The Tent
3.5/5
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About this ebook
The perfect getaway...
The perfect place to hide...
Hocking Hills, Ohio is an oasis for campers, hikers, nature enthusiasts, and for those who just want to get away and lose themselves in the wild.
And as long as you follow your guide's advice and stay within the permitted areas, you can expect to survive the night.
Because deep within the dark woods, something insidious awaits, something few have ever seen, something ancient, unknowable, and insatiable.
If you go down to these woods today, you won't live to see the sunrise...
A brand new novella from the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of THE TURTLE BOY and KIN.
Kealan Patrick Burke
Born and raised in a small harbor town in the south of Ireland, Kealan Patrick Burke knew from a very early age that he was going to be a horror writer. The combination of an ancient locale, a horror-loving mother, and a family full of storytellers, made it inevitable that he would end up telling stories for a living. Since those formative years, he has written five novels, over a hundred short stories, six collections, and edited four acclaimed anthologies. In 2004, he was honored with the Bram Stoker Award for his novella The Turtle Boy. Kealan has worked as a waiter, a drama teacher, a mapmaker, a security guard, an assembly-line worker at Apple Computers, a salesman (for a day), a bartender, landscape gardener, vocalist in a grunge band, curriculum content editor, fiction editor at Gothic.net, and, most recently, a fraud investigator. When not writing, Kealan designs book covers through his company Elderlemon Design. A movie based on his short story "Peekers" is currently in development as a major motion picture.
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29 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I like the lovecraft vibes his stories give off and this one in no exception. Quite a different outcome than I expected, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.
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The Tent - Kealan Patrick Burke
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Visit the author at www.kealanpatrickburke.com
THE TENT
Kealan Patrick Burke
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Pepper is nervous, and that in turn makes McCabe uneasy. The collie is not given to barking at every sound or she’d long ago have driven him insane. Up here in the mountains, they have long shared real estate with rabbits, cows, deer and sheep, and birds aplenty. Pepper learned this as a pup, learned to recognize the ambient sounds of the mountain’s many residents, and now rarely does she raise her head from her tattered old wicker basket in the corner of the cabin.
Tonight, however, her head and her hackles are raised. Her brown eyes are wide and wet and fixed on the door of his small bungalow as if trouble casts its shadow on the other side.
Sitting before the fire, the air tinged with smoke, the damp logs still crackling and spitting three hours after he set them alight, McCabe watches the dog watching the door, and cocks his own head in an effort to detect whatever might have upset his old friend. Unsurprisingly, he hears nothing but the wind. Twenty years ago, maybe even ten, he’d have stood a slim chance of competing with the dog’s hearing, but not anymore. They are both in the winters of their lives, but Pepper still has the edge on him when it comes to the senses.
Reluctantly he stands, his knees crackling louder than the logs, and puts one rough hand on his lower back, absently massaging away the dull fiery pain that settles in like a cuckoo whenever the weather turns cold. Pepper gives him a brief glance, her worried eyes reflecting the small flames in the hearth, clearly unwilling to break her concentration from whatever has her dander up, and goes back to watching the door.
What is it, Pep?
he asks in a soothing voice. What’s got you upset?
The dog whines but does not look at him.
Visitors are rare during the day, and rarer still at night. When anyone does have occasion to seek his cabin out, it is seldom with good news.
As he shrugs on his peacoat and sighs, Pepper gingerly steps from her basket and plods over to join him. She trembles slightly and McCabe doesn’t like that at all. She may be old, but he has always thought of her as fearless. He reaches down and is alarmed when the dog lowers her head as if afraid she is about to be struck, something he has never done in all their years together.
He frowns. This is one of those times I wish you could talk,
he says, something he has wished often in the four years since his wife Susan passed away.
Coat fastened, he fetches his old hand-carved, bleached pine walking stick from the corner by the door and turns his attention back to the dog.
Her head is still bowed in deference to the unknown threat. As he watches her tremble, he briefly considers abandoning the idea of venturing out into the cold and giving Trooper Lyons a call instead. Then he just as quickly dismisses the notion. Lyons is a good and fair man, but he’s also a drunk and as it’s after ten on a Wednesday night, the chances of finding him sober are slim. He’d undoubtedly balk at the idea of the twenty-mile drive to the mountain, especially to investigate what will no doubt prove to be little more than the result of a nervous dog’s hypersensitivity. Instead he’ll slur a few reassurances and promise to stop by in the morning. But because McCabe has unwavering faith in his dog’s ability to sense something amiss out there, he doesn’t fancy the idea of waiting that long. The wondering will keep him awake all night if he doesn’t go see what it is.
How likely am I to run into a demon or a ghost out there, girl?
he asks the dog.
Pepper says nothing, just looks through him to the door as if, merely by mentioning it, he has become a ghost himself.
And though the old man feels silly at the note of fear pealing through him, he can’t deny that the dog has him more worried than he’s accustomed to being. The last time he saw Pepper this alarmed, McCabe had stood up from the supper table and followed her outside into the fine spring evening, where he found his wife lying prostrate in the yard, her heart as dead and cold as the rocks upon which she lay, her laundry basket turned on its side, the freshly laundered clothes strewn about her head and shoulders.
He doesn’t like to think about that now, no more than he likes the waves of terror that radiate from the dog and creep into the marrow of his old bones.
Something is wrong out there, and he tells himself that if he has any sense at all, he’ll stay locked up inside with the old girl and wait until sunup to go investigate. But then he reminds himself that people sometimes get themselves in trouble on the mountain; youngsters mostly, sometimes