This is the blog of Samie Sands, author of Lockdown. There will be many great books and projects reviewed here. For more, check out thelockdown.co.uk.

Wednesday 11 April 2018

Carnival Of Fear (Creepiest Show On Earth Book 1)

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Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls!

Step right up to the darkest carnival you’ve ever seen.

Do you like puppets? Well, we have a marvelous one. This poor little thing was left all alone to die, only to wake up with a taste for revenge.

If smiling, red-nosed clowns bore you, you’ve come to the right place. Just follow the bloody path of mutilated clowns, and it will lead you to a room filled with gruesome revelations.

But that’s not all.

Ready for a mind-bending experience? Wonderful! Our contortionist won’t just showcase her extreme flexibility, she’ll also shock you with her insatiable appetite. Want to know her secret?

She’s cursed—but shhhhhh, don’t tell.

So grab your friends and join us as we create the most bone-chilling atmosphere.

Because we’re coming to your town…

…and we’re bringing the Carnival of Fear.


Sample - Tulle's Freaks by Samie Sands...

This is so weird. So, so weird.
My hands fall onto my hips and I stare around the dusty ass room with a sense of unpleasant anticipation. This house is creepy as hell, and I don’t like it one bit. There’s something super eerie about it that I can’t quite put my finger on. There’s a presence in the walls, hanging over my shoulders, peering at me, waiting to see what I’m going to do. I have the uncomfortable feeling it’s going to pounce on me as soon as I move, making my blood ice cold and my heart burning hot.
That isn’t the strangest thing about this, not at all. The oddest thing is the home belongs to my father and I haven’t ever seen it until today, which is weeks after he passed away from a long-term illness I didn’t even know he had. From what I’ve found out about it since his death, the life drained from him quite quickly without any physical disease to explain his demise. No one could really understand it. Even medical staff had been bewildered. He died, almost as if he simply gave up on living.
“Amber, we do not know what happened,” his attorney told me when I begged for some answers. “All I can tell you is what he left you in his will.”
In twenty-two years of life I didn’t ever know anything about him, and I guess that isn’t something that’s about to magically change now he’s gone. Perhaps it’s time to finally accept that I’ll never be able to fill that massive hole.
What I can’t work out is why I’m here right now, why he left me this house. He didn’t want me to be a part of his life, so why his death? I mean, who does that? As far as I can work out, he went out of his way not to see me when he was alive. If he wanted to, he could have found me online and contacted me that way. I have a social media presence just like everyone else. He never did, so I have to assume he didn’t want me.
“Right,” I mutter quietly in an attempt to break the thick silence. “Let’s do this.”
I wander from room to room, wondering what I’m supposed to be doing exactly. I know I need to be here, and while I’m sure I should be doing something with my inheritance, nothing feels right. I don’t particularly want to touch the belongings of a man I didn’t know. That task feels a little overwhelming. Still, I don’t know if I can give up the opportunity to at least learn a small part about the man who fathered me either. Since I definitely don’t plan to live in this weird ghostly home, someone will need to clear it out before it can be sold. I suppose I should at least try.
 I lift up one of the smaller boxes that fill his kitchen. He’d actually labeled the box “crap.” Was he a hoarder? That would be something to know about him. Even a tiny habit is better than no information at all. A box labeled “crap” had to be a good place to start. Not too personal.
I don’t get anything inside. It’s literally crap: screws and nails that mustn’t have fit anywhere, bits of plastic and metal, even some smashed glass. This is all stuff he should have thrown away a long time ago. Nothing to help me learn about him. If I want to do that, I must go deeper.
I perch on a stool by what I assume is a breakfast bar under all those old magazines and peer into a much deeper box on the floor. This one’s labeled “stuff” which admittedly doesn’t bode well either. I suppose the more stuff I can toss, the closer I’ll get to discovering something real.
I pull out old bank statements, photographs of people I don’t recognize at all, newspaper clippings that don’t appear to have anything to do with my father’s life...all which leaves me even more despondent than before. Maybe he left me all of this as a final screw you. Perhaps he hated me and he wants me to spend hours trawling through his rubbish. Who knows?
“What the...?”
My hands curl around something strange and metallic feeling. In among paperwork there’s something solid which intrigues me. I pull it free, letting it go the moment it comes into view because I clap my hands to my mouth in shock.
It falls to the floor with a loud clatter and stares up at me, boring painfully into my soul.
It’s disgusting, absolutely hideous. Of all the creepy things I’ve seen in this house—in my life—this is by far the worst. I can only identify it as a clown mask, though not the kind I ever expected to see. Not a funny, laughter-inducing friendly character who’s here to light up someone’s day. No, it’s the sort of clown who haunts your nightmares and leaves you a shuddering wreck.
The face of the mask is white, except where the paint is peeling away it’s coppery-colored underneath, giving it an antiqued appearance. There’s a creepy red smiling mouth sprayed across it, which weirdly hasn’t been chipped away at all. Truthfully, it’s more a sneer than a smile. It isn’t a pleasant look. My immediate impression is that the mask seems to know a secret, and combined with the thick black rims painted around the eyes, I don’t think it’s a good secret.
Bleep!
“Holy hell!”
I leap into the air as my phone blasts out the text message sound, reminding me of the real world that’s out there. I got so sucked into the image of the mask I forgot about everything else for just a moment. I grab the phone out my pocket and stare at the screen, blinking to bring the words into focus. They remain slightly blurry due to my shaking hands.
Jadis: Yo, Amber. Malcom is having a Halloween party tomorrow night. You in? It’s fancy dress, by the way. Love ya! Jadis xxx.
Fancy dress Halloween party. That’s such a normal sentence to read in this oddly stressful time. Do I want to go? Fancy dress isn’t my thing after all.
Then I look at the clown mask once more. Now that I’ve been dragged out of the horror of this house and I feel more like myself I can see it’s just weird-looking. It would be fun to dress up as something so awful. It would certainly be different!
Amber: Sure, why not? See you then! A x.

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