Holiday Horrors (Volume 2) (Holiday Horrors Collection)

PROLOGUE

The fireworks did it.

Across the Uinta Basin, people celebrated the new year beneath a full moon. Rockets burst over Roosevelt, Ballard, Fort Duchesne, and the little settlements scattered between sage flats and oil roads. The reports rolled along the mesas, sharp enough to rattle window glass.

At the old ranch south of Ballard, security cameras blinked off one by one.

Farther east, where the pavement ended and the washes cut black lines through the desert, other things woke.

The basin was not empty. It only looked empty to people passing through.

The families of Red Willow knew that. They had rules for the thin places. Do not whistle after midnight. Do not follow lights off the road. Do not answer a voice that calls from the dark if you cannot see its face.

And if the hills go quiet all at once, get inside.

At 12:12 a.m., the hills went quiet.