Twilight Hankerings

CONTENTS:

Peacemaker

The Boxcar

Consumption

Then Came a Woodsman

Oh, Sordid Shame!

The Thing at the Side of the Road

Whorehouse Hollow

Thinning the Herd

From the Author:

""Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “appetite” as:

a) any of the instinctive desires necessary to keep up organic life; specifically: the desire to eat, or b) an inherent craving; an insatiable appetite for nourishment

Of course, there are other terms for appetite as well. Craving, coveting, hunger, lust, gluttony, ravenousness, want, yearning, and passion, just to name a few. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, we call it a “hankering”. Southern folks possess a hankering for a lot of things: gravy biscuits, sweet tea, pecan pie and homemade ice cream. If you’re hanging at the honky-tonk and downing your twelfth beer, you might get a powerful hankering for a hellacious fight or some late-night loving (although most Southern wives refuse to accommodate their men in that area if they stagger home all liquored up).

When thinking of appetite, two supernatural beings come instantly to the minds of horror fiction readers; vampires and werewolves. I’ve explored both in larger bodies of work – my novels, Blood Kin and Undertaker’s Moon (Moon of the Werewolf) – and, in a more limited way, several short stories. Those tales of the blood-sucking undead and the beastly lycanthrope are featured here in this collection. Since it is also dedicated to “things that go bite in the night” these stories also explore other creatures with equally voracious appetites, from man-eating caterpillars to backwoods succubi to monstrous things that lie patiently in wait by the side of the road.

So, if you hear something scratching at your front door or lurking in the shadows of your darkened bedroom following the reading of this collection, don’t blame me. It’s just the dark things that run rampant between dusk and dawn, looking for a little midnight snack."

--Ronald Kelly