Jools G King
My occult horror novella, RAVEN HILL, is available from Amazon. It’s a kind of eco-horror story with a strong occult witchcraft theme. While it can be read as a standalone, Raven Hill will likely be the first story in a series.
Follow Nate as he tries to save the village where he lives from ecological distruction caused by a 300 year-old witch who seeks revenge for the wrongs meted to her and her family.
RAVEN HILL is a 32,000 word novella.
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You can buy RAVEN HILL from Amazon here. Or read for free on Kindle Unlimited.
Also, RAVEN HILL is available in audiobook and paperback formats.
EBOOK ASIN: B0CHWNSWYD
PAPERBACK ASIN: B0CHL7M33L
AUDIOBOOK ASIN: B0F3ZP5DWM
BISAC CATEGORY: FIC015040
Publication date: October 12 2023 UK (independently published)
- Language: English
- Print length: 150 pages (ebook), 144 pages (paperback)
- Listening length: 3 hours and 24 minutes
- Trim size: 5 x 8in
- Territorial rights: Worldwide
- ISBN-13: 979-8861088350
List of Tropes:
Horror; Revulsion; Terror; Cursed; Horrifying Past; Witch;
Now that I hope I’ve hooked you, here’s the blurb:
A grim horror overshadows the village. A horror over three hundred years old. Here lives a witch who seeks vengeance on the folk who live beneath Raven Hill.
A witch gone rogue, an evil crone with a vengeance that must be satisfied at all costs.
Fish are dying. Crops are withering. The birds no longer sing. Everywhere, flocks of malevolent ravens darken the skies. The air is poisoned.
Nate fears the life is slowly being choked from the village. But he has no idea why.
For the villagers, time is running out.
Who is the mysterious but enchanting Abbie who has set up camp close by? Is her travelling folk band here merely to entertain the locals?
Or is their purpose far more ominous?
Nate must uncover the haunting legacy of Raven Hill before it’s too late for both him and the village. That means he has no choice but to confront the evil crone in her lair.
This gripping tale of horror and redemption will envelop you in its chilling embrace, inviting you to confront your deepest fears and uncover the dark secrets of Raven Hill.
You can buy RAVEN HILL from Amazon here. Or read for free on Kindle Unlimited.
Now you’ve had your beak wetted, why not read some actual prose from Raven Hill?
Here’s chapter 6 of Raven Hill in full:
Zig-zag shadows. Sloping rendered buildings. Light and dark. Not just the architecture, but in the pancake faces of passing shoppers; over-exposed, like footage from a silent movie.
As Nate plodded from their cul-de-sac home, dispatched by Miranda to buy a half dozen eggs, he flipped up the hood of his hoodie and dug his hands into the pockets of his Wrangler skinny jeans. A faint but bitter breeze sanded his cheeks as he reached the high street. The traffic was light. A tractor grumbled past, its monster tyres flinging clods of mud onto the road.
Today, the village high street looked particularly dreary, despite a bold early morning sun battling the last of the dawn’s mist. You could walk from one end of this shopping paradise to the other in fewer than ninety seconds. He knew this because he’d once timed himself.
The hanging pub sign – he’d never bothered to research the monarch – set down a shadow diagonally across the deserted road as sharp as one printed by the gnomon of a sundial.
A tall, thin character clad in a black suit and white shirt, with dishevelled hair, burst from the shadow of the awning opposite, pursued by a stouter figure, also clad in black, who was presumably his wife. She was pushing a pram, and the baby concealed inside was mewling like a cat.
Nate had seen this young couple before, but because they didn’t frequent the Queens Head, he didn’t know them by name. Maybe they went to church regularly, but as a fervent non-attender, he wouldn’t know that either. He’d heard there was a strong following in the tiny Roman Catholic church of St Edmunds, and from their formal dress the couple looked as if they might be evangelicals.
Everyone in the village was so black and white.
Nobody did anything in grey. He’d learned this soon after he’d moved here as a small kid. Either you were an evangelical God worshipper or you were a heathen. Either you’d been married in church or you were single. Either you worked long hours or you were unemployed.
As he passed the hairdressers, his hand instinctively went to his mouth. The road gully outside it had been blocked for months, and vented a foul odour, part hydrocarbons, part rotting roadkill. He wondered why the council hadn’t yet jetted the gullies along here.
More locals emerged from the mist rolling across the narrow street. They reminded Nate of a litter of newborn puppies taking their first trepidant blinks in daylight. Even the adults looked like they needed a big slurpy lick wash from the proud mother dog.
Here came Brian and Louise Webb, arguing again, with their autistic son tight between them. A raven swooped towards Brian’s face. He flapped at it angrily, and it flew off. They disappeared into the British Heart Foundation charity shop. Across the road, a dismal cafe called The Cuckoo’s Nest was sandwiched between the motor parts shop and another charity shop. Through the cafe’s large window, smeared with at least a year’s grease of smoky breakfasts, the wan, alien faces of the morning regulars could be seen. Each sat alone at the little tables, a couple shovelling sweaty bacon and runny fried eggs into their mouths; others sipping milky sweet tea from chipped white mugs.
Old Annie Partridge appeared out of the mist, raising her straw hat at passers-by, wobbling on her battered jalopy.
She cycled the half mile from her house once a week to get groceries, maybe indulge in a cup of tea at The Cuckoo’s Nest. The widow Partridge was a regular attendee at St. Edmunds. She got off her bike and leaned it against a streetlight. Glancing up as the first clouds overtook an anaemic sun, she quickly made the sign of the cross and disappeared into the cafe. Moments later, she must have realised her mistake, because she exited The Cuckoo’s Nest and bundled herself next door to the haberdashery shop, itself a study in between-the-wars quaintness.
Nate smiled to himself. The villagers here were mostly good folks. Just mad. Barking. Eccentric, at best. Not all of them, of course, but he reckoned a team of top psychologists flown in from London might fill up a few academic journals during their stay here.
Who was the odd-looking fellow gazing out from his flat above the fish and chip shop, glass of sherry in hand? Why, it was top-hatted Bart Merrydown, author of almost thirty crime novels, all stocked at The Sharpest Pencil, the local bookshop.
Nate casually saluted him. The author smiled and raised his top hat in return.
Nutters. All of them. But he loved them all.
Even the few sane ones.
Dougal had broken out of Jerry Cosgrove’s farm again. The Golden Labrador nosed among the shop fronts across the street, tail wagging, showing greedy interest in Rathbone’s the Butchers. Freedom would be short-lived, but if there were sausages within snatch range, the excursion would have been worth it.
From the sudden eruption of barking and angry dissent from Rathbone, those sausages had been found.
Barking. Wasn’t that just bang on for the whole village community?
The grocer’s shop stood at the far end. Newspapers displayed under the awning on one side of the door, fruit and veg the other. Blu-tacked to the door’s window,
MISSING SINCE JAN 26
RACHAEL GREENE
PLEASE CALL OR TEXT 116 000
Accompanied by a smiling close-up photo of the teenager wearing a light grey hoodie.
Trying to ignore the knot in his stomach, Nate shuddered open the jammed door, triggering a welcoming jingle. Miranda usually preferred to do their weekly shop at the supermarket in Bury. It worked out cheaper that way, but Grindstones Grocers was always handy for the essentials.
Inside, he recognised another of the local village characters. Big Jack lived a mile or so outside the village, but he often used the village grocers, though he stayed clear of the Queens Head. The guy was a giant, at least six and a half feet tall, and built like a brick windmill.
What God had given him in brawn with one celestial hand, He’d taken away with the other in brain. Big Jack had the verbal IQ of a ten-year-old. He also smelled rank.
Big Jack wore a tatty black suit over a small-checked shirt. A piece of old cord held up his trousers. His short black hair was slicked from right to left across his dome, and his ears stood out like two cabbage leaves protruding either side of a granite face.
When Nate entered, the shop was empty except for Big Jack and Mrs. Grindstone, the septuagenarian proprietor. The term shop tested the bounds of credulity, as it was little more than a converted room in a corner cottage terrace with a few shelves containing the most basic items. You were out of luck if you were searching for something even remotely exotic. Amazingly though, behind the small counter with cash till, Mrs. Grindstone serviced a post office as well. It was in her role as clerk that she was fielding an argument with her largest customer.
Nate hung back, pretending to decide which box of eggs he wanted to buy, although there were only three boxes, and they were all the same: half a dozen free-range eggs from a local farm. So local, tiny tufts of feathers clung to each box.
“I keep telling you, Mr. Beet, we no longer pay disability allowance over the counter,” Mrs. Grindstone protested. “We stopped doing that at the end of last year. You now need to open a bank account and the DWP will pay your disability benefits directly into that. Please discuss it with them. I’m tired of trying to get you to understand, week after week.”
“No bank account!” A heavy fist slammed on the counter, loud enough to make Nate look up from his egg boxes in alarm.
“Then I’m sorry, Mr. Beet, but I can’t pay you.”
“No, payment,” Big Jack Beet roared. “I need payment. Things to buy.”
Mrs. Grindstone took an involuntary step back from the counter. The village had not seen a serious crime in over ten years. Mrs. Grindstone had never bothered to fit a plastic screen to the counter. The villagers were all her friends. Having lived all her life in the village, she was a local doyen, respected and admired.
Fearing for her safety, Nate approached the counter, egg box in hand. “Anything the matter?” he said. The last thing he needed was a fight with Big Jack. There could only be one easy winner from that, and he had black, greasy hair. Now, a Wordle contest might be a different matter.
Mrs. Grindstone sighed, shaking her head. “Once again, I’m afraid Mr. Beet is confused about the new rules from the DWP.”
For reply, Big Jack lunged towards Nate, grabbed his box of eggs and scrunched the thick grey cardboard in his meat slab hands, grinning. Yellow yolk drooled onto the floor. Aghast, Nate wondered if his head was next, but Big Jack seemed distracted by something.
My bites. He’s noticed my bites. It’s taken the wind out of his sails.
“You’ll pay for those,” Mrs. Grindstone said.
“Won’t.” Big Jack seemed to recover himself. “No money,” he protested, slamming his fist and leaving an eggy stamp on the counter. “You have my money. Give me.”
“Come on, big guy,” Nate said, placing one hand on Big Jack’s arm. “Let’s talk about this outside.”
“She has my money,” Big Jack said, his beady black eyes displaying less intelligence than a bird’s. “Why won’t she give me my money?”
“I can spare you a few quid, Jack,” Nate promised. “I’ll pay for the eggs too, Mrs. Grindstone, okay?”
Anything for a quiet life, he reflected.
Now that you’ve read a sample chapter, why not buy Raven Hill from Amazon by clicking here, or read for free on Kindle Unlimited?
Additionally, learn more about my upcoming novels by clicking here.