Book Excerpt
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Rachel Ames knows she’s making a terrible mistake, but that’s never
stopped her before. Even as she speeds down the empty highway, she’s certain
nothing good will come of this trip. She can’t say why she has this belief,
only that it’s deeply rooted, part of a visceral animal instinct clawing away
at her insides. Call it intuition. Or call it common sense, doesn’t matter.
Can’t change the fact that it’s the truth.
She refuses to change her destination, even
if the rising sense of dread causes her heart to beat right out of her chest.
She’s committed, this much is a fact, so she pushes aside all thought of
turning around and focuses on the road ahead.
She checks the map on her phone, taking
comfort in the little blue dot on the screen that symbolizes the exact spot in
the world occupied by her aging Honda Accord with faded red paint, bad muffler
and squeaking brakes. The dot sails along a straight white line surrounded by
an ocean of green. She appreciates the simplicity of the image, the perfection
of it. An object moving at a steady rate along a direct path toward a specific
destination. No hurdles. No obstacles to navigate. Not even an intersection or
a fork in the road. There are only two decisions to make. To continue forward
or stop the car and go back.
And there’s no chance in hell she’s going
back.
Her two gentlemen passengers are the perfect
companions. Silent, good-looking and only there to cater to her whims and
needs. They sit together in the seat next to her, sharing the seatbelt. That
might have been overdoing it, but strapping them in together makes her laugh,
so she forgives herself the indulgence. This is her journey, her time, so
acting odd is her prerogative.
Besides, the two of them are the perfect
complements. Daniels and Underwood. Booze and typewriter. Soul mates bound by
common history and mutual reliance.
The Underwood typewriter was a great find her
sophomore year in college, given to her by Professor McNeely’s widow soon after
his very public death from a massive aneurism. It’d happened right in the
middle of her creative writing class, just as the old bastard was finally
saying something nice about her novel-in-progress. Mid-sentence, he’d slapped a
hand to his head, made a small grunt and rolled his eyes back in their sockets.
At first, she’d thought he was mocking her work, but then his back arched and
he collapsed to the floor. After that came the convulsions, followed by the
shit and urine filling his pants as her classmates screamed. Then, as the good
book says, the lights went out and Elvis left the building.
But unlike Elvis, the man wasn’t much loved.
A taskmaster who hated any writer beside himself, he used critiques as an
assault rifle to mow down any young soul with the temerity to attempt the art
that, in his mind, belonged only to him and a handful of his peers. Sure there
were the appropriate candlelight vigils and the church service to honor the
brave soul who died fighting the good fight in his ivory tower, but right under
the surface, the humor rolled dark and furious.
I heard that the last pages he read really
blew his mind.
You know that saying, would it kill you to
say something nice?
Rachel guessed it had.
About the Book
Title: The Torment of Rachel Ames
Author: Jeff Gunhus
Genre: Thriller / Horror
Suffering from writer’s block, novelist
Rachel Ames escapes to a lake cabin to calm her mind and regain a sense
of herself. The location is perfect. Isolated. Beautiful. Inspiring. It
even comes with a good-looking landlord who shows an interest in her.
But she can’t shake the sense that something terrible has followed her
to the lake, something just beyond her consciousness, something out on
the edge where the sounds of a raging fire and sirens linger whenever
she slows down to listen. Determined to make the cabin work, she tries
to settle in and give her new life a chance. But when strange things
begin to happen around her, she wonders if she’s made a terrible
mistake. As the darkness that’s followed her manifests itself in
inexplicable ways, her concept of reality is stretched thin and she
realizes nothing at the lake is what it seems. As she fights to survive
with her sanity intact, she understands too late that the location she’s
chosen for herself is far from perfect.
Author Bio
Jeff
Gunhus is the author of thriller and horror novels for adults and the
middle grade/YA series, The Jack Templar Chronicles. The first book,
Jack Templar Monster Hunter, was written in an effort to get his
reluctant reader eleven-year old son excited about reading. It worked
and a new series was born. His books for adults have reached the Top 100
on Amazon and have been Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Finalists and
Gold Medal Winners.
After his experience with his son, he is
passionate about helping parents reach young reluctant readers and is
active in child literacy issues. As a father of five, he leads an active
lifestyle in Maryland with his wife Nicole by trying to constantly keep
up with their kids. In rare moments of quiet, he can be found in the
back of the City Dock Cafe in Annapolis working on his next novel.
Links
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Torment-Rachel-Ames-Jeff-Gunhus-ebook/dp/B015545GBI/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Author Site: www.Jeffgunhus.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/jeffgunhusauthor
Twitter: @jeffgunhus
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