Product Description

At one time John Coffee was a sneak thief, a burglar who slipped into places where he didn’t belong and took things he shouldn’t. When he was on vacation in Trinidad in the Southern Caribbean he broke into a ramshackle unoccupied home and found great wealth. But a sixth sense told him if he stole anything, that it would come back to haunt him in a horrible way. So he backed on out of there, however he couldn’t resist leaving empty handed, so he picked up a worthless looking locket on his way to the door, because it looked like something Carolina, his young daughter, might like.

Unfortunately he delivers the locket to his daughter before he learns the significance of it. It was the charm of the Night Witch, a soucouyant, second Caribbean cousin to the vampire. It contains a potion that allows her to live forever and she wants it back. Coffee has been living on a sailboat at sea, where the Night Witch can’t get to him, but when he sees that his ex-wife has been written about in the papers, he knows the soucouyant has seen it too.

Fearing that the Night Witch will find his daughter, Coffee gives up his life on the run to stand and fight.

Carolina fingers the locket her father had given her as she and her friend Arty are on their way to their first class at RFK Junior High School, when Carolina feels as if someone is watching her. She looks to the moving curtains of an old woman’s house. Someone had been there. That night her mother has a date. Carolina doesn’t like being left alone, but she’s used to it. She’s in her room, about to go to bed, when she hears something outside her window. She tries to put it out of her mind, but she hears it again and she knows for sure there is someone there. She calls Arty, who sneaks out and comes right over. No sooner does Arty gets there when they see a pair of red eyes staring in at them.

All of a sudden her radio turns on by itself, music from the Beatles fills the bedroom and Arty has a quick premonition that those red eyes mean to do Carolina harm. He dives on her, covering her body with his own to protect her from whatever it is that’s out there, when three shots ring through the night and a pain sears along Arty’s back. He’s been shot, but fortunately it’s only a graze. Carolina worries about whether or not they should call the police or the paramedics as she cleans the blood away, but Arty has an abusive father and he’s afraid he’ll get in trouble. He bravely says it’s only a scratch and they go outside and discover a loaded gun on Carolina’s front lawn. Though she hasn’t seen it in years, she immediately recognizes it as her father’s.

It appears as if her father had tried to kill her, but that thought is unthinkable. What the children don’t know is that her father had been doing battle with the thing that had been looking in her window, the Night Witch.

The soucouyant will stop at nothing to get her locket back. John Coffee will stop at nothing to protect his daughter. Arty and Carolina are just children, but they are about to be caught up in a whirlwind that could very well destroy them and in the end there will be nobody to save them but themselves.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #185308 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11
• Released on: 2005-09-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 340 pages

Review
NIGHT WITCH is a fast-moving page-turner I couldn’t put down. Jack Priest is truly the Dark Priest of Horror. -- Ken Douglas, underpaid writer of DESPERATION MOON

This book scared my panties off, but I couldn’t stop reading. Thank God it was a hot night! -- Captain Katie Osborne, sea-going erotica writer

From the Publisher
Once again, in his third horror story NIGHT WITCH, Jack Priest reaches deep into a culture most of us living in North America and Europe know little of, and brings forth a bad thing to stalk and terrorize innocents. In this story two children, through no fault of their own, run afoul of a soucouyant, the Southern Caribbean cousin of the vampire.

There are still those living today that fear the soucouyant. It’s said she lives in that abandoned house at the end of the road, that she comes out after the sun goes down, when the bats replace the birds on the trees. She sheds her skin, turns into a ball of fire as she flies into the dark, descending finally as a blood devouring animal, seeking out young prey. It’s also said that you can keep a soucouyant away from your door by dropping rice in front of it. She cannot enter without counting each and every grain and she’s too impatient to do that, so she moves on to seek a victim elsewhere.

But can you kill a soucouyant once she is on your trail? That’s the question young Carolina and her friend Arty have to find the answer to, because Carolina has something a soucouyant wants, but she doesn’t know it. She knows only that an evil old horror she calls the Night Witch is after her. And it appears that she and Arty are alone in their stand against it. However, unknown to her, her estranged father, who unwittingly set the beast on her, is doing his level best to draw the thing away.

Will he succeed? Can Carolina and Arty stay alive until he does? Or are the children going to have to deal with the Night Witch themselves.

NIGHT WITCH is a book full of tension and suspense, a horror thriller that we think will firmly plant young Jack Priest among the greats of the genre. And frankly, we think if you give it a try, you'll come back for more.

Sincerely,

Bootleg Press

About the Author
They couldn’t find anyone to write my Bio here, so they asked me, so I guess this bio is really a sort of autobio, maybe not even that, but it’s about me anyway.

My Name is Jack Priest and I write horror stories. You know, the kind of something-is-under-the-bed-and-it’s-a-gonna-getcha kind of story. I’m a rabid Dylan fan, but I play the Stones, Beatles and the Dead all the time too. And because I live about ten months of the year in the Caribbean on my sailboat, "Night Witch," I also play Jimmy Buffett. Believe it or not, you live on a sailboat, you play Jimmy Buffett. It’s like a rule, no not like a rule, it is a rule. I think they keel haul you if you don’t have his CDs on board, either that or they send someone up in a bosun’s chair to throw a line over the first spreader, then they hang you by the neck till dead. Good thing for me I’m a Parrot Head as well as Dead Head or I’d really be in trouble.

I used to be a singlehander, that means I sailed alone, though I’m not a loner. I joined a writer’s group in St. Martin and those guys, writers and sailors all, gave me the courage to get my stuff published. To date I’ve got three books out, all based on stories I’ve heard in my travels.

RAGGED MAN: One night out at Aires Rock this aborigine guy started talking about the Dreamtime, this is a story about something that followed an American couple home from Australia. Something from the Dreamtime. Something bad. GECKO: I picked up the idea for this one in New Zealand. The Gecko was born out of a Maori legend and it came to America mad as hell.

NIGHT WITCH: The Night Witch is a soucouyant, second Caribbean cousin to the Vampire. She wears a locket that lets her live forever. Little Carolina Coffee got a locket from her father, a sneak thief back from vacation in Trinidad. Now the Night Witch is in California because her locket has been stolen and she wants it back.

I named my boat after the Night Witch, two years before I wrote the book. She’s such a spooky character, a mix of voodoo and European folklore, very scary.

I’m in the States now for a couple months, working like a dog on my latest horror novel, THE VOYAGE OF JESSE NAZARETH. Basically Christ comes back in the body of a serial killer, but nobody believes him despite the miracles. They try him, find him guilty and it’s the gas chamber. I don’t know I might change the ending.

While sitting on a the deck of a friend’s boat in Santa Barbara, I met Sara Hackett, who I call Babe. She’s a sailor gal, she’s very sweet and I guess when I get back to the Caribbean, I won’t be singlehanding anymore.

Thanks for reading,

Jack Priest

Customer Reviews

One Shouldn't Mess with the Night Witch
Carolina is on her way to school when an old woman peers out at her from behind her curtains. Arty, the fat kid of the class, meets her and carries her books. Bullies push Arty around, Carolina tries to defend him. The bullies promise to deal with Carolina and Arty after school. Such is the stuff of children in junior high school, but young Carolina and Arty have much bigger problems on their hands than a handful of bullies. That old woman for example. She is a soucouyant, loosely related to the vampire. A bloodsucking shape-changer that hunts and kills in the Southern Caribbean. She wears a locket which allows her to live forever. Unknown to Carolina, when her father, a petty thief, was in Trinidad on vacation, he stole the locket on a routine burglary, because he thought it would make a good gift for her.

Very bad things are about to happen in the small Northern Californian town of Palma. People are going to die as the soucouyant vents her ancient wrath. However there is a secret to her destruction, not a stake in the heart, something more chilling, and our young friends are going to have to find what it is pretty darned quick, because they are on the evil old witch's list and the Night Witch is certainly not someone or something to be trifled with.

Mr. Priest has delivered a chilling, sometimes violent, sometimes uplifting, horror story that will have you on the edge of your seat. A super, bad, vampire-like, evil old witch of a character that will have your heart racing to a voodoo beat as you eagerly read though the pages to see what comes next. I couldn't put it down. You won't be able to either.

Just a Doggone, Fun-Filled Story I Couldn't Put Down
This book starts out with a bang. John Coffee (spelled differently than Stephen King's great character) is on a northern California beach. He sees two men about to attack a woman jogger. He interferes, saves the woman just as something else attacks and Coffee barely gets away with his life, the beach attackers do not survive.

Coffee, a small time thief, broke into a house when he was on vacation in Trinidad and he stole a locket. He saw no value in the trinket, but thought it might make a good present for his daughter Carolina. Unknown to him, the locket is the key to a Soucouyant's immortality. In fact he didn't even know the Soucouyant's are shapechanging, Vampire like creatures, who live on blood and fear.

This shapechanger has followed Coffee home to California. She wants her locket back and she will stop at nothing to get it. Carolina lives with her mother, as her parents are divorced. Coffee tries his best to protect his daughter, but his frequent battles with the beast weaken him. Carolina is on her own, well not entirely, she has her school friend Arty, an overweight kid who is frequently the target of both his father's and a school bully's abuse.

I really liked the children in this story. I felt I was with them every step of the way as the Soucouyant creature closed in on them. I particularly liked the way Arty grew from a sad little boy who was afraid of the school bully to a tough kid who stood up to not only the bully, but his father and eventually the Soucouyant. I liked that the good kids triumph and I really like what happened to Arty's father, that alone is worth the price of the book. There is good reading here.

She will get you in the night!
Night Witch was a slick, cool and a really fast read, as I could have read hundred more pages. Jack Priest writes like he knows everything, as he is well accurate and prolific in his descriptions, nothing is staged and unbelievable and the story is as far out as it gets! This tale of fantasy married with horror is very enjoyable as we trek with John Coffee, an unusual character with a passion for stealing things large and small, who is smart, funny and someone you either want to be best friends with or just want to be him. He gets into a large fiery mess, stealing a locket that gets him in more trouble that he ever bargained for, as the thing he stole it form is beyond life and death and will stalk him until it either rests in its grave or kills him and gets it back. The characters in this book are both smart and fast, but they are human and they make mistakes, they are not perfect yet it makes them more real than most people I run into every day. I loved the character development and the conversations, I felt like the writer picked my brain and typed it all over his pages.

The story is split in two views, something I love in books. I get hooked on one and then the other and in the end I get to enjoy them coming together in a turbulent and mouth watering ending.

John is on the run from a mysterious creature that can appear as anything, but it chooses predatory and nasty forms of dangerous animals with the dead give away of its red eyes that sear though many in the book, sending chills and cries from its victims. I loved the fight sequences as there were many and the combat one on one with John and the creature was superb. I felt chills on my spine reading about a wolf in the dark forest in the fog, with it's claws ticking on the rocks, its snout dripping with hunger and I felt as if I was in the story and tried not to overstep the safety zone from which I was watching. The second story line deals with a pair of eleven year olds, Carolina and Arty, who were marvelously written, as it is rare that I enjoy youngsters in books, the only other author who really captured them well was Dan Simmons but for a new writer such as Jack, his children were breathtaking. They were kids, with their tender minds, and brave souls who became friends and fought obstacles greater then the sum of them put together and I loved reading their adventures and their dangerous escapes from the Night Witch. They had personal problems to deal with, gut wrenching child abuse and bullies at school, while trying to survive a killer that grown men fought and lost their lives to. I wouldn't dare to spoil the ending but it was great! I love when the climax is even greater then the story told, for all the buildup you read really brings you ultimate satisfaction and makes the whole experience of cracking open a book such a rewarding one.

I cant wait for more books from this author, as his is slick as a silver bullet in the night and he really doesn't miss with his stories.