Rich Cole

Four Stories of Bargains That Should Never Have Been MadeA washed-up horror novelist walks into a dead mall for a book signing nobody attends-and discovers the mall isn't empty. It's been waiting. The coven that runs it needs one more sacrifice, and he has until dawn to write his way out. A traveling salesman takes the wrong exit and checks into a desert motel where the mirrors don't show your reflection-at least, not the reflection you walked in with.
The night clerk has been expecting him. A disgraced archaeologist pours his obsession into a wooden mask from a flea market, certain it's the last relic of a blood cult that never existed. The mask begins to speak. It wants offerings. And a voice actress with multiple personalities is hired to read an ancient book in a recording booth, opening something that slips through-only to discover her fractured mind might be the one cage it can't escape.
Four stories. Four invitations. Four hungers that can't feed until someone says yes. Someone always says yes.