Bad Moon Rising

ALSO BY JONATHAN MABERRY

Ghost Road Blues

Vampire Universe (with David F. Kramer)

Dead Man’s Song

Cryptopedia: A Dictionary of the Weird, Strange & Downright Bizarre

Zombie CSU

BAD MOON RISING

JONATHAN MABERRY

To Alvy & Kittie West

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my wonderful agent, Sara Crowe of Harvey Klinger, Inc.; my terrific editor at Kensington, Michaela Hamilton; and to the great Doug Mendini.

Thanks to Chief Pat Priore of the Tullytown Police Department; Peter Lukacs, MD; Dale Blum, RPh; Lisa and Eric Gressen, MD; and Larry Kaplan, DDS, for extensive technical information. Any errors that remain in the book are purely the author’s doing.

Thanks to my crew of first readers: Arthur Mensch, Randy Kirsch, Charlie Miller, and Greg Schauer, and to my devious and highly weird webmasters, David F. Kramer and Geoff Strauss.

Thanks to Gus Maris of Red Lion Diner and Erin and Danny Da Costa of Graeme Pizza for letting Crow and Val visit for a spell, and thanks to my friends in the HWA (Horror Writers Association) and the Garden State Horror Writers for dropping by Pine Deep’s Halloween Festival.

Thanks to the many wonderful bookstore managers and community-relations managers who made the tours for my previous books such a joy!

Thanks to Stephen Susco, Brinke Stevens, Joe Bob Briggs, Ken Foree, Tom Savini, Tim O’Rear, James Gunn, and Debbie Rochon for dropping by to make an appearance.

Thanks to Sam West-Mensch, Chris Maddish, Elizabeth Little, Mischa Wheat, Jim Winterbottom, David Pantano, Rick Robinson, Brandon Strauss, Helena Penfold, Rebekah Comley, Keith Strunk (and F. F. Manny Thing), Mark DeSousa, and all of the wonderful friends of Pine Deep.

My author homepage is www.jonathanmaberry.com, which has links to the website for this series and for my nonfiction books.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Welcome to Pine Deep!

Bad Moon Rising is my third novel about the pleasant little town of Pine Deep, Pennsylvania, where a lot of un-pleasant things seem to happen. It can be read as a stand-alone novel or as part of the complete Pine Deep Trilogy. If you want to take the whole ride, start with Ghost Road Blues (which, I’m delighted to say, won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel of 2006 and was also nominated for Novel of the Year, though it was edged out by Stephen King).

That book tells the story of Karl Ruger, a psychotic killer who wrecks his car in Pine Deep while on the run from both the mob and the law. In truth Ruger is drawn to Pine Deep by an even worse killer, Ubel Griswold, one who cut a bloody swath through the town thirty years ago and whose body is buried deep below the swampy mud of Dark Hollow. In Pine Deep, however, the dead don’t always rest easy and Griswold’s particular brand of evil is vast, powerful and ancient.

Griswold was brought down by an itinerant farmworker and sometime blues singer named Oren Morse, or as the kids called him, the Bone Man. The Bone Man recognized Griswold for the monster that he was and risked his life to stop the killer’s reign of evil; but although he killed Griswold the Bone Man was framed for the murders and beaten to death by the town fathers. He, too, rested uneasy in his grave and when Griswold’s power began to reassert itself the Bone Man returned as a ghost to try and stop him. The real problem there was that Griswold understands how to be a supernatural being and the Bone Man, sadly, does not. Alone, unseen, nearly powerless, the Bone Man has been trying to communicate with the living and help them in their fight against Griswold’s growing power.

Ghost Road Blues is also the story of a handful of people in the town whose lives were touched by the slaughter thirty years ago and are tainted again by more recent events. Malcolm Crow’s brother was one of Griswold’s early victims and Crow himself was very nearly killed (saved by a timely appearance by the Bone Man), and he alone understands that something dreadful and unnatural is still at work in his town. His fiancee, Val Guthrie, lost an uncle to Griswold years ago and more recently saw her father gunned down by Ruger.

Dr. Saul Weinstock, the chief medical examiner and Crow’s friend, has begun to suspect that something is seriously wrong in Pine Deep and has begun to compile evidence that points to an impossible and horrifying explanation.

Terry Wolfe, Crow’s oldest friend and the mayor of Pine Deep, lost a sister to Griswold and received terrible wounds himself. Now, as Griswold’s power reawakens, Terry feels his mind begin to fracture: is he going insane or is there some supernatural taint in his blood that is transforming him, night after night, into a monster?

And Mike Sweeney, a fourteen-year-old newsboy, has been caught up in the events as Griswold’s power grows. He is the victim of appalling ongoing physical abuse by his stepfather, Vic Wingate. Vic, unknown to