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    Nothingland
    Nothingland
    Nothingland
    Ebook127 pages1 hour

    Nothingland

    By Katherine Silva

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Nothingland: a dream-like theme park where the dregs of society have gone to languish and remember the by-gone world. Janet has heard the whispers about it through her time surviving in the Deadlands and now, she's arrived at its doorstep. She seeks the blood of Steele: the man responsible for killing her father and tearing her dad away to do hi

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStrange Wilds Press
    Release dateDec 20, 2024
    ISBN9798218577445
    Nothingland
    Author

    Katherine Silva

    Katherine Silva is an ace Maine horror author, a connoisseur of coffee, and victim of cat shenanigans. Her favorite flavors of the genre mix grief and existentialism which she combines with her love of the New England wilderness in her works. She is a three-time Maine Literary Award finalist for speculative fiction and a member of the Horror Writers of Maine and NEHW. Katherine is also editor-in-chief of Strange Wilds Press. You can find out all about her work at katherinesilvaauthor.com.

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      Book preview

      Nothingland - Katherine Silva

      nothingland

      other books by katherine silva

      The Wild Oblivion

      The Wild Dark

      The Wild Fall

      Hallowed Oblivion

      Lost Oblivion

      Orchards

      Dan & Andy’s Scary-Oke Holiday

      Deadlands

      Undead Folk

      Dead Folk

      Nothingland

      The Monstrum Chronicles

      Vox: Book 1

      Aequitas: Book 2

      Memento Mori: Book 3

      Acquolina: A Short Story

      The Collection

      Night Time, Dotted Line

      nothingland

      book 3
      in the deadlands
      by
      katherine silva

      Copyright © 2024 by Katherine Silva

      Paperback ISBN-13: 979-8-218-57743-8

      Ebook ISBN-13: 979-8-218-57744-5

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages.

      This book is a work of fiction. Anything that bears resemblance to real people, places, or events is coincidental and unintentional.

      Content warning: This book contains blood, gore, animal harm, dead animals, skeletons, implied child harm, violence, guns, cannibalism, abandonment, portrayals of dementia, substance abuse, religious ideology, and animal violence.

      Published by Strange Wilds Press

      Print first edition: December 20th, 2024

      E-book first edition: December 20th, 2024

      Cover design by Katherine Silva

      www.katherinesilvaauthor.com

      Strange Wilds Press Logo by MartaLeo

      Cover photos courtesy of Pexels and Unsplash

      One

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      lack and white flashed as the tunnel narrowed... Death arrived for everyone eventually. Janet found herself wondering which of the two colors she should move toward when her time came.

      Sunset radiated over the horizon as the train cleared the mountain passage, as the whistle blew solemnly. Janet turned her attention to the open cargo car door before her and the emptiness of the rail yard as it rumbled by. Dozens of tracks meandered and crisscrossed one another in a dizzying display across the ballast. Disused cargo cars in muted rust colors sat like forgotten blocks.

      The train slowed. Janet summoned everything she had to get to her feet. Her legs wobbled and she caught sight of the rash surrounding her latest tattoo: words from her beloved father, Amos, written in dedication to his husband, her dad, Hugh.

      You need to stay focused. The memory of Hugh’s voice enshrouded her with warmth despite of the frozen early morning temperatures. When she was a child, he always knew how to keep her focused when the world spun too fast. I know you’re tired, but you can’t fall down here. You have to find the Junco.

      The map Hugh had left her on the penthouse floor of the Hierophant Hotel was as plain as it was puzzling. It pointed to where she would find her quarry: Steele, the man who had taken everything from her. He’d had Amos killed which made Hugh do the only thing he thought he could do to protect her…become one of Steele’s hitmen.

      Steele had taken any normal life she could have had and twisted it away. Who knew how many other people he’d done this to over the years.

      He needed to be stopped and she was going to stop him.

      The train crawled along the track. Janet braced herself to jump down but the slow steady sway of her legs as she fought for balance made her wary of going too soon. Normally, she’d have hopped already. She’d be half way across the yard by now making her way toward the glow of sunlight on the horizon. But everything was on fire in her body and in her mind. She’d scratched that tattoo into herself days ago with an old pen, a lighter, and mania driving her on. Her body saw fit to rebel now.

      The train shuddered to a stop. Not expecting the sudden jerk of the car, Janet crumpled from the opening down into the rocks. Her knees and palms screamed as they took the brunt of the impact.

      Get up, Ella, Hugh urged her.

      She struggled to her feet, then pushed her heels and toes through the ballast to crossed the yard. Further and further away from the train, she found herself amongst dirt hills and scrub. Plants shifted in the light breeze. The only sound was the steady whoosh of wind in her ears it fought to carry her away on its gusts and the hood of her jacket flapping against her back.

      It was hard to tell from the map how far the train yard was from Nothingland, the sprawl circled in giant red pen at the center of Hugh’s map. It could have been a couple miles. It could have been twenty.

      As she cleared the first hill, she stumbled on a large rock and went down onto her hands and knees again. This time, her stomach came unglued with the violent drop. She imagined it hula-hooping around her middle as she vomited. All that came up was bile and saliva.

      I know it hurts, darling. But you’re going to survive this, Hugh whispered. She imagined him cupping her soft, child-like hand in his own when she was a girl: when she’d stuck her finger on a thorn, or picked up a pretty piece of broken glass in the train tunnel, when she cried at night because she was so, so hungry… How many times had he said that to her?

      Focus, Ella.

      At her back, she felt it: the shadow. A cold prickling ebbed against her skin as she swung her head up, hair sticking to her sweat-laden face. Lights glimmered in the valley down below, hanging bulbs strung around temporary wooden poles. Someone was down there. Judging by the number of metal trailers and tents, lots of someones.

      On her feet once more, Janet shambled down the hill toward the trailers. At the bottom, she suddenly had the thought: what if they were dangerous? What if they saw her and immediately saw a defenseless, fucked-up woman? The dread nearly pinned her in place. Her hand scooped the wrench from her toolbelt, dried with the blood and brain matter of Steele’s lieutenants back at the Hierophant Hotel.

      They’d just have to be surprised when she didn’t go down without a fight.

      The canvas tents whipped in the wind as she got closer, as she took in the pale red lights creating a hanging border for the strange little camp. A sound reached out to her that she couldn’t quite identify: like someone dropping nails on a metal floor. Once she peered around the corner, her eyes widened in sudden recognition.

      A cage on wheels was hooked to one of the trailers, its metal siding below the bars decorated in bold colors with flourished letters. Centurion’s Magical Carnival. Janet immediately dropped into a memory from her childhood of the circus rolling into town and turning the nearby park into a glorious labyrinth of striped tents, bright lights, and wild animals.

      The creature pacing back and forth in the cage stopped to regard her, shining eyes flickering like pennies. Its sheer size kept her frozen in place, the muscles like liquid gold beneath its smooth fur, bones faintly showing around its ribs. A lioness. She’d seen one as a child at the Centurion’s fair that popped up in Town. It probably wasn’t the same one. Couldn’t be after close to ten years but, then again, maybe it was?

      Hypnotized by its stare, Janet wondered faintly if she could go anywhere and not have it stalk her silently from its enclosure. The longing in its eyes her told her it was hungry. She could tell it was assessing her as either a potential meal or threat. And she hated the impulse that throbbed in her to unlock it from its cage. How long had that poor, poor animal been trapped like this? Forced to perform and entertain in order to survive? It wasn’t right.

      But now wasn’t the time to let a voracious animal out even if she could find the keys. She needed to find a place to lay low until she could rest. She needed to—

      The animal chuffed at her, the sound echoing in through the small space as its head bobbed up and down.

      The scuffs of boots alerted Janet moments before she wrestled herself behind the other side of a tent. A metal door banged against the outside of the trailer towing the cage and footsteps crunched in the dirt.

      Easy, old girl, someone muttered. What are you making noise for?

      The voice made Janet want to abandon her hiding spot. If not for her staunch paranoia, she might have. While it wasn’t familiar to her, the timbre was laced with concern for the beast and that filled her with a kind of hope she hadn’t had in what felt like forever. A hope she hadn’t felt since she had watched her fox friend playing in the grass behind her old home.

      Before he was killed.

      Before she found out who killed him.

      Her momentary lick of anger was snuffed out by a darkness falling across her along with the

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