District Attorney Bowman Carter has the case of his life. A murder trial. He wins and his future is bright. There is even talk of running for Congress. Then disaster. The man who has spent the last seven years in prison is actually innocent. Carter is not only booted, but a terrible catastrophe befalls him. He is run out of town. Drunk and suicidal, he wakes up in the small seaside town of Port Royal South Carolina. There among a cast of eccentrics, he begins the slow, arduous task of healing—if it doesn’t kill him first.

Time passed. Now he sat slumped, his head resting against cool glass. The stars overhead had given way to harsh lights, cast in rime, and a buzz surrounded him like a hundred different chants from the proselytes. Perhaps they would grant him a final request and cast him into the sea before he woke. It was only a dream. Only a dream. He began to rouse, not knowing if he was still dreaming. He lay on a soft bed. A gift before passing. He tried to focus. A wall curved steeply above his head. He reached a trembling finger, but could not touch it. He panicked. He was in an enormous coffin. But he wasn’t dead yet. He had been buried alive! He flailed in every direction. He struck something solid behind him. Pain flared. Maybe this, too, was a part of his death, to feel the pain of every movement, to feel the pain of a thousand thoughts—forever.

He tried to rise and tumbled off the bed onto the floor. He stood, woozy, but staggered against a sharp edge that punched his thigh. He winced and nearly fell. There were obstacles everywhere. He was on a narrow path. He wobbled step-by-step, bumping against some small protrusion, clouting his shoulder on the edge of a shelf. Damnation was a passageway with traps lying in wait.

Through a veiled opening, he saw a bright light, surrounded by a halo, and spreading in every direction. Bowman never lost sight of it as he plunged ahead. The Light of Life Eternal. If he could only escape this gauntlet. If he could only make it. He saw the end of the burrow ahead, and the light beyond. He despaired, finding the way blocked by a wall. Then to his right he saw the outline of a door. He fell against it, fumbled for some kind of handle. He found it. Turned it. The door opened and he took a step…only to pitch into empty air with nothing beneath his feet. He fell and landed on his hands and knees. The surface was dirty and stuck to him everywhere it touched. He crawled forward toward the light.

He looked up into the luminance, high upon a post. It seemed to shake. There he saw the faces of Fred Flintstone and Bambi’s Aunt Ena in smoke and shadow. Surrounding them was a thick, syrupy odor, sickeningly sweet like decomposition. He squeezed his eyes shut. Suddenly, he crumbled, and began to gush corruption from deep within his gut.

He heard the drawn out voice of the witch. “Yep. That’s just how I found him.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

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