The box is Jack Ketchum's 1994 Bram Stoker Award-winning story. It has been anthologized, reprinted, and now it is available for the first time in digital - along with a brand new afterword by the author.
It's the Arizona Territory. The year, 1848. The year the Mexican War ended. Fate and blazing pistols have just thrown together reporter and part-time drunk Marion T. Bell and the very nearly legendary John Charles Hart, mustanger and scout, in the Little Fanny Saloon. Plying the river-trade across the Colorado to the gold fields of California in the north, and war-torn Mexico to the south, the town of Gable's Ferry has sprung up overnight—lacking only a church, a schoolhouse and a jail. Though some would say that only the jail was needed. A rough place in a lawless era. About to become a hell of a lot more so one night when Hart, Bell and the easy-going giant Mother Knuckles stumble upon Elena, a fierce, young, badly wounded Mexican woman near the banks of the Colorado. She's naked. She's been bullwhipped, knifed and branded. And she tells them about the kidnap, rape and servitude she and her sister have endured at the hands of las hermanas de lupo, the deadly Valenzura Sisters and their henchman, the deserter Paddy Ryan, at the well-manned slave-camp across the river aptly called Garanta del Diablo—Mouth of the Devil. It's just three hundred years since Cortez. Only three hundred years since the Old Gods of Mexico were in their full and fearsome flower. Tezcatlipoca, god of the moon and the night. Tlazolteotl, Eater of Filth. Xipe, Lord of the Flayed. Blood for rain. Blood for bounty. For many, like the Valenzura Sisters, they have never died. And Elena's sister's still there.
WEED SPECIES: In ecology. An invasive species, also called an invasive exotic, is an organism that is intentionally or accidentally introduced to an area where it is not native, and where it successfully invades and disturbs natural ecosystems, displacing native species. The term is most often applied to, but not limited to, plants. See also kudzu, water hyacinth, zebra mussel, Burmese python, eco-tourism, sociopath. Weed Species is a brand new novella from award-winning author Jack Ketchum, and this is a Cemetery Dance exclusive title there are currently no other editions of this book planned for anywhere in the world!
In this intimate glimpse into the heart of his own creative spirit, Jack Ketchum shares his early career, literary influences, and some of the characters that formed the man he has become. From his early respect and admiration for Henry Miller to the tortured lives of friends, and the aftermath of 9/11 - these are the stories that define a career. This is the kind of book that opens windows into the soul. Step up and take a look.
Now I'm way beyond confusion. Now I'm scared. I've slid down the rabbit-hole and what's down there is dark and serious. This is not play-acting or some waking bad dream she's having. She's changed, somehow overnight. I don't know how I know this but I sense it as surely as I sense my own skin. This is not Sam, my Sam, wholly sane and firmly balanced. Capable of tying off an artery as neatly as you'd thread a belt through the loops of your jeans. And now I'm shivering too. In some fundamental way she's changed...
Sixty poems from Bram Stoker Award winning author Jack Ketchum.
Jack Ketchum is back with a brand new short story collection, full of the horror and terror we've come to love and expect from the author Stephen King has called, "one of the best in the business." What Ketchum has crafted in these stories are portrayals of the starkest, darkest aspects of the human condition. These stories are enthralling, expertly constructed, and very very powerful. Some will put a lump in your throat. Some will have you squirming. Some might be so intense and disturbing that they leave you no choice but to put it aside for awhile, catch your breath, and finish when you've worked up the guts. This is fiction that does far more than "entertain," and it goes far beyond what we expect when we read "horror." No haunted houses here, no pitchfork-wielding devils with horns on their heads. The only monsters are the very worst kind: humans. Table of Contents: Introduction by Edward Lee Gorilla in My Room The Western Dead Bully Listen Polaroids Squirrely Shirley (with Lucky McKee) Group of Thirty Winter Child Cow (with Lucky McKee) The Transformed Mouse The Right Thing Awake That Moment Oldies Seconds