INTO THE LIGHT by Solomon Archer

excerpt from
WRAPPED IN BLACK
Thirteen Tales of Witches and the Occult
Sekhmet Press is excited to announce that Wrapped In Black contributor
Solomon Archer
has been named the
2014 Masters of Macabre Winner
Congratulations, Archer!
INTO THE LIGHT
by Solomon Archer
Elliot thought back to when it all started, before the gatherings became ceremonies. Before the rituals demanded sacrifices. Before his gift became a nightmare. Before his life became Mother’s.
Back then, he thought, as if the world before the coven had been simpler. Sundown meant heading home to set the table for dinner, pedaling his Schwinn as fast as he could. Back then, he responded “treasure hunting pirate astronaut” to any adult who inquired what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wasn’t a sullen eighteen-year-old who lived with his single mother on a dead farm, in a state where the only excitement came in the form of questionably regulated rides at the county fair or an occasional late summer hailstorm. Back then, he had a family and a life. He had a father and friends and all of suburban Newton Highlands as his playground.
But most importantly, he didn’t stay up until dawn, sweat-soaked and panicky with his heart in his throat, listening for the sounds of creatures stirring in the fields outside his window. Or hold his breath when they stopped.
Then, sixteen months ago, he met Deacon.
It had been a Saturday in mid-April, and rather than spend the day turning his dead grandparents’ former dream home into his own Midwest nightmare, unpacking the moving boxes that doubled as cardboard furniture, Elliot opted instead to explore the deserted back roads of Delphos, far from the disappointed stare of his mother. He rarely needed to use more than three or four gears on his bike in the flat expanse of Ottawa County, but that was more than enough to generate a welcome rush of spring wind through his hair. He had just passed the county line ten miles from his house, enjoying the solitude and peace, when he struck the pothole.
He hadn’t been watching the road, so he never saw it coming. The front tire dropped into the depression, pitching him over the handlebars. He stiffened reflexively as the ground rushed up to meet him, and hit the road with both hands. The road tore into his shoulder, elbow, back, and legs as he landed hard. He writhed in pain, moaning and cursing at dozens of scrapes, cuts, and tears that had suddenly erupted all over his body.
He sat up slowly, turning his left hand over in his lap and wincing at what was undoubtedly a sprained wrist. The asphalt had shredded the meat of his palms and the pebbles, dirt, and debris burrowed into his skin like powdered acid. A midline scar on his right hand, the result of a playground accident when he was ten, was lost in a map of angry red cuts.
He gingerly took the cell phone out of his back pocket. The screen was cracked, and dark. His bike lay on its side like mechanical road kill, the disengaged chain dangling from the crankshaft like a metal intestine.
Favoring his left leg, Elliot got to his feet, picked up his bike and steadied himself on it as he walked it back in the direction of town. The front tire wobbled on its warped rim and Elliot had to coax it along like a wounded pack animal. It was over half an hour before he spied a vehicle on the watery horizon. It crossed the center line and slowed to a crawl, stopping only a few feet in front of him. The muffler offered a low chuckle and shook impatiently as if it were attached to a sleek classic muscle car rather than a mid-70s Lincoln Continental. The dark brown finish was faded, its exterior coated in dust. Though the do-it-yourself window tinting was pale and bubbled, Elliot couldn’t make out the driver.
He gave the car a wide berth as he walked past, when the window rolled down and a gaunt man with a shock of fluffy white hair leaned across the passenger seat.
“Looks like you’ve had quite a scrape.” The driver’s voice was deep and raspy, belying a lifetime of cigarette addiction if not throat cancer.
“Yeah,” Elliot replied, an automatic response. “Just a little scrape, no big deal.”
“Would you like a ride?”
Elliot tensed. “No. Thanks, really. I’ll be fine.”
The man’s gaze fell on the ruined tire and dragging chain, glided over Elliot’s legs, wandered past the abrasions on his hips and elbows, and came to rest on the blood-soaked handlebar Elliot clutched in a vise-like grip. He shook his head slowly, deliberately.
“And you’re planning on walking back to town?” The driver’s voice had a pitying, amused quality. “How long do you think that will take? Two hours? Three maybe?”
Read the entire story in
WRAPPED IN BLACK: Thirteen Tales of Witches and the Occult
RELEASE DATE: October 18, 2014
Solomon Archer is the 2014 Masters of the Macbre winner for his short story SURFACE TENSION. A criminal psychologist by day and writer by night, Archer is currently the Chief Psychologist of the XXXXXXX State Department of Corrections. He spends much of his time working with serious and dangerously mentally ill offenders, some of whom are not so disorganized that they couldn’t figure out a way to free themselves from their restraints and stab him in the head with an altered food tray. (Incidentally, the going rate for shanking a psychologist is two pounds of coffee and three bags of Top tobacco. You know, just in case you were curious).
Archer’s short stories have appeared in Wrapped In White: Thirteen Tales of Spectres, Ghosts, and Spirits and the new Wrapped In Black: Thirteen Tales of Witches and the Occult. His book PSYKU: A Work of Forensic Prose will release later this year by Sekhmet Press. Follow the lives of criminal offenders, as distilled into 17-syllable snapshots of dark humor and morose commentary, by a forensic psychologist with a Disciple Complex and a rampant case of cynicism.
You can find Archer here: http://psykubook.wordpress.com/
and here: https://www.facebook.com/psykuofficial
October 7, 2014 | Categories: anthology, short stories, Solomon Archer PhD, Wrapped Anthologies, Wrapped Authors, Wrapped In Black | Tags: anthology, excerpts, horror, Solomon Archer, witches, Wrapped in Black | Leave a comment
NEWS: Wrapped In Black
We are very proud to announce the contributors for
WRAPPED IN BLACK: Thirteen Tales of Witches and the Occult
It wasn’t easy to narrow down the fantastic submissions we received, but we think we’ve picked 13 amazing stories from 13 talented authors and we hope you will agree.
Stay tuned for more links, interviews, excerpts, release date, cover reveal and more!
CLICK the NAMES to visit their Facebook Author pages.
Mike Lester
Nick Kimbro
and Special Guest
June 23, 2014 | Categories: Allison M. Dickson, anthology, horror, James Glass, NEWS, Patrick C. Greene, Sekhmet Press LLC, short stories, Solomon Archer PhD, Suzi M, Wrapped Anthologies, Wrapped Authors, Wrapped In Black | Tags: anthology, Table of Contents, witches, Wrapped in Black | 1 Comment
Wrapped In White: Thirteen Tales of Spectres, Ghosts, and Spirits

NOW AVAILABLE!!
Amazon PAPERBACK
Amazon KINDLE
UK Amazon
CreateSpace PAPERBACK
from the creators of WRAPPED IN RED
WRAPPED IN WHITE
Thirteen Tales of Spectres, Ghosts, and Spirits
Tragedy begets terror, then circles back on itself, and a cycle is born that ripples through the worlds of the living and dead eternally, until satisfied by love, tears–or blood…
The creators of Wrapped In Red have struck again, unfurling thirteen gossamer shrouds of woe and weirdness, laying bare the faces of fear that watch and wait in the shadows of cemeteries, the corners of ancient structures, the thoughts we wish we didn’t think . Some will crawl under your skin, some will batter you senseless with limitless otherworldly power, others will walk a line as thin as the veil between us and them.
Leave the lights on for this collection–but know that no precaution will keep its tales from haunting you even into the noonday sun…
March 23, 2014 | Categories: Allison M. Dickson, Bryan W. Alaspa, James Glass, Michael G. Williams, New Release, NEWS, Patrick C. Greene, Sekhmet Press LLC, short stories, Solomon Archer PhD, Suzi M, Wrapped Anthologies, Wrapped In White | Tags: #13GhostStories, anthology, Fiction, ghosts, Short Stories, spectres, spirits | 1 Comment
Coming Soon! WRAPPED IN WHITE: Thirteen Tales of Spectres, Ghosts, and Spirits
COMING MARCH 25, 2014
from the creators of WRAPPED IN RED
WRAPPED IN WHITE
Thirteen Tales of Spectres, Ghosts, and Spirits
February 28, 2014 | Categories: Allison M. Dickson, Bryan W. Alaspa, Ghosts, horror, James Glass, Michael G. Williams, NEWS, Patrick C. Greene, Sekhmet Press LLC, Solomon Archer PhD, Suzi M, Wrapped In White | Tags: #13Ghosts, Allison M. Dickson, Bryan W. Alaspa, Fiction, ghosts, James Glass, Michael G. Williams, Patrick C. Greene, wrapped in white | Leave a comment
The Journey Begins

PsyKu: A Work of Forensic Prose
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
So this is how the next chapter in my life starts.
I’ve been working on this project off and on for about the last 15 years – more off than on, to be truthful – but it’s been present for over a third of my life in some form or another It started when I was in the clinical psychology program at the University of Texas at Austin. A fellow graduate student named Nina and I would periodically come up with haikus during seminars or those god-awful brown bag lunches we were forced to attend during our first two years of indentured servitude. Nina’s interests were in neuropsychological testing and she would periodically slide me a piece of paper with something like this written on it:
Glial blastoma
sneaks along white matter tracts
a thief in the night
I had no idea what it meant but I smiled because she…
View original post 851 more words
December 7, 2013 | Categories: PsyKu, Re-Blog, Solomon Archer PhD | Leave a comment