WITH ITS TWILIGHT ZONE VIBE,
PREPARE FOR A JOURNEY THAT’S AS EERIE AS IT IS UNFORGETTABLE…
Scantic Books is proud to present a new collection of short stories, Odd Birds by Joel Reeves. “Odd Bird” (noun. A strange or eccentric person). Get ready to be transported beyond your wildest dreams … and worst nightmares. Discover strangers and their strange pastimes, things that lurk in shadow and darkness, screams cut short, and madness and melancholy, in these twisted tales—and tales with twists.
Odd Birds takes you on a disturbing ride through dark fantasy and horror and just plain weird, where the unexpected lurks around every corner. Locked away in his own basement with an ax clutched in his trembling hands, a young bachelor is about to learn the importance of carefully screening his new roommates. A runaway orphan’s search for safety leads him straight into a web of lies and danger. Boneless Chuck, a bizarre lawn doctor, offers his “cures” with a smile—but the consequences are anything but healing. And in a town obsessed with social media, teens find themselves hunted by a killer. Each tale cracks open a doorway to the unsettling, dragging you into a world where the rules of reality are bent beyond recognition.
Story Teasers:
“And Baby Makes Three”: A brutal winter storm raged outside, but it was the storm brewing in the house that terrified me more. Trapped in the basement of my crumbling old home, ax in hand, I listened to Sharon’s pacing, her voice echoing down the stairs. She claimed I was the father of her baby—impossible, of course—but the cries upstairs were too real, too… wrong. How had I let her move in? The warning signs were there, but I ignored them. Now, with the door shaking and her eerie growl ringing out, I realized my mistake. Sharon wasn’t normal. And whatever she was holding wasn’t either.
“Boneless Chuck and the Screamers”: I’ve seen this before—the signs are always the same. Headaches that make a man claw at his own skull, soft clicking sounds riding the wind. The Screamers have taken root, feeding off his pain like leeches on a bloodline. I go in knowing it’s already too late for him, but I’ll dig down anyway. I always do. Shed my bones, crawl into the earth, and find the things lurking in the dark. I’ll drag them out, kicking and screaming, and end them. But sometimes… sometimes they’re already too deep. Sometimes, all I can do is finish the job and make sure the poor bastard doesn’t hurt anymore.
“The Runaway”: I slipped out of the tent, my heart pounding, careful not to wake the others. They lay scattered across their cots like sleeping giants, motionless beneath the darkness. I paused over Auguste Clown, the man who had been like a brother, watching his painted face twitch slightly, his thick makeup still intact. Melbourne’s sleeping potion had worked—too well, maybe. My throat tightened. What if they never woke up? The mountebank’s hand clamped on my shoulder as I reached the flap. “They’re all dead,” he whispered with a grin. My blood froze before his laughter followed, cold and sharp.
“Honestly if you are interested in weird stories this collection is for you. The stories do not rely on gore or splatter-punk (so if that’s your thing maybe look elsewhere), but ODD BIRDS contains some of the smartest and most creative stories I’ve read in the past few years. I rank this collection right up there with Eric J. Guignard’s THAT WHICH GROWS WILD–and that collection won a Bram Stoker award, so that lets you know how highly I praise ODD BIRDS.”
“…there is a TWILIGHT ZONE vibe, but the plots were fresh and some left me shaking my head thinking–COME ON, WHY DIDN”T I THINK THIS ONE UP?”
“If you’re looking for something different that doesn’t waste words, then ODD BIRDS is for you. Certainly, I think it was money well spent for the absolutely top-notch storytelling.”
It’s time for YOU to start reading the “top-notch storytelling” at…
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About Author Joel Reeves:
Joel Reeves is a teacher and author living in Northwest Lower Michigan with his family, his pet cats, Penguin and Big Chungas, and a ginormouswood spider named Charlie that only the author can see. His weird tales have been published in several anthologies including Tales of the Unanticipated, Return to Deathlehem, and Wild Musette Journal. His rollicking fantasy Quillogy, Of Quills and Kings, Walpole Unbound, and Dreams, Schemes, and Spiny Machines— featuring a demented demon hedgehog bent on world domination—is available from Double Dragon Press. His screenplay, Midnight Dreary, a biographical drama about Edgar Allan Poe, was a winner in the WILDsound screenwriting competition. Odd Birds is his first collection of short stories.
For more information about Joel and his books, please visit: