Neon Crucifix

By Christopher Joyce

A compendium of tale and verse, Neon Crucifix is a collection of horror stories and shorter, more poetic ruminations on the nature of darkness and the macabre.
Witness ghosts, demons, A.I, time travel and more in this dark and bizarre collection.
With shocking twists and dark revelations alongside other, more poignant and thought-provoking entries, Neon Crucifix is undoubtedly the most ambitious horror collection the author has created to date.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Joyce
• Release date: Jun 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227650207

Christopher Joyce

Christopher is a Middlesbrough-born Horror/Fantasy author, and freelance content creator. When not busy crafting tales of weirdness and wonder, Christopher's main passions are retro video gaming, superhero comics, and tabletop strategy games.

Book preview

Calling

The Fear Eater

Ruin

The Lonely Marionette

Of Slumber

Antiquity

Follow the Leader

Thirteen Enter

Malady

Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite

Of Shadows

P.B

Senseless

The Stalker

Ashes

The West Side of the Village

Maypole

Janie is Typing...

Campaign

Severed

Maybe One Day They’ll Call it a City

The Sensor Ship

Calling

L eeds? said Calvin as he stared down at his phone and the incoming number it displayed. 

I’ve never even fucking been to Leeds.

He hit the red ‘Decline’ button with the tip of his cold thumb, cutting short the small, tinny rendition of Kula Shaker’s ‘Grateful When You’re Dead’ which served as his ringtone, and thrust the phone back into the inside pocket of his heavy winter coat. That was the third random call he’d received today, each from a completely different area code. He had declined them all in the same way he had terminated the call from the mystery Leeds number.

Someone has clearly sold my personal data, he said out loud to absolutely no-one as he looked out over the empty, misty moors.

Either that, or someone really wants to talk to me, he added silently.

His eyes felt a little scratchy and painful as he awoke in his tent.

Probably left my contacts in too long again, he thought as he stretched his legs and clicked his spine. He was inside his tent, tucked up snugly inside an insulated sleeping bag. He tentatively opened his eyes, feeling them sting as the light, meagre as it was, flooded his retinas. He closed them again, and proceeded to blink by increments until his eyes had fully adjusted and the dull pain abated. He extracted himself from his sleeping bag, unzipped the main entrance of his tent, and stepped outside.

His long, satisfying stretch of his back, legs, and arms was somewhat exaggerated, akin to how a child would emphatically demonstrate how tired they are, but Calvin was well aware that nobody was watching; even if they were, he was long past giving a fuck what anyone thought of him.  Elaborate stretch completed, he inhaled deeply, feeling the fresh morning air of the North York Moors fill his lungs in cold bursts, tinged at their extremes by the mingled scents of grass, dew, and soil. He loved it here; it was quite possibly his favourite place on-

‘Yeah you’ll be grateful when you’re de-ea-ea-ead, ooooh...’

The fuck? he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket and looking at the number which stared back at him from the bright screen. "Brighton? Who the fuck do I know in Brighton? This is getting fucking silly now."

He declined the call, once again cutting Crispian Mills off mid "ba-ba-baaaa, ba-ba-baaaa." He shook his head as he angrily stowed the phone. Four unsolicited calls in less than twenty four hours was, by anyone’s standards, a bit of a piss-take, as Calvin would put it. He shook the thought out of his mind, dispelling a measure of his frustrations as he did so, and set about making himself a cup of tea using the camping kettle Katie had bought him for his birthday. 

Tea drank and face washed, Calvin packed up his tent, slung his large, heavy pack onto his back, and set off for the day’s hike.

He needed this, perhaps more than he knew or would ever know. As he looked around through the rapidly clearing mists, all he could see for quite literally miles around was green. Fields, plains, hills, and marshes; Calvin had no real destination in mind, and no thought other than to simply walk. 

He found that he was enjoying the solitude, the silence, and the sense of aimless exploration which seemed to invigorate him. No amount of walking, though; no amount of colourful trees, rapid streams, or trickling waterfalls, however, could entirely dispel or drown out that nagging feeling in his gut. That droning, buzzing anxiety which seemed to scratch at the back of his skull in a place he could not seem to reach - something was just not quite right.

He pressed on, and the day soon turned bright, warm even. The appearance of the sun, high and mighty in the clear blue skies above the distant hills and peaks seemed to soothe and nourish Calvin in a way he did not quite understand on a conscious level. He decided he would push ahead for another fifteen, maybe twenty minutes before he stopped for-

‘Yeah you’ll be grateful when you’re de-ea-ea-ead, ooooh...’

Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me, he said aloud to nobody in particular as he once again pulled his phone out of his pocket.

"Cardiff? They’re not even English scammers anymore, for fuck sake," he said before cutting short the call in exasperation. 

One more time, he thought. One more fucking time and I’ll give the cunts both barrels.

The day was growing dark, and Calvin swore under his breath as he sensed that rain would not be long in coming. He could smell it, almost taste it in the air, and he shuddered involuntarily as the temperature dropped. It had turned cold, the coldest it had been since he got here on...

When did I get here? he mused. Three days ago? Four?

He dismissed his inability to remember as merely a manifestation of his tiredness.

But I’m not tired, he admitted. Stress, then. Yeah, that’ll be it. Work stress. Work, yeah.

Where do I work, again? What do I even do?

Calvin realised that he had stopped moving, and made a concerted effort to put one foot in front of the other and forge ahead. Just like he always did.

His mood had failed him just as spectacularly as the weather, and he found himself in a black humour as he trudged on angrily, determined to find somewhere he could make camp and put the events of the day behind him.

Before too long he found just the spot; a reasonably large area of grass lay below a high craggy outcropping, and had managed to avoid much of the rainfall. Calvin dumped his pack on the ground, but did not immediately move to set up his tent. Instead, he paced, breathing heavily as he tried to extinguish the fiery anger he felt welling up inside him; a fire born of frustration, annoyance, lethargy, and.... What else? He just could not put his finger on what it was that was making him so fucking-

‘Yeah you’ll be grateful when you’re de-ea-ea-ead, ooooh...’

Right! he said, snatching his phone out of his pocket with such gusto that he nearly dropped it. Stockton-On-Tees? Well at least they’re a bit fucking closer to home this time, he said, thumbing the green ‘Accept Call’ button.

Hello? he demanded.

A moment of silence greeted him.

"Hello?" he repeated with emphasis. 

C... C... Calvin? said a small, meek female voice.

"Yes, this is Calvin speaking. Who the fuck is this, and what are you