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    The Dark Game: Includes the Novelettes The Dark Game and I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes
    The Dark Game: Includes the Novelettes The Dark Game and I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes
    The Dark Game: Includes the Novelettes The Dark Game and I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes
    Ebook91 pages1 hour

    The Dark Game: Includes the Novelettes The Dark Game and I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes

    By Douglas Clegg

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    About this ebook

    Can you escape the nightmare? Men imprisoned, one in war and one in an asylum, these two novelettes are packed with twisted psychological suspense and spine-tingling horror at its darkest. One man, a prisoner of war; and the other, a disturbed young man who wants out of a hospital for the criminally insane – at any cost! New York Times bestselling author Douglas Clegg brings together two dark classics with The Dark Game and I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes.

    Note: These two short novellas/novelettes can also be found together in the collection Lights Out.

    Don't miss Douglas Clegg's other books of horror, suspense and dark fantasy:

    Stand-Alone Novels

    Afterlife
    Breeder
    The Children's Hour
    Dark of the Eye
    Goat Dance
    The Halloween Man
    The Hour Before Dark
    Mr. Darkness
    Naomi
    Neverland
    You Come When I Call You

    The Harrow Series:

    Nightmare House
    Mischief
    The Infinite
    The Abandoned
    Isis (prequel novella)
    The Necromancer (prequel novella)

    The Criminally Insane Series:

    Bad Karma
    Red Angel
    Night Cage

    The Vampyricon:

    The Priest of Blood
    The Lady of Serpents
    The Queen of Wolves

    The Chronicles of Mordred:

    Mordred, Bastard Son (Book I)

    Short Novels & Novellas:

    The Attraction
    The Dark Game
    Dinner with the Cannibal Sisters
    Isis
    The Necromancer
    Purity
    The Words

    Short Story Collections:

    The Nightmare Chronicles
    Night Asylum
    Wild Things
    Lights Out

    Box Sets:

    Dark Rooms
    Halloween Chillers
    Night Towns
    Coming of Age
    Lights Out
    Criminally Insane
    The Vampyricon
    Harrow 3 Novels (Books 1-3)
    Harrow 4 Novels (Books 1-4)

    Short Stories:

    Belinda in the Pool
    Funerary Rites
    The Stain

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDouglas Clegg
    Release dateFeb 3, 2017
    ISBN9781944668112
    The Dark Game: Includes the Novelettes The Dark Game and I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes
    Author

    Douglas Clegg

    Douglas Clegg is a screenwriter, poet, and the author of dozens of novels, novellas, and short story collections. His fiction has won the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award. He is married to Raul Silva and lives near the New England coast, where he is currently writing his next work of fiction.

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      Book preview

      The Dark Game - Douglas Clegg

      The Dark Game

      The Dark Game

      Including the novelettes The Dark Game & I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes

      Douglas Clegg

      Alkemara Press

      Contents

      About This Book

      Praise for Douglas Clegg’s Fiction

      Explore More

      Author’s Note

      The Dark Game

      I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes

      Also by Douglas Clegg

      Contact Douglas Clegg

      About the Author

      Credits

      About This Book

      Is there a way out?

      Men imprisoned, one in war and one in an asylum, psychological suspense and chilling horror at its darkest. One man, a prisoner of war. The other, a disturbed young man who wants out of a hospital for the criminally insane – at any cost.

      The dark of the mind may be the most terrifying prison of all.

      From Douglas Clegg come two classic horror novelettes (100 pages if in print) in one special The Dark Game ebook.

      Praise for Douglas Clegg’s Fiction

      Clegg’s stories can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby.

      —Dean Koontz, New York Times bestselling author.

      Douglas Clegg has become the new star in horror fiction.

      —Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story and, with Stephen King, The Talisman

      Douglas Clegg is the best horror novelist of the post-Stephen King generation.

      — Bentley Little, USA Today bestselling author of The Haunted.

      Clegg gets high marks on the terror scale…

      —The Daily News (New York)

      Explore More

      Get book updates, exclusive offers, news of contests & special treats for readers—become a V.I.P. member of Douglas Clegg’s long-running free newsletter.

      Click here to sign up.

      Click here to explore more fiction by Douglas Clegg.

      Author’s Note

      Dear Reader,

      These two short novellas/novelettes are about men in dark circumstances, both prisoners of one kind or another, both seeking escape and perhaps even redemption.

      They are twisted stories with a touch of magical realism, no doubt, and are not light-hearted romps or meditations on actual prisoners-of-war or of asylum prisons.

      I hope you enjoy them. These are also gathered together in my large collection of short fiction, Lights Out.

      With best wishes,

      Douglas Clegg

      The Dark Game

      1

      I saw a painting once, by an artist unknown to me.

      The painting was of a man’s hands, bound together. The title was Victory is freedom of mind and body.

      I believe that is true. I would go further and say that victory is freedom of mind from body. Separation from the thing that imprisons us. Flight.

      Perhaps freedom from life itself.

      That is victory.

      Life is brutal. It is like this whip and these ropes. It hurts. It scars. But we must take it.

      We must find some pleasure and solace within this terrible lashing.

      You want to hear it all? You want me to tell you how it went, in the prison camp? Why I like the ropes? You want to play the game with me?

      First let me tell you this:

      Youth is something you put in a drawer somewhere, you lose the thought of it behind socks and letters and medals and old passport photos and keys that no longer fit locks. You wear it when you’re of the right age, and you do things that you ought not to, and then as you gain perspective with age, you put it away, and you close the drawer.

      And you lock it.

      Then, you live the life you’ve built toward, and no one needs to see what’s in that drawer.

      A secret is something to be hidden, and if it is hidden well enough, it never becomes a fact. It is just something that is not there when you go to look for it. It is the thing missing, but the thing that is not missed.

      That is how I feel.

      That is why I don’t revisit those times, often. The camp.

      Or the motel room.

      Or the smokehouse.

      But since you have me here, like this, I’ll tell you. Maybe you’ll leave after that. Maybe you won’t want to stay here once you know about me.

      2

      Before the war, I was in a motel room with a girl I met outside the base, and for fun she tied me up and when she did it, I went someplace else in my head. My hands tied, my feet bound.

      I remember she smelled like orange blossoms, and she enjoyed tightening the thin ropes around my hands. But my mind was just gone — drifting upward into darkness, into another place. Back to Burnley Island, I guess, and that’s where I’ve always ended up — my memories, my family, my home.

      I was just not there anymore. The game had taken me over.

      It had become automatic for me.

      It was second nature.

      My name is Gordon.

      Gordie, to my friends.

      Captain, to folks back home.

      In the war, things got worse for me.

      The game got worse.

      But it wasn’t so bad when I was a kid.

      3

      Early memory: winter.

      Bitter cold.

      Wind whistling around me, boxing my ears, as I trudged through three feet of snow to get out to the smokehouse. I was ten, perhaps. Heavy with a burden.

      It was the dog I’d had since he was a foundling of two or three years old, and I was too young to remember bringing him home from a walk in the woods.

      He was dying now, of some undiagnosed malady. In those days, you didn’t take the dog to the vet when it was its time.

      You took him someplace and you shot him.

      And this freezing February day, that was what I was to do.

      My father marched behind me. I could not bring myself to turn and look over my shoulder to see how he kept pace. I was weeping, and it would be the first and last time I would weep for years.

      I held my dog — a small mutt, no bigger than my arms could carry — and he looked up

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