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Tales From the Cemetery On the
Hill is a new book available only online and at book signings where the
author chooses to show up. Clearly, rather than waste time shopping around
with the mainstream market, prolific writer Dale Pierce has seen fit to
deal with his cult following and market to this audience alone. While
Lulu’s books on demand system is not fancy, it enables any author to get
his project out fast and on the market, literally changing the face of
publishing. Clearly, Pierce intends to go beyond Lulu to resell his works
to bigger companies for foreign reprint rights and possibly film. In Tales
From The Cemetery on The Hill there are a ton of things that would make
great film. Someone like Dario Argento should take note.
At the opening of this horror novel, we find The Sin Killer, a
murderous psychopath who believes himself killing for Christ to be a fine
thing. According to his philosophy, if his victims will not give their
hearts to Jesus while alive, they will
do so when dead. Those who know Pierce’s style need not stretch their
imaginations to see what happens next.
Anyway, The Sin Killer visits Hillside Cemetery in the remote parts
of Sugarcreek, Ohio, where he intends to gloat over the grave of his last
victim. Instead, he is confronted by a man in a priest outfit, who
identifies himself only as Traveler.
Traveler seems to be more than something human, for he confronts
the Sin Killer and plays a game with him, taunting him as he takes him
from gravestone to gravestone, each of which offers an encounter with the
supernatural. The dead rise up to speak in the whispering wind, telling
ghostly stories of woe, while the murderous Sin Killer is forced to
listen.
The tales are a bizarre mixture of things. A jealous magician
confronts a rival to force the secrets of his magic tricks from him and
finds out these are not tricks, but real magic. The rival sold his soul to
the devil. Other tales deal with a man attempting to raise an army of
demons to take over the world, by sacrificing his visiting niece as the
last needed victim in his uncanny rituals. A writer makes a fortune by
claiming to have seen the mythical Mothman in Point Pleasant, West
Virginia, but evokes the wrath of the real creature. You kind of get the
drift of things.
The best, though darkest of the tales are the first two:
In They’re Tearing Down Hoe Finn’s Arena, a pro wrestler
confronts the past by returning to the condemned arena in Canton (Ohio)
where he once killed a rival in the ring. In this empty arena, the lights
come on where there is no power, the silent building rocks with cheers and
once again, he relives the deeds from his past.
The ghosts of the empty arena come back to claim their own.
In the next tale, Between God, The Devil & A Pair Of
Horns, an
American bullfighter born in Ohio, but seeking adventure as a novice
torero, leaves his home for Peru. There, he receives a massive goring and
luckily pulls through.
After being released from the hospital, said bullfighter stumbles
upon a bullfighting bar in Lima, devoted to dead bullfighters. He enters
and partakes in an educational program where the narrator delivers a
lecture on death in the ring.
All is fine and dandy until the young man sees his own death on the
video screen.
Fleeing, he finds himself trapped in a netherworld where dressed in
his suit of lights once again, he must confront destiny. The lecturer
comes to his aid dressed in a bullfighting costume of his own and informs
him he too, was killed in the ring.
Now, as all others have done before, the young man must prove
himself in the other world. There are bullfights in heaven…or hell…one
imagines, for the trumpets blow and the gates open before him.
“Who is out there, on the other side?” the young man asks,
wishing to know the audience who will be appraising him.
“Who do you think?” the other man responds and with that they
make their way across the sand in this phantom plaza, where the dead
return to resume their passion of old.
The book ends with one final
story, where the identity of the mysterious Traveler is revealed and The
Sin Killer meets his fate at The Cemetery On The Hill.
A truly creepy piece of work, though not the fanciest production,
this is available for book purchase in the $10.00 range and also a very
economical downloaded e book version for around $2.00.
A mySpace for the book exists at http://www.myspace.com/graveyardpolka
and the actual Lulu page where orders, sample pages and info
may be found exists at http://www.lulu.com/content/5099181
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