Snowball by Gregory Bastianelli

Blog tour: 27 January to 8 February 2020

Synopsis

A group of motorists become stranded on a lonely stretch of highway during a Christmas Eve blizzard and fight for survival against an unnatural force in the storm. The gathered survivors realize a tenuous connection among them means it may not be a coincidence that they all ended up on this highway …

An attempt to seek help leads a few of the travelers to a house in the woods where a twisted toymaker with a mystical snow globe is hell bent on playing deadly games with a group of people just trying to get home for the holidays.

Extract

I’m delighted to share an extract of Chapter 1 of Snowball with you today.

[…] Toby knew approximately which mile marker he was at on the turnpike, which meant it was a few miles between exits, one of the more desolate stretches on the highway, with nothing but woods lining both sides. No easy way to get off. Nobody should even be on it on a night like this.

He unlatched the shovel attached to the side of the truck.

With the wind howling like a freight train, he could barely hear himself think. But another sound joined the night.

Someone calling for help.

He turned toward the front of the truck, the direction the sound was coming from.

It had to be his imagination. The wind screeched too loud to hear anything else. But it came again, a low moan. Someone hurt? Out here?

No. It was a trick of the wind. It just sounded like a person’s cry.

But it compelled him enough to walk toward the front of his truck and around the wide plow blades. Ignoring the snow pelting his now-numbed cheeks, he stared out to where the headlight beams ended, cut off by the swirling snow and dark night.

A figure stood in the road.

Motionless.

Wet snow stuck to his eyelashes and he wiped it away with one gloved hand, the other still gripping the shovel. It was still there. A tall, stout figure.

“Hello?” Toby called, his voice sucked away so that he couldn’t be sure the person had heard him.

He climbed into the snow on the road in front of him, sinking up to his thighs. He struggled to lift each leg and plant it in front of him. When he got a few feet closer, he realized what he was looking at.

A snowman.

What the hell? he thought. Is this some kind of joke? Who the hell would build a snowman in the middle of the turnpike?

There was no mistaking it. Three round balls of snow piled on top of each other. Branches for arms stuck out of the sides of the middle section. A black top hat perched on the head, tilted forward so Toby couldn’t see the face. A red-and-white scarf wrapped around the neck, its ends flapping in the wind.

With everything he’d been through this miserable night, this senseless act irked Toby the most, and he felt like smashing the damn thing with his shovel.

He gripped the handle and took a step forward.

Then the snowman’s head rose, tilting back as its face came into view. Beneath the coal-black eyes and long crooked carrot nose was a black mouth grinning with two rows of sharp teeth.

Toby froze in his tracks, bringing the shovel up against his body defensively, his heart thudding in his chest.

He turned to run, but his feet were stuck. He pulled at his legs until the snow finally released its grip. Toby stumbled through the snow, like wading through wet cement. He didn’t dare look behind him, because he knew if he did, he’d see that deranged snowman lurching after him.

What the hell?!

The snowplow was only a few feet away, but the snow made his efforts so slow, he didn’t think he’d be able to reach it. He tossed the shovel aside, as if losing the excess weight would help. His arms swung wildly, trying to propel him forward through the thick snow. Cold air sucked deep into his lungs, preventing him from screaming. He could hear a swooshing sound from behind.

He slipped and fell into the road beside his front tire. Scrambling, he got up and grabbed the handle of the driver’s side door. It was at that moment when he finally glanced behind him.

Toby saw nothing but the swirling snow.

He opened the door and climbed up into his seat. He slumped back, releasing an exhausted breath, only to continue panting. He removed his gloves and saw his hands were shaking.

A mirage? he wondered. Toby knew tired drivers sometimes hallucinated. Highway hypnosis they called it. Was that what had happened to him? He had been plowing for nearly twenty hours straight, and at his age—

Crack!

A branch smacked against the driver’s side window, causing him to jump. The long branch split into three thinner ones, like fingers on a misshapen hand. It scraped down the glass, etching narrow cracks, as if trying to claw its way in.

No, Toby thought. This can’t be.

He punched down on the door lock and moved to the middle of the bench seat. He shut the headlights off. Maybe it won’t see me, he hoped.

Crack!

The branch came down again, this time on the windshield before him. The three twiglike fingers bent, digging at the glass.

It can’t get in, Toby told himself. The glass is too strong. It won’t break.

The branch pulled away from the windshield. Toby peered out the glass, looking around all three sides of his cab. He didn’t see anything.

A strange sound came, faintly.

Toby turned off the truck’s engine and listened. It sounded like it was coming from under the truck’s hood. A scraping sound. It was getting closer.

Then he realized it was coming from the vents in the dashboard.

Buy the book

Snowball by Gregory Bastianelli can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle and in paperback, and as an eBook from Kobo and iBooks.

About the author

Gregory Bastianelli is the author of the novels Loonies and Jokers Club. His stories have appeared in the magazines Black Ink Horror, Sinister Tales and Beyond Centauri; the anthologies Night Terrors II, Cover of Darkness and Encounters; and the online magazines Absent Willow Review and Down in the Cellar. His novella, The Lair of the Mole People, appeared in the pulp anthology, Men & Women of Mystery Vol. II.

He graduated from the University of New Hampshire, where he studied writing under instructors Mark Smith, Thomas Williams and Theodore Weesner. He worked for nearly two decades at a small daily newspaper where the highlights of his career were interviewing shock rocker Alice Cooper and B-movie icon Bruce Campbell.

He became enchanted with the stories of Ray Bradbury as a young child, and his love of horror grew with the likes of Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell.

He lives in Dover, New Hampshire, in a Colonial home built in the 1700s. He enjoys kayaking, hiking and bicycling in the summer and snowshoeing and racquetball in the winter. Along with spending time with family, he enjoys travelling, especially to Italy where he has visited his ancestral home and relatives residing there and hiked the Path of the Gods on the Amalfi Coast and to the top of Mt. Vesuvius.

Twitter: @gregorybastiane
Website: https://www.gregorybastianelli.com

Blog tour

Thanks to Flame Tree Press and Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for my copy of Snowball and for my place on the blog tour.

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