Shadow Lover (Siren Publishing Allure) by Audrey Godwin Page A

hanging vines, and some kind of plant that looked like severely misshapen palms. Short trees, and tall ones, skinny or round seemed to be so crowded in places they were pushing against each other—growing together in deformed shapes.
    That piece of land belongs to the devil!
    She shivered as she heard the cicadas and the screeching birds in the trees nearby, but she gathered up her courage and plodded on ahead. She stumbled over deep ruts, and in the distance she could hear owls hooting. In among the shadowy trees and the mist that lingered, the eerie inflection was a haunting, funereal sound. When she finally came to a turn in the road, she stopped and looked back. She could no longer see her house but made herself keep walking. When she got to a certain point she heard an unusual flopping in the trees that slowly became louder and more frenzied. She looked, but couldn’t see anything.
    It’s only a bird, she thought, trying to bring logic into this bizarre experience so she wouldn’t turn and run. The sound stopped after a while, and when she had walked a while longer she noticed something up ahead lying on the side of the road. When she saw what it was, her hand flew up to her mouth and she whirled around quickly, a flood of fear surging through her.
    It’s a death trap—a death trap—a death trap!
    She stood there for a moment, trying to stay calm. Finally, she slowly turned and angled her eyes down at the collection of human bones when her eyes caught movement. "Oh, my God!" she cried as she looked ahead and saw a small tarpaper shack with human bones scattered around it.
    They’s a man up there who eats people!
    Trying to be as careful as possible, she continued walking on the uneven ground, even though everything inside her told her to turn back. Before long, she began to smell something horrible. She looked around for a dead animal, but couldn’t find one. While she peered under bushes and into ravines, she stumbled across a clearing and bumped into a tall post. She stopped, looked up, and what she saw almost made her faint.
    And they's a graveyard with bones spread all over creation .
    On a crude, unpolished wooden board, being held up between two tall posts, she saw the word boneyard written in white dripping paint. The letters were small and crude, looking strangely childlike. The lettering was fading, and the sign was cracked and old, having been exposed to the elements for years. It creaked as it swayed in the eerie mist and wind, guarding the entrance to a piece of land that had jagged, makeshift tombstones jutting out of the ground.
    She saw bones everywhere, looking as if they had been thrown haphazardly on the mound, littering the graves. Even though the sight was chilling, curiosity had her in its grip, and she felt she had to find out if the things she’d heard were true. As she crept closer and closer, her eyes darted around to make sure she wasn't being watched. Her heart was pounding as she slowly made her way through the graves, and saw something engraved on large, oddly-shaped stones. They leaned precariously, the angle and the crude markings making them difficult to read. Her gaze narrowed, and her lips formed the words, Aaron Reeves — to strangy. She stared at the odd wording, not understanding what it meant, until suddenly the truth dawned upon her. Repelled, she suddenly clamped her hand over her mouth and reeled away from the horrible sight to keep from screaming, but the next one came into view as quickly as the first— Sylvia Stone—to tuf .
    She wanted to deny what she saw, but the roughly hewn words were there, before her eyes, even though her mind could hardly comprehend the insane things she saw. Suddenly she was staring at a chipped, misshapen stone that stuck up out of the ground like the rotted tooth of a giant monster. The name shouted out to her— Margaret West—to fat . For one mad moment, she saw a picture in her mind of an old man hovering over a stone and crudely