Only one more day! That the Dead May Rest will be available from multiple retailers tomorrow, October 17th. In the meantime, here's another excerpt. None of the continuing characters are involved, and the voice describing what happens is a narrator I've called "the chronicler."
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The pastor tidied up the church and thought with satisfaction — he hoped it didn’t amount to improper pride — of the funeral the day before, and his counseling session with the new widower after the graveside service. Attendance had been good, with extended family and neighbors and even coworkers from before the deceased retired to fuss over her husband and work in her garden. The husband had made sure there would be flowers growing near the grave, in season, and already several crocuses had popped up, which the pastor had made sure the grave diggers did not disturb. The weather for the burial had been benign, an unusually warm afternoon for March with a gentle breeze, and the grave site would be positively pastoral in the spring, the grass lush and green, the faint sound of water lapping at the manicured shore of the nearby lake.
The bereaved husband had seemed to take some comfort from the irrational, but oh-so-human thought of his beloved wife appreciating the spot and his care in choosing it. Encouraging any thoughts and feelings that helped the man cope, providing a sympathetic listener for his grief, while steering his mind toward the heavenly reward into which his wife had been received . . . it had been a good day’s work, and he was grateful that such work was his lot in life.
He was not prepared for that very man to burst into the sanctuary, wild-haired and wild-eyed, beside himself, shouting, “Where’s my wife!”
Had the man’s grief driven him out of his mind? How had the pastor failed to see some warning sign? He hurried to the widower’s side and placed a hand on his shoulder, steering him toward a pew. But the man shrugged him off, violently, and spun to face him. “I went to the grave! It’s all torn up!”
The casket must have been defective, allowing odors to escape that had attracted some stray dog. It must have been a large dog, to do such damage. “I’m so sorry. That must have been very hard to see. We’ll contact — ”
“You don’t UNDERSTAND! It’s all torn up and EMPTY! She’s gone! Someone stole her body. . . .” He broke down in sobs, groping for something to support him. He might be ready to sit down, now. The pastor reached out —
and froze as something banged into the church door, once, twice, and then burst in.
A lurching nightmare, the essence of desecration, had entered his church. And he recognized it. Recognized her from photographs, even though the husband had chosen a closed casket. And what he saw before him was a hideous mockery.
The pastor had never thought of himself as physically courageous. But he could not let this horror, this evil, go unopposed. He strode up to it and declared, “BEGONE, FOUL THING! THIS IS HOLY GROUND!”
It leaped for him, snarling, biting, clawing. And as it opened his throat, as his thoughts bled away, the last thought he carried into darkness was relief, even gratitude, that he wouldn’t live to see whether the creature attacked the man who had been her husband.
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A word of reassurance: that's about as grim as the book gets, and things do get better. You only have to take my word for it for one more day. . . .
Tomorrow, you can order the book instead of preordering it! All the following preorder links will then become purchase links.
-- Kobo (ebook)
See you tomorrow!
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