The Blood Texts: You’d Better Watch Out by Frank Cadaver

Warning, this is extremely creepy! Definitely not one to read at night, especially if you haven't been perfectly good recently. Full of spooky imagery and terrifying descriptions. It also got me surprisingly emotional at the end. Read on for more and an extract from the book... if you dare!

Book Summary

Fourteen year old Evangeline knows she isn’t good. She knows she might even be a bully to her quiet, studious classmate Olivia. But when her Dad returns home with a sinister looking Watching Elf, desperately hoping it will push her to behave, ‘just in time for Christmas’, she’s positive he’s lost the plot. Just how old does he think she is?!

But then footsteps scuttle past flickering fairy lights, when she’s sneaking to places she shouldn’t. A malevolent figure is reflected in her phone screen, when she’s about to share malicious photographs. And, when a bullying teacher is brutally attacked during her detention, Evangeline starts to wonder: is this Watching Elf more than just a doll?

And not to be forgotten, is Olivia. Always perfect Olivia. There’s just something not right about her; she’s got a part to play in this but Evangeline can’t quite figure out what. All she knows is Olivia may not be as innocent or as perfect as she seems…

Extract

PROLOGUE - THE BLOOD TEXTS

2004...

“You’re scared.”

“I’m not scared!”

“You’re the one who wanted to do this!”

“I’m just saying, the coach is gonna go. We’ve got to get back!”

“Whatevs, run away then,” Mason scoffed, his black Korn hoodie up over his ears, his legs straddling the metal track in what he would never admit was his One Tree Hill pose. From the path below, his friend sighed and turned away up the dripping, decayed exit ramp. As the New Animal rollercoaster rumbled far above them, joined by the muffled screams of its passengers, Mason couldn’t help but call after him.

“Go on then, biatch!” he shouted. “Run back to teacher! But I won the challenge! I’m keeping the magazine! It’s MY trophy!”

The magazine was tucked down the back of Mason’s baggy jeans, and it was why they were here in the first place. The Blood Texts – the most gruesome and gory of his older sister’s horror magazine collection. When he’d discovered a feature among The Blood Texts’ creased pages about Smithson’s Theme Park, just one week before their school was visiting it, he and his friend’s next graffiti challenge had been clear: they would tag the OLD ANIMAL ROLLERCOASTER, HOME OF REBECCA’S HEADLESS GHOST!

“Rebecca didn’t keep her arms and legs inside the ride. Rebecca wanted to wave to the camera. But once the ’coaster sped up, she started slipping out too far, and when the loop-the-loop went through the tunnel, her head clipped a boat on the old River Rapids. Her boyfriend had to sit the rest of the ride next to her headless corpse. After her family sued, Smithson’s shut the Old Animal ride and built the New Animal over top of it. But The Blood Texts says they never tore the loop down. It’s still down there, and Rebecca’s ghost an’ all . . . searching for a head to replace hers.”

His friend had grinned then, and they’d gone toe-to-toe with sick jokes about the tragedy. It was what they did – like Jackass, like Dirty Sanchez – like grinning the blood out between your teeth after stacking a rail grind. Like sneaking past warning signs down an unmarked tunnel to graffiti the last bones of a deadly rollercoaster that Smithson’s Park didn’t mention in their ads.

MA$ON

He was getting better, he decided, as again the New Animal rumbled and screamed above. The dollar sign used to just look like he’d screwed up the ‘S’, but now it looked legit, like the $ in the rapper Ma$e. He leant closer to study it, when the battery light began to fade orange.

“Dumb torch,” he growled. The batteries were the big Eveready ones he’d tea-leafed from his sister’s new hi-fi; how were they failing already? Mason – BANG – smacked the torch with the – BANG – palm of his hand, trying to get some juice from the batteries, but the orange bulb still – BANG – wouldn’t BANG—

Splash...

It came from below, quiet, but unmistakable.

“Tyler?”

There was no answer. Mason shone his torch down, lighting up twisted metal, bolts and rails, to the brown, stagnant water of the closed river rapids beneath. Seeing nothing, he turned to point the beam behind him. The grey fake river wound further down the gloomy tunnel, surrounded by knackered SM_LE _OR TH_ C_MERA! signs, tattered rope queues and decayed plastic animal models. Then, with a sudden thought, he looked up to where the last surviving tracks of the Old Animal twisted and climbed, before stopping dead against a concrete slab that Smithson’s had built to hide this infamous deadly loop-the-loop.

Huh...? The screams. The rollercoaster screams, from the New Animal.

Why have they stopped?

Splash...

At the second splash, Mason whirled the torch back down again, a cold stab of fear in his gut.

There was nothing.

And then...

Soft ripples raced across the grey water, before a ride boat bobbed gently down the river below. Mason’s mouth felt suddenly dry. The boat was filthy, worn and circular with seats around the edge and a wheel in the middle. The insides were strewn with something black and matted, and as he climbed down to the bottom rail, Mason saw what it was and fought back the urge to scream.

Hair. Long, human hair. And blood.

Mason pulled out the magazine tucked behind his waistband and stared at the picture on the open page.

“It’s true,” he croaked out loud. “The Blood Texts. It’s true.”

It was the last thought his head got to have.

The Blood Texts. It’s true.

Who is Frank Cadaver?

He was born in the witching hour, beneath a blood-red moon, and under a bad sign. His first words were not fit to print. Now he scratches stories with yellowed fingernails, across the mouldering walls of the abandoned nuclear power station he calls home. If you like what you read, we’ll dare you to find out more…

I started this book while on holiday and had an amazing Pomegranate Caipirinha. This also looks quite Christmassy so I thought its a good fit for the book. Cut half a lime into chunks and muddle in a cocktail shaker with 2 teaspoons of sugar. Add 60ml of cachaca and 15ml of grenadine, stir and then pour into your glass. Add crushed ice (or smaller cubes) to half fill the glass, drop in a handful of pomegranate seeds, stir and top with more ice. Garnish with more pomegranate.