The Skinner

In the dying Appalachian town of Red Creek, Deputy Sarah Vance thought she'd returned to face only the ghosts of her past. Then she found the deer carcass hanging in the rain-soaked woods-skinned, stretched, and crudely stitched over something horrifyingly familiar: pieced-together human skin.

The grisly 'art' points to Elias Thorne, the town's reclusive taxidermist, a man whose morbid creations already haunt the fringes of sanity. Sheriff Brody, desperate to quell rising panic, sees a simple case: a freak finally snapped. But as more grotesque effigies appear-human remains fused within animal pelts, displayed with chilling deliberation-Sarah feels a deeper wrongness, a terrifying sense that this isn't just murder, but a gruesome warning.

When Thorne is arrested, his cryptic words about 'preservation' and 'things that hunt' seem like mad ramblings-until Sarah uncovers his family's secret journal. Generations of Thornes haven't been killers, but terrified witnesses, documenting the 'Spliced': horrific fusions of human and animal stalking Blackwood Forest for centuries, drawn to fear, and converging on the poisoned heart of the abandoned Black Creek Mine.

Suspended by her disbelieving boss, hunted by forces she can barely comprehend, and haunted by a past failure she can't escape, Sarah is the only one standing between Red Creek and an ancient entity preparing to reclaim its territory. Armed only with a dead man's terrifying legacy-notes on cold iron, forgotten herbs, and sonic frequencies-she must race against the new moon.

Can Sarah decipher Thorne's desperate defenses and confront the nightmare dwelling beneath the mountain, or will she become the final, stitched-together testament to Red Creek's terrifying decomposition?

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NOTE: Knowing that some readers have strong feelings regarding the use of A.I. in book publishing and for transparency, I wish to disclose that A.I. was used in the final process of proofreading and editing this story to produce a cleaner, tighter narrative. My Beta Readers appreciated this and my hope is that you will too.