book cover of Midnight Grinding
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Midnight Grinding

(2009)
And Other Twilight Terrors
A collection of stories by

 
 
Midnight Grinding
by Ronald Kelly

It's dark. Crickets chirp in the black of night, accompanied by the lonesome
call of a whippoorwill. On the front porch of a ramshackle house, pale
moonlight reveals two forms in rocking chairs, facing one another. Just you
and the storyteller.

You are uneasy at first, a little nervous, but for what reason? After all,
they are only tall tales and folklore passed down from generation to
generation. Just a bunch of ghost stories and strange yarns conjured up for
your entertainment. Or are they? Perhaps, in some dreadful way, they are
based more in fact, than in fiction.

You sit there in silence for a long moment. You contemplate making an excuse
and taking your leave. But it is too late. In hushed tones, the storyteller
begins. The crickets grow disturbingly quiet and the whippoorwill is
replaced by the far away howling of a dog. Or something vaguely and
sinisterly similar.

Then the storytelling session begins. And the darkness about you grows even
darker.

The children of an itinerant farm family are secretly terrorized by a
deranged handyman with a fetish for stone-honed steel and a deadly question
upon his whiskered lips.

A Southern gentleman discovers that his demure and delicate wife suffers
from a horrible physical ailment that originates not from without, but
within.

An infamous and dangerous gator reigns fear and death upon the dark swamps
of Black Bayou and, for one unfortunate Cajun, turns its underwater lair
into a watery Hell!

Two Atlanta homicide detectives discover that a recent rash of cold-blooded
murders and the grisly trophies collected from the victims lead to a
horror born of cold winds and insanity.

A popular rockabilly star shares the secret of his sudden rise to fame and
the awful price he has paid to attain success.

A prodigal son returns to his hometown to find that nothing has changed or
has it, due to some hidden and forgotten evil from centuries past?

An eager fan of horror films travels cross-country in search of his favorite
scream queen, only to find that some infatuations should be left unexplored.

And there are other tales, just as dark and disturbing. Tales that roll off
the storyteller's tongue like a smooth and subtle poison dragging you
downward, further downward into the shadowy depths of a dark and disturbing
imagination.

In his first short story collection, Ronald Kelly spins an array of unsavory
tales that could only beat in the dark heart of Dixie.

Come, have a seat on the ol' front porch and experience the blackness and
depravity that lies, hidden but alive, amid the kudzu and magnolias south of
the Mason-Dixon Line.


Genre: Horror

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