Malevolent, is an old-fashioned ghost story told in a contemporary way, containing humour and horror in equal measures.  It blurs fantasy with reality, dreams with the waking moment, and also both sends up and pays homage to the horror genre at the same time.  It is told in first person, as if written by the main character as a true-life haunting story.

I would sum it up as a fantasy story pretending to be a haunted house story.

The length is approximately 65,000 words.

Malevolent: sample chapters

Synopsis (without giving away plot and ending)

Mike Peters, an architect by trade but also an aspiring horror writer, who is the first person narrator of the story, informs us that the story we are about to read concerning he and his family's experience in Stokes Cottage is true, though we may doubt him.

     In the first chapter Mike and his wife Helen view the house and are shown around by Elaine, the woman from the estate agents.  Mike describes Elaine to us as resembling a cat.  During the viewing he gets signals from Elaine that she may be as interested in him, as he makes clear to us that he is in her.

     During the course of the viewing Elaine lets it slip that the local people think that the house is haunted.

     That night Mike has a dream that he is running naked through the woods, being pursued by a large black cat; a panther.  The animal corners Mike and knocks him to the ground, and then makes a transformation into Elaine.

     Mike arranges to meet Elaine at the house without Helen, in a hope that his intuition about her feeling the same way about him is correct.  While standing in the bedroom there and studying his reflection in the window he sees the face of a slightly older man staring back at him.  Mike has been right in his assumptions about Elaine, and they make love passionately and violently against the wall.

     Mike and Helen buy the house and they and their two young children, Danny and Sophie move in.

     Some days after they've settled in, the couple discover a pair of manacles fixed to the wall of the cellar.  For a joke, Helen locks Mike in them, then goes back upstairs and shuts him down there in the dark.  Mike becomes aware that someone is in the cellar with him, but he cant see who it is because it is dark.  Then he suffers a whipping from the mystery person.

     The next day Elaine pays a visit to see how they're getting on in their new home.  Helen goes out and Mike and Elaine make love on the settee and decide to have an affair.

     While Helen is in the garden one day, one of their new neighbours, Christine, who lives down the lane from them, informs Helen of the history of the house, concerning a man called Abel Stokes, one of the bosses who used to own the mill in town, in the early eighteen-hundreds.  Apparently he kept women imprisoned in the cellar at the house and would beat them.

     Helen borrows a book from the local library and finds out more about the house and Stokes ...

Malevolent: sample chapters

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