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    The Devil's Outhouse
    The Devil's Outhouse
    The Devil's Outhouse
    Ebook39 pages37 minutes

    The Devil's Outhouse

    By James Pratt

    ()

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    About this ebook

    After a bank robbery goes terribly wrong, ex-Confederate soldier turned gunfighter Jacob Burden flees into the desert where he might hope to escape the posse but certainly not his conscience. Somehow, Jacob winds up in a place far stranger than any tall tale and more dangerous than a hanging judge. If he keeps his wits sharp and his pistol loaded he might not only survive but find redemption.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJames Pratt
    Release dateJun 28, 2011
    ISBN9781465717283
    The Devil's Outhouse
    Author

    James Pratt

    James Pratt likes to create realistically flawed but basically decent characters and have them cross paths with serial killer angels, redneck vampires, slithering horrors from other dimensions, and the end of the world. He also likes to write stories that demonstrate how the ever-present darkness threatening to wash over the world like a wave of endless night can be held back with a little courage and a big shotgun (assuming one hasn't already used both barrels, of course). Some take place in the distant past, others in the far future, and still others somewhere between eight minutes ago and twelve minutes from now. Whether sci-fi, adventure, or straight-out horror, the running theme is that the universe is very, very big and we are very, very small.

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      Book preview

      The Devil's Outhouse - James Pratt

      THE DEVIL’S OUTHOUSE

      A Short Story by James D. Pratt

      Copyright 2010 James D. Pratt

      Smashwords Edition

      Cover image © HeroMachine.com

      /********************************************************************************/

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If this is not a free book and you would like to share it with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If this is a free book and you would like to share it with another person, please direct the recipient to the book’s page on Smashwords.com so they can download their own copy. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      /********************************************************************************/

      I) Into the Devil’s Outhouse

      Jacob Burden never set out to be a bad man. Fact was, he probably had more of a conscience than any of the local sophisticates making up the posse hot on his trail. And though he stood accused of shooting that fella back at the bank in cold-blood, Jacob could have sworn there’d been a pistol in his hand. But what’s done was done. The fella was dead, Jacob was galloping across the badlands on a stolen horse, and a pack of bloodthirsty sumbitches was close behind. By bullet or by noose, they were fixing to give Jacob his due and truth be told he didn’t half blame them.

      The Devil’s Outhouse was understandably the last thing on Jacob’s mind. Oh, he’d overheard some stories about it after he blew into town, mostly old-timers trying to outdo each other by telling tall tales each more extravagant than the one before it. Some said the Outhouse was the devil’s own place on earth, a way-station for lost souls where even the most upright man might find himself were he to take a wrong turn at the wrong place at the wrong time. Others said it had always been here, that the Indians told stories about it long before the first paleface ever set foot in the New World. The local tribes, the Manuwati and the Chinnacooks, had no name for it. They just called it the place and claimed it was full of things far older than humanity; terrible, nameless things a thousand times worse than anything you’d find in the white man’s hell.

      As for Jacob, he had a fondness for tall tales but had never paid them any real mind. As a veteran of the War of Northern Aggression, Jacob knew storybook horror from the real thing. Hell, he’d even been at Shiloh, slick with other men’s guts and in the thick of things when the hand-to-hand fighting was at its bloody worst. The stories about goblins and haunts his ma, God rest her soul, had raised him on before she went to be with Jesus were

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