ABOUT SEAN
Sean Stone is an odd British man who has always loved two things: telling stories and entertaining people. His love of horror started with the weekly Spine Chiller magazine and a sister (one of many) who used to read him short stories by Stephen King. This early exposure to horror had a profound influence on him and he started to write horror stories of his own. They were not good.
He continued to write, told stories to friends at sleepovers, and even wrote his own soap opera. He had a huge lever-arch binder that he wrote in religiously every day after school. His sister’s (a different one) ex-boyfriend told him if he put the same amount of work into his school work he’d be a genius. Sean didn’t want to be a genius. He wanted to be a writer.
For some bizarre reason, he decided to move to Liverpool for a brief period. While there, his brother-in-law (husband to yet another sister) read some of his work and then asked if his writing was so bad because he lacked life experience. Being only 19, his life experience was rather sparse. So, off he went to get some more.
He located the very centre of the world in Turkey and there he discovered a cave called “The Heart of Darkness.” The cave went deep underground and navigating its tunnels was a treacherous endeavour. Skeletons belonging to past explorers littered the floor with no sign of what had killed them. The farther he went the more skeletons he found.
He soon came to a mist-covered lake filled with twinkling orbs that illuminated the black water. He was wondering how he would cross the lake when his eyes fell upon a small wooden rowing boat that had seen far better days. No sooner had he seen it than he heard a terrible clicking sound echoing behind him. Turning back the way he’d come he saw silhouettes in the tunnel. He squinted his eyes and peered through the dimly lit cave until he realised what he was looking at. The fallen skeletons had risen and were shambling toward him.
He hopped in the boat and without a second thought he rowed away from the rocky shore. The water was thick like treacle and rowing through it was like dragging a bag of bricks up a mountain. Every now and then something snagged the rotten oar and he had to use all his strength to keep hold of it. Just when it seemed his energy was all but spent, Sean reached the distant shore.
He clambered out of the boat, arriving at a forest of dark stone trees. The trees stretched up, their branches scratching the jagged roof. Across the floor skittered rat-like creatures with too many eyes and not enough limbs.
Sitting on a stone stump with nothing but rags to cover her, was a withered old crone, her body cracked and wrinkled beyond human years. Her skin was peeling away like leather on an old pair of shoes. Exposed tendons clung to her bones like strings. In her monstrous hands she clutched a newspaper dated three years in the future.
“I paid a terrible price. My sacrifice was mine and no one else’s,” she croaked with a voice that hadn’t been heard for decades. With each word she spoke a tuft of wiry white hair fell from her head like the white remains of a dandelion.
With what little energy she had left she raised a bony arm and pointed at a crimson door standing between two trees. “Go on,” she whispered.
The door creaked open as Sean approached and the crone began to laugh and weep at once. Sean looked back at her and saw that she had fallen from her perch and as she writhed about on the stone floor, her body was crumbling to dust and granting her a long-awaited rest.
Heart thumping in his chest, Sean stepped through the door and into what he knew was the final chamber. The door slammed shut behind him. Shadows extended from the walls which they hid, seeping into the very centre of the room where a single orange light hung suspended above a hole in the floor. A hole just large enough for an arm.
Sean knew the choice that lay before him. Reach into the hole or turn back and take the crone’s place on the stump outside. He dropped to his knees and thrust his arm in before he could think too much about it. His fingers brushed against metal. A lever. He gripped tight and pulled. Dozens of spikes pricked his spin from his wrist to his elbow. He howled in anguish as he felt his blood pour down his flesh, running into the bottom of the hole.
An icy chill swept over the chamber like an invisible wave. The room spun around him as the hole continued to steal his blood. Suddenly the spikes retracted and Sean screamed again. He rolled onto his back, pulling his arm free and clutching it to his chest. The entire arm was painted red and throbbed furiously.
A soft sigh interrupted his whimpers. The sound danced around the room as light as dust motes in the air. “You wish to leave this place,” said a woman’s voice, as deadly as it was sweet. “So do I. We leave together or we stay together. I know what you want. Take me with you. Feed me souls and I will feed you stories.”
That probably didn’t happen. It’s far more likely that Sean returned to the South, took a few jobs, pursued degrees in English and psychology, and gained some good old life experience.
In 2015, he started writing again and people enjoyed the stories he told. He has since published the Eddie Lancaster and the Jacob Graves series which both did pretty well. Sean currently lives in Kent next to an abandoned house which may or may not contain a mysterious woman who he found in a cave.