QSFer Hayden Thorne has a new MM paranormal gothic romance out: Primavera.
Coming out to his parents may have burdened him with unfortunate difficulties, but nineteen-year-old Adam Sheridan didn’t expect a sudden flood of nightmares and fragmented dreams to ruin his nights and threaten his mental health. But there’s a reason for these dreams, these baffling images of people and moments from a time and place that have never once crossed Adam’s mind. As these grow more and more insistent, triggered by harmless little things in his day-to-day movements such as a co-worker’s whistling, a framed print of an old painting, and even a quick escape in an old church, Adam realizes these are really memories surfacing.
Memories from someone who lived three hundred years ago, in fact. A young man such as himself who once harbored hopes and dreams–all of which were lovingly recorded in a journal–who fell in love with another, and whose life was cut tragically short. But for what reason? And how? As Adam navigates through the murky and risky waters of living in a household bent on stifling his nature, his dreams call him back to the old church again and again. It’s there, in a small and silent side chapel dedicated to the Virgin, where the answers lie. Answers guarded closely by the mournful specter of a man who has known Adam through the centuries.
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Excerpt
From Chapter 5:
I walked with dragging steps toward a dimly lit side chapel, and for some reason, the closer I got, the more frightened I felt. I’d had dreams—nightmares—years ago where the more I ran away from something, the slower I got. And the more I felt as though my legs were turning into cement or that I was trying to run through extra thick sludge until whatever it was I was running from caught up with me.
In this instance, I walking toward something I didn’t want to go to, but the same increasing resistance was there. Not only that—movement and an emotional response were forefront.
The side chapel itself was a really old one, and it was barely lit with faint light streaming through three narrow, dusty stained glass windows. I was inside a larger church, whose interior was deeply shadowed though I knew my way around it in spite of the lack of illumination. Not that it mattered, really, since it felt as though whatever was shaping my dream were determined to push me toward the side chapel and nowhere else.
There wasn’t anything in the side chapel but what I figured was a statue of the Virgin standing on a low platform of sorts set into a shallow alcove. There were a few votive candles lit up in their containers, which were also displayed on a simple wrought iron candle stand placed against a wall between two of the windows.
The atmosphere in the side chapel could be felt from where I was, and it was nearly crippling.
Grief and mourning—twisted and woven into each other like a heavy, suffocating blanket of sorrow that slowly oozed out as though an old dam just cracked a little, and a gradual flow of water was pushing through it. No doubt it would turn into a major gusher if it weren’t stopped.
That overwhelming feeling added to my terror as I closed the distance, and my legs began to shake, my knees locking up. My heart suddenly twisted in my chest as I stared, bug-eyed, at the empty side chapel. I didn’t want to go inside; that was the overriding gut feeling that had me in its grip. My heart raced, my blood pumped wildly in my ears, and an awful chill descended on me, making my skin break out in goosebumps.
“No. No, no, no, no, no…”
I mumbled that over and over again into the death-like silence of the church and the side chapel. Then my knees completely gave way, and I crumpled to the stone floor, refusing to move another inch closer. I didn’t know how long I stayed there, utterly frozen and locked up, staring in mounting horror at what was really nothing more than a moody, empty space of worship.
But there was something wrong with it. I knew it deep, deep down, and once that conviction and accompanying feeling were roused, there was no holding them back. I stayed there, on my hands and knees, unable to move save for the painfully slow way I forced myself into a frightened ball on the floor.
“No, no, no—I won’t go there—never…”
Nothing came out of the side chapel. Everything stayed quiet and still, but the feeling of immeasurable and toxic grief and helpless despair flowed out in a steady and brutal stream. It moved around me, over me, and through me, spearing me in place with this horrifying conviction that a disaster had happened in that quiet, unobtrusive space. A private space of worship.
“No, no, no, no…”
/No! No, stop! I won’t—let me go!/
Author Bio
I’ve lived most of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area though I wasn’t born there (or, indeed, the USA). I’m married with no kids and three cats. I started off as a writer of young adult fiction, specializing in contemporary fantasy, historical fantasy, and historical genres. My books ranged from a superhero fantasy series to reworked and original folktales to Victorian ghost fiction. I’ve since expanded to New Adult fiction, which reflects similar themes as my YA books and varies considerably in terms of romantic and sexual content. While I’ve published with a small press in the past, I now self-publish my books.
| Author Website | https://haydenthorne.com |
| Author Mastodon | https://zirk.us/@haydenthorne |