Shadows in the Heart

Shadows in the Heart
Edited by Carrie S. Masek et al
Whiskey Creek Press
ISBN: 978-1-59374-686-5
Fiction, Horror Anthology
Reviewed by Eugen M. Bacon

Shadows in the Heart is a Jewel of the Quill Anthology by Whiskey Creek Press authors. Being a Halloween collection, the stories are ghastly, now and then crimson stained, time and again ghost seeping.
The Unvanished Hitchhiker by Margaret L. Carter opens the suspense. Trick-n-Treat: Leah is not quite sure why Alice has asked her to stay the night this Halloween. Alice's jumpy state does little to alleviate her concern. And then the doorbell rings…
Allysa Swain is nightly haunted by screaming brakes before a freak car crash in Christine DeSmet's When The Dead People Brought A Dish-To-Pass. A dead man this time comes to visit, undeterred. He is keen on fixing her home for a ‘deadies’ party. Weary to protest any more, Allysa lets him tinker about her house. But discontent to let things be, he raises the subject of her dead little girl... and a whole saga unfolds.
In Carrie S. Masek's Trick or Treat, a Halloween witch makes Derrick and his little sister bipolar. Derrick retains his human form with added ninja capability; Squirt becomes a black panther. And though they might have missed the Halloween dance at Monster Mash, together they make one mean match for the Middle School bullies.
On the date of murdered wife Cathy's birth remembrance, Judge Jake Reynolds moons alone before court in Ghost of a Chance by Karen Woods. He is unwilling to disclose to anyone that deceased Cathy speaks to him still. Or does she? Now he questions his own sanity, more so when Cathy has a love match all set up for him.
As C J Winters contributes her bones in White Elephants, Amy in Karen Wiesner's Papa is haunted by a guilt that even Rand's love is powerless to cure. The couple’s romantic getaway to Woodcutter's Grim (an effort to discover themselves and subsequently perhaps find freedom) turns into one hell of a nightmare.
The collection culminates neatly with The Beast by Jane Toombs, perhaps my favorite of the collection. Something happened at the party, the narrator knows. But what? she doesn’t know; nor is she sure why nobody, including Howard, has come to visit her in her indisposed state. Only the doctor...
Anyone keen on a counterbalance of love, horror, murder and apparition will have a feast on Shadows in the Heart which in turn stirs a keenness to read more of the Jewel of the Quill collections available from the publisher.