eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
In one of the hottest summers for decades, New York City is swept by a strange and terrible epidemic. Doctors are helpless as victims fall prey to a bizarre blood disorder. They can no longer eat solid food, they become hypersensitive to sunlight and they have an irresistible need to drink human blood.
As panic grips the city, psychic Harry Erskine must enter the shadowy realms between the living and the dead, and call on native American spirits to help him...
'One of the most original and frightening storytellers of our time' PETER JAMES.
'A true master of horror' JAMES HERBERT.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781786692870 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 07/14/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 357 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Graham Masterton (born 1946, Edinburgh) is a British horror author. Originally editor of Mayfair and the British edition of Penthouse, Graham Masterton's first novel The Manitou was published in 1976 and adapted for the film in 1978.
Further works garnered critical acclaim, including a Special Edgar award by the Mystery Writers of America for Charnel House and a Silver Medal by the West Coast Review of Books for Mirror. He is also the only non-French winner of the prestigious Prix Julia Verlanger for his novel Family Portrait, an imaginative reworking of the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Masterton's novels often contain visceral sex and horror. In addition to his novels, Masterton has written a number of sex instruction books, including How To Drive Your Man Wild In Bed and Wild Sex for New Lovers.
Visit www.grahammasterton.co.uk
Read an Excerpt
Manitou Blood
By Graham Masterton
Dorchester Publishing
Copyright © 2005
Graham Masterton
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8439-5425-6
Chapter One
It was only a few minutes after eleven in the morning, but
already the sun was beating on the sidewalks as hard as a
blacksmith's hammer.
As he crossed Herald Square in his flappy brown linen suit and
his green Matrix-style sunglasses, Dr Winter saw a small crowd
gathered outside Macy's. At first he thought they must be
looking at a new window display, but then he realized that a
mime artiste was performing in front of the store.
Frank Winter had an irrational aversion to mimes, or jugglers,
or clowns, or any other kind of street performers. Behind
their painted-on grins, he had always suspected that they were
sly, and spiteful, and out to cause mischief. But this mime
caught his attention. She was a girl, to begin with - a very
thin, small-boned girl, in a one-piece suit made of tight
silver fabric. Her short-cropped hair was stiff with silver
paint, and her face was painted silver, too.
Frank stopped for a moment, and watched her. Her suit was so
tight that she could almost have been naked. She was
small-breasted, with very prominent nipples, and her buttocks
were as tight as a boy's. Underneath her Tin-Man make-up she
had a thin, sculptured face that was almost beautiful, in a
starved, waif-like way, and pale blue staring eyes.
But it wasn't only her appearancethat held him there: it was
her extraordinary performance. She swayed from side to side,
giving the impression that she was defying gravity. Then she
began to mime that she was climbing, and somehow she made it
appear as if she was actually making her way up a ladder. At
the top of the ladder she teetered, and nearly lost her
balance. Two small children who were watching her stepped
instinctively back, as if she was really going to fall on them
from twenty feet up.
Frank pressed his hand to the back of his head, because the
sun was beating on his neck. It was well over 93 degrees, with
85 percent humidity. Nobody could walk around the city without
gum sticking to the soles of their shoes, and the crowd around
him were mostly dressed in T-shirts and shorts and sandals,
and were furiously fanning themselves with newspapers and tour
guides. It had been sweltering like this for over a week now,
since the second day of August, and the weathermen were
predicting the longest heat-wave in New York City since the
summer of 1926.
Up on top of her imaginary ladder, however, the girl began to
clutch herself, and shiver, as if she were freezing. She stood
on the sidewalk quaking and even though the sun was beating on
the back of his neck, Frank could almost feel a chill, too, as
if somebody had opened up a refrigerator door, right behind
him. He turned to the man standing next to him and said,
"She's something, isn't she?"
The man looked Italian, or maybe Greek. He was bearded, with a
flattened nose like an osprey's beak, and bulging brown eyes,
and he was wearing a strange dangling earring, like a
miniature dreamcatcher, all feathers and beads and fish-hooks.
He raised his eyebrows and smiled but didn't reply.
Frank wasn't sure if the man had understood him. "I mean the
way she's shivering like that ... she's actually making me feel
cold."
"Well," said the man, still smiling. "She is one of the pale
ones, that's why."
"The pale ones?" said Frank. He shook his head to show that he
didn't understand.
"I would gladly explain it to you, sir, but you would probably
not believe me."
"You could try me. I'm a doctor and you know us doctors. We're
ready to believe anything."
The girl began to climb down her imaginary ladder, until she
reached the ground. Then she sat on her red-and-yellow rug on
the sidewalk and twisted her arms and legs together so that
she tied herself into human knot. If he hadn't seen it for
himself, Frank would have said that it was anatomically
impossible. Her face was looking at him from between her legs,
emotionless, remote, but strangely threatening, as if she were
warning him to keep his distance.
She rolled around the sidewalk in a ball, and then, in one
fluid movement, she disentangled her arms and legs and stood
up, her arms spread wide. The small crowd applauded, and two
ConEd workers gave her a piercing whistle.
Gradually, dropping nickels and dimes into her silver-painted
basket, the crowd dispersed, but the girl stayed where she
was, leaning against Macy's window with both hands, breathing
deeply, staring at herself. The Greek-looking man stayed, too.
Frank took off his sunglasses. He could see himself reflected
in the store window behind her - a tall, broad-shouldered man
with brushed-back hedgehog hair that was graying at the sides.
"That was quite some performance," he told her. "I'm a doctor,
and believe me - I've never seen anybody who can tie
themselves up quite like that."
The girl lifted herself away from the window and turned
around. She looked Frank up and down as if she already knew
who he was, but she didn't speak. Frank wondered if she might
be such a good mime because she was genuinely mute. He glanced
again at the Greek-looking man, but the Greek-looking man
didn't seem to be interested in contributing anything to the
conversation, either.
"Well, great show," Frank told her, uncomfortably. "I have to
be getting on."
He took out a dollar bill and he was leaning forward to drop
it in her basket when the girl suddenly raised her hand to her
throat and made a gagging noise. She took a stiff-legged step
toward him, and then another. At first he assumed that she was
acting, but her eyes were wide and she kept opening and
closing her mouth, as if she couldn't breathe.
Without warning, she vomited blood. A bright-red clattering
cascade that splattered the sidewalk in front of her and
splashed all over Frank's shoes. She tilted back, and then
sank to her knees. Frank knelt down beside her and put his arm
around her.
"What's wrong? Are you sick with something? Have you been to
see your doctor?"
The girl shook her head. She looked terrified.
Frank shouted, "Call 911!" but there was no reply. "I said,
call -!" he began, but when he turned around the
Greek-looking man was hurrying away, like the White Rabbit.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Manitou Blood
by Graham Masterton
Copyright © 2005 by Graham Masterton .
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.