A Terrible Beauty: (Short Horror Story) (Kindle Single)

Her wings ghosted across Whitethorn Mountain.Datan arrives as the hills darken.A secret love vanishes.Charlie Crowe, a young man strong in body, tender in heart, is haunted by his lonely past growing up in the Bain Orphanage. On Whitethorn Mountain, he discovers a bat-like presence inside a long glassy object swaying beneath a dark New Hampshire sky. This presence, the menacing Datan, claims to ‘eat men like air.’ She communicates her powers to Charlie through a thought-noose.Datan has never been far from the mountain and spends her nights swinging above the grassy-green knolls near the orphanage where Charlie and ‘little Clare’ lived as children, delighting in their puppy love as they would share cherry Life Savers and steal a kiss. Until one starless night when the autumn goldenrod wilted in the frost, Clare went missing.Years later, as Charlie encounters Datan on Whitehorn Mountain, he still burns with the heartbreak of losing Clare. What will he learn from this menacing presence when the sun sinks? Will he finally find his Clare or will he succumb to a reality of defiant loneliness?Lovecraftian-inspired, this tale of cosmic terror, isolation, uncertainty, and the maddening human desire will propel you into a dark winding foreverland, and bring you face-to-face with a terrible beauty.Click to buy the short story A Terrible Beauty and meet the mysterious beauty Datan who lives in a crystalline object.A Terrible Beauty was originally published in Unfading Daydream, 2019, Possession Issue.Paula Cappa has been named a master of the metaphysical mystery genre ... an extraordinary and original storyteller of the first rank. She is a multiple award-winning novelist of The Dazzling Darkness, Night Sea Journey, and Greylock published by Crispin Books, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, and many are reprinted as ebook singles.

Richard Thomas, Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Thriller Award finalist and author of Spontaneous Human Combustion.

"A Terrible Beauty" is a haunting, moving, tense story, told with the weight and authority of a wise elder, but the innocence (and innocence lost) of a curious child."

Madelon Wilson, Mad About Books, Reviews from an Eclectic Reader.

"Paula Cappa has a way with words that is as seductive as it is chilling. In "A Terrible Beauty" we meet orphaned Charlie Crowe who inhabits a world of Paula Cappa's landscape visions crafted from the stuff of love and loss, good and evil, life and death. It is short story perfection!"

and yes, terrible

"This tale of irreparable loss, wrapped in an ethereal bow of magical realism, paints a picture of unsettling yet transcendent

From the Inside Flap

Gold Medal, Global Book Awards, 2023, The Dazzling DarknessGold Medal, Global Book Awards, 2022, GreylockSilver Medal, Global Book Awards, 2021, Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the SupernaturalBest Book Award Finalist, American Book Fest, 2017, GreylockEric Hoffer Book Award Winner, 2015, Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the SupernaturalChanticleer Book Award Winner, 2015, GreylockBronze Medal, Readers' Favorite International Book Award, 2014, The Dazzling DarknessGothic Readers Book Club Choice Award Winner, 2013, The Dazzling Darkness

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