It's Friday, October 6th, the third day in a row the temperature has hit the high eighties. A genuine Indian summer heat wave. Twelve year-old Billy Crowell and his friends are playing homerun derby at Pingree Park when the town’s fire horn starts honking. Everyone stops and counts the series of toots and they decipher the code: there's a forest fire approaching town. Billy and his friends join the firefighters as they attempt to protect their town from the raging forest fire, but the fire isn't the only danger in the forest. Soon Billy is separated from the group, disoriented and lost. Daylight is fading fast and the forest is growing darker by the minute. Before too long, Billy stumbles upon the mutilated corpse of a deer, and the true horrors of the woods are soon chasing after him as night consumes the land...
Author
AKA A.J. Matthews Rick Hautala has more than thirty published books to his credit, including the million copy, international best-seller Nightstone, as well as Twilight Time, Little Brothers, Cold Whisper, Impulse, and The Wildman. He has also published four novels—The White Room, Looking Glass, Unbroken, and Follow—using the pseudonym A. J. Matthews. His more than sixty published short stories have appeared in national and international anthologies and magazines. His short story collection Bedbugs was selected as one of the best horror books of the year in 2003. A novella titled Reunion was published by PS Publications in December, 2009; and Occasional Demons, a short story collection, is due in 2010 from CD Publications. He wrote the screenplays for several short films, including the multiple award-winning The Ugly Film, based on the short story by Ed Gorman, as well as Peekers, based on a short story by Kealan Patrick Burke, and Dead @ 17, based on the graphic novel by Josh Howard. A graduate of the University of Maine in Orono with a Master of Art in English Literature (Renaissance and Medieval Literature), Hautala lives in southern Maine with author Holly Newstein. His three sons have all grown up and (mostly) moved out of the house. He served terms as Vice President and Trustee for the Horror Writers Association. Sadly, Rick died on March 21, 2013.
