GHOSTWRITTEN BY RONALD MALFI, AN EXCLUSIVE COVER REVEAL AND EXTRACT FROM A MASTER OF HORROR

23/3/2022

GHOSTWRITTEN BY RONALD MALFI, AND EXCLUSIVE COVER REVEAL AND EXTRACT FROM A MASTER OF HORROR

If you haven't heard already Titan are publishing Ronald Malfi's new novella this year called GHOSTWRITTEN on 4 October 2022!!!!

Four brand-new horror novellas from “a modern-day Algernon Blackwood” all about books, stories, manuscripts – the written word has never had sharper teeth…

In The Skin of Her Teeth, a cursed novel drives people to their deaths.

A delivery job turns deadly in The Dark Brothers’ Last Ride.

In This Book Belongs to Olo, a lonely child has dangerous control over an usual pop-up book.

A choose-your-own adventure game spirals into an uncanny reality in The Story.

Full of creepy, page-turning suspense, these collected novellas are perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay, Stephen King and Joe Hill.

ghostwritten extract

“Davis? Hello? It’s Gloria Grossman. Anybody home?”

Davis McElroy was in his late forties—Gloria’s age—but exuded the youthful good looks of a man at least ten years his junior. Those looks had earned him more than one cameo in a few of the movies he or his friends wrote—once, even a speaking role—and he may have enjoyed a decent run as a second-tier actor had he not been such an introvert. But the man who stepped out from behind the house and into the harsh daylight looked nothing like Davis McElroy. That rugged frat-boy air had vanished, leaving in its place a dark shiftiness, furtive as a wounded animal. He’d lost considerable weight; the open flannel shirt and Race for the Cure T-shirt hung from his wasted frame. His hair had exploded in a dark, unruly mop, bleeding down his face in the form of a spotty, salt-and-pepper beard. His eyes looked haunted.

Davis McElroy froze upon seeing her. He was holding some sort of tool or weapon in his hand, the sight of which did not help ease Gloria’s sudden apprehension.

It’s drugs, all right, she had time to think. Son of a bitch.

“Gloria,” he uttered, and even his voice sounded alien to her. Aggrieved, somehow. He took an unsteady step in her direction, shuffling along like someone unaccustomed to it. His eyes looked like they had strings attached at the back and someone was pulling them deeper into his skull. “Gloria, what the hell are you doing out here?”

“That’s the question I came to ask you, Davis. Where the hell have you been?”

“Where—?” It came out as a croak. He seemed confused. As he managed another step in her direction--

“What have you got in your hand, Davis?”

He blinked, then glanced first down at his empty hand, then at the other one. He raised the item but she still couldn’t make out what it was. Some sort of metal pole or pipe?

“This?” he said. “It’s nothing. It’s a wood chisel.” As if suddenly disgusted by it, he tossed the chisel on the ground.

“Davis, what the hell have you been doing out here? People have been trying to reach you. I’ve been trying to reach you. I drove up from the city to make sure you weren’t dead.”

He said nothing, just seemed to tremble there in front of her like something insubstantial enough to be carried off by a strong gust of wind. He glanced at something toward the rear of the house—something beyond Gloria’s line of sight—then met her stare again. Those bleak and anxious eyes appeared to quiver in their sockets.

“What is it, Davis? Cocaine? Pills? Or have you just been at the bottle?”

A vertical crease appeared between his eyebrows. He shook his woolly head. “No, no—it’s nothing like that.”

“You realize you missed your deadline, don’t you?”

“My deadline?”

“The screenplay, Davis. Please tell me you’ve got something to show me.”

“Jesus,” he said, the word wheezing out of him. “Yeah, I know. I mean, I know I missed the deadline. It’s just, time got away from me.”

“You stopped answering your phone. Even John Fish was trying to call you.”

She’d mentioned this to shake him up, maybe drive home just how deep in the shit they were. It had the desired effect, given the expression that overcame his face, but when he opened his mouth, Gloria realized she had miscalculated.

“John Fiiiish.” The name all but seethed out from between McElroy’s teeth. He glanced again at whatever kept attracting his attention behind the house—a tic that was making her increasingly uncomfortable—then scratched nervously at his stubbled neck.

“What have you got back there?” she asked him.

Like a landed trout gasping for air, Davis McElroy’s mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. It made a sickening mawp mawp sound.

“Davis?” she pushed.

“You shouldn’t have come here.” He took another step in her direction—a stagger, really. “It’s not safe. It’s...dangerous.”

She felt herself take an instinctive step back from him. “What’s dangerous?” she asked.

There was a beat of silence. When he spoke, he did so just barely above a whisper, and Gloria couldn’t be certain she heard him correctly. Sounded like he’d said, “The book.”

“I don’t even go in the house anymore, except for when I have to put up a new wall,” he said, then nodded to a small brick structure no bigger than an outhouse farther down the property. “Been sleeping in there. Where it’s safer.”

He took another step in her direction and she took another step back.

“Been eating out here, too,” he continued, and nodded toward the overturned bucket and the decimated watermelon.

“Davis, I think I should call someone and get you help. Would that be okay?”

“Help,” he said, the word sounding like it had come unstuck from the roof of his mouth. “Help would be nice.”

To Gloria’s horror, he collapsed to a seated position in the grass and began to weep.
Every instinct told her to bolt back to the car and get the hell out of there. She could call the goddamn cops from the highway, have them come and collect the son of a bitch. But she didn’t do that. She was on the hook now, her curiosity about what Davis kept glancing at behind the house besting any impulse of survival. Besides, she couldn’t leave here without the screenplay.

She stepped around him, one cork-heeled sandal brushing the watermelon rind and setting it rocking. It was a pleasant day on its way toward a cool and clear evening. The air had been scented with lilac just moments ago, but as she turned the corner of the house and crossed into the back yard, she caught a whiff of sawdust and overheated electrical equipment.

There was a flagstone patio back here that led to a set of double doors at the rear of the house. These doors both stood wide open now, and there was some sort of construction project erected on the patio in front of them: a pair of sawhorses hoisting one of those sheets of plywood, a scattering of two-by-fours lying on a bedding of sawdust, a circular saw that must have accounted for the mechanical whine she had heard from the front porch.

She looked down, saw her shoe had gotten tangled around a loop of orange electrical cord, and shook it loose.

There was something inside the house, just beyond those wide open double doors.

Ghostwritten
by Ronald Malfi

Four brand-new horror novellas from “a modern-day Algernon Blackwood” all about books, stories, manuscripts – the written word has never had sharper teeth…

From the bestselling author of Come with Me, four standalone horror novellas set in a shared universe!

In The Skin of Her Teeth, a cursed novel drives people to their deaths.

A delivery job turns deadly in The Dark Brothers’ Last Ride.
In This Book Belongs to Olo, a lonely child has dangerous control over an usual pop-up book.

A choose-your-own adventure game spirals into an uncanny reality in The Story.

Full of creepy, page-turning suspense, these collected novellas are perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay, Stephen King and Joe Hill.