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Twelve Tingly Tales
by Clyde R. Hedges
(Writing as Craig Hoskins)
Journey with Craig Hoskins as he takes you from a campground in New Hampshire to the Nevada desert with stops in Indiana, Louisiana, and El Paso, Texas along the way. Every tale leaves your spine tingling as common people encounter occurrences for which there are only supernatural explanations. First, an aspiring writer hires a local handyman to work on his New Hampshire cabin and ends up losing more than his family to this strange carpenter who can do no wrong in the eyes of the writer’s wife and sons. Next, the reader is introduced to Eddie Burnhart, a small Indiana town’s most malevolent inhabitant until he meets the greatest evil of all. From the prairies of Indiana the reader journeys next to Las Vegas where a junior high student is terrorizing his teacher by inexplicably changing his facial expression to that of a demon from hell, or is it the recent loss of his wife that is unhinging the teacher? Only in the last few paragraphs does the reader learn the truth.
In Vermont, a workaholic father learns how much he loves his eldest daughter when she confronts a ghost, and it’s up to him to save her and to learn how wrong he has been. Back in the Las Vegas desert, a jogger learns that dogs, too, can be clairvoyant when his lazy Labrador retriever confronts a renegade mountain lion. The reader returns then to Indiana where a struggling family moves into a deserted farmhouse and finds that the house has a strange, terrible past. Still seeking a change of scenery? Then journey to Louisiana where an arrogant science teacher confronts the local Voodoo queen and discovers that there aren’t scientific explanations for everything.
Maine is the perfect locale for a shaken mill worker who tries to explain to his friends that he’s just seen the largest snake in the world swallow a cow and a teenage boy whole. The ninth story is Toy Boy, which has no definite setting for a toy magnate who confronts a series of miniature monsters inside his special playroom.
Back in Maine, a real Tough Guy escapes New York only to learn that what you want most of all, may be the poison of your everlasting existence. In El Paso a rising American industrialist meets a beautiful Hispanic prostitute and learns too late how much he loves her. In the twelfth and final story a struggling writer learns from his Labrador retriever how much it means to spend time with his youngest daughter.
A few of the stories will mystify you, others will horrify you, and still others will warm your heart… but all have a supernatural twist that you won’t see coming. Twelve Tingly Tales is a feast of mystifying excitement that no reader will soon forget.
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