Nightmare Acres (Nightmare Acres #2)

Prologue

JACK

Smoke billows into the room from below filling my lungs.

It burns my eyes and throat. They have us surrounded as the fire grows, eating away at our home like it’s a meal to be devoured.

My children and wife huddle together on the floor in a coughing fit as I search desperately for the tonic. I know it’s in here somewhere.

“There’s no escape!” I hear someone shout from outside. The crowd they’ve brought with them laughs in response as they watch our house burn with myself and family inside.

Sick fucking bastards.

I’ll make them pay for this.

The desk I’m searching in is empty. No tonic.

Maybe I left it in the kitchen below.

“Jack, please, don’t,” my wife begs as she holds our children to her chest.

Little Mary and Nathaniel cling to her with tears in their eyes. It breaks my heart.

“Papa. I’m scared,” Mary cries then coughs.

“I know, sweetheart. It’s going to be okay,” I lie, because what else do you say to your daughter when you don’t know how you’re going to make it out of here?

There’s no time. The fire is spreading quickly.

“The cellar, Jane. It’s our only option.”

She nods, trying to gather the children, but then we hear a sharp crack and I topple backwards as the house shakes. The floorboards that hold my wife and children splinter and crumble before my eyes and they plummet through the crack. I hear their screams and then a sickening thump.

I crawl to the edge and see their bodies splayed out and engulfed in flames.

A scream like I’ve never known rips free from my very soul. My family. My wife. My daughter. My son. All gone.

Taken from me by the bloodthirsty mob outside that’s so hellbent on their greed. That greed has consumed them to a point that they would do such a thing to others. Just so they could have my land.

Then I see it. The tonic gifted to me by the town witch, Melinda Ruttelidge.

“For desperate times,” she had said. “May it save you when you have no other options.”

I scramble to stand and carefully make my way to where it’s perched on the shelf in a tiny glass bottle. My hands find purchase around its slim, small exterior. The cork top pops off easily and I stare down into the contents that look like black sludge.

“For desperate times,” I whisper before chugging it back.

The moment it hits my tongue I feel paralyzed with pain. It crawls down my neck and into my limbs with such ferocity that I feel like it’s killing me. Nerve by nerve is set alight with pain like I’m being made and unmade.

That witch poisoned me, I think. But at least I’ll be with my family if I must die. I can join them in the afterlife.

But death does not find me.

Instead, I feel my body shift. It morphs and what was once bones turns into vines. I feel as if I’m being ripped apart and stitched back together as my house is consumed by the flames.

It burns down all around me and when I open my eyes, I’m standing in a pile of embers, staring at the crowd that’s surrounding my property. They have torches in their hands and horror in their traitorous faces.

My neighbors.

People I once called my friends.

They did this.

They came to my house in the middle of the night and took my family from me. Now I’ll make them pay for what they’ve done.

My body moves beneath me at my command. Vines that were once my hands shoot out and grip my former best friend, Martin, around the neck.

Squeezing just enough to make him squirm.

The others around us try to run away, shouting about demons, but I stop them in their tracks.

The vines multiply and soon, I have the whole host of traitors bound and at my mercy.

I drag Martin’s body close to me, staring down into his frightened, sputtering face.

He claws at the vines as I lift him from the ground.

“I— I’m sorry,” he struggles to say as his feet kick and his face turns a sickly shade of purple.

“Sorry? You haven’t begun to be sorry,” I hear myself say in a voice that doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to a monster. To what they’ve made me.

His face contorts as I keep squeezing the life out of him in front of me. I watch with sick satisfaction as he struggles to stay alive. He foams at the mouth, and I know he won’t last long. None of them will.

For my family, I exact my revenge on every soul that came here tonight.

Blood soaks into the fertile ground as I kill each and every person, leaving Martin for last.

I drop him and watch as he tries to get away. Pathetic.

“P-please,” he croaks out as he crawls on his hands and knees. “We’re friends, Jack. I’m so sorry. My family—”

I lunge for him, landing on his back and feel the bones in his spine break beneath me as he screams out in pain. The bodies of our former friends and neighbors lie strewn about us in a heap of broken bones and blood.

Their corpses will curse this land for anyone of their ilk. This will not be a safe haven for those with black hearts and tainted souls.

“Fuck you, Martin. I hope you burn in hell for all eternity for what you’ve done.”

I take my time with him. Making sure he feels every bit of pain before his soul cleaves from his body, and he slumps into the ground below.

I look around me at the carnage. Smoke still trails from what was once my home. I make my way over to it, finding my family’s charred bodies in the rubble.

My body crumples beneath me as I lean down over them and cry for what seems like hours.

As the dawn begins to crest in the distance, I see a cracked mirror sitting tilted a few feet away.

At first, I don’t know what I’m looking at, but then it hits me that the creature staring back at me is what I’ve become. A monster.

Where my face and head once were is now a crude orange pumpkin with gaping eyes and crooked smile. My torso is imposing and wide, and my limbs have become stalks, swirling into vines at the ends.

A true nightmare come to life.

That tonic I drank must have done this, I realize.

The vines begin to shift back into a human form as the sun rises, but there are black lines still engraved onto my skin that reach up my arms and neck.

My face returns to normal but it’s no longer a reflection I recognize.

Gone is any joy that once lived in those eyes.

I look haunted, and I decide that is what I’ll do.

I’ll live my life haunting the people who are capable of this kind of evil. And I’ll make sure they don’t get the chance to hurt anyone ever again.