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    Sudden Death Overtime - A Tale of Hockey and Vampires
    Sudden Death Overtime - A Tale of Hockey and Vampires
    Sudden Death Overtime - A Tale of Hockey and Vampires
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    Sudden Death Overtime - A Tale of Hockey and Vampires

    By Steve Vernon

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Meet Sprague Deacon - one of the toughest old-time hockey players who ever skated upon a rink of hand-poured ice. Sprague was born and raised and he expects to die here on the Northern Labrador coast. What he did not expect was a tour bus full of vampires - none of whom glitter in the least bit - to pull into his town and begin lowering the population level - one corpse at a time. Sprague and his three best friends - an over-the-hill never-say quit bush league hockey team from Northern Labrador go toe-to-tooth with a tour bus full of vampires in an immortal-stakes showdown of street hockey? For the answer - throw Paul Newman's Slapshot into a blender with Steven Niles 30 Days of Night and hit frappe!

    Steve Vernon is the author of a dozen e-books of outrageously mind-blowing horror and dark fantasy including his horror/historical full length novel DEVIL TREE, the take-no-prisoners testosterone-fest superhero extravaganza NOTHING TO LOSE and the cult hit novella LONG HORN, BIG SHAGGY - A TALE OF WILD WEST TERROR AND REANIMATED BUFFALO.

    Also including the bonus time travelling hockey tale, "Time Out" as well as a bonus hockey-oriented ghost story, "Smoke Signals".

    "With SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME, Vernon perfectly captures the dark heart of a Canadian Winter and the lifetime passion surrounding the game of hockey. He takes a group of old friends who never backed down from a fight on the ice when they were younger and still refuse to do so even when they're old enough to know better. Toss on the rink some memorable characters, truly great dialogue, a bus load of nasty vampires, and a shocking surprise ending that you won't see coming and you've got yourself a story that's sure to be a winner." - Gord Rollo - author of VALLEY OF THE SCARECROW

    "If Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson and Robert Bloch had a three-way sex romp in a hot tub, and then a team of scientists came in and filtered out the water and mixed the leftover DNA into a test tube, the resulting genetic experiment would most likely grow up into Steve Vernon." - Bookgasm

    "Steve Vernon is something of an anomaly in the world of horror literature. He's one of the freshest new voices in the genre although his career has spanned twenty years. Writing with a rare swagger and confidence, Steve Vernon can lead his readers through an entire gamut of emotions from outright fear and repulsion to pity and laughter." - Cemetery Dance

    "Armed with a bizarre sense of humor, a huge amount of originality, a flair for taking risks and a strong grasp of characterization - Steve's got the chops for sure." - Dark Discoveries

    "Steve Vernon was born to write. He's the real deal and we're lucky to have him." - Richard Chizmar

    Best of all - you don't even need to be much of a hockey fan to enjoy this yarn.

    Pick this one up. You won't regret it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSteve Vernon
    Release dateOct 17, 2016
    ISBN9781536532968
    Sudden Death Overtime - A Tale of Hockey and Vampires
    Author

    Steve Vernon

    Everybody always wants a peek at the man behind the curtain. They all want to see just exactly what makes an author tick.Which ticks me off just a little bit - but what good is a lifetime if you can't ride out the peeve and ill-feeling and grin through it all. Hi! I am Steve Vernon and I'd love to scare you. Along the way I'll try to entertain you and I guarantee a giggle as well.If you want to picture me just think of that old dude at the campfire spinning out ghost stories and weird adventures and the grand epic saga of how Thud the Second stepped out of his cave with nothing more than a rock in his fist and slew the mighty saber-toothed tiger.If I listed all of the books I've written I'd most likely bore you - and I am allergic to boring so I will not bore you any further. Go and read some of my books. I promise I sound a whole lot better in print than in real life. Heck, I'll even brush my teeth and comb my hair if you think that will help any.For more up-to-date info please follow my blog at:http://stevevernonstoryteller.wordpress.com/And follow me at Twitter:@StephenVernonyours in storytelling,Steve Vernon

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      Book preview

      Sudden Death Overtime - A Tale of Hockey and Vampires - Steve Vernon

      Prologue

      Enough of this farting around.

      Let me tell you where this story REALLY started. It started like any other story – in the beginning.

      The story REALLY starts just like this - in the beginning of the world there was no death.

      No one knew the sorrow of that final ending.

      No one knew the grief of losing someone they loved.

      No one had tasted a single bitter tear.

      The People grew fat and abundant.

      Far too abundant.

      The land grew crowded.

      The food was harder and harder to find.

      The People grew unhappy.

      So the Great Raven looked down from his high-looking mountain and saw all this.

      This is a bad thing, the Great Raven said. There is not enough food and water and land for the People to continue to live on in peace and harmony.

      So the Great Raven decided that he would do something about this problem.

      I will create a gift so that the People can rise up and leave this world to make room for those who will follow in their path.

      And so the Great Raven – in his wisdom and his sorrow – created Death.

      Now let’s play some hockey!

      C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\J07WM4Y9\MC900292496[1].wmf

      Tuesday night 9pm

      No one noticed quite exactly when the long black bus stole into the parking lot of the Anchor Pub. As far as anyone knew the bus just sort of drifted into the Labrador coastal village of Hope’s End like an unexpected snow flurry.

      Things happen that way in the town of Hope’s End.

      Slow and unexpected and all at once.

      Judith Two Bear leaned her elbows against the wood grain of the unvarnished table top. Her cigarette glowed like a lighthouse’s lonely beacon, bobbing as she nodded three slow beats behind the music of the static-ridden radio. She had parked herself at the window seat since dinner time. She liked to watch the world go by from the sanctuary of the town’s only drinking hole – the Hope’s End Drink and Drop Tavern and Grill.

      Several long slow warm beers later Judith Two Bear found herself staring vaguely at the names and dates carved and inked into the table top. She knew some of them. She could guess at some of the others and she wondered just who the hell the rest really were. How many lonely souls had made their mark on this table and had then just sat here like so many half-finished glasses of warm draft beer – just waiting to be swallowed but not quite yet.

      Truthfully, she didn’t think of any of this.

      Not in those exact words, anyway.

      People don’t really think that way – only in books and poetry and movies and other such bullshit. Rather, Judith Two Bear felt it, perhaps. She breathed it in with the stale pub air. Her grew her own sort of loneliness, nursing her drink and her evolving disappointment and her unvarying boredom that were as much a part of her as was the blood that sludged through her tired veins.

      Nothing was left.

      She had lived her life and had nothing but time left to her lonely keeping. She had seen her kids grow up and run away, her lovers grow cold and run away, she had seen life pull up to the curb and wave gaily once or twice before passing her right on by.

      Her hands weighed heavy on the scarred pine tabletop. Her knuckles were cracked and leathered like old alligator skin, tattooed with nicotine and age. Her eyes had grown dull and nothing that hinted of girlhood was left to her save a shotgun blast of freckles playing hide-and-seek within the wrinkles and worry-lines that troughed down her cheeks like a memory of tears.

      She stared at her flat beer.

      The time drifted past the hope of anyone offering to take her home for any other reason but pity. Fergus McTavish had said he’d see her here, but so far he hadn’t showed. She believed he’d only told her that to be kind. Fergus McTavish was a good man, after all, although he spent far too much time out there on that damned hockey rink with old Sprague.

      What in God’s frozen earth did grown men see in the rattle of sticks, the slashing of steel over ice and hockey sweaters worn way beyond funk?

      Judith Two Bear sat there, disinterestedly listening to the soft current of gossip prowling through the Drink and Drop Tavern; folks wondering just where the black bus came from. Perhaps it was a fresh oil rig crew, or perhaps a wandering rock band. Perhaps a pack of tourists, far off course, with their pockets jingling with cartwheels of American silver and the promise of better days.

      Judith Two Bear knew better.

      No one in their right mind would ever WANT to come to Hope’s End, Labrador where the only thing that kept the town going was the influx of oil rig workers who stopped here between shifts to get drunk and fed and laid; the three weeks of seal hunters who would stop here to get drunk and fed and hopefully laid; and the occasionally dangled promise of incoming government money.

      There were a lot of them - so many promises washed up like waves on the rocky beach, only to be pulled away just as fast.

      She stared at her beer.

      The lights dimmed as the town generator kicked up a notch.

      The last tune on the jukebox crackled out, only to be replaced by another goddamn hockey game.

      Judith Two Bear stood up carefully.

      Fergus McTavish wasn’t coming, she decided.

      She laughed to herself.

      There had never been a hope that he would come.

      Life doesn’t really work that way.

      Love is nothing more than a lie told in a midnight poker game where everyone cheated and nobody truly won.

      She leaned backwards and listened to the creaks and cracks in the fossil that her doctor laughingly referred to as a spinal column.

      The evening had passed as slowly as a yearlong bout of chronic constipation.

      Time had moved inexorably.

      Judith Two Bear was six beer older – without a candle to show for it.

      Maybe seven beer – who the fuck really counted?

      The television commentator shouted as someone banged the puck home. A few onlookers moaned and someone listlessly cheered. No one noticed as Judith emptied her glass of warm beer

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