October Shadows

By John Grover

Ten haunting stories and poems to fright and delight. So go ahead, indulge in Spooky Season again . You might just find yourself in some of these stories!

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Grover
• Release date: Oct 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215691601

John Grover

John Grover is a dark fiction author residing in Massachusetts. John grew up watching creature double feature with his brother on Saturday afternoons. This fueled his love of monsters, ghosts and the supernatural. He never missed an episode. In his spare time he loves to cook, garden, go to the theater to watch horror movies with his friends, read, talk about food, bake amazing desserts, play with his dog Buffy (yes named after the character in the TV show) and draw-badly. Some of his favorite TV shows and influences are The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside, Space 1999, Battlestar Galactica, X-Files, Night Gallery, Monsters, Star Trek, and much more. He completed a creative writing course at Boston's Fisher College and is a member of the New England Horror Writers, a chapter of the Horror Writers Association. Some of his more recent credits include Best New Zombie Tales Vol 1 by Books of the Dead Press, The Book of Cannibals by Living Dead Press, The Vermin Anthology, The Northern Haunts Anthology by Shroud Publishing, The Zombology Series by Library of the Living Dead Press, Morpheus Tales, Wrong World, The Willows, Alien Skin Magazine, Aurora Wolf and more. He is the author of several collections, including the recently released Feminine Wiles, sixteen tales of wicked women as well as various chapbooks, anthologies, and more. Please visit his website for more information.

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Copyright © 2023 by John Grover

www.shadowtales.com

First published by Shadowtales Publications 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Cover art by K.H. Koehler

Interior Art by Shawn Langley

Contents

You’re Invited!

The Hollow Ridge Shortcut

Party Guest

Pumpkin Eater

An Autumn Respite

Halloween’s Gifts

A Good Haunt

Old Nell

Dancing Partners

October Shadows

About the Author

Also by John Grover

October Shadows

And other Halloween Frights

John Grover

The Hollow Ridge Shortcut

Hey, new kid, Jimmy Porter called to me just as we stepped into Hollow Ridge, a thick patch of woods that ran between our school and our neighborhoods. It’s almost Halloween. You know what that means?

Yeah, I get to go trick or treating.

Jimmy laughed. He was always laughing at something. My family had moved to town over the summer, and this was my first Halloween here and let me tell you, it would be a Halloween I’d never forget. When I look back on that day now, I’m surprised I even made it out of Hollow Ridge. Somehow, I was spared. Not everyone was.

I made fast friends with Jimmy and Tyler that summer. We bonded over our love of horror movies and Halloween. Movie monsters, ghosts and campfire stories fueled our entire summer. We had even managed to sneak into a matinee of Fright Night without getting caught. It scared the hell out of Tyler, but Jimmy and I weren’t scared. That vampire sure was creepy though. He looked like a neighbor down the road from me. Of course, I wasn’t about to find out if he really was a vampire.

Anyway, back to me and Jimmy. The two of us were the best of friends but there was a little bit of a rivalry between us. Both of us wanted to be the leader of our little trio. I let him think he was most of the time but really, I was the brains of the group but after five months of friendship he was still calling me new kid instead of Billy.

No, dummy, Jimmy continued his assault. Not the candy. We can’t cut through Hollow Ridge on Halloween. We have to go home from school the long way.

That’s stupid, I said. Why?

You don’t know? Tyler asked.

I shook my head.

Oh my God, Jimmy added. Because of Rawhead and Bloody Bones.

Who?

Man, you need to listen to Jimmy, Tyler said.

Everyone in town knows about them, Jimmy added.

Well, not me, I said. I’m new here, remember? Like you keep reminding me, doofus.

I’ll tell you about them right now. There was a spring in Jimmy’s step. He couldn’t wait to tell me the story.

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. We trampled our way through Hollow Ridge woods and away from the view of the street just as Jimmy started to tell his tale.

Hollow Ridge was a dense thicket of woods that a lot of kids used to walk from school to some of the neighborhoods on the east side of town. It was shorter than circling around them through the upper-class neighborhoods and the snobby people who looked down their noses at us.

The woods tended to be darker than most other areas in town, shrouded with towering pines and maples, choked with overgrow vegetation and unlevel trails snarled with humungous tree roots.

Moss-covered boulders jutted from the ground, blocking certain paths. Critters of all types scampered around the deadfalls and hollowed tree trunks. At one point, when you had gotten deeper into the woods, it rose to a ridge that if you climbed to the top you could see some of the rooftops in the upscale neighborhoods. That’s where I guessed the woods got its name.

Vagrants sometimes camped out in the woods. We’d often find empty beer cans, old, forgotten campfires, and tons of cigarette butts.

Rawhead and Bloody Bones, Jimmy continued. They are two monster spirits. Like demons. They look like a mix of animal and human parts. Bloody Bones’ actual bones stick through his skin and Rawhead has a big bald head with pointed ears… most of the rest of him is hairy though.

Sounds crazy. I fed into the fear of the story as best I could.

A big battle happened in these woods during the wars with the Native Americans, Jimmy continued. "It was a bloody massacre and that’s what brought