Celebrating National Black Cat Month with 13 Days of Halloween

Dancing in the Shadows: A Tribute to Anne Rice [https://amzn.to/40g2LRn] edited by Elaine Pascale and Rebecca Rowland [from Yuriko Publishing] is free on Kindle Unlimited. If you download the book and read to the end, money is earned for the Animal Rescue of New Orleans.
100% of all proceeds from sales and Kindle Page Reads goes to ARNO as a tribute to Anne Rice. It was the shelter she loved, and she frequently donated to their rescue cats program. Everyone donated their stories, editing, art and more for this project. Cover and interior art by Jeanette Andromeda.
Authors include: C.W. Blackwell, Morgan Sylvia, Greg Herren, Holly Rae Garcia, Douglas Ford, Kristi Petersen Schoonover, Gordon B. White, Tim Mendees, Stephanie Ellis, Scotty Milder, Holley Cornetto, Lamont A. Turner, KC Grifant, Lee Andrew Forman, Anthony S. Buoni, Trish Wilson, Angela Yuriko Smith, Christine Lajewski and E. F. Schraeder.
“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe pt 12
“Gentlemen,” I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, “I delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this, this is a very well constructed house.” In the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all. “I may say an excellently well constructed house. These walls, are you going, gentlemen? These walls are solidly put together.” and here, through the mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.
But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend ! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman, a howl, a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the dammed in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation.
Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!
Thank you for listening to “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe.
