The Dark Ones

CRITICS PRAISE THE FRIGHTENING WORK OF
BRYAN SMITH!

THE KILLING KIND

“First off, let me unequivocally state that Bryan Smith creates the most fantastic, sick, demented and twisted characters in horror fiction today.”

—Famous Monsters of Filmland

“With [
The Killing Kind
], you can rest assured that [Smith has] reached a new level of extreme that will surely make him a household name with the mass market genre fans, and hopefully more.”

—Paperback Horror

DEPRAVED

“Bryan Smith’s
Depraved
is everything you want in a novel: black-humored, violent and nasty . . . Gotta love it.”

—Bookgasm

“
Depraved
is a jet-fueled tale that begins fast and mean and never lets up. Smith blends multiple plotlines together seamlessly, pulling readers into his characters’ sprints for survival. This isn’t just a recipe for horror shock and awe . . . as Smith crafts characters that provoke empathy, pity, even disgust . . . which pulls readers even deeper down this dark and twisted hole.”

—
Shroud Magazine

“Bryan Smith is right up there with Brian Keene, Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon and Wrath James White . . . I cannot wait until his next book comes out. The writing was very strong . . . I strongly recommend
Depraved
and would give this book ten bloody hearts. You won’t regret reading this book.”

—HorrorNews

SOULTAKER

“This is a classic tale of a small-town haunting.”

—
Fangoria

“This book encompasses everything good about the horror paperbacks from the 1990s . . . Filled with sex, violence, and atmosphere, rolling along at a frenetic pace that never lets you rest, this book is good old-fashioned horror.”

—Fear Zone

QUEEN OF BLOOD

“I can’t see any fan of 80s-style pulp horror novels not leaving this one with a huge, gory grin on their face.”

—The Horror Fiction Review

“
Queen of Blood
is a great follow-up . . . taking all the elements that worked so well in the first book and ramping them up. Not just the gore or the violence, though there’s plenty of both, but the characterizations Smith is so adept at as well. He has weaved a very intricate tale with multiple levels of deception and sadism and managed to have it all make sense and be a helluva lot of fun at the same time.”

—Dread Central

“A non-stop thrill ride . . .
Queen of Blood
is flying off the shelves. Bryan Smith seems poised for a major career explosion, and if you want to be trendy, read him now, before he becomes a household name. Incidentally, although
Queen of Blood
has a definite conclusion, there is plenty of room for a third volume in the same series. You can count me as someone who is eager to read it.”

—Skullring

HOUSE OF BLOOD

“
House of Blood
is a unique and riveting excursion into modern horror. Here’s an author exploding onto the genre.”

—Edward Lee, author of
House Infernal

“Bryan Smith is a force to be reckoned with!”

—Douglas Clegg, author of
The Attraction

“A feast of good old-fashioned horror. Don’t pass this one up!”

—Brian Keene on
House of Blood

“In the vein of Bentley Little and Edward Lee . . . sometimes scary, sometimes amusing,
House of Blood
is a quick, enjoyable read suitable for all fans of horror and dark fantasy.”

—Michael Laimo, author of
Fires Rising

THE THING IN THE DARKNESS

It sensed them. For the second time in less than a day it stirred toward wakefulness, toward something close to full awareness.

Something was happening now.

Somewhere . . . up above.

Humans had come to this blighted place again. It opened its inner eye—the one that felt rather than saw. It probed at the edges of their minds.

It sensed something.

The humans . . . they were trying to come closer.

To come inside the house.

The air in the basement grew warmer and vibrated with demonic laughter.

Yes
, it thought.

Come inside
.

Come . . . to me
.

Other books by Bryan Smith:

THE KILLING KIND

DEPRAVED

SOULTAKER

QUEEN OF BLOOD

THE FREAKSHOW

DEATHBRINGER

HOUSE OF BLOOD

THE
DARK
ONES

BRYAN
SMITH

For Rachael
.

DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

January 2011

Published by

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016

Copyright © 2011 by Bryan Smith

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 13: 1-4285-1617-5
E-ISBN: 978-1-4285-0992-4

The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

Visit us online at
www.dorchesterpub.com
.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As usual, the greatest degree of thanks has to go to my wife, Rachael, the bravest, strongest person I know, capable of summoning courage and optimism in circumstances that would break most people.

I also want to thank John Everson for his role in helping to rescue our annual Hypericon party from the brink of oblivion. Again, Rachael gets bonus points for all the work she did to make the party rock. In the words of Ben Eller, it was “epic.” Wait. That was just one word. Whatever.

Thanks also to my mother, Cherie M. Smith, my brothers Jeff Smith and Eric Smith, my friends Shannon Turbeville and Keith Ashley, in-laws Jay and Helene Wise, my grandmother Dorothy C. May, Don D’Auria, Brian Keene, the Keenedom board regulars, Tod Clark, Kent Gowran, Ben and Tracy Eller (www.worldofstrange.com), Mark Hickerson, Derek Tatum, Paul Legerski, Paul Synuria, Brittany Crass, Blake Conley, John Barcus, Joe Howe, Elizabeth Rowell, Kim Myers, Robert Czake, David “Fucking” Hobbs, the brewers of Yazoo Hop Project and Dogfish Head India Pale Ale, Darin Gardner, Doug and Jamie Dobbs, Brian Bowyer, Wayne Griffith, James Rowe, Pete Kremer and Jeano Roid Coffinberry of The Creeping Cruds (buy their music!), Fred and Stephania Grimm, all the regular commenters on Facebook, who are too numerous to mention individually but whose support is nonetheless greatly valued, and all the other people I am criminally, tragically neglecting to mention as I rush to finish this. And, of course, thanks to all of you who keep reading each new book as it comes out.

THE
DARK
ONES

P
ROLOGUE

Ransom, Tennessee
Hollis House

December 1, 1959

A smell so foul it made his eyes water permeated the room. His throat filled with bile as the overpowering odor assailed him, filling his nostrils like poison as wave after hot wave of the foulness engulfed him, making him feel like a man drowning in an ocean of filth. It was impossible to fathom how so vile a stench could issue from the mouth of the woman he’d married almost a decade ago.

Frank Hollis reminded himself that this thing wasn’t really his precious Eleanor. It was her body, but there was something else inside her, an evil thing using her flesh like a puppet. The thing was manipulating her flesh in ways that sickened and frightened him, using and abusing the body of its host with reckless abandon. He could only hope Eleanor’s poor soul had already departed the ravaged flesh. The possibility that she might still be aware of what was happening, a powerless prisoner in her own head, was too awful to bear. Rage filled him again at the thought of this, but there was nothing he could do.

Frank was lying flat on his back in the bed he and Eleanor had shared since moving into their new home five years earlier. He had made love to Eleanor as recently as three days ago on this bed. Fresh tears welled in his eyes as he realized that would never happen again. His hands were stretched backward behind his head and tied with thick lengths of rope to the headboard. He struggled against his bonds as the thing hovering above him hissed and leered at him.

Thing
.

Yes, a thing.

The reminder had to be constant because it certainly still looked like Eleanor. The leering face was the same lovely one he’d kissed so many times. But the expression on that face was so bizarrely alien. The eyes were wide and bulging and hideously bloodshot, almost completely crimson. The lips were peeled so far back from the teeth they had cracked at the corners, causing thin trickles of blood to spill to the point of her chin, where the dark moisture beaded and dripped onto his bare chest.

Frank screamed again as it performed one of its special tricks.

There was a sound of popping vertebrae as Eleanor’s neck began to lengthen. Her head stretched toward the ceiling. Her neck now looked like the long, bendable neck of a giraffe or extinct prehistoric creature. The head atop the long, elastic flesh-stick seemed too big and wobbled precariously. It grinned down at him, its lips stretching wider and thinner. More blood spilled from the deepening cracks at the corners of the mouth. Then the magic trick reversed itself, the neck shrinking in a breathtaking instant as the head came sliding back down, stopping with an abrupt wobble. The mouth moved in that weird way it had when the thing was laughing, the lips a shifting blur of impossible-to-follow motion. Fresh gusts of that hell stench made him gag again.

Then it lifted one of its arms, turning the inner part toward him, displaying the tender, unmarked flesh for him. It waited until it knew it had his full attention. It then flexed the fingers of its right hand, causing the fingernails to lengthen and harden, becoming black, diseased talons.

Frank shook his head. “No. Please. No. Haven’t you done enough?”

It laughed again.

The talons ripped at the exposed inner arm, tearing long, deep grooves in the flesh. Thick streams of dark blood poured from the new wounds. It held the torn flesh over Frank’s face, dripping the blood into his mouth. Frank swallowed every drop. He knew now this was expected of him. The creature enjoyed this extra level of defilement. It enjoyed all the ways it taunted and tormented him.