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    Bloodeye
    Bloodeye
    Bloodeye
    Ebook135 pages1 hour

    Bloodeye

    By Craig Saunders

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Keane Reid is tired of living. He's bored life ever since the mysterious death of his wife seven years earlier...but when he's called to a routine job at a local pub, he discovers the corpse of a young girl crucified and nailed to a wall, her eyes torn out and a third eye carved into her forehead. Keane's seen this mark before, and soon his life is thrust between the present and past, reality and fantasy, darkness and light. As Keane loses his grip on sanity, a long-forgotten shadow begins whispering to him once again, ushering him toward the void, where the ghosts of his past reside, waiting to show him what truly lies behind the veil.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCraig Saunders
    Release dateNov 23, 2018
    ISBN9781973270324
    Bloodeye
    Author

    Craig Saunders

    Craig Saunders is the author of forty (or so) novels and novellas, including 'ALT-Reich', 'Vigil' and 'Hangman', and has written over a hundred short stories, available in anthologies and magazines, 'best of' collections and audio formats. He tends to write science fiction as Craig Robert Saunders, fantasy as Craig R. Saunders, and most fiction as Craig Saunders...although sometimes the lines are blurred. Imprints: Dark Fable Books/Fable Books.  Likes: Nice people, games, books, and doggos. Dislikes: Weird smells, surprises, and gang fights in Chinatown alleyways.  He's happy to talk mostly anything over at: www.craigrsaunders.blogspot.com  @Grumblesprout Praise for Craig Saunders: [Masters of Blood and Bone] '...combines the quirkiness of Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas series with the hardcore mythology of Clive Barker to create an adventure that is both entertaining and terrifying.' - examiner.com [Vigil] 'A gripping accomplishment.' - Murder, Mayhem and More. 'Saunders is fast becoming a must read author...' - Scream. [Bloodeye] '...razor-sharp prose.' Wayne Simmons, author of Flu and Plastic Jesus. 'Plain and simple, this guy can write.' - Edward Lorn, author of Bay's End.  [Deadlift] 'Noir-like, graphic novel-like horror/thriller/awesomeness.' - David Bernstein, author of Relic of Death and Witch Island. 'A master of the genre.' Iain Rob Wright. [Spiggot] 'Incredibly tasteless, shamelessly lowbrow, and very, very funny.' - Jeff Strand.  [A Home by the Sea] 'Brutal and poetic...' - Bill Hussey, author of Through a Glass, Darkly. [Rain] '...the best book I've read in a year.' - The Horror Zine. [Cold Fire] '...full of emotion and heart.' - Ginger Nuts of Horror.

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      Book preview

      Bloodeye - Craig Saunders

      I.

      Anhedonia

      Some days it gets so hot you can’t think about anything but sweating. You walk and sweat. You sit and cool. Your head pounds with dehydration from the beer in the sun. And the heat? The heat goes on. It’s a heat wave, they say. Take it slow.

      But you can’t take it slow, because you’ve got to run.

      You run when the sun goes down because it’s a little cooler. Sweat pours, still, even though the moon is bright above the cityscape. It’s cooler, but it’s hot enough, and it’s going to stay that way. Salt crystals on your thighs rub you sore. You change your gait, but you don’t stop. You can never stop.

      You run because you’re a runner.

      Same as a fighter fights.Running is just fighting with yourself. A fight you can’t win, you can never win, you can never run out on. It’s always there, inside you, burning you up. So you sweat it, starve it of air and sustenance and even, when you reach the void, of thought.

      You kill it with every mile your sneakers pound on pavement, road, dirt, grass. Stamp on it, time and time again.

      And when you stop, it will catch you.

      So run.

      Run.

      1

      The smell hit Dan Howard as he opened the door. He coughed, blinked, stepping from the bright burning morning light into the dark interior of The King’s Arms. He pulled off his sunglasses a little too late to notice the flood of sewage. He trod on a sodden piece of toilet tissue wearing nothing on his feet but flip-flops. Wet, stinking shit-water hit his toes. Surprisingly, it was cool. His first thought: Cool shit.

      Secondly, just: Shit.

      2

      Dan Howard didn’t want to be tiptoeing through a flood of shit first thing on a Monday morning in the middle of a heat wave.

      Keane Reid didn’t want to be cleaning up shit, period. He was tired of cleaning up shit. It was what he did for a living, though, and when the boss called him at 6.24 a.m. precisely (according to Keane’s digital clock), he answered politely enough on the telephone by the bed. Then he hung up the telephone, swore clean, turned to his wife. Then? Then he swore dirty, because his wife was seven years dead and there was no one and nothing there but a Teresa Reid–shaped hole.

      He pushed himself out of bed.

      Downstairs in his simple kitchen in his simple house, Keane ate breakfast. He always ate a big breakfast, a big lunch, and a small dinner. It was just the way he did it and it worked for him just fine. He didn’t put weight on, or lose weight. His weight, by and large, took care of itself. Forty-five years old, with the metabolism of a teenager, pretty much.

      Muesli, two rounds of toast with one egg (poached—he wasn’t an idiot), and an apple, which he ate with a knife, dissecting it slowly and chewing each slice while thinking about the day ahead. Work, eat, work, eat, sit, run, shower, sleep...repeat.

      I’m bored, he said to no one, through a half-chewed slice of green apple.

      That was the problem, he figured. That was why he didn’t want to do anything much. The only joy in his life was running. Six nights a week. The weather didn’t matter, nor coughs and colds (which for Keane were rare anyway). He didn’t have a social life. Didn’t want one. He wasn’t interested in television, or dating, or reading. Sometimes, when the quiet in the house became unbearable, or if he couldn’t sleep at all, he listened to the radio. But very little else.

      There was nothing but miles and miles ahead for Keane. His kind of running didn’t have an end, or a finish line. He didn’t time his runs. It wasn’t training. There wasn’t a marathon at the end of it, a shiny blanket to warm him up. Nothing could do that.

      He ran so he could sleep. If he didn’t run, he worried he might just sit. Sit, endlessly, forgetting to eat and work and sleep, staring out at the garden and the birds, watching the seasons go by, his hair and beard growing and his limbs turning to stone.

      That’s what you’re doing anyway, said a voice from his past. He wanted to tell that voice to get fucked and leave him to his thoughts. But the voice was his thoughts, and it was right.

      He was turning to stone. He was dying. Not so anyone would notice. Maybe he’d keep on running until he was fifty, or seventy, or a hundred. But somewhere out on the city roads, he’d died inside. There was no way back.

      Maybe that’s what you’re running for. What you’re searching for...? The way back?

      Maybe, he told the voice in his head.

      Keane took a deep, easy breath through his nose and got out of the kitchen chair. He turned away from the garden and the early birds chirruping and eating cheap seeds on the feeder.

      With a dull kind of resignation, he rinsed the bowl, plate and utensils, then left them on the draining board to put away later.

      He took a good look at himself in the mirror in the hallway. The gray and the deep lines in his skin didn’t bother him. But the emptiness in his eyes caused him to look away.

      He still hadn’t found the way back.

      Keane Reid closed the door behind him and got in the company van on his short driveway and headed off to work.

      3

      Keane stepped into the pool of sewage that covered the floor of The King’s Arms, light into dark. Who you gonna call? Shitbusters!

      He wasn’t wearing flip-flops, but heavy boots that made his feet sweat and stink. He wasn’t sure he was any better off than the poor lad who’d met him at the door to complain about his reeking feet.

      The entire floor was flooded. Keane clenched his teeth, not too worried about the smell, and headed off to the toilets. He’d been in The King’s Arms years and years ago, back when he’d been a drinker and a smoker. He hadn’t been in a pub for at least thirteen years — the entirety of the current millennium. Seemed like a long time, but he figured around thirty years old, give or take. When

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