Black Witch Moon
Tyburn, 1625. A young woman hanged as a
witch. A doctor plagued by nightmares.
Wracked by guilt, Robert Winter struggles
with the notion that a witch may have been wrongly accused. But if that is so,
what can he do about it?
When strange things begin to happen,
Winter’s understanding of good and evil are put to the test. Compelled to
choose one or the other, he soon learns that taking sides is the least of his
problems…
In this horror series set in London, the
novella Black Witch Moon is book #1 in the Black Witch Saga.
Purchase Links - https://geni.us/fU08JG
Excerpt
After witnessing the hanging of a witch
at Tyburn, Robert Winter feels uneasy about what he has seen. That night,
something disturbs his sleep…
He awakes with a start. Something...what? A sound?
Blinking in the
darkness, he looks towards the casement. As his eyes grow used to the gloom,
the diamond-shaped panes come into focus. Staring at the leading criss-crossing
the frame, he tries to see what might lie beyond. Despite the dark, moonlight
casts slivers of pale silvery light onto the far wall. Sinking back into the
pillow, he realises he’s been holding his breath. Letting it out, he chuckles
to myself.
And then he sees
it.
The window dims,
as if a blanket has been drawn across it from outside. With both the fire and
the lantern having petered out, the room sinks into utter darkness. Winter’s
heart gives a jolt, and he reaches out a hand to Sarah. As his hand touches her
shoulder, she makes a small movement and murmurs in her sleep. It would be cruel
to wake her. Withdrawing his hand, he pulls the bedsheet higher.
Turning back to
the window, the moonlight has returned, splashes of light painting the walls
just as they had a few seconds before. Whatever he thought he’d seen had most
likely been a fantasy of the imagination, the remnants of a dream. Sighing at
the stupidity of his anxieties, he rolls over. Then the room falls once more
into darkness.
This time, he
throws back the covers and leaps from the bed. Keeping his gaze on the window,
he walks across the floor, staring at the almost indistinguishable outline of
the window frame. Coming within a few feet of it, he perceives that, indeed,
the scene beyond the window—the yard and stables and fields—appears cloaked in
a blackness that cannot be real. Even when clouds obscure the moon, the
darkness has never been so absolute.
Standing with
his hands on the cold windowsill, Winter stares at the imprecise reflection of
his own face in the glass, noting that the proliferation of lines and wrinkles
around his mouth and eyes has increased in the last few days. As he looks, his
face moves. He blinks. There it is again, shifting before his eyes, as if some
unseen force has taken hold of the image in the glass, pulling it out of
alignment. Scrunching up his eyes, he stares hard at the reflection, sees his
hair darken and grow longer while his face becomes pale and thin, the lines
around his mouth fading away even as he watches.
The visage that
gazes back at him no longer resembles his own—it has transformed into the pale
dead face of the witch.
Author
Bio –
Colin Garrow grew up in a former mining
town in Northumberland. He has worked in a plethora of professions including:
taxi driver, antiques dealer, drama facilitator, theatre director and fish
processor, and has occasionally masqueraded as a pirate. All Colin's books are
available as eBooks and most are also out in paperback, too. His short stories
have appeared in several literary mags, including SN Review, Flash Fiction
Magazine, Word Bohemia, Every Day Fiction, The Grind, A3 Review, 1,000 Words,
Inkapture and Scribble Magazine. He currently lives in a humble cottage in
North East Scotland where he writes novels, stories, poems and the occasional
song
Social
Media Links – https://linktr.ee/colingarrow
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