New Release – The Doom of Balar

The time has come! The second installment of the Balar series is out now! This is the Doom of Balar, thirteen interconnected stories that build the lore and highlight the characters of this cursed town in the Carpathian Mountains.

This book offers more tales of horror and dark fantasy (much like the first), but this time there is a killer on the loose. I have always been a passionate reader of murder mysteries, so it was an absolute pleasure to write one (excited to do more of this in future, in fact).

Can you solve the mystery? Can you unmask the killer known as the Tailor? Or will you become distracted by the other dark happenings in the cursed town of Balar?

A Dark Mystery

As with all the stories, there are allusions to classics of the gothic horror genre. Those who read “The Patron” in the Curse of Balar, will know what I am talking about. My starting point here was “What if Doctor Frankenstein was a serial killer?” and the story grew from there. Things morphed and melded as I mixed this idea with the underlying lore of Balar.

The result is the mystery of the Tailor, someone who leaves macabre creations comprised of many bodies. Why does he do this? What is his goal?

This, remains to be seen.

There are enough clues here to solve major parts of the puzzle. Can you succeed where Inspector Skender failed?

A Dark Universe

I have spent the last year painstakingly fleshing out the stories, the setting, and the characters. Regular readers will know how much I deplore mysteries without a solution – secrets without an answer. Well, this doesn’t have that. I started from the ending (and from the heart of the great secrets) and worked my way back. Everything is building towards something. Most of the smaller details have thought-out – everything connecting to a cohesive whole.

I hope that you will see some of that at work in this installment. That and the overarching themes and metaphors that are starting to emerge. I do love a good theme.

As I have stated before, the first three books will consist of thirteen interconnected short stories (each). Thereafter, the series will become novels. I initially planned a single volume that caps everything off. However, as a result of the meticulous outlining process, I have discovered that the series needs to be a tad larger. Therefore, it will end in a trilogy of novels (Ghosts, Secrets, and Wrath). This way I can tie up all the loose ends and (hopefully) deliver something epic.

I hope you will join me for the entire run of Balar and beyond (more on my other projects soon).

A Preview

Read on for a snippet from the first story of the Doom of Balar. Much like Iris’s tale from Curse, this acts as a frame story, a foundation from which to explore the town and the townsfolk.

Please note that this segment (and the book proper, of course) contains elements that are not meant for younger readers (18+).

Please let me know what you think of this or about other parts of the series. Your feedback is valuable to me.

Without further ado, let me introduce you to Inspector Skender.

“Tailored” – From the Doom of Balar (Preview)

Monsters are real. They walk in men’s shoes and cast men’s shadows. When they look in the mirror, do they see red eyes and fangs? Or do they see what the rest of us see: the neighbour, the father, the priest, the lover, the old man, or even the child? There is always talk of beasts in Balar: creatures in the woods, shadows under beds, and bumps in the night… Perhaps these things are true enough, but for me, the most monstrous creatures wear human smiles.

— From the journal of Tomas Skender, Inspector of the Balar Constabulary, 26 October 1895

The rope creaked as the early morning wind nudged the body. The bare skin was various shades of ashen blue and purple. The clefts between the stitches were an angry black and white as if the limbs wished to be parted. Several sections of the grisly effigy were bloating, straining the thick thread that kept it all together. Other parts were leaking, running with discoloured bile, and dripping onto the hard earth beneath. Bile, but no blood.

“By the Light,” said the sergeant making the sign of the sun. His breath steamed in the cold air.

Somewhere behind him, a fresh cadet was vomiting into the undergrowth. There was snow in the air. Delicate flakes of white clung to the coils of the rope and to the creaking branch from which the figure was secured. Bare branches formed a canopy of bones, robbing the scene of what little wan light there was. Five figures: two guards, the sergeant, the inspector, and the hanged person, players in a macabre shadow play. The distant clatter of hooves and wagon wheels echoed through the black tree trunks, hinting at the proximity of civilisation. How far it seemed now.

“Like the others?” asked the sergeant. He stared at the doomed person’s feet — the legs were not of equal length. He stared at the ground instead, where snaking roots protruded like hardened arteries. Those were better to look at than this thing. Inspector Skender could not blame him, for that face — such as it was — was a sight that burrowed in the mind and left its mark. A corruption Skender was most familiar with.

He grunted his affirmative. There was no need for words, for the stitches made the matter clear. Like the others indeed.

“Is that number seven?” asked one of the cadets. Behind him, his vomiting companion was wiping his mouth on his uniform sleeve.

Skender shook his head. “Not that simple,” he was surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded. It had been many days since he had last spoken to anyone. Weeks and weeks of dry paperwork and dusty documents. How long had it been since the last? Months and months of studying the old case notes and witness statements. Endless meetings with the captain to justify the existence of his office. Ten months of nothing and now this.

“Things are never simple with our old friend,” he said bitterly. He stepped towards the body and caught it by the wrist to stop it spinning. It was a left arm, skin purple, nails like pale roots, unmarked and unscarred up to just below the elbow. Here a neat row of stitches — thick red thread, as with the others — joined lower arm to upper, the latter slightly larger and out of proportion. He knew that, under better light, the skin tones would be ever so slightly different.

“Observe,” he said pointing to the other arm. “Two left arms. See by the position of the thumb and the palm displaying outward.” He held up his own left hand to demonstrate. “Observe also how clean this hand is and how scarred the other. Healed cuts on the palm.” He examined the hand he was holding, the clean one. There was a dark stain on the index finger — ink, perhaps.

“Never just two victims, is it?” asked the sergeant. His eyes never left the dark pool of wetness below the dangling feet — a left and a right, at least, but one was athletic and hairy, the other slender and womanly.

“Three at the very least,” said Skender. “Neither arm seems in proportion to the torso. This might be due to other factors, we will have to send for the doctor.” He turned the body slightly to examine the front of it. “Genitals removed. Definitely our man.” He glanced at one of the cadets — the one who had spilled his guts. “You there,” he pointed through the trees towards the source of the urban sounds. “There is an undertaker’s not far from here. Do you know it?”

The young man went pale and the fine hair on his upper lip — a bad excuse for a moustache — seemed to bristle. His wide eyes looked from the detective to the body and back again. “Quinnell’s, sir?”

“That’s it. Tell him we have another one — like last time. Ask him to prepare one of his rooms for us. He will be compensated.” He shot a glance at the other cadet — the one who had, thus far, kept himself together. “You. Start questioning the people on their early rounds. They must have seen a cart or something heading in this direction.”

He nodded frantically. “Yes, sir.”

“And cadet,” said Funar, his large pale face creasing into a frown. “Make notes, by the Light. Legible ones this time, Lord save you.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Oh, and both of you, keep the fact that we found a body quiet,” Skender added. “As far as anyone is concerned, we are looking for someone transporting contraband.” He waited for the two young men to scamper off, before resuming his examination of the scene. “Hard ground,” he said to the sergeant. Sergeant Funar — his looming presence had accompanied Skender at every crime scene. Round and slouched with a neck like a ball of dough. His soft face was permanently creased with a frown of disapproval. Cynical and honest, with a penchant for second-guessing all of Skender’s theories. The inspector could work with honest. It was the passivity that grated on him. “What does hard ground tell you, sergeant?”

The man kept his eyes on the wet spot. “No footprints, sir.”

“No footprints,” Skender echoed. He glanced about. “That might explain why it is out here, but…” he trailed off raising a finger into the air, listening to the sounds of the waking town. Even on a cold Saturday morning, the poorer quarters were abuzz. “Why so close? Why not dispose of it in the woods beyond Balar? Why this relatively small copse of trees so close to town? Anyone working the mills could meander through here.”

The sergeant shrugged. “In a hurry, sir, perhaps. I do not know.”

Skender looked up at the rope and its careful knots and then down at the body with its careful stitching. He shook his head. “No signs of haste,” he said. “If anything it is too careful. No. Our man wanted this to be found, to be displayed. No doubt about that.” He breathed a heavy sigh and placed his shaking hands in his jacket pockets, hoping the sergeant would see it merely as a means of keeping them warm. He cursed his aching fingers and how they trembled in the cold. “The question, sergeant, is thus: How did he get a body like this through the streets of Balar without being seen?”

Funar’s frown deepened. His eyes left the spot on the ground and scanned the trees. “Either he came from out of town,” he began, pointing to the southwest, “out past Scaffold Hill or down the old riverbed, or…” he glanced to the northwest, “…he came through town as you say. But, the mills and yards, sir, they start early.”

Skender nodded. “Good,” he said, his breath trailing in the cold air. “If he took the body through the latter, someone will have seen him. We need to ask around.” He glanced up at the branch the rope was secured around. “It must have been someone with a cart or wagon of some description. A thing like this,” he trailed off, not sure what to call the monstrosity of a corpse. “Heavy,” he said. “Unlikely someone carried it all the way. We are looking for someone strong, nonetheless. Our man had to haul the body up to swinging.”

“Are you sure, sir?” asked Funar. “Isn’t it more likely he came through from down there, through the woods?”

Skender grimaced. “Possible, of course, but I am reluctant to pursue that theory.” He gave a knowing look at Funar who returned it with blank incomprehension. Skender closed his eyes for a moment. “Sergeant,” he said, his tone patient, “if we give the captain even the slimmest inkling that the killer lives out there in the woods, he will blame it on the gypsies, and our investigation will be at an end.”

“But, sir,” Funar began. “It’s not impossible. You know the godless Vanrix do all sorts of strange and blasphemous things.”

Skender glanced over at the body. “Not like this. Our man lives in Balar, I know it.”

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I would love to know what you think. Perhaps you have a favourite character or someone you hope meets a bloody end. Maybe one of the stories speak to you. I would love to know. Join the discussion on Goodreads, or the Balar subreddit. I am up for talking about things!