The Autumn People

This collection of morbid short stories crawls out of the fevered imagination of a man who has spent far too many nights staring into dark woods and listening for things that shouldn’t be there. They are the kind of stories that creep up on you slowly, the way cold autumn air slips beneath a door. Most of them were first told the old way, face to face, around autumn campfires where the flames crackle and the shadows stretch long behind the trees. Especially on Halloween, when the night itself seems to lean closer to listen and ghost stories are not merely welcome but expected. No, more than that. On a night like that, they are required. Within these pages you will meet the Autumn People, cruel and patient beings who arrive with the turning leaves and the smell of frost in the air. They do not come with kindness in their hearts. They come for anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path. You will hear of shadows that do not behave like shadows should, things that peel themselves away from the wall and move with quiet purpose, searching for new souls to drag into their growing darkness. You will encounter the restless dead as well, family members who claw their way back from the grave, not always for vengeance, but sometimes for love. Sometimes to protect what little of their bloodline remains. And sometimes simply to bring the last of their kin home. These stories are only the first door opening into the darker corridors of the imagination of Michael Summers. Step through if you dare. But tread lightly. Once you wander too far into this place, the night has a way of closing in around you. And not everyone who enters its shadows finds their way back out again.