"Mom?..." I whispered, cautiously taking steps toward her. "Mom are you ok?... You're hurting yourself and you're scaring me." Slowly, very...very... slowly, she turned her head around to look at me. At this sight, the loudest scream I ever produced escaped my throat.
She turned her head around without moving her body. I stared at her in horror as I heard her neck snap and watched as it contorted in ways that were not human. Staring back at me, were those deep crimson eyes.
"Hello Martha," said a voice that did not belong to my mother, its smile spreading impossibly far across its face. That was all it said before it lunged at me.
After that.
All I saw.
Was black...
.
.
.
Martha Iselin is an orphan girl, who grew up living a normal life, except for the fact that she remembers absolutely nothing until the age of eleven. Recently celebrating her 21st birthday, her roommate that she grew up with at the orphanage, Nita, gifts her a set of keys. The keys are to a seemingly beautiful, rustic house. However, something about the house is off. Bruises start randomly appearing on her body, things are moving on their own, time seems to skip, and there's this...smell. She also begins to have these weird dreams. Scattered dreams that she can't piece together...but she knows there's a meaning to them. Will Martha be able to piece together her past and survive the horrors that went on in the house once again? Or will she fall victim to the presence?... Just like someone she knew did.
Antique store owner Liz brings home a Victorian taxidermy hound from auction, unwittingly unleashing dark forces on her wife and son.
*****
Nat Loman has finally married the love of her life, Liz, and is getting used to her role as stepmother to Liz's 5-year-old son, Liam. The Loman family runs a bustling antique business so they attend a sale where a striking, black taxidermied hound is up for auction. Liz picks it up for the business, but it ends up being stored in their home, where Nat notices strange things occurring. She quickly discovers the past residents had died violently. Then she hears from a friend about the myth of "the devil's dog", a hound that perches in the shadows, tearing families apart from the inside. Soon, people around the Lomans are dying, and Liz is changing, darkening. It's up to Nat to save the woman she loves from the darkness closing in, and to save Liam from danger no matter what she has to sacrifice.
[[Winner of the 2018 Wattys "Hidden Gems" category]]
[[word count: 60,000-70,000 words]]