Bad Moon Rising. Джонатан Мэйберри

Road Blues” by A. L. Sirois; used by permission of the artist.

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

      KENSINGTON BOOKS and the K logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

      eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0544-0

      eISBN-10: 1-4967-0544-0

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0541-9

      ISBN-10: 1-4967-0541-6

      To Alvy & Kittie West

      Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Author’s Note

      Prologue

      Part One

      America’s Haunted Holidayland

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Part Two

      Born Under a Bad Sign

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Chapter 28

      Chapter 29

      Part Three

      The Red Wave

      Chapter 30

      Chapter 31

      Chapter 32

      Chapter 33

      Chapter 34

      Chapter 35

      Chapter 36

      Chapter 37

      Chapter 38

      Chapter 39

      Chapter 40

      Chapter 41

      Chapter 42

      Chapter 43

      Chapter 44

      Chapter 45

      Chapter 46

      Chapter 47

      Chapter 48

      Chapter 49

      Epilogue

      Afterword

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Thanks to my wonderful agent, Sara Crowe of Harvey Klinger, Inc.; my terrific editor at Kensington, Michaela Hamilton; and to the great Doug Mendini.

      Thanks to Chief Pat Priore of the Tullytown Police Department; Peter Lukacs, MD; Dale Blum, RPh; Lisa and Eric Gressen, MD; and Larry Kaplan, DDS, for extensive technical information. Any errors that remain in the book are purely the author’s doing.

      Thanks to my crew of first readers: Arthur Mensch, Randy Kirsch, Charlie Miller, and Greg Schauer, and to my devious and highly weird webmasters, David F. Kramer and Geoff Strauss.

      Thanks to Gus Maris of Red Lion Diner and Erin and Danny Da Costa of Graeme Pizza for letting Crow and Val visit for a spell, and thanks to my friends in the HWA (Horror Writers Association) and the Garden State Horror Writers for dropping by Pine Deep’s Halloween Festival.

      Thanks to the many wonderful bookstore managers and community-relations managers who made the tours for my previous books such a joy!

      Thanks to Stephen Susco, Brinke Stevens, Joe Bob Briggs, Ken Foree, Tom Savini, Tim O’Rear, James Gunn, and Debbie Rochon for dropping by to make an appearance.

      Thanks to Sam West-Mensch, Chris Maddish, Elizabeth Little, Mischa Wheat, Jim Winterbottom, David Pantano, Rick Robinson, Brandon Strauss, Helena Penfold, Rebekah Comley, Keith Strunk (and F. F. Manny Thing), Mark DeSousa, and all of the wonderful friends of Pine Deep.

      My author homepage is www.jonathanmaberry.com, which has links to the website for this series and for my nonfiction books.

      AUTHOR’S NOTE

      Welcome to Pine Deep!

      Bad Moon Rising is my third novel about the pleasant little town of Pine Deep, Pennsylvania, where a lot of un-pleasant things seem to happen. It can be read as a stand-alone novel or as part of the complete Pine Deep Trilogy. If you want to take the whole ride, start with Ghost Road Blues (which, I’m delighted to say, won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel of 2006 and was also nominated for Novel of the Year, though it was edged out by Stephen King).

      That book tells the story of Karl Ruger, a psychotic killer who wrecks his car in Pine Deep while on the run from both the mob and the law. In truth Ruger is drawn to Pine Deep by an even worse killer, Ubel Griswold, one who cut a bloody swath through the town thirty years ago and whose body is buried deep below the swampy mud of Dark Hollow. In Pine Deep, however, the dead don’t always rest easy and Griswold’s particular brand of evil is vast, powerful and ancient.

      Griswold was brought down by an itinerant farmworker and sometime blues singer named Oren Morse, or as the kids called him, the Bone Man. The Bone Man recognized Griswold for the monster that he was and risked his life to stop the killer’s reign of evil; but although he killed Griswold the Bone Man was framed for the murders and beaten to death by the town fathers. He, too, rested uneasy in his grave and when Griswold’s power began to reassert itself the Bone Man returned as a ghost to try and stop him. The real problem there was that Griswold understands how to be a supernatural being and the Bone Man, sadly, does not. Alone, unseen, nearly powerless, the Bone Man has been trying to communicate with the living and help them in their fight against Griswold’s growing power.

      Ghost Road Blues is also the story of a handful of people in the town whose lives were touched by the slaughter thirty years ago and are tainted again by more recent events. Malcolm Crow’s brother was one of Griswold’s early victims and Crow himself was very nearly killed (saved by a timely appearance by the Bone Man), and he alone understands that something dreadful and unnatural is still at work in his town. His fiancée, Val Guthrie, lost an uncle to Griswold years ago and more recently saw her father gunned down by Ruger.

      Dr. Saul Weinstock, the chief medical examiner and Crow’s friend, has begun to suspect that something is seriously wrong in Pine Deep and has begun to compile evidence that points to an impossible and horrifying explanation.

      Terry Wolfe, Crow’s oldest friend and the mayor of Pine Deep, lost a sister to Griswold and received terrible wounds himself. Now, as Griswold’s power reawakens, Terry feels his mind begin to fracture: is he going insane or is there some supernatural taint in his blood that is transforming him, night after night, into a monster?

      And Mike Sweeney, a fourteen-year-old newsboy, has been caught