All Souls Day
"The horror of what was happening was very real and made for a tense and captivating read. I highly recommend this novel to fans of horror." - Sharon Stevenson, author of The Gallows Novels and the After Death Series.
My hidden Bible says that whoever "giveth any of his seed unto Moloch; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones."
But is the story of the Binding of Isaac in the Bible the original, and the Book of Moloch a blasphemous satire of it, as Mom once whispered to me? I can’t be sure. Maybe it’s the story of Isabel that is the original, and the Bible a blasphemous satire, imagining a divine being who does not require human blood.
There’s an unsigned note from Suzie asking me to meet her at sunset by the big rock in the middle of Brandywine Creek just around the first bend downstream from the park.
I know the spot like I know my own bedroom. It used to be my favorite place to hang out and daydream on my own. But with the rising shadows covering the rocks and the darkly rippling water, I can’t help imagining unseen danger lying in wait for me...
"Won’t be alone? What do you mean, she won’t be alone? Everybody knows the Sacrifice is locked in the Castle by herself for almost five months!” Amos says.
I know this as well as anyone else in town does, but I close my eyes and shudder, picturing the former National Guard armory on top of Boot Hill on the northern edge of town, beyond Linwood. The hill’s a gentle slope that has to be less than a hundred feet high, but it’s barren, packed earth without a blade of grass or a dandelion growing on it even at the height of summer, when the poor girl trapped inside must be sweltering her brains out, imprisoned alone with nothing for company but the roaring turbines of the power plant far below her feet. Nobody knows anybody who has ever worked in the Castle, so the rumors run wild: that it’s the one place in town where Moloch allows the radioactivity that poisons the rest of the world to leak through; that the old U.S. Army used to conduct chemical warfare drills there, and they never cleaned it up; that the ghosts of the Sacrifices haunt the grounds and kill any living thing...