David J. Thirteen

Author

Writer of dark fiction and strange stories.

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David J. Thirteen

A writer of horror and other dark fiction

Returning to writing in 2012, he garnered over a million reads posting serial novels on Wattpad. This led to the publication of both his novel, Mr. 8, and the novella, The Garrison Project. His short stories have been published in Seize the Press, Lamplight Magazine, several anthologies, and The Other Stories Podcast.

Stories in the Wild

Short stories available in print

Short stories available in audio

My Books

The Garrison Project

No one knows more about urban legends than Molly Heyworth. She’s been studying them for years, hoping to discover a story at the moment it makes the leap from a real-life event to a macabre folktale. When she comes across the Garrison’s video blog, Molly believes her search is over.

The tapes begin with a young couple fixing up their dream house, but events take an eerie turn when a hidden room is found where no room should exist. After the discovery, their home improvements fade into the background as accidents and family tragedies take centerstage.

The videos create an intimate window into the couple’s fracturing relationship and Molly is unable to turn away. The more she watches, the more she sees herself reflected back on the screen. But as she examines every frame and pixel, something is gazing back at her from those captured images of the past — something seeking a new victim to prey upon.

 

Kindle Indigo Barnes & Noble Waterstones

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The Eternal Guest

Dr. Richard Cardin’s is called to a remote estate to bear witness to a groundbreaking scientific discovery. But when he spies a bewitching young woman from his window, the purpose of his visit becomes secondary to the mysteries confronting him. Who is she? Why does she roam the lonely grounds at night? and why does his host claim to know nothing about her?

As Dr. Cardin searches the mansion’s dark hallways and wild, moonlit gardens for the woman and for answers, he begins to question if she’s real at all. Might she be a specter from the house’s past? Or is she a manifestation of his own troubled mind? Or perhaps the answer is more sinister than he could ever suspect?

 

Available for free on Wattpad

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The Atrocity Artist

Among gallery owners and collectors, Skad is known as The Atrocity Artist for his transgressive paintings depicting zombified people fused with transistors, vacuum tubes, and circuit boards. But his true masterpiece, his ultimate atrocity, has been his own existence. To reach his goals, Skad has destroyed more lives than he can remember, all with a cruel blend of indifference, malice, and glee.

Now, reeling from the death of his estranged son and facing his own approaching mortality, he returns to his family home on Lake Sauvage to get some peace. But the community by the water has a long memory, and in its earth, the past refuses to stay dead.

Available for free on Wattpad

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Mr. 8

Psychology professor Denton Reed has been pulled out of the classroom to find a killer. Bodies are turning up all over the quiet town of Bexhill. They are found dismembered and burned beyond recognition in a snow covered farmer’s field, by the abandoned mill, and under the train bridge. The only clue linking the victims is the bizarre figure-eight patterns left behind in their homes.

Denton must use his unique profiling techniques to uncover the murderer, who the police have dubbed Mr. 8. As he begins to unravel the mystery, a strange pattern begins to emerge. Before their deaths, each victim was seized by dark obsessions and inexplicable changes in behavior. Whatever strange forces are affecting the people of Bexhill, they may actually be more dangerous than any killer.

As a wave of insanity sweeps the town, Denton will put his life on the line to get to the source of the madness and risk all to protect the woman he loves.

But is it already too late?

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The Things We Bury – Part 1: In Anticipation of the End of the World

In the spring of 2012, the US government captured a creature that wasn’t supposed to exist. Faced with a monster of myth and nightmares, they built a secret facility half a mile beneath the earth to lock it away. But the scientists and caregivers charged with observing this specimen have been selected because of the control the government has over them more than their skills. Every one of them is emotionally damaged or morally ambiguous. They are so consumed with tragedies from their past they barely notice the humanity of the monster they tend or their own monstrous actions. As they seek redemption for their sins and failures, they are completely blinded to the machinations of the sinister corporation plotting against the creature and everyone in contact with it.

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The Things We Bury – Part 2: No Big Apocalypse

It has been four years since the government captured and imprisoned Amy Westgate after she massacred her family one moonlit night. She has grown up inside the secret laboratory known as The Music Box, where she has existed in two small rooms: a bedroom for when she’s human and a steel pen for when she isn’t. At the age of sixteen, knowing almost no other life, she is content in her insular world.

The team of researchers headed by cryptozoologist R.J. Blass have grown close after the attack on the facility that nearly killed them all. The Music Box is their world too and their old lives are just as forgotten as Amy’s. But when the government orders an end to the project, loyalties will be tested and old wounds will resurface.

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