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    Sinkhole: A Novella of Terror
    Sinkhole: A Novella of Terror
    Sinkhole: A Novella of Terror
    Ebook90 pages1 hour

    Sinkhole: A Novella of Terror

    By Grant Palmquist

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    About this ebook

    On a lazy spring afternoon, a sinkhole opens up and swallows Bobby Page’s mother whole...

    Bobby thinks it must be a nightmare, but he’s never been a in a nightmare this real in all his fourteen years in Kinsale, Texas. When he edges closer to the hole in an attempt to save his mother, he sees something sinister lurking within it, something monstrous that threatens to destroy the whole town.

    Soon sinkholes are rapidly spreading, neighbors are disappearing, and parasitic monsters are swarming up from the holes to feed on humanity... and Bobby Page finds himself in a race to locate his little brother Ralph, the only person he has left in the world, before it’s too late.

    Part The Goonies, part Stand by Me, and all fun, Sinkhole is a fast-paced, horrific thrill ride that will leave you reeling.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrant Palmquist
    Release dateOct 18, 2014
    ISBN9781310724343
    Sinkhole: A Novella of Terror
    Author

    Grant Palmquist

    Grant Palmquist is the author of the science-fiction novel Azure and four horror novels: A Song After Dark, Permanent Winter, Dirge, and The Seer. His short stories have appeared in Chizine, Dogmatika, and Underground Voices.

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      Book preview

      Sinkhole - Grant Palmquist

      SINKHOLE

      Grant Palmquist

      Copyright 2014 by Grant Palmquist

      Smashwords Edition

      eBook formatting by Maureen Cutajar

      www.gopublished.com

      All rights reserved. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

      Other Works Available by Grant Palmquist

      A Song After Dark

      The Seer

      Isolated Howl

      End of Amnesia

      Cemeteries of the Heart and Other Stories

      Dirge

      Engel

      Azure

      Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright

      Other Works Grant Palmquist

      SINKHOLE

      About the Author

      Sinkhole

      The sinkhole opened up and swallowed Bobby Page’s mother whole.

      Bobby Page thought it must have been a nightmare, but he’d never been in a nightmare that felt so real in all his fourteen years in Kinsale, Texas, and stumbling backward from the spreading hole with his eyes wide and his arms pinwheeling to try to keep his balance, he screamed a scream that even he couldn’t hear, for the crumbling sounds of earth drowned it out.

      He’d been walking toward Mom in the living room, where she was watching one of those soap operas she always liked to watch on her days off, The Young and the Restless. For once she had off on a Saturday from the Kinsale Hospital where she worked as a nurse. She’d looked at him sleepily and smiled, red wine stains upon her lips. She must have seen every episode of that stupid show, and yet she taped them all and watched them repeatedly, saying she hadn’t seen whatever episode she was watching at any given time, even if Bobby distinctly remembered scenes from it. He’d never watched an episode all the way, but he’d had to endure parts of various episodes while he and his twelve-year-old brother, Ralph, waited to watch their shows, of which Breaking Bad was the favorite.

      Mom would always ask, Why would you want to watch something about a drug dealer?

      Why do you like watching those sex shows? Ralphie would ask then, smiling at Bobby.

      "They’re not sex shows," she’d say.

      Then this isn’t a show about a drug dealer, Bobby would say.

      It was strange that that memory passed through Bobby’s head now, when his mother had just been eaten by the earth, but it passed quickly, in a matter of a few seconds, and then he was back in the moment, still not fully accepting what had just happened, that his mother was gone, never to return. Why had he moved away from her instead of toward her? Could he have saved her? But she was gone before he’d had a chance to react, like a fly eaten by a leopard frog with a quick flick of its tongue.

      He shambled out of the living room and into the kitchen, rounded the stovetop island that stood in the center of the room, squatted, and rested his back against it. If the sinkhole caught him here, then he supposed he’d go wherever Mom had gone. His breath was nearly lost, not from running, but from a panic that was seeping into his bones that this was real and happening, that he would never see his mom, whom he loved more than anything, again. The urge to hug Mom and tell her he loved her one last time rolled through him to what felt like an endless hole in his belly, ever deepening. He shut his eyes, and a warm tear slid from the corner of his eye down his cheek then curved to the side and rolled over his thin lips.

      Behind his eyes he saw Mom and hugged her, and said, I love you… wherever you are.

      The sounds of the crumbling earth had quieted in the house, but now he heard screams and destruction coming from outside, and there was a new sound coming from within the living room too, a steady click followed by a pneumatic hiss that repeated itself again and again. Maybe his mom had somehow survived and was inching her way up the black hole. He had to check, absolutely had to, so he could help her—if it was indeed her.

      He picked himself up and crept toward the doorway that led to the living room, hands trembling, heart thumping in his throat. He grabbed the doorjamb and peered around it into the living room, but all he saw was the black maw where the couch and TV had once been, the hissing and clicking sound coming from within it. He sidled his way toward the hole, readying himself for the earth to crumble apart beneath him so he could jump if it did, but no such thing happened. Instead he made it to the edge of the sinkhole and looked inside it. Two glowing green eyes shone in the darkness of that hollow pit, and beneath those orbs smoke breathed from invisible nostrils.

      What the hell is that? Bobby thought, an icy finger trailing up the knobs of his spine.

      He fumbled in his pants pockets and took out his half-empty pack of Marlboro 100’s, which Mom had often caught him smoking. You know what happened to my mother from smoking, Mom had said every time she caught him to the side of the house with smoke drifting up from his lips, and he always said yes, that Grandma had died of lung cancer, which Grandma had, but now, as he pulled the silver Zippo from his pocket, he thought, Smoking may kill me one day, but this lighter may save me today. And he stuck the pack of smokes back in his pocket and held the lighter over the darkness and spun the wheel, and the blue-orange flame arose. From within the hole a sickly black-green face stared back at him, slithering a sharp-pointed tongue in and out of its mouth, hissing that pneumatic hiss.

      Bobby stumbled backward from the hole, his stomach lurching into his throat. He tasted the acrid vomit and pushed it back down breathlessly, stuffed the lighter in his pocket, then crawled along the floor toward the kitchen, his legs not steady enough to walk just yet. Just as he was edging his way beneath the doorway and into the kitchen, he heard the hiss behind him once more and looked over his shoulder. The thing from within the hole, whatever it was, had come halfway out now.

      Though his legs felt heavy and sticklike, Bobby pushed himself up and ran to the door in the kitchen that led to the backyard and flung it open, slammed it behind him, and ran into the yard, warm spring air washing over him. He swiveled his head around, thinking, Where’s Ralphie at? He was too busy trying to accept what had happened to Mom as real to

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