QSFer Matt Doyle has a new queer horror book out (gay, lesbian): The Beast of Loughby Island.
No full moon. No silver bullets. No chance.
A young man named Tom Daniels is kidnapped by a local family and is dropped on Loughby Island in an attempt to ‘clean up their streets’.
When the family that dropped Tom off is slaughtered by a werewolf-like creature, he soon finds himself banding together with a small group of the island’s residents in a fight for their lives against an otherworldly monster.
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Excerpt
Joe Atkins hated sailing at night. He’d won the boat on an episode of Bullseye in the late 80s, and while it still worked, he’d learned years ago that he knew nothing about maintaining speedboats. Or sailing them, for that matter. As a result, his little delivery jaunts were choppy af-fairs. Even so, he had faith in the machine. It had been built in the Midlands, meaning it was like him: solid, British, and unrelenting.
That didn’t stop him from struggling to see, though. This sort of mission required a degree of stealth, so he couldn’t exactly light up the way ahead. Tonight, the sun had set early, too, mean-ing he couldn’t rely on the low light to alert him when to slow down near the island.
But this was necessary work. Kent needed to be cleaned up, and if no other fucker was go-ing to do it, Joe damn well would. Best of all, this time, both his kids were coming along for the ride. That was enough to make him smile, at least.
A grunt came from the back of the boat, and Joe hissed, “Oi! Keep him quiet! We’re just coming up on the bank.”
“You heard him,” Robbie chuckled, and the unmistakable sound of a hand slapping the back of someone’s head cut the grumbling short.
Joe swung the boat to the right and brought the speed down as he angled towards the muddy bank. It was the same place he always parked up when dropping off an undesirable, and he preferred to stop side-on so he didn’t have to get his feet wet.
The boat drifted onto Loughby Island with a satisfying bump, and Joe turned toward his son. “Help your sister. And you,” he growled, grabbing his cargo by the shoulder and shoving him towards the land, “Ger’off.”
“Which way?” Laura asked.
Joe nodded his head toward the woods at the top of the hill. “Stick close. You don’t wanna get lost here. You’ll end up indoctrinated, or whatever.”
“I can’t see,” the man said, his voice muffled by the sack over his head.
Joe shoved him in the back, forcing him forward. “Shame that, ain’t it? Keep quiet, walk where I say, and maybe I’ll let you know if you’re gonna walk into anything.”
The man’s shoulders sagged, but he started walking. Though tempting to let him just walk into trees, Joe was true to his word. If nothing else, he didn’t want the idiot drawing unnecessary attention if he made a racket. To that end, he kept his own voice low as he explained to his kids, “This little Hellhole has turned too many people soft. Still, it keeps the bleeding hearts all in one place, don’t it?”
“I can think of a few more I’d like to send here,” Robbie said. “That bloody Carl Rogers down the street for one.”
“You and me both, lad.” Joe hauled the man to the side, avoiding a large rock, and asked, “And why can’t we just chuck him over here?”
“Because the police, blah, blah, blah,” Robbie replied, his eye roll creeping into his voice.
“You better take that seriously, you little prick. You try to do one of these deportation trips with a local fella, and we all get in the shit. Lost little lamb like this one,” he said, slapping the man on the shoulder, “they’ll never know.”
“They knew about Dougie Walters,” Laura sighed.
Joe grimaced. That had been a misjudgment on his part, one that almost got all of them in trouble. “Only because he’s technically still local, even if he is a worthless waste of space.”
Robbie shrugged. “Didn’t he used to be a teacher or something, though?”
Joe fought to keep his body language strong and upright. “What you were don’t mean shit, lad. Only what you are. Take me. I was a foreman. Ran that factory like a well-oiled machine in the best and the worst of times. Now look at me. I worked every day of my adult life until they closed that place. I paid enough in taxes to fund a small town of dole scroungers. I earned my break. Earned the right to let someone else look after me for a change. Yet you look at how those people look at me. At us. Like we’re fucking scum.”
“But one of these tossers wanders in,” Laura growled, giving the man a kick up the arse, “they get all the help in the world.”
“Exactly. That’s why I do this. Why I want you two to, as well. We’re keeping the streets clean. Keeping people out of our benefit pool. Some other place wants to fund their lifestyle, let ‘em do it, but I won’t see our town fall under the rule of dossers and immigrants. Even if none of them in town know what we’re doing for ‘em, we do. Working in the shadows, fighting the good fight.”
“Like a family of superheroes.” Robbie stood taller then, his pride almost moving his steps into a march.
“Proper British vigilantes,” Laura added.
“That’s what we are.” Joe smiled and led the group farther into the woods. Even without a torch, he knew the route well enough now that he wasn’t about to get them lost. It was the one thing he liked about this place: It never changed. The people of Loughby Island never wanted to develop more land than they had to, and the population never swelled. It just trickled upward then subsided again if one of Joe’s drop-offs didn’t stick around.
Up ahead, torchlight shone through the darkness, and a voice drifted between the trees.
“Get down,” Joe hissed, dragging the man to the floor and gripping his coat tight. He crawled quickly to the side, pulling the man with him. “This way. Get behind the bush. Keep quiet, all of you, or I fucking swear, what I do is gonna be far worse than anything that cop does.”
Author Bio
Matt Doyle is a pansexual/nonbinary author, voice actor, and pop culture blogger from the UK. Matt specializes in horror and sci-fi fiction, sometimes in an unusual or experimental form.
| Author Website | https://mattdoylemedia.wordpress.com |
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