Sol Invictus

By J. Paul Roe

"Wow is all I can say after finishing Sol Invictus. I like the macabre and have a huge collection of Poe, Dahl, and Doyle. However, this writer was able to throw in twists I never saw coming without compromising the storyline or sacrificing the wonderful dark humor that pervades this novella." - C. Duffie

"This story grabbed me from the start...and the slow reveals were enough to keep me guessing with each step. A unique, truly frightening take on the holiday. A fast-paced, excellent read." - Author, Jonathan Praise

**
"Sol Invictus" is a supernatural horror that sharpens the modernized mythology to a razor's edge. The undertones of psychological trauma, abuse and repression fill this book with shadows that will haunt you long after you've stopped reading.

Above all else, "Sol Invictus" has a conclusion that you will never expect and you do not want to miss.

Read it now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Third Phase
• Release date: Sep 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311493644

Book preview

PROLOGUE

My bare feet stomped across the bedroom floor before I finished opening my eyes. Had I dreamed the noise? I knocked the door out of my way and flew down the hall. Dreamed or not, the tiny scream was more than enough to send me running toward my daughter's bedroom.

Lizzy? I said, clicking the light switch beside her door, Baby?

Not a word. Nothing stirred in the room while my eyes adjusted to the brightness. The air in her room was cold, dense, and I was shivering by the time I reached her bed to toss her green Tinkerbell comforter to the floor. There was nothing but wrinkled sheets underneath.

Lizzy! I called back into the hall, my breath sending a cloud of vapor trailing over my nose. Why was it so damned cold? I turned to the window and it wasn't broken, but when I touched it, it swung loosely away from the jamb.

Oh, God...had she fallen out of the window?

I ran out of her room and down the stairs, clicking every light switch as I went. I checked the living room, dining room, kitchen, Lizzy!

Silence.

When I pulled open the front door and rushed outside, I was struck by a roaring wind that burned my face like a wave of cold fire. My flannel pants and old sweatshirt offered no challenge to December, and the snow had my feet numb and dark by the time I'd rounded the side of the house. Below Lizzy's window, I found no footprints, no hole where she could have fallen.

LIZZY! I yelled into the night. My teeth were chattering so hard the words barely escaped. All around me, black night pressed down on the snow-covered ground while the moon struggled to paint the pale mounds blue. If someone had taken my daughter, there would have been tracks in the snow. But there weren't any tracks.

I circled the house in an awkward, freezing lope, finding the snow untouched in every place that I hadn't myself disturbed. At the front door, I paused to look up and down the street one last time. A few of the houses blinked in fits, strings of colored lights carrying on through the night. Next door, Pierson's inflatable Santa Claus had turned into a heap of snowbound red and white plastic. But my daughter wasn't out there. I prayed that she wasn't out there.

I spent a half-hour searching every square foot of the house, calling Lizzy's name, wincing through needles of pain each time my frozen hands threw open a closet door. When I finally collapsed onto the couch, my hands were so numb it was nearly impossible to dial the numbers on my cell phone. I finally managed, and the voice on the other end told me help was coming.

I sat, waited. Staring through the colorful decorations on the mantle in front of me. I should have known it was coming. In thirty years, it had taken my life apart one piece at a time. One friend, one relative, one hope. With Lizzy gone, it had taken everything.

I pulled my knees to my chest and tried to feel warmth again. Tears welled, but they felt cold rolling down my cheeks to fall from my chin. By the time the police arrived, I had come to terms with something that I'd been denying for twenty years. I had denied it for her sake, as if somehow ignoring it would protect her. But that night, it showed me that it wouldn't be ignored.

I would never be forgiven for what I'd done.

I

I'm not really sure why I kept the rituals going every year. Spending the weekend after Thanksgiving in the attic, pulling down totes marked with X-MAS in Diane's smooth block letters. I'd pop off the plastic lids and draw out strings of lights and ornaments in cardboard boxes, methodically placing them on the hooks and tables that sat empty for the other eleven months of the year. The decorations didn't feel like they were mine, no more than Christmas felt like my holiday. The season was for Diane, and for a short time, Lizzy. It was supposed to be a time of giving, but all Christmas had ever done was take away the things that mattered the most to me.

Over the last few years, the living room had become the epicenter of my half-assed holiday decorating. I had gradually reduced the amount of effort I'd put into the task until what remained of Christmas was in that twenty-five-by-eighteen space.

The tree would have sat in a red and green metal stand in the corner, but I hadn't bothered with that last year, and I wouldn't this year. It was the first tradition that I'd fully given up. Too time consuming, too many memories attached to each little ornament. Now, I just piled two totes full of the dangling keepsakes where the tree should have been and moved on.

I draped the narrow table behind the sofa with sparkling white felt, arranging a white porcelain nativity set in the center of the implied snow. The set had been Diane's, and I flanked it with two antique nutcracker figurines that were passed down to her by her mother. They looked like soldiers, with feathery plumes in their hats and big, creepy teeth. They would have been Lizzy's some day.

Just like last year, I didn't cry until I went to hang our stockings along the mantle. I had bought Diane's for her when we were still dating. Our first Christmas together came only two months after we'd met, so it was more of a joke gift than a heartfelt one, but she'd loved it anyway. I couldn't help remembering how much she'd laughed when she unwrapped the gaudy, awful thing covered in beads and baubles. She laughed even harder when she'd seen the stocking-stuffer that I'd put inside: one of those department store massage wands that looked suspiciously phallic. She had found the whole thing hilarious (her sense of humor was one of the reasons I'd fallen in love with her) although she had punched my arm numb for letting her open it in front of her parents. I smiled and dropped the bead-heavy stocking on its hook, grateful for having that memory to draw me out of empty grieving.

A step to the right, and I carefully placed Lizzy's stocking on the middle hook. Two years ago, it came home from the store unadorned, plain and white. Smears of glue, handfuls of glitter, and the artistic vision of a three-year-old changed that in a short minute. If you asked Lizzy what picture she had made, she would tell you it was a snowman, or a present, or a Rudolf. If you asked ten different times, you'd get ten different answers, but each time she was sure. It didn't matter to me that the stocking was covered in shapeless, sparkling blobs, I loved the confidence in her answers. My budding artist, I