Depravity Lane News #9: Kill The Hunter excerpt
Today’s edition of Depravity Lane News features the first public excerpt of my forthcoming new novel, KILL THE HUNTER, which will be released by Grindhouse Press on October 1st, 2023. If you enjoy this sample, please consider pre-ordering the book on Kindle at the link below.
In addition to the excerpt, I’m also offering an opportunity for one reader to obtain a copy of the new book several weeks in advance in the form of my latest Mega Book Bundle. This bundle is the most exclusive yet in that only one bundle will be made available. It includes a copy of the sold out Thunderstorm Books limited hardcover of DEAD END HOUSE and a paperback ARC of KILL THE HUNTER. See the link below for more details.
Box Bundle #3: Kill The Hunter
Latest blurb:
"KILL THE HUNTER, while perhaps a slight change of pace for Smith (particularly after his one-two punch of brutality in DEAD END HOUSE and THE GAUNTLET), confirms his skill as a writer and storyteller. KILL THE HUNTER is at once a supernatural thriller and a compelling story of family...albeit a VERY untraditional family. This is a movie ready to be made, Hollywood take note!"
--Trent Haaga, director of 68 KILL and CHOP
And now the excerpt.
These first three chapters of the book are relatively short. Subsequent chapters get longer as we move into the meat of the action.
***
KILL THE HUNTER
By Bryan Smith
ONE
The man with the eye patch was holding a gun to his sister’s head when Zach Murphy walked into the kitchen.
This was shortly after he’d gotten home that afternoon. An annoyingly talkative Uber driver who hailed from Texas had dropped him off in the street outside less than a minute earlier. The man’s rambling diatribe about Longhorn football and the apparently unquestionable superiority of Texas BBQ over BBQ from anywhere else had made him wish he had a screwdriver handy so he could puncture his eardrums.
It wasn’t the content of what the man was saying that bothered him, though none of it was anything he cared about. What annoyed him was the man’s loud, boisterous, fast-talking manner of speech. It grated on his nerves and left no room for interjection, not that he actually cared to participate in a conversation with the rowdy Texan.
At that point, as he exited the vehicle, he was blissfully unaware of the violent chaos that would soon engulf his life. Later on, he would sometimes reflect on those last few moments of existing in ignorance of the dangerous threats that lurked in so many of the world’s darker corners. He could see himself mounting the steps to the front porch that day, just a kid not long out of high school. An innocent in so many ways.
A kid who was about to learn that some of the mythical things that go bump in the night are real.
TWO
Zach came to a dead stop in the kitchen, a fleeting wish to still be in the back of the Texan’s late model Mustang flitting through his mind. The desire was shameful and understandable at the same time. On the one hand, any sane person, upon unexpectedly encountering an armed and scary-looking one-eyed stranger in their place of residence, would likely experience an instant desire to be anywhere else. This was a normal human impulse. The feeling of shame stemmed from knowing that not being here in this moment–or until after the man was gone from the house–would condemn his sister to being alone with a murderous psychopath.
Zach had no actual knowledge yet of the intruder’s intentions or motive for being here, but he figured murderous psychopath was an unfortunately safe assumption. This was an intruder who’d violated the sanctity of their home. He had a gun pressed to Chelsea’s head. What looked like an old knife scar trailed down one side of his face, from the corner of his one remaining eye down to the tip of his chin. The scar was a thick ridge of swollen flesh, suggesting a deep slice by a blade of significant heft. He perceived a demented aspect to that one ice-blue eye, which seemed to pulse in its socket. The man was tall-ish, around six feet, and possessed an intimidating physique, with huge muscles that strained the fabric of a black shirt.
Zach was familiar with the old saying about not judging a book by its cover, but in this case he felt perfectly justified in doing so.
This guy was a psychopath, no doubt about it.
Zach froze in place and felt his guts curdle as the man took the gun away from Chelsea’s head and pointed it at him. His mouth was hanging open and he had a thumb hooked under one of the straps of his backpack, in preparation of removing it. His impression of a statue ended the instant he saw the muzzle of the man’s weapon aimed straight at his face.
His knees started to shake.
Then his whole body was trembling.
The man’s voice was surprisingly soft when he spoke, with an almost feminine quality to it. “I’m going to ask you a question, Zach Murphy. If you don’t answer truthfully, you and your sister will suffer. Do you understand?”
Zach did not understand.
He couldn’t imagine what information the one-eyed man thought he possessed that would warrant such threatening behavior. This was all so mysterious. He was a normal kid who didn’t do bad things or run with a rough crowd. He’d never harmed anyone and was pretty sure the same was true of Chelsea, who was still in high school.
His entire family was respectable and unassuming. They did okay, but they weren’t rich and there was nothing of any great value in their home beyond ordinary things like semi-expensive electronics. There was no secret fortune stashed away in a safe. No rare art masterpieces were hanging from the walls. He had a couple of semi-rare comic books that might fetch around fifty bucks on eBay, but that was about it. Nothing a man like this would be after.
He couldn’t make the slightest lick of sense out of what was happening.
But he made himself nod and stammer out an answer. “Wh-what…do you want?”
The one-eyed man sneered. “I need to know where Jonathan Murphy is.”
THREE
The man’s words prompted a groan from Zach. The disfigured psycho was looking for their estranged father, because of course he was. He wasn’t aware of his dad being up to any shady business, at least not prior to abandoning his family a year earlier. As for what the man might be up to these days, he knew almost nothing, and judging from the look the one-eyed man was giving him, he was not going to be happy to hear that.
An understatement of gargantuan proportions. The man was tightly wound, on edge, and ready to explode. His teeth were clenched tight, one side of his mouth twitching and quivering. In Zach’s opinion, he lacked the calm, even-handed disposition anyone handling a firearm should possess.
Instead of answering right away, Zach studied the look on his sister’s face. She did not appear to have been harmed. He saw no evidence of welts or bruises, which came as a huge relief. Just the concept of this brute laying his big, meaty hands on his sweet sister with the intention of hurting her made him sick. Their mother sometimes referred to Chelsea as a “slip of a girl”, meaning she was small, slender and barely an inch above five feet. A man like this psycho could snap her in half as easily as anyone else could break a pretzel.
Zach made eye contact with Chelsea.
She was terrified.
Tears were streaming down her face. Seated in a chair pulled slightly away from the big, round dining table, she looked pale and shaky, her mouth moving in a way that reminded him of the time she’d become violently ill on a family trip to Florida a few years back, not long after eating at a Cracker Barrel. He’d been sitting in the backseat of the SUV with her when she abruptly groaned and lurched forward, clutching at her stomach. She’d turned her face toward Zach and shown him an expression that was a mirror image of the one he was seeing now. Seconds later, she was screaming at their father to pull over to the side of the road, which he promptly did. Then she was out the door and on the shoulder of the road, commencing a round of projectile vomiting that rivaled that of the possessed girl in The Exorcist.
The one-eyed man gestured with the gun. “Did you hear me, boy? I know you’re not deaf, so I’m pretty sure you did. You better start talking if you want to make it out of this alive. I’ll shoot her in the fucking head if you don’t tell me what I need to know right now. Swear to God I will.”
Chelsea’s grimace of pain stabbed at Zach’s heart. A length of her long dark hair was wound around the man’s other hand, had been the whole time, but Zach was only now realizing it. What had changed was that the one-eyed man was now pulling hard at it, perhaps hard enough to feel like it was on the verge of being ripped out of her scalp. Chelsea’s head tilted backward to a sharp degree, but not far enough that she couldn’t still make eye contact with her brother. She still hadn’t said anything, but those eyes were pleading with him, begging her older sibling to save her somehow.
Zach’s expression hardened. “You’re hurting her.”
The one-eyed man laughed. “This is nothing, boy. It’s just a taste of what’s to come if you don’t tell me where I can find Jonathan Murphy.”
Chelsea started blubbering, weak cries that soon gave way to louder sobs and moans. She was still looking at him in that desperately pleading way. He couldn’t fault her for her distress. In her place, he’d be just as scared. He was plenty scared already, but he knew his terror would be off the charts if he was the one sitting in that chair. Pants-pissing scared. The maddening thing was Chelsea knew he didn’t possess the information the man wanted.
There was nothing Zach could do in terms of physical intervention. All he could do was to stall and obfuscate, maybe buy enough time to allow some miracle solution to present itself. This felt super important. Say he told this man the truth, that he rarely talked to his dad and had no idea where he was. It was difficult to imagine a man this on edge walking out of here happy without the information he was after. Conversely, it was extremely easy to picture him shooting them both in the head before departing.
Zach realized he’d been holding his breath and now he slowly released it. “Why are you so desperate to find my dad? I mean, we’re not real happy with him these days after ditching us the way he did, but he’s a pretty ordinary guy, straitlaced and boring. Honestly, he’s too nerdy to be involved with anything that would get him in trouble with…well, with someone like you. You sure you don’t have him mixed up with someone else?”
The one-eyed man smirked. It was his first expression of anything resembling humor. “You’re describing a false version of your father, an illusion he created. He kept things hidden from all of you. Things that would disturb and sicken you if you knew any of it. He’s dangerous. A threat to anyone who crosses his path.”
Zach made a scoffing sound and shook his head. “Bullshit. That’s ridiculous.”
The one-eyed man’s smirk disappeared, his expression turning grim. “I’m afraid it isn’t. And you’re stalling.” He shoved the muzzle of the gun against Chelsea’s head, making her squeal. “You’ve got about ten seconds to tell me what I want to know. If you don’t, I’ll fire a hollow point round into your sister’s head, pureeing her brains. It’ll be messy and ugly and it’ll be all your fault. This is your last chance to save her.”
Zach’s pulse quickened as he began to panic. He felt close to hyperventilating. The circuits in his brain felt like they were misfiring continuously, the right pacifying words–the ones that might save his sister’s life–eluding him.
The one-eyed man began a countdown. “Ten, nine, eight…”
He was speaking fast instead of dragging it out. His index finger was inside the trigger guard, squeezing against the trigger. One more tiny degree of pressure against it would bring a devastating result. Chelsea whimpered helplessly. She spoke for the first time since Zach’s arrival, repeatedly saying his name in a tremulous voice filled with despair.
“...four, three, two…”
Zach said, “I don’t know where my father is. I swear to God that’s the absolute truth. Please don’t hurt my sister.”
The one-eyed man glared at him for a moment.
Then he took the gun away from Chelsea’s head and pointed it in Zach’s general direction.
A loud boom filled the kitchen.
END OF EXCERPT
I hope you enjoyed this first look at the beginning of KILL THE HUNTER. Trust me when I say the ride gets a lot wilder from there and never lets up.
I love how you’re sucked in from the get go! This is what makes you one of my all time, hands down favorite writers!