And the Night Growled Back

They shouldn’t have run. There are three of them, Sam, Lila and Paul—young travelers with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and yet, everything to lose. Their visit to Iceland has invigorated their senses…until the carnival. There, a single punch is thrown. A man lies dead on the ground. Blood speckles Sam’s bruised knuckles. In a blind panic, they flee the scene and disappear down an unpaved road, winding through the barren landscape. Soon they find an empty cabin, the perfect place to hide. Twilight turns to night. All is still. It is then that the travelers realize they are not alone. Something is lurking out there. In the dark. They can hear its growls. And to the creature, the guilty and the innocent taste exactly the same. "Like [The Fallen Boys], this new piece takes relatable actions and emotion - in this case anger, jealousy and panic - and spins them into horror that is as tragic and effective as anything based in the supernatural... And then, just about the time we're locked in to thinking this is a straightforward piece about how a moment of anger and aggression can change everything, Dries flips the story upside down, turning it into a shocking and violent siege story that kick starts an adrenaline-fueled finale." - FearNet.com "Aaron Dries helps lead a new generation of Splatterpunk for a new dark age." - Brian Keene, author of The Rising "Aaron Dries, Australia's Edgar Allen Poe, has a talent most other authors can only dream of." - Iain Rob Wright, author of The Final Winter "The pacing is tight, the suspense and tension pitch perfect. What really impresses is that in a relatively short piece he creates truly three-dimensional characters that come alive and are completely authentic. He also managed to completely surprise this reader with a killer plot twist. Just when I thought I knew where the story was going, I was completely blindsided-and I mean that in the best possible way. I can't heap enough praise on this writer or this novella." - Mark Allan Gunnells, author of Companions in Ruin

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