Midnight Grinding

Midnight Grindingby Ronald KellyIt's dark. Crickets chirp in the black of night, accompanied by the lonesomecall of a whippoorwill. On the front porch of a ramshackle house, palemoonlight reveals two forms in rocking chairs, facing one another. Just youand the storyteller.You are uneasy at first, a little nervous, but for what reason? After all,they are only tall tales and folklore passed down from generation togeneration. Just a bunch of ghost stories and strange yarns conjured up foryour entertainment. Or are they? Perhaps, in some dreadful way, they arebased more in fact, than in fiction.You sit there in silence for a long moment. You contemplate making an excuseand taking your leave. But it is too late. In hushed tones, the storytellerbegins. The crickets grow disturbingly quiet and the whippoorwill isreplaced by the far away howling of a dog. Or something vaguely andsinisterly similar.Then the storytelling session begins. And the darkness about you grows evendarker.The children of an itinerant farm family are secretly terrorized by aderanged handyman with a fetish for stone-honed steel and a deadly questionupon his whiskered lips.A Southern gentleman discovers that his demure and delicate wife suffersfrom a horrible physical ailment that originates not from without, butwithin.An infamous and dangerous gator reigns fear and death upon the dark swampsof Black Bayou and, for one unfortunate Cajun, turns its underwater lairinto a watery Hell!Two Atlanta homicide detectives discover that a recent rash of cold-bloodedmurders and the grisly trophies collected from the victims lead to ahorror born of cold winds and insanity.A popular rockabilly star shares the secret of his sudden rise to fame andthe awful price he has paid to attain success.A prodigal son returns to his hometown to find that nothing has changed orhas it, due to some hidden and forgotten evil from centuries past?An eager fan of horror films travels cross-country in search of his favoritescream queen, only to find that some infatuations should be left unexplored.And there are other tales, just as dark and disturbing. Tales that roll offthe storyteller's tongue like a smooth and subtle poison dragging youdownward, further downward into the shadowy depths of a dark and disturbingimagination.In his first short story collection, Ronald Kelly spins an array of unsavorytales that could only beat in the dark heart of Dixie.Come, have a seat on the ol' front porch and experience the blackness anddepravity that lies, hidden but alive, amid the kudzu and magnolias south ofthe Mason-Dixon Line.

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