As a teaser to my horror collection, Bringing in the Creeps, from Anuci Press, I offer you a quickie story which was also awarded a runner-up nod by Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine for their “Mysterious Photograph” contest.

“The Cleansing of the Soles”

From Bringing in the Creeps by Ray Van Horn, Jr.

The Givenchy sneakers clumped around the drier’s rotating drum like the rumbling floor toms from Manic Augustinians drummer Shay McDaniels. A band no doubt reconsidering their lyrical huckstering of self-deprecation and suicide after tonight’s meet and greet of death.

Sha-shunk-a-thunk. Repeat pattern.

I was missing Donna three months after her curt parting. Senselessly longing for her bickering over my accumulation mania. “Hoarding,” she’d called it, always to set me off.

I seized those shoes the minute fate drove them my way amidst the adrenalized turmoil murder brings. Shucked and scattered somehow. An untagged forensics exhibit, all mine.

The blood was problematic.

The pricey kicks belonged to Manic Augustinians guitarist, Marc Roberson. Late as of five hours ago.

Listening to the groaning fan and repetitive banging of those shoes, I’m sitting cross-legged in front of the machine, relishing the hot air massage. It casts the first aura of triumph I’ve enjoyed since forever.

I’m fanning through a crate filled with handwritten set lists I’ve poached over the years. I got another one for the collection tonight, though I’d hoped for Roberson’s autograph at the band’s bus. Maybe a selfie.

Impossible to get either of those now, the rear parking lot then filled with the arresting canvas of shock dashed by twirling police cherries. The lookee-loos ushered away from Marc Roberson’s shivved corpse. The cuffed and giggling culprit covered in crimson, claiming he did it as “the band’s ultimate fan.”

Hardly the first time I’ve plundered treasure from a dead rock god.

Grab your copy of Bringing in the Creeps at Amazon or your favorite online retailer. Also available digitally at Kindle, Nook and Kobo.

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Order Bringing in the Creeps here

—Ray Van Horn, Jr.