John Everson - NightWhere

Selena responded with a sad, but hopeful, smile.

“I know,” she whispered. “And I want you to know I’m glad I broke the truce.”

He kissed her forehead. The glow of the dawn colored the horizon and lit her face in a dusky-red light. Like NightWhere, but then again, not at all the same. This light bore hope, not blood.

“Hang on for me,” he begged, as the car started.

Selena nodded, but didn’t answer.

All he could promise her was love, but love was supposed to conquer all, right?

Mark pulled onto the road back towards the city, whispering three words to Selena like a prayer: “I love you.”

“I know,” she answered, smiling faintly. A trickle of blood bled from the corner of her mouth.

“Hang on,” Mark repeated. “I promise, if you just stick with me now, I’ll never leave you again.”

Selena nodded. “I know,” she whispered and a tear slipped down her face.

One clear, wet, saltwater tear.

John Everson is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Covenant, as well as the novels Sacrifice, The 13th, Siren and The Pumpkin Man. Over the past 20 years, his short stories have appeared in more than 75 magazines and anthologies and have also been compiled in the collections Creeptych , Deadly Nightlusts, Needles Sins, Vigilantes of Love and Cage of Bones Other Deadly Obsessions . His work has been translated into Polish, Italian, Turkish and French, and optioned for potential film production. He is also the founder and publisher of the independent press Dark Arts Books.

John shares a deep purple den in Naperville, Illinois with a cockatoo and cockatiel, a disparate collection of fake skulls, twisted skeletal fairies, Alan Clark illustrations and a large stuffed Eeyore. There's also a mounted Chinese fowling spider named Stoker courtesy of Charlee Jacob, an ever-growing shelf of custom mix CDs and an acoustic guitar that he can't really play but that his son Shaun likes to hear him beat on anyway. Sometimes his wife Geri is surprised to find him shuffling through more public areas of the house, but it's usually only to brew another cup of coffee. In order to avoid the onerous task of writing, he holds down a regular job at a medical association, records pop-rock songs in a hidden home studio, experiments with the insatiable culinary joys of the jalapeno, designs photo collage art book covers for a variety of small presses, loses hours in expanding an array of gardens and chases frequent excursions into the bizarre visual headspace of '70s euro-horror DVDs with a shot of Makers Mark and a tall glass of Newcastle.

To catch up on his blog, join his newsletter or get information on his fiction, art and music, visit John Everson: Dark Arts at www.johneverson.com.