Here you will find small snippets from many of the novels Stuart is Working on or has published! Thanks for visiting and keep an eye out on the store and your emails for when the next book will be available to purchase.
An Excerpt from:
The Hymns of Withered Men
The creature’s voice slithered forth, emerging from behind the ragged veil of its dress, a living tapestry that cascaded outward and was pinned cruelly to the walls, sprawling like veins of corruption across the ceiling, swallowing the entire hut in its decaying hold. “I have heard whispers, Apostle,” the monster spoke softly. “Of a God who does not watch from on high, hidden behind the splendor of His glory, but one who walks amongst us; one who might just forgive, a King who might just save.” Its voice trembled, faltering as though the very thought carried an unbearable burden, too immense for its withered body to uphold. The dress, stained and tattered, stretched even further, it shifted and moved as if it were a part of the monster itself, as if it were its very skin, filling every corner of the room. Beneath its hem, the creature’s fingers crept forth, they were gnarled, and very long, too long and they crumbled out seeking air and freedom from the prison of its fabric. Eliphelet’s sole remaining hand tightened fiercely upon the sword’s hilt, his heart convulsing within his chest as though clasped by a hand of ice. “Heresy,” he whispered hoarsely, speaking to himself more than the abomination before him. Yet, the beast remained silent, watching him from shadow-filled eyes, empty wells urging him to acknowledge the chains that he himself wrapped tightly around his own heart.
With a determined breath, Eliphelet drew forth his blade, he positioned the gleaming tip just beneath the creature’s pale, sagging throat. “If you hadn’t just saved our lives,” he growled softly, “I’d strike you dead for such blasphemy.” He paused, his gaze piercing the shadows where the creature’s hidden face lay. But the monster remained still and silent, Eliphelet grunted, “A King, you say?” he mocked bitterly. “And you believe this child poses threat enough?”
“Threat?” The creature wheezed a brittle laugh, like the rustling of dried leaves. Its emaciated arms reached upward from beneath the garment, stretching toward the heavens pinned to the ceiling. “My sweet Apostle,” Abemelech whispered, “the skies themselves weep at the hour of His birth. He is not only the reckoning we have long feared, He is both beginning and end, judgment and salvation.” The creature’s lips curled into a weary, knowing smile, as a rattling chuckle emanated from deep within its frail chest. Eliphelet snarled, “Then let him come clad in glory or madness, I care not.” Abemelech interrupted him, “But you Apostle, shall not bear witness to the one that does not come with a sword but one that is to become it.” Eliphelet put the tip of his blade onto the monster’s throat. But the creature did not frighten, it only smiled and said, “The death of Abemelech,” it paused and nodded to itself, “a monster such as I; will die here… or die there… yet anywhere I die.” Its gaze drifted, unfocused, lost to a vision only it could see. It looked back up at Eliphelet, “Do what you will, Apostle,” it whispered, with a finality that seemed to pull the very air from the room.
An Excerpt from:
THROUGH THE THROAT OF MADNESS
THE BLACK RAINBOWS ARE
Avery had clawed her way from the marsh’s black gut and lay naked upon its shore, her body trembled against the earth’s cold breath. Around her, the trees had twisted jaggedly toward her as though she were the sun, and had always been there. But the ink of the marsh had not released her and it did not move like water, it did not seep or stain, it breathed. It knew, and it coiled up her legs with hunger, not dampening her skin but devouring it, whispering its way into her flesh. The air was still, as wind did not exist in a place like this. And from behind the trees, it came. It did not walk. It folded. Its body was a lattice of brittle ruin, collapsed inward and bending in upon itself. Her limbs were dreadfully wrong and her knees, set adrift from their sockets, bent in every direction. Her legs were impossibly long and stretched upward around its own torso, past its face and over its head, planting her feet in the mud behind her back. It fumbled over itself, as if her body was like a scaffold to climb over. Her arms, boneless in their horror, coiled around its legs as it climbed the desecration of its own design. Its head jerked with violent and involuntary twitches as she dragged herself forward. The jaw was unhinged and rattled against its chest, and from the yawning cavern of its throat, a thick, glistening slickness poured, drooling in viscous ropes that clung to its skin like oil spilled from a ruptured vein. Its flesh was a fevered landscape of decay, shifting between spoiled violets and necrotic greens. As though the marrow inside its bones had liquefied into ink, her moistened rot bled through its engorged pores, pours that stretched too thin over misaligned joints. Its bones cracked with each movement, resetting and splintering again, rolling loose beneath paper-thin skin, like the wet pelt of something skinned too soon.
Avery could not move. The ink had taken root inside her, slipping between the hinges of her ribs. She felt it slither into her lungs, her veins, her very thoughts. Her brother had been right; she should never have come back. The thing’s fingers, jointed in too many places, reached toward her face, beckoning with a tenderness that curdled in its monstrous form. Avery tried to run, but the fear had swallowed her whole, animating her body as though it were no longer hers to command. Breath failed her. Thought failed her. She should not have returned.
The thing lifted its head, or what was left of it. Its face was a ruin of shifting states, flickering between rot and something that had never lived at all. Lips, if they could be called that, had been carved into place, an imitation of form rather than something meant to be. They stretched too thin over shattered teeth, wet with the shine of the marsh. And its eyes, too human, and unearned in their authenticity, stared at Avery with a knowing that should not have been possible. They were eyes meant to deceive. Eyes that should not be trusted.
“I have waited so long,” it gurgled like splintering wood from a forest in the deep. It cried as it reached for her, but at Avery’s whimper, its hand recoiled. “It’s okay, little one,” it coughed through the wet ruin of its throat. It sat at the bank of the marsh, its limbs folding grotesquely into themselves. It peered at Avery, its lips stretched into a mimic of what she thought a smile could have looked like. It had no eyelids to blink, yet it giggled, a shrill, broken thing, as if willing Avery to laugh along. Its gaze traveled the length of Avery’s bare body, lingering, calculating. Then, it saw the cord. The umbilical tether, pulsing, slick with the ink of the marsh. The thing followed its length, tracing it back to the water’s surface. It tried to swallow, but the ink drowned it, spilling thick from its mouth like the run-off of something curdled and rotten. “It’s okay,” it choked, gurgling through the wet. It reached for Avery again, “I can remove that for you.” It brushed its fingers through her hair, moaning as it did. A black wound tore through the sky, leaking diseased reds and sickly yellows, streaks of white that dripped like candle wax. They fell, sluggish and inevitable, dissolving into the marsh below, bleeding into the ink like white rain.
An excerpt from
The Worms of Broadmoor
A small soot colored sac slithered out of the squirrel’s broken jaw. Panic took her over as she scrambled to her feet, meaning to run but the worm had already attached itself to her shoe and began squirming up her leg. She ran through the opening in the fence and up the hill, slashing at her ankle but slipped again, sliding down the embankment. Begging aloud, she lifted her pant leg to see something burrowing its way into her flesh. She screamed and clawed at it, crying as she prayed. She felt the skin of her leg rise and fall under her palm, as she followed its movements up to her thigh. It had left a small hole in her ankle, that looked nothing more than a small cut. It stopped moving, it stopped hurting….
An excerpt from The Mountain Known as Brine
As they drew closer to the whale, the full horror of its condition unfolded with devastating clarity. The stench hit first—a nauseating miasma that clung to the air like a rancid fog, a sickening blend of brine, rot, and a cloying, sweet decay that made their stomachs churn.
The whale’s majestic skin was stretched taut over protruding bones, the smooth, silken surface now a ghastly network of innumerable abrasions and deep, festering gashes. The sand around the leviathan was stained a deep, morbid crimson, soaked through with the creature’s blood. The ground beneath it was a treacherous quagmire, slick with gore, ocean and mud.
The whale’s eye, mysterious and as dark as the deepest abyss, slowly turned toward the gathering crowd. In its gaze was a profound, unbearable sadness and a haunting reflection of ancient wisdom. It was as if the creature held within its sight the weight of countless oceans and endless migrations, yet now, it recognized the finality of its fate. There was a plea in that eye, a desperate, unspoken request for mercy, for an end to its unbearable suffering. As the people of Wharf Alberbour stepped closer, the whale’s massive body trembled, each breath a laborious struggle. Once more, that sorrowful eye fell upon them, but this time, there was a change in its gaze—a resigned understanding that they were powerless before its enormity, mere ants to a titan. The whale no longer sought an end to its suffering from them; instead, it seemed to seek their presence, a silent company to witness its final moments, as if all it desired was not to die alone.
An excerpt from Eyes to See Glory
Lining the cathedral walls, nestled between towering columns, were statues of nuns hewn from the same cold stone as the church itself. These life-sized figures, locked in eternal devotion, knelt in postures of anguish and suffering, their silent torment frozen in time. Each statue was captured mid-supplication, hands outstretched toward the heavens in desperate, pleading gestures, their stone fingers seemingly grasping for mercy that would never arrive. Their faces, carved with excruciating precision, were tilted upward in a perpetual cry for deliverance, and their lips were parted in silent, eternal wails. The robes adorning their emaciated forms, though carved from solid rock, appeared to ripple as if caught in a relentless wind. The folds of the garments twisted and whipped around their bodies, frozen in chaotic motion, giving the impression that these figures were caught in a struggle that never ceased. The sharp, angular edges of the fabric clung to their skeletal structure, the tension in the stone folds suggesting the immense weight of their penance, as if they bore the sins of the world on their brittle, fragile lives. Despite the rigidity of the medium, the craftsmanship was disturbingly lifelike. Every fold and crease in their habits had been sculpted with such meticulous detail that it seemed the fabric might at any moment shift and rustle, as though the statues themselves were on the verge of joining the living in prayer. Their faces were a study in agony—deep lines of torment etched into their gaunt cheeks, hollow eyes staring not downward in submission, but upward, locked in an unrelenting gaze toward the unreachable summit of the mountain. The empty sockets, shadowed and gaping, gave the statues an otherworldly quality, as if they were blind to the world around them yet saw something far beyond the reach of the living. They stared, unblinking, into the heavens, searching for a salvation that would never come, their devotion unanswered, and their suffering endless.
Caleb's every muscle propelled him through the woods. The forest's boughs and branches sought to hinder his progress, but he pressed on, picking himself up from his broken ballet. The air around him hummed with his frantic energy, his breaths drawn in quick, like fragile whispers against the leaves. Despite the exhaustion, he ran deeper into the woods, his son's name an invocation on his lips, each one falling short, a physical reminder of his fatherhood. And then, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed it - that log. It hung suspended in time, a familiar enigma that seemed to beckon him with secrets. Recognition sparked in his mind yet again, the knowledge that this was not the first time he had encountered it. But there was no time for contemplation, for the forest seemed to twist and coil around him. Was he trapped in a cycle? A roundabout of his own making, or was there something herding him like a lost lamb? The questions flickered like fireflies in his thoughts, elusive and enigmatic. With every heartbeat, a distant melody reached his ears, the sound of water, a siren's song echoing through the trees.
