enchantment, a novel written through 250 poems, most of them epics, forming one continuous story.Dream School, the sequel to Dream World, followed in 2014.In 2015 came the horror Serenity, to be followed in 2016 by another apocalyptic, Sniffer.The companion book to Dream World and Dream School, titled Guide to Dreaming, was published in January 2018. Also in January 2018 came the collection of short stories, Night is for Nightmares.The first book of the fantasy Vespula series, Rituals, was released in September 2019, and was followed in by the second novel in the series, Insanity.In February of 2023 his collection of poems, mostly epic tales, was published under the title Riotous Rhymes.Leon currently lives in the city of Kempton Park, in the province of Gauteng, South Africa, where he continues life as a novelist and architectural draughtsman.Never far from nature, he has close ties to the Gauteng and Northern Regions Bat Interest Group as their membership secretory. He holds a membership with the Exploration Society of South Africa and the Speleological Exploration Society.In 2013 he was involved in a National Geographic expedition to retrieve hominid fossils from the Rising Star cave formation, working as a safety caver in support of the scientists.In 2014 he was involved in the Gobolo expedition to Swaziland to help explore and map the Gobolo Cave formation, one of earth's rare granite cave formations.Although his healthy sense of self-preservation has kept him from taking the plunge over the 50 meter precipice into the cave known as Armageddon, he was part of the team that first discovered and explored what would turn out to be one of the largest, deepest and probably oldest underground chasms in South Africa.You can find more information about the author's work at http://www.leondekock.com/

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      Book preview

      Night is for Nightmares - Leon De Kock

      Night is for Nightmares

      Leon de Kock

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2019

      Table of Contents

      1. The Steel Box

      2. Forest Ghost

      3. A Warm Welcome

      4. Weird Wolves

      5. Annua Morte

      The Steel Box

      Mark stopped the welding job to wipe sweat from his brow, glancing out of the garage to where his flatbed truck was parked. He loved that truck. The only thing Mark loved more than his truck was his twenty-year-old daughter, who was currently inside the house, studying for her college exams.

      He pulled the bottle of beer closer and finished it, looked at the empty bottle in disgust and grunted. He stood up, walked over to the fridge he kept in the garage and fetched another beer. After draining half of the beer in one go he returned to his welding work.

      The steel box he was constructing was a work of art. The top part, the part that could open, had several compartments for tools and spares for his truck. He was going to weld the box onto the bed of his truck as a handy storage place for those little parts and tools that he might need on the road.

      Mark flipped the welding helmet down and once again bent to his work. In the garage, blue light danced and played as he drew the welding rod along the edge where two sheets of metal connected, welding them together perfectly. He’d practiced welding for months before starting work on the box, because the box had to be perfect.

      Inside the house, the same house where his lovely daughter was studying for her exams, his bitch of a wife was lying in front of the television. He hated that. She could have done so much with her life, she could have been so much more, but no. After she had given him the daughter he loved so much, she had become nothing but a slob who spent her life in front of the television, while he had spent the last twenty years of his life bringing in the money, money which she could not wait to get her hands on.

      Flux curled off his welding job in a straight line, yet even so Mark had to use the hammer to chip away more flux, but when he checked the weld he was satisfied. It would last a lifetime, and it would be completely airtight and watertight. After brushing the weld clean he absentmindedly finished his beer, stuck a new welding rod into the clamp and continued welding.

      For twenty years, the complaining had never stopped. Every month-end was the same, there was never enough money. In her eyes all he ever did was drive his truck up and down the country, having a great time travelling, while she had to stay at home to look after their daughter.

      Now though, the time his wife spent at home was going to come to an end. Thinking about it made Mark stop his work and fetch a fresh beer from the fridge. The steel box he was creating had two levels. In the top part he had made compartments for his tools, the bottom part would hold the bed. It was a lovely bed, soft and covered with silk. After tonight, she would not be able to tell him that she did not want to join him on his travels, because she would have a bed to sleep in while they toured the country together.

      Mark remembered the first few months of their marriage. It had been the most magical time of his life, when his young and beautiful wife Margery had travelled the country with him. Everywhere he had gone, she had been in the truck with him, singing along with the radio and dreaming dreams of a long and happy life together. After a few months though, Margery had grown tired of life on the road. At first she had stayed home for a few days at a time while he did the long haul to small towns, but the time she spent at home had grown to weeks and then months, until she had stopped travelling with him altogether.

      He shook his head. Thinking about those long-ago years was good, because it was what he yearned for, and it was what he was going to bring back with this box, but tonight he had a lot of work to do. The box was almost finished, the real work would only start once the box was ready.

      The beer was starting to effect his craftsmanship, but tonight he needed the help of a few beers, to do what had to be done, to finish the job. He took another long pull from the bottle and touched the welding rod to his work again.

      He’d chosen special thick steel plates to work with, because this box could never be allowed to come apart or to rust through. Margery was a complainer by nature, he could imagine what she would say if the box he had made for her came apart at the seams.

      Mark’s thoughts turned from his wife to his daughter. Oh, the lovely Lisa. How it was that Lisa could still stay in the same house as her mother Mark could not understand, because it was obvious that Margery had grown to hate the daughter that Mark had grown to love. It was as if she hated the girl on principle, because it was another way in which she could annoy him.

      Mark put down the clamp holding the welding rod and took off the welding mask, then drained the rest of his beer. The job was almost done, the box was almost complete. He switched off the welding machine and walked over to the fridge to fetch another beer, but checked himself. He still had work to take care of, he could have a beer later. Instead he walked out of the garage and headed towards the house.

      He’d been right, of course. He found Margery sprawled in front of the television, watching one of the long list of soap operas she lived for. He was fascinated by how she could so utterly and completely live her life through the fake people on the television. He’d tried showing her how she was wasting her life, but it always resulted in another cataclysmic argument which she would ultimately win by spending the night in the spare room and ignoring him until he was back

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