I’ve got another scary one for ya! Plus another Giveaway!
Faithful Shadow
by Kevin J. Howard
Yellowstone National Park is on fire. The skies are smudged with smoke and the air is filled with the pungent scent of burning brush.
Underneath Yellowstone, the creatures maze of tunnels are filling up with smoke. It has to find a safe place until the fires are put out. One unlucky fireman gives it that opportunity.
For Joseph Rand, a park ranger, things are heating up, and not only because of the fire. People are disappearing mysteriously. They seem to just vanish, leaving no trace.
Taking advantage of the lack of business at the Old Faithful Inn, a landmark in the park, some of the summer employees head up to the hotsprings to soak in the warm waters and camp out for the night, and do a little partying. When they wake up the next morning, two of their group are missing. Their belongings are still there but there’s no trace of their friends. After much searching, it’s decided they need to head back and notify the park rangers.
Joseph is nursing a bad hangover when the kids rush in, talking over each other, claiming their friends are missing. He doesn’t see it as an emergency and patronizes them, saying maybe they went off to be together. This infuriates the group. They can see his shaking hands and smell the reek of stale booze on him.
When Joseph tells them he’ll go check it out they leave to report to work. What he finds isn’t much. No trail to follow, but a few drops of blood are on the ground. Perhaps he was too hasty in writing this one off as young people having fun. Another call pulls him away from the hot springs, it’ll have to wait.
Now a fireman has gone missing. One second he was standing by his supervisor, the next he was gone. With the fire line close by, there’s no time to waste and the firemen and Joseph spread out to look for anything he could have fallen into. There are plenty of sinkholes in the park.
They find one and when they holler down, the fireman answers. It’s a ways down, so they rig a harness and lower a man down to get him. Strangely, he is now farther down the tunnel and in bad shape, too weak to help himself. When they finally get him topside, he’s so weak they have to take him back to the Inn. One man notices the injured man’s jacket is bulging in the back, like somethings underneath, but then he’s distracted and thinks of it no more .
What piggybacks the fireman is now a guest in the Inn. It’s cunning, malicious and hungry. Always hungry. And it gets a devilish delight in terrorizing its prey.
Hell has come to Yellowstone and it’s just getting started.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbDBOKgYzts]
.
Creature stories are my favorite reads. Whether they’re on land, under the sea, or on another planet doesn’t matter. As long as there’s carnage and terror I’m happy.
I know, “I ain’t right.” Can’t help it.
Faithful Shadow has all the carnage you could ever want, and once it starts it doesn’t stop.
I could take or leave the young group of friends. I found most of them shallow and self-centered. Probably a good thing I didn’t warm to them, as many meet bloody ends.
Joseph, the park ranger, has a huge drinking problem and a lot of baggage. It took a while, but I started to get him and was really pulling for him by the end.
There are a couple other characters I really liked, you’ll know who I’m talking about when you read the book. They added depth with their own stories.
Now, the creature! It’s something else. I kept trying to picture what it looked like and never really got an image in my mind. Maybe it was too dark:) Anyway, I shopped around and this is kind of what it looks like in my mind.
Do you see it? Oh, well I guess it’s too dark. But it’s in there, looking right back at you, edging closer. Can you hear it?
If a story makes me rub my hands together, chuckling with evil delight, it gets 5 Stars!
Congratulations Kevin. Your debut novel gave me shivers! I’m first in line for your next one.
And now for the giveaway.
Kevin is giving away 5 e-books of Faithful Shadow.
To enter, please leave your email address and answer this question, “If you’re cornered by the creature would you faint, fight, or run?”
Contest ends December 15th. Good luck everyone.
About the author
Kevin Howard lives with his family in Washington. He worked in Yellowstone National Park for the summer season as part of a family tradition. Kevin, his wife Melissa, and his two young children enjoy spending summers there.
Contacts
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/faithful-shadow-kevin-howard/1112436638?ean=9781432794354
Faithful Shadow will be offered for $0.99 from now until Christmas for the
Holiday Season. A great price to celebrate the holidays and the coming release
of my second novel, Precipice: The Beginning. Voted the Scariest Author of 2012
by Outskirts Press for Faithful Shadow.
Click on the cover image below to purchase.
Related articles
- Geysers, geysers, geysers – Yellowstone National Park, WY (travelpod.com)
- Best of Island Park & Yellowstone (ajburuca.com)
- Yellowstone Park rangers hunt elk poacher (missoulian.com)