Fred Wiehe

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Nightmares and dreams war inside you. Nightmares twine along the veins and through the synapses, into the nerves and beneath the skin. They skulk in the darkness that surrounds your heart. They're always with you. They are you. They're a version of you that has gone too far, done things you can't take back. They lie. Dreams lie too. They, however, dwell in the light, in the open. They shine on your face out of the sun, and where before you saw darkness in the face of the stranger on the street, you now see the kindness in their eyes and the upward curve of their lips. Dreams light the way forward. Nightmares seek to drag you back. They're always fighting for control of your body, but only you can decide which one wins. This is what master storyteller Fred Wiehe shows us through his achingly raw prose and poetry in The Collected Nightmares, that you can fight for the dreams, or sink into the darkness and let the nightmares take you. Every one of Wiehe's characters-the struggling writer confronted by the sins of his past. . . . The young witch who's the only thing standing between a small town and the evil that lurks in an ancient tree on its outskirts. . . . The man visited in the night by a beautiful but very, very cold woman. . . . The three teen friends who play with demons beyond their ken. . . . The vengeful patrons of a horse stable. . . . The monster hunter who fears he might be the worst monster of all-make unexpected choices. Read the two novellas, twelve short stories, and seventeen poems contained within, and then ask yourself: Which will you choose?

Aleric Toma Bimbai is a two-hundred-year-old Rom, Gypsy, and a legend among his people. He hunts monsters for bounty, a gun for hire, with secrets as dark as midnight in a graveyard. He is a hero and rogue rolled into one, with preternatural powers of his own, only slightly better than the supernatural creatures he hunts. His exploits border on the mythical and the legendary. His is a land where good versus evil in a never-ending battle for supremacy, and in his world a very thin line separates the two. He walks that line every night. He is in a constant struggle to remain on the side of good, but he must often cross over to the side of evil and meet his adversaries on their ground. Defeat is not an option. He is a hero who believes that the end does justify the means, and he will do whatever it takes to win and to stay alive to fight another day. To that end there is a price to pay. But he pays it willingly, sacrificing eternal salvation for his own soul to help make the world better for all. Aleric's task this time is to save a zombie rather than exterminate it. But Wasso Wonko is no ordinary zombie. He's different. He can still think. He can talk. Besides, Wasso is also Gypsy. Aleric soon uncovers an immoral alliance between local doctor, Wilhelm Ratterman, and the self-proclaimed King of the Gypsies, Carranza Tene. Tene is supplying his own people as guinea pigs for Ratterman's bizarre experiments. Ratterman is in search of a serum that will not only give him strength and courage but also immortality. But he's foolishly using the zombie virus as a catalyst in his serum. Under the guise of free flu shots, the doctor's testing that undeadly serum on the Gypsies that King Tene supplies him. Is there an antidote? If so, can Aleric find it in time to save Wasso from his undead existence? To complicate matters, Wasso goes missing. Ratterman's serum-a Molotov cocktail of chemicals, zombie virus, and now vampire blood-succeeds only in regressing the doctor back through evolution, transforming him into a rampaging, primitive beast-a Neanderthal. King Tene puts a contract out on Aleric's head. Pearsa, Aleric's new girlfriend and boojo woman is running a scam on an old woman, and both she and her mark go missing. Aleric believes that Jeta, his two-hundred-year-old vampire wife, targeted Pearsa in a fit of jealous rage. What's worse, Jeta's vampire lover, Kinski, is set on ripping out Aleric's heart-you don't want to get vampires jealous. Aleric must find the antidote if it exists. He must now track down both Wasso and the Neanderthal. One, he must save. The other, he must destroy. Pearsa's life also depends on him finding her. But he must save her without harming Jeta in the process, for he and his vampire bride have a relationship that is not only long and dark but twisted and complicated. And to succeed, Aleric must fight his way through King Tene's Gypsy henchmen, an assassin bent on collecting a high-priced fee, and the pissed-off vampire Kinski. To succeed he must simply stay alive, for he is the world's best hope and last line of defense against evil. He is Aleric: Monster Hunter.