Wednesday, October 3, 2012

The Home for Halloween Giveaway



 Enter the Rafflecopter to win your choice of a Kindle Fire, Nook HD, or Kobo Glo, as well as signed books and audiobooks in the Home for Halloween giveaway from author Scott Nicholson.

The giveaway celebrates the launch of paranormal thriller The Home. Experiments at a group home for troubled children lead to paranormal activity—and the ghosts are from the home’s dark past as an insane asylum. 

In development as a feature, it’s available in ebook at Amazon US, Amazon UK, BN.com, Kobo, and Smashwords.


EXCERPT: THE HOME
By Scott Nicholson
(From Chapter 8)

Inside Thirteen, the boy’s outline was faintly visible in the darkness. His eyes snapped open and his gasp was audible over the microphone. The heart rate graph rose in intensity. Bondurant clenched his fingers.
Darkness. He’ll think he’s back in the closet. Now he’ll scream.
The boy sat up. On the monitor, the twin lines rose and fell in parallel motion. The brain image glowed in bands of red and indigo.
“See the upper reading?” Kracowski said. “That’s his energy field as measured across the meridian points I devised. Did you notice how erratic the reading was before my treatment?”
“You mean before you gave him electroshock?”
“Mr. Bondurant, that’s a crude comparison. I’m not a psychosurgeon. I don’t try to cure by destroying the brain. I don’t give frontal lobotomies, or whatever term they use these days for systematic depersonalization. I merely drive away the traumatic residue that blocks the normal functioning of the brain’s neurotransmitters.”
Gobbledygook, Bondurant thought. Kracowski’s technobabble was as bad as the counselors’ psychobabble.
Mario looked around, unhurried, curious. It had taken three grown men to restrain the boy during his first night here, when the lights were turned out in the Blue Room and the boy fled for the exit, clawed at the walls, rammed his skull against the steel door. Now the boy sat in the dark as if meditating with open eyes.
“He’s not screaming,” Bondurant said.
“He doesn’t seem to be uncomfortable in the confined space,” Kracowski said.
The monitor showed the top line on the chart had leveled out while the bottom line rose and fell steadily. Kracowski waved a hand to indicate the pattern. “Calm as a nursing infant.”
“I must admit, the treatment is impressive. How long do the effects last?”
“My initial research shows that it may be temporary. But even if the neurotransmitters must be, shall we say, ‘realigned’ every month, that’s a much better success rate than any of your shrinks can claim.”
Mario looked at the mirror, and for a moment, Bondurant was struck with the impression that the boy could see him. “What about potential cardiac damage?”
“No chance. It’s as if a light switch was flipped off and then back on.”
“Let’s hope so. One incident, and the state licensing board and the Social Services investigators will sweep through this place like storm troopers. I don’t think they would find your techniques in the chapter on standard practices.”
“Your job is to keep them away. At least until I’ve finished my work. Then they, like the rest of the world, will finally see the light.”


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