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Saturday, October 6, 2012

The Home for Halloween - Scott Nicolson

The Home for Halloween Giveaway
Enter the Rafflecopter to win your choice of a Kindle Fire, Nook HD, or Kobo Glo, as well as signed books and audiobooks in The Home for Halloween giveaway from author Scott Nicholson.

The giveaway celebrates the launch of paranormal thriller The Home. Experiments at a group home for troubled children lead to paranormal activity—and the ghosts are from the home’s dark past as an insane asylum. In development as a feature, it’s available in ebook at Amazon US, Amazon UK, BN.com, Kobo, and Smashwords.




EXCERPT: THE HOME

By Scott Nicholson
(From Chapter Five)

“Shoo. Hey, Dipes, did you drop a load or something?”

Freeman looked at the boy who had spoken. The teenager had a broad, beefy face and a crew cut. His eyes were small and piggish, gleaming with that cruel cunning that Freeman had seen in dozens of faces in group homes across the state. The porcine gaze was fixed on a thin, pale boy who looked to be about ten.

“I didn’t do nothing, Deke,” the thin boy said, a reaction so quick and rehearsed that Freeman could tell he had been the target of Deke’s bullying before.

“Sure, Dipes. Better go change yourself, or we’ll have to get the nurse to do it.” At the word “nurse,” Deke had launched into a mocking, effeminate tone. “Don’t want her to see your stinky, do you?”

Since the boys had come into the Blue Room, Freeman had said nothing. He’d been sitting on his cot, pretending that the other boys didn’t matter. One of the guys gave him an appraising, new-kid look, and another started to wave, but Freeman turned his attention to the book he’d swiped from Bondurant’s office. The book was boring, one of those inspirational and motivational hardbacks that told you how to prosper with the help of the Lord. But holding the book allowed him to watch the room out of the corners of his eyes while trying to size up the pecking order. Deke seemed to be the biggest pecker of them all.

Deke began dancing around the thin boy, making a motion as if he were wiping himself with toilet paper. A few of the others were watching, and Deke grew bolder in front of his audience. “Come on, Dipes. Don’t be a poopie pants.”

Laughter rippled across the room. The boy who had tried to wave to Freeman was biting his thumbnail, glancing nervously at the door. Freeman wondered where the house parents were. He’d been in enough group homes to know that the children were never supposed to be left unsupervised, though it happened way too often.

Dipes retreated from the teasing, passing Freeman’s bunk. Deke pursued his quarry, giving Freeman a smirk that said, “Watch me have a little fun.”

Freeman quickly turned his attention back to the words on the page, searching for vapid inspiration. He felt sorry for Dipes, but his best bet was to stay on the sidelines for now. Maybe Deke had enemies among the kids, but the odds were just as good that Deke ruled the roost with no opposition. And survivors didn’t survive by turning into Defenders of the Weak.

A tall guy in an olive army jacket, who had enough of a hint of facial hair to be fifteen, followed Deke like a second lieutenant. Dipes reached the corner and cowered as the two older boys jabbed at him and sneered. “Dipey wipes, dipey wipes,” said Deke, his taunts somehow made even more obscene by his singsong chanting.

A couple of the other boys gathered behind Deke, making noises in imitation of passing gas. Three kids sat quietly on their bunks. From their expressions of relief, Freeman figured they were glad that Dipes was the victim this time instead of themselves. Then Freeman made the mistake of meeting Dipes’s eyes.

Help me, those small dark eyes implored.


When twelve-year-old Freeman Mills arrives at Wendover, a group home for troubled children, it’s a chance for a fresh start. But second chances aren’t easy for Freeman, the victim of painful childhood experiments that gave him the ability to read other people’s minds.

At Wendover, Freeman and the other children are subjected to more secret experiments, organized by a shadowy organization called The Trust. But the experiments do more than open up clairvoyant powers--the electromagnetic fields used in the experiments are summoning the ghosts of the patients who died at Wendover back when it was a psychiatric ward.

Now a new scientist has been brought into the project, an unstable and cruel pioneer in ESP studies who performed most of his work on a very special subject: his son, Freeman Mills.



About the author:
Author Scott Nicholson has written 15 thrillers, 60 short stories, four comics series, and six screenplays. He lives in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, where he tends an organic garden, successfully eludes stalkers, and generally lives the dream. 

4 comments:

  1. Just picked this one up and looking forwards to some thrills and chills :)

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  2. Thanks, Denise, I hope you enjoy it and it inspires you to write a review! (Unless it sucks, in which case this conversation never happened!) Good luck in the contest!

    Sharon and Kate, thanks so much for hosting me.

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  3. Anytime Scott! Always fun having you over :)

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  4. Wicked! :)

    My Kindle always has room for a creepy book.

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