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David Dunwoody, the author of EMPIRE, presents strange and chilling tales in which there is no escape to be found - only confrontation with the dark entities of the author's imagination. Giant ghouls in a graveyard, rebellious demons chained eternally in Hell, ravenous shape-shifters on a lost island, and the specter of Death himself are awaiting you within the confines of this book to collect your soul. Join us. Take a chance, but will you survive?!
The palette of history and horror mingle in the hues of crimson blood and blackest death. The ghosts of the past mourn for lives unfinished, vengeance unfulfilled, and loves lost. The heart beats in a cacophony of anticipation and fear, echoing with the memory of those that once were, once danced, once believed.
Hues of fear, of woe and dying. Shades of death, of blood and shadow. Fallen women, queens, and angels. Angry men, ghosts, and devils. Life is woven in a tapestry of joy and sorrow; painted in the colors of pain, and triumph, and love. What artistry is found within the soul of every man -- some perfection, some wretched -- painted words and pictures of things glorious and of things unspeakable.
They say Mooncat Jack takes the kids nobody is watching, the kids nobody wants. They say he takes them in the dark and smiles with teeth like black dice and eyes like pools of dead water waiting to suck them down to…someplace else….
Darkness is everywhere. It lingers in the echoes of the past and dwells behind the closed doors of ordinary houses. It rises from the dead and hides behind the face of true love. Pretend you don’t see it, but you know it’s there. You know, sooner or later, a day will come when you feel its touch and see its face.
“Michael Kelly’s characters are the lost, the misbegotten, the lonely and the damaged; and all are searching for a moment of redemption. Whether he intended it or not, the stories in this collection have been arranged not unlike the various movements in a symphony. While he references Vivaldi here, the symphony you’re about to “hear” has more in common with Gustav Mahler, as far as I’m concerned. Undertow and Other Laments left me feeling the same way I felt after first hearing Mahler’s overpowering 1st Symphony; it begins quietly, broodingly, with funereal sorrow, and continues through movements of anger, or triumph, of horror, of sadness, and, in the end, with the glorious title novella, combines all of its themes to produce a heartbreaking summation in the final passages, wherein final redemption may not have been achieved, but its presence is still nearby, somewhere, in the shadows of the human psyche and the undiscovered corners of the spirit.”
--Gary Braunbeck, from his introduction “Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats”