The Misforgotten Press

Hi everyone! I told you I'd have big news soon, and here it is! The Unshorn Thread, book 1 of the Tales Misforgotten series is launching a Kickstarter! That means I'm closer than ever to realizing my dream of having this book out there for everyone to read! I've got special art rewards, limited editions of the book, and some very very cool special surprises in store for everyone, and it's all kicking (ugh, puns!) off in just 2 weeks!

To celebrate this announcement I'm uploading a little piece entitled "The Night Before", which is both a sequel to my previous entry "Eyes" as well as a precursor to Chapter 1 of the book, which I hope to share a part of with you during the course of the Kickstarter itself. So hooray Kickstarter and here it is, your final extended prologue to The Unshorn Thread:

"The Night Before"

Raw, crackling fingers of pitch snapped as they closed around Wart's neck. Scraping and scratching against his flesh, their tightening latticework slowly eclipsed the starlight. Instantly the boy's heart crushed itself against his ribs, beating in rapid, irregular rhythms in its attempts to escape his frame.
'No!' thought Wart. 'It's found me again. How can it keep finding me, night after night?' He could feel the dark bracken weaving its way through his hair, scratching his scalp. He felt at though it was trying to swallow him, to bury him in its black mass, never to be seen again. 'What will happen then?' he wondered. 'Will it take up root in my skull? Will it send roots down my throat and grow fat on my entrails?' The terror of these thoughts was too much for his young mind, and yet he could think of nothing to do to stop the slow encroachment of the thing's crackling, ashen presence upon him.
Feeling his muscles freeze from terror, the creature crashed against him, a wave of predatory ashen shards.

"Aaaaugh!"
Wart sat up with a shock. He was drenched in a cold sweat, and shivering from a place just behind his stomach. Lurching forward, he wrapped his little arm about his knees and stared hauntedly down at the straw and cloth that was his mattress. His eyes focusing on nothing in particular, Wart tried to regain his breath, tried to gulp down air or to expel it. Nothing worked. The giant lump of fear and strain which clogged his windpipe would not budge.
It had come back. That shambling, crackling thing from the night before, and the night before that. Even in his dream, he had recognized it, had known it to be the same faceless evil which had terrorized him each night this week. The lump of terror in his throat finally shifted, and Wart let loose a calling, fearful wail which had been stuck within his chest. Its brothers and sisters followed it in quick succession, and desperate tears pushed their way down his cheeks. His chest heaved, finally drawing in the breath he so needed.
As he heaved labored gulps of air in and out of his lungs, a little voice in his head told him that the creature had not really been there, that it had only been a dream. 'What had Bedwyn called it?' he thought, 'a particularly pernicious strain of nightmare?'
Be that as it may, he could not shake the creature's strange and wretched image from his mind. He had gone to bed fearful that of its return, and had been proven right to do so. He wished with all his being that he had been wrong, that it would have let him be tonight. He tried to blink, but his fear would not let him. 'The creature might be waiting,' whispered his fear, 'right behind your very eyelids.' His heart skipped about against his chest at the thought. Another great big sob forced its way out of his lungs, even as the boy tried to shake away his tears.
It was no use. The fear was too great for him to tackle alone, and so Wart stood. It was a difficult process, so tightly wound were his arms about his knees, but he managed it. Once standing, he felt exposed to the cold and dark of the night, and so, still wailing he darted out through the door of his bedchamber. He would find Bedwyn out by the fire, would find warmth there and safety as well -- and maybe, eventually, even a bit of sleep.