Forest of Bleeding Trees!!!

P. Mattern
Aug 16, 2017
2 min read

This one was the worst, Cop Heywood decided. The face was so mutilated by wounds that looked like they’d been made with the business end of a screwdriver that he wasn’t sure if the swollen face would be recognizable even after the coroner’s bunch cleaned him up. It was obvious he’d been doing what 100% of the able bodied men in Mingo County West Virginia were doing that time of year—hunting for their families. He inwardly winced as he recalled the gouged out eyeballs on the corpse. That crossed the line as far as he was concerned. And the repeated wounds that covered the man’s body indicated that this was not a random attack from some homicidal freak looking for a thrill. Nope, this one had ‘personal ‘written all over it. He was on the fence as far as issuing some sort of official warning about the death count on hunters going up exponentially in the last week. It could be an unfortunate coincidence, but again, his instincts told him this might just be the beginning of something unfortunate. He watched the Mingo county ambulance workers struggle the stretcher containing the body bag up the bank to the highway. He hadn’t recognized the man, but he had obviously been a family man. The fact that he hadn’t recognized him or his truck indicated that he was likely a resident of Pike County rather than Mingo and had crossed to county line to poach on the edge of the MacLuster land. That was another puzzle that he was concerned about lately. It seemed the long lost relatives of Old Man MacLuster were doing a hell of a restoration job on the place. He had glimpsed it, sitting on one of the tallest hillocks around from his patrol car as he traveled around town. It was looking pretty ‘restored’ already, and he’d heard that the Treadwell boy Johnny, the boy that had been screwing the McCoy girl at the bog was working for them now. That seemed odd to him too. Especially since there hadn’t been ANY deaths in the first half of the hunting season before the MacLuster relatives arrived in Tugtown. All of it bore watching. Heywood figured if he needed any information about the strangers he could talk to the resident with the most contact: Johnny Treadwell.

Synopsis

The Forest of Bleeding Trees is a horrific delight, a fast-paced ride that will leave you breathless and exhilarated until you reach the unexpected but satisfying end. First you have the straight-shooting but heroic JOHNNY TREADWELL, a handsome young man with backwoods charm and unwavering devotion to his family. He's also the guardian of a thousand sorrows. Enter the mysterious, Gothic, LILI MACLUSTER, a darkly beautiful daughter of the richest though most preternatural family in town--and keeper of a thousand secrets. In stark contrast is KATRINA MCCOY, the studding blond princess of the town's most prominent businessman--and survivor of a thousand waking nightmares. Together they will fight for their lives in a supernatural turf war that takes place in the superstition and ghost riddled mountains and bogs of West Virginia.