"a visionary work of twisted art."
-Athena Schaffer
(aka The Crowgrrl)
"A compelling story that keeps you guessing until the very end."
--Eternal Night
"...a macho, tough-guy sensibility pervades his...bloody, staccato-delivery of this Mafia-tinged horror show...set 60 years ago in the Hell's Kitchen underworld of New York City, as a race of shapeshifters congregate for an orgy-infused festival and a blood-spilling battle for power..."
--Karen R. Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A wild ride centering around an underworld of shape-shifting creatures, bringing Clive Barker's NIGHTBREED to mind, and like Tom Piccirilli's HEADSTONE CITY ... Think an acid trip edition of NYPD Blue merged with the cult film SOCIETY, and you pretty much know what to expect. Fans of monster-infested tales will enjoy the strange ones on display here, several who would fit perfectly in a Lovecraft story."
--Horror Fiction Review
"Frank Cavallo cleverly uses creatures of myths and legends to further the tale as the audience wonders what is good and evil and who lines up where including the protagonist. Dark fantasy fans will cherish this urban thriller."
--Harriet Klausner
The sky above Manhattan was black. Storm clouds gathered, blotting out the stars in the west and battling with the moon. Cold mist loitered over the city. Frost crystallized on windows and exposed steel. Snow threatened.
From the north, a brood of crows split the fog in a ghostly descent of black feathers.
There were ten, then twelve, or perhaps only nine. The dim made it hard to discern. Whatever the number, the flock turned and dove when they came close upon the broken cross that crowned the spire of an old church. All moved as one, and all landed in unison upon the iron and brick steeple—the highest point in the area.
Though no one was looking, and no one would have seen the change, the birds waited in silence. Until a bank of clouds swept briefly over the moon, robbing what little light there had been from the city.
When the clouds passed, and a scattering of moon-glows once more lit the steeple, the birds were gone. Sean Mulcahy rested there, naked but for a tattered black overcoat. His bare skin was drained of color, bone white and stark against the night.
Like the ghost of a failed saint, he clung perched atop the fractured church spire, haunting a domain he had long ago rejected. Though his form was nearly normal in other respects, his face was still. His eyes gazed forth in emptiness, sunken deep into an alabaster visage that was only vaguely human.
Fingers that stretched absurdly long wrapped themselves like twine about the rusted iron base. His beaten coat flapped in the wind, a dark and ersatz flag over a dark and grim neighborhood.
What little remained of the cross that had once presided over the cathedral heights cracked and fell away when his unnatural grip loosed. His skin, his limbs and his face all began to shrink and to grow paler until the whole of him seemed almost transparent. Then, like glacier ice melting into the dark of the sea, his feigned humanity dissolved into pure liquid. In a matter of moments, the stuff of Sean Mulcahy ran in streams down the side of the steeple and over the church roof like rain.
Once it had seeped through the ashen-cracks in the ceiling timber, all that remained upon the spire was the once-elegant overcoat. Snagged upon the jagged metal, it continued to flap in the wintry air.
Here's an interview I did for The Lucifer Messiah with the Crowgrrl, Athena Schaffer, reviewer and purveyor of all things dark and sinister. (It's the 5th spotlight on the page -- just click on the crow and scroll down).
Sadly, Athena passed away recently, but her site and her enduring love for the occult live on. She was one of the first boosters of my work as well as one of the first people to ask me for an interview.
She will always hold a special place in my heart.